OK, so it was a while ago. I was debating, I think, Mission_Minded_Maiden. The usual topic for those debates being Religion. So, she suggested that I read a book called "The Case For Christ" by some guy called Lee Strobel. This was months ago, probably. Well, I just found it and, because I like to think of myself as fair minded, I got it and have started reading it. I also recommend it. It's hilarious!
Back story is this. We have Lee, the so-called atheist investigative journalist. His wife converts to Christianity, so he decides to look into it in a journalistic way. He's going to interview people. So, person number 1 is Craig Bloomberg. He wants evidence about eye-witnesses. And he is convinced so amazingly easily! It's really laughable.
Things like this. He's asking why Matthew, a disciple of Jesus references Mark in his gospels even though Mark wasn't a disciple.
Sir Bloomberg, in answering, quotes two people. First, this guy Papias, who said, around 125 AD that Mark "'made no mistake' and did not include 'any false statement'". The idea being that Mark wrote down what Peter (an inner disciple) said.
He also quotes someone named Irenaeus who said in180 AD, "Matthew Published his own Gospel among the Hebrews in their own tongue, when Peter and Paul were preaching the Gospel in Rome and founding Church there. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, himself handed down to us in writing the substance of Peters preaching. Luke, the follower of Paul, set down in a book the Gospel preached by his teacher. The John, the disciple of the Lord, who also leaned on his breast, himself produced his Gospel while he was living at Ephuesus in Asia."
The purpose of this quote being to prove the authorship of certain gospels.
Surely you can all see the problem with this. Lee Strobel didn’t. He had some other questions, but seemed fairly satisfied by all this. For clarity, I’ll spell out the problem.
Let us start with Papias. We have Craig Bloomberg. He is quoting Papias, but not directly, of course. It would have to be in translation. That’s 3 degrees of separation already. But what of Papias. According to Bloomberg, he recited this spiel in 125 AD!!!!! That’s what, 92 years after the death of Jesus! So, even if Mark and Papias’ life overlapped a little, he sure as hell wasn’t a contemporary of Peter, so how does he know that Mark copied it down perfectly? Let’s assume the tiny possibility that he and Mark met. Not likely, but possible. Then Mark told him he wrote it down perfectly. That’s four degrees and one of them is pretty suspect. Then we get to Peter, whose words these supposedly are. That’s five degrees. Then Jesus, that’s 6 degrees of separation, at least, over a course of close to 2000 years. And Strobel DOESN’T question it! What kind of investigative journalist doesn’t bat an eye when the proof he’s being offered is a translation of a person’s testimony alive around 1900 years ago, offering evidence of an event that happened close to 100 years previously?
The same problem (or practically the same) exists for this Irenaeus character. Right, he’s alive around 150 years after the death of Jesus. Bloomberg, again, has to be quoting a translation. And all this guy does is say this person wrote this gospel here, while these people were somewhere else, and this guy also wrote a gospel here, and someone else wrote a gospel somewhere else. Ummm. How does he know all of this? If he was alive for any of this gospel writing, I don’t see why I should trust that gospel. If he wasn’t, who told him about it? There are no sources for his information. Nothing to back it up. Just saying it, plain and simple. It’s like me saying “General Lee wrote down that he like chocolate in his diary.” Great. What’s my source? Is that source credible? Any intelligent person would ask that, but this Strobel guy doesn’t even question Bloomberg! It’s outrageous!
Later in the chapter, this insane style of ‘investigation’ is backed up by Strobel’s own words. It isn’t me just wondering why he doesn’t say anything. He says “Feeling satisfied with Bloomberg’s initial answers concerning the first three gospels…” WHAT????? How on Earth could an investigative reported with a professed atheistic worldview be satisfied with that?
The conclusion is fairly obvious. There are two paths that lead to the same answer, which is don’t trust this guy. 1) He’s an idiot. 2) He either lied about being an atheist, or was over-eager to be convinced otherwise.
Rest in peace
yourfuneralguy
http://www.lowercostfuneral.com
You got me curious now, so I am going to get a hold of the book.
Thanks.
Rest in Peace.
I'd get it from a library if you can...
"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do."
Benjamin Franklin
Strobel needs to return his journalism degree with apologies to whatever university he got it from.
(1) In his book he does mention what critical scholars say, but he doesn't interview a single one. He gets only one side of the story, ... and its the evangelical side. That sounds a little strange for someone who claims to have been an atheist entering into the investigation.
(2) He accept EVERYTHING his sources say without doing some simple checks.
(3) As you note he doesn't even put simple thought that anyone could do that actually questions the information.
As an example, He talks about Irenaeus as saying that Matthew wrote his gospel in Hebrew. It is true that Irenaeus said that ... but it is not likely to be true that the author of Matthew actually did that.
(1) Matthew does quote Mark. In many places word-for-word, and Mark was written in Greek. If Matthew translated it into Hebrew and then his work was later translated back into Greek then it is unlikely we would get that word-for-word correspondence.
(2) When Matthew quotes from the Hebrew Bible (aka the Christian Old Testament) he is quoting text of the Septuagint which was an early Greek translation and not the Masoretic text kept by the Hebrews. Again he quotes the Septuagint text word-for-word in those places. And again it would be unlikely that the text would be retain that trait after being first translated into Hebrew and then translated back into Greek.
Another MAJOR problem with Strobel/Bloomberg's thesis here is that they quote Papias and tell us that it comes from 125 CE. Except, NONE of Papias writings exist anymore. The only way we know of anything that Papias wrote is because other Ante-Nicene church fathers briefly mention his writings. The person who mentions him the most was not even Ante-Nicene. He was Eusebius of Casarea who was writing circa 350 CE. And Eusebius thought Papias was an idiot. Papias quote about Mark comes from Eusebius by the way.
Here is the full quote:
It is unlikely that Mark, "the interpreter of Peter" actually wrote the Gospel of Mark:
(1) The Greek in the Gospel of Mark is notoriously poor quality Greek and Mark was supposed to have been a native Greek whose job it was to translate Peter's Hebrew into Aramaic
(2) For someone writing down Peter's recollections of his time spent with Jesus, Peter doesn't come across as looking very good. That would be an aberration for the writings of that time.
(3) Mark is the shortest of all the Gospels. Did Peter just not discuss much about Jesus with Mark?
So there is plenty of reason to believe that the Ante-Nicene fathers were incorrect in their attributions of authorship of the Gospels. In fact, critical scholars generally agree that Mark didn't write Mark, Matthew didn't write Matthew, Luke didn't write Luke, and John didn't write John. The real authors are anonymous.
Cheers,
DB
===
If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. - Anatole France
:)X Yeah, it's pretty sad really. Just makes you want to cry.... :((
I haven't read the whole book yet, but any other amusing goodies I'll probably blog about. Speaking of funny is the long list of, for the most part, Christian Scholars who seem to think this book presented good evidence. I guess they couldn't find an atheist who was converted...
"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do."
Benjamin Franklin
I read Strobel's CASE FOR CHRIST a couple of years ago after my neice, a fairly well respected neurologist, urged me to. She believed the evidence was incontrovertible.
I read it and I was impressed, but not the way she thought I would be. Prior to reading CFC, I had just finished looking into the differences in the birth narratives of Jesus given in Matthew and Luke. Christians amalgamate the stories at Christmas ... having Jesus born in a manger, being visited by 3 wisemen and the shepherds etc. But if you actually read each account separately it becomes clear they are two DIFFERENT stories.
Matthew has Joseph and Mary living in Bethlehem and Jesus is born in their house. Luke has them coming to Bethlehem because of a census (more on this in a bit) and the there is no room at the inn so Joseph and Mary stay in the stable.
Matthew has the 3 wisemen. Luke has the shepherds
Luke has Joseph and Mary returning to Nazareth. Matthew has them flee to Egypt with Herod ordering the deaths of all the babies in Bethlehem.
The stories are simply incompatible. However, extreme bible believers wont accept that. They come up with ridiculous apologies to cover up the contradictions.
One of the more prominent contradictions is the time that Jesus was born. Matthew says it was during the reign of Herod. We know from independent sources that Herod died in 4 BCE. Luke says it was during a census called by Quirinius, govenor of Syria. Quirinius did call a census for the Syrian provinces and we know from independent sources that it was in 6 CE. That was 10 years after Herod had died.
So they both can't be correct, one must be wrong ... ouila an error in the inerrant word of God.
But not so fast ... Apologists have claimed that there might have been another Quirinius governor of Syria during the reign of Herod who just maybe could have called a census.
Without any explanation of the problem Strobel mentions that to his expert. His expert is evidently aware of the problem because he goes to his references and comes up with a paper by archaeologist Jerry Vardamen concerning a coin dated circa 10 BCE (IIRC) that has Quirinius' name on it.
Strobel immediately accepts this as proof that (A) Quirinius was governor of Syria then, (B) he did call for a census at that earlier time, and (C) the potential problem is resolved for good.
BUT get this, Vardaman never published that paper. What Strobel's source must have been using was an unpublished draft. Why was it never published? My guess would be that a rather large contributing factor is the fact that THERE IS NO QUIRINIUS COIN. Vardeman never produced one and he has died and nobody can find it. There isn't even a photograph of it. Vardaman has a DRAWING of the coin. And the name Quirinius is ACCORDING TO VARDAMAN, too small to see with the naked eye. He has a DRAWING of a microscopic picture of the name. And even there it is not easy to tell that the name is Quirinius. Vardaman claims that the name was engraved with a diamond stylus ... there is no evidence that there even WAS diamond styluses during BCE. Vardaman doesn't even try to tell us why anyone would engrave a name on a coin that is too small to see with the naked eye.
Furthermore, we know who was the governor of Syria back then and it wasn't Quirinius. Furthermore, the census called by Quirinius in 6 CE was because Rome didn't have any data on the people living in that area so it is unlikely that Rome had ever done any census at all before that. Finally, Syria was under control of a Roman Governor. Bethlehem was under control of a Roman appointed King ... Herod. It would have been stupid for Quirinius to require people living in Galilee under his auspices to go to Bethlehem (under Herod's auspices) to be counted in the first place.
So again Strobel didn't check out squat. What type of investigative reporter is that?? And as you read his book he milks his being an "award winning" investigative reporter to the max to lend credibility to his book. I can't help but think of this as intentional misrepresentation.
Cheers,
DB
===
If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. - Anatole France
Yeah, the more I read the more stunned I am. I was already pretty aware of the inconstancies talked, thanks mostly to you and Percivale bringing them up. I was stunned how Strobel challenged nothing except a couple of seemingly meaningless points. He accepts blatant circular logic, obscure facts, frankly unbelievable suppositions without batting an eye, but spends a decent amount of time questioning why, if the bible was a biography, was it different from modern bios.
He even ignores Bloomberg's own contradictions. Once Bloomberg calls the apostles highly moral, then he says that they appear, in the bible, as "a bunch of self-serving, self-seeking, dull-witted people a lot of the time." Strobel says nothing.
It's really appalling. I would be lying if I said I didn't expect at least some faulty reasoning, but nothing like Strobel's complete lack of curiosity, and his total deference to these so called experts, all of whom support what he claims thought was false.
"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do."
Benjamin Franklin
These points are interesting but not well thought out. If you want to criticize something you need to look at it with a rational perspective. If you set out determined its false, then you will reap nothing from this book. Points made were not always well thought out either, look at it from every angle before you jump to conclusions. To me it looks like you are angered and scared of truth so you build 'facts' up to prove that you are right when in fact you are scared. But i could be wrong. That is just how it appears.
I'll admit that I didn't expect to be convinced. However I have read a lot more sophisticated theological arguments than this. I've read a few on this site.
Let's say that you were investigating a murder and you wanted to interview people. But let's say this was a big controversial murder. Would you only interview people who thought the suspect was guilty? Would you accept evidence without even looking it up? If you did question evidence, would you bring those questions only to people who thought the same way the initial interviewee did?
Of course not. Well, that's what Strobel did. He only interviewed Christian scholars with a literal interpretation of the New Testament. That's it. He didn't interview non-literalists. He didn't interview Jews or Muslims or Buddhists. He didn't interview atheists. He accepted almost everything he was told as fact. When he did have questions, he asked people who he knew shared similar beliefs as the initial person who brought the item up.
That's just plain sloppy.
“I am the King of Rome, and above grammar”
Emperor Sigismund
I see your point but if you want the truth on the subjects he was looking into wouldn't you want to go to a scholar who had studied the subject in depth and who knew what he was talking about? And if he had interviewed Jews they would have said the same things the Christians do about the Old Testament and archeological digs. And from my perspective so far in the book it doesnt appear that he is nesecarily 'accepting' everything as fact but he is looking at this with a very open mind and is taking these things as fact. And then going to another source to see if their data disputes the date he just received, he ever writes in the book that the scholar made a good point but he wanted more refrences to see if what the scholar said was in fact true. And when it comes to christianity once one studies it as in depth as the scholars have done it is hard to find scholars who are not christians but who have studied as much and as in depth as the christian scholars. It seems to me that Strobel is trying to go for best information he can get. And why would a Christian lie? We have no reason to. So why would these men dedicate their lives to this study just to lie about it? Would that really bring them fulfillment in life? Before you write off a Christian look into who they are first. A Christians past explains a lot of why they are Christian.
"I see your point but if you want the truth on the subjects he was looking into wouldn't you want to go to a scholar who had studied the subject in depth and who knew what he was talking about?"
Absolutely. He should ask them, but he should also look at the other side.
"And if he had interviewed Jews they would have said the same things the Christians do about the Old Testament and archeological digs"
But, they would say something different about the theology, which would be important.
"And from my perspective so far in the book it doesnt appear that he is nesecarily 'accepting' everything as fact but he is looking at this with a very open mind and is taking these things as fact."
He questions almost nothing! And when he does question, he asks people who he knows advocate the same view point as the person who raised the issue.
"he ever writes in the book that the scholar made a good point but he wanted more refrences to see if what the scholar said was in fact true."
Yes, but the references all advocate the exact same position as the initial scholar.
"And when it comes to christianity once one studies it as in depth as the scholars have done it is hard to find scholars who are not christians but who have studied as much and as in depth as the christian scholars."
I'm not talking about asking secular scholars about the theological issues. I'm saying he should have talked to secular scholars about the historical and scientific issues. He could have also talked to the ones he did, but they shouldn't be the only sources.
"It seems to me that Strobel is trying to go for best information he can get."
But only from sources that advocate the same view.
"And why would a Christian lie?"
The same reasons that anyone else would lie. I hate to say it, but that's a really obnoxious supposition.
"We have no reason to."
What about the Quirinos(?) coin that DB talked about? What about that Noah's ark sham?
"So why would these men dedicate their lives to this study just to lie about it?"
Have you ever considered that, while being honest, they might be wrong?
"Would that really bring them fulfillment in life?"
To some people. Some people, whatever the faith or what-not will lie to protect what they believe in.
"Before you write off a Christian look into who they are first. A Christians past explains a lot of why they are Christian."
I would suggest that you expand that to everybody.
“I am the King of Rome, and above grammar”
Emperor Sigismund