Why do I trust the claims of the bible are not mere fiction? I don’t have any reason to.

Yes, supernatural events are hard to swallow, and I struggle with things like Jesus’ resurrection. But that doesn’t discount them as fiction.

Besides, I don’t think any serious scholar would assert they were fiction. Even the Jesus Seminar people didn’t do that. And they’re hyper critical about miracles.

I look forward to your post. And no, I don’t feel like you’re picking on me. I appreciate the challenge and see it as fleshing out the blog post. Furthermore, contrasting me helps me to sharpen my own thoughts. I hope to do the same for you.

Accuracy means I can trust that your copy of the Koran is identical to the original Koran. It doesn’t demonstrate authority, of course. That’s trying to prove too much.

Thank you. So at least point 1. is irrelevant to the title of the post. I’m not exactly convinced by the other points regarding the bible’s authority, but don’t have the time to go into them now.
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Okay, we could probably go endlessly around challenging authorship and dates…both trotting out scholars and books to defend our positions equally…but I’m curious…why would you trust those sources?

Yes, I expect we could. Are you curious enough to investigate them? I trust them only because they’re biblical scholars. Why do you trust the claims of the bible are not mere fiction?
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But more importantly, what do you hope to get out of talking to me? I’m seriously curious.

Hehe, why am I picking on you? It’s a fair question. The short answer is that I’m curious too. The long answer is an upcoming post on my blog. I’ll pop you an email when I’ve posted it so you can comment.
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Thanks for your thoughtful replies.

I think accuracy does mean reliability. We can trust that the documents aren’t corrupted. Accuracy means I can trust that your copy of the Koran is identical to the original Koran. It doesn’t demonstrate authority, of course. That’s trying to prove too much.

And I shouldn’t have said “obviously.” Good catch. Yet, Luke declares he was an eyewitness. And both John and Matthew were Jesus’ students. Mark was the only one who got his info second hand, from Peter, another student of Christ.

Okay, we could probably go endlessly around challenging authorship and dates…both trotting out scholars and books to defend our positions equally…but I’m curious…why would you trust those sources? But more importantly, what do you hope to get out of talking to me? I’m seriously curious.

Take care, Eshu.

I don’t intend it as a trick question. When you said, “The internal consistency of the New Testament documents is about 99.5% textually pure.” I thought this implied that it added authority or reliability to the bible. Given your clarification that this only means the ability for people to subsequently copy the copies accurately, it seems irrelevant to authority and reliability. If you think it is relevant, then surely the same measure could be applied to other books? Forgive me if I’ve misunderstood.

I got the dates from Dan Barker’s recent book, but they are also discussed in the following WikiPedia article, which cites “Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally, (HarperSanFrancisco, 2002) page 189″ as a source amongst others.

Now, how do you know the authors were “obviously” eyewitnesses?

Thanks for the clarification.

Basically, how close is Romans manuscript A to a later Romans manuscript B?

Erm, so how is that relevant to the accuracy of the originals? Do we even have the originals? I mean, if we have an early manuscript and a later copy and there are some minor differences, well then, use the earlier copy. If we could find the originals then we might be on to something but as it is I don’t think this tells you anything about the bible’s accuracy, just that some people who copied some copies of copies were fairly good at copying. If I took a copy of the koran and copied part of it with 100% accuracy, would that make it reliable?

What would be more convincing (although human-authored books could also acheive this) is if the stories were consistent throughout the bible. However, from what I’ve read, the gospel stories differ considerably regarding the resurrection.

Obviously Matthew, Luke and John were written by eyewitnesses, within their lifetime, so just a decade or two after Jesus’ death.

Obviously? I understood that Mark was commonly thought to be the first of the gospels, written about 70 CE, then Matthew around 80 CE, Luke 85 CE, John somewhere in the 90s CE. Given the life expectancy at the time was mid-forties, these couldn’t have been eyewitnesses, unless they were children at the time or exceptionally long-lived. If it is obvious and you know otherwise please show me.

The internal consistency of the New Testament documents is about 99.5% textually pure.

An interesting claim. What does this mean exactly and how is it measured?

And there is dating evidence that suggests the entire New Testament was completed within 70 years.

70 years? So not entirely the eyewitness accounts we are sometimes led to believe? An adult at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion would not have been alive 70 years later. Even their grandchildren would be fairly old.