The overwhelming consistency of the NT

[gmx]

This reply shows plenty of confusion over how an argument is constructed. It also contains red herrings and other informal fallacies.

The argument the OP presents can be simply represented as:

If writings x are consistent then there is historical truth to writings x.
Writings x are consistent.
Therefore...

So far the first, major premise has received no support whatsoever. You've offered absolutely no reason for thinking that it is true.

You have said a little more about the second, minor premise, yet you've also failed to do something so simple as to define your terms. What exactly do you mean by consistent? A definition that is the same for both premises is required to evaluate the argument.

Please drop the emotive appeals and focus on the structure and soundness of the argument. You are also, of course, free to formulate the argument as you see fit. You may, for example, wish to frame it in probabilistic terms.

(For what it's worth this argument appears to be worthless, with both premises being false under the meaning of the word consistent as I understand it, but as a reasonable fellow I am offering you enough benefit of the doubt to give you the opportunity to clarify and justify your argument.)

(Also a rational Christian or atheist or whatever should be able to identify unsound arguments, regardless of their opinion of the truth value of the conclusion. I would appreciate it if we could avoid unnecessary rhetoric regarding bias. Obviously one "can't just assert to be correct." I'm disappointed if that is what you've interpreted my posts as doing, especially because I'm not even a "mythicist.")

1. Constructing arguments probably isn't my strong suit.

2. I wasn't really intending to formulate an argument at all, more to offer some observations, and possibly to play devil's advocate for a number of different viewpoints simultaneously. I can see how that might be confusing.

3. If I was putting forward any argument it certainly wasn't

If writings x are consistent then there is historical truth to writings x. Writings x are consistent. Therefore...

It was probably more the converse, "If the NT was cobbled together from many and varied discrete traditions and mythologies, over a period of one to two hundred years, in a process spanning a wide geographic area, in what was therefore a chaotic or perhaps organic theological evolution, then one should expect the NT to exhibit more obvious and widespread dogmatic contradictions than it contains." I agree, that is an assumption that should be tested, but it seems logical / self-evident to me.

4. Yo mama.

5. In response to

I would appreciate it if we could avoid unnecessary rhetoric regarding bias

I want to stress that my use of the word bias was not intended to be perjorative. It was to be transparent in acknowledging that everyone comes at such discussions with their own preconceptions, a principle I thought was widely accepted and appreciated in NT studies. My use of the word "bias" was meant in this context, not as any kind of slight.

[iskander]

What could "consistency" mean in any religious text? I would propose that uniformity can only be achieved by separating diverging views into smaller units, so that each one of these smaller units represents the individual consistent interpretation of the sacred.


The NT, like any other revelations of god, admits to a multitude of interpretations which may generate several doctrines. In a society that values tolerance these doctrines become organised religious organizations living in peace with each other.

Christianity,- like Buddhism, Hinduism. Judaism , etc ,- has split into many different churches ; and even within each one of those churches there are lay members that hold a personal understanding of the official doctrine. Religions behave like political parties do.

[Peter Kirby]

It was probably more the converse, "If the NT was cobbled together from many and varied discrete traditions and mythologies, over a period of one to two hundred years, in a process spanning a wide geographic area, in what was therefore a chaotic or perhaps organic theological evolution, then one should expect the NT to exhibit more obvious and widespread dogmatic contradictions than it contains." I agree, that is an assumption that should be tested, but it seems logical / self-evident to me.

I would date the earliest NT text around AD 50 (at the earliest) and the latest NT text around AD 150 (at the latest), with the range easily tightening to AD 55-145 or AD 60-140 depending on how you want to split the hairs. That implies a range of 80, 90, or approximately 100 years. I don't know of anyone stumping for 200 years.

The geographic area would seem to be wide in that some come from the area of Asia Minor, some from Rome, and some from Syria, among other potential locations.

Neither the date range nor the geographic range seem particularly relevant to the question of "more obvious and widespread dogmatic contradictions." Indeed, everyone would grant the geographic range bit in any case. Some would try to squeeze the range to AD 40-70 at one extreme or AD 50-100 from a more mainstream perspective, but honestly I fail to see what difference the extent of the range makes here. It's certainly not self-evident that the exact amount of time is relevant to the point.

That leaves just one or two relevant conditionals for the statement, i.e., "cobbled together from many and varied discrete traditions and mythologies" and "in what was therefore a chaotic or perhaps organic theological evolution." If I may take the liberty of tightening the statement a bit, then:

"If the NT was cobbled together from many and varied discrete traditions and mythologies ... in what was therefore a chaotic or perhaps organic theological evolution, then one should expect the NT to exhibit more obvious and widespread dogmatic contradictions than it contains."

Now everyone knows that a conditional statement holds true in one (or both) of two cases:
(a) the "if" portion of the statement is false
(b) the "then" portion of the statement is true

For this statement, the "if" portion is false if and only if:
(1) the NT was not cobbled together from many and varied discrete traditions and mythologies, or
(2) it was not a chaotic or perhaps organic theological evolution

(Of course, this little list just gets longer if someone wanted to insist on the relevance of the dating range or the geographic range to the argument.)

Frankly, I don't see why a "mythicist" couldn't or shouldn't readily affirm either (1) or (2), along with you, and thus evaluate your "self-evident" statement to be true (... "vacuously" true, in that the "if" portion is false).

I for one have never been a big fan of the idea of anything being "cobbled together from many and varied discrete traditions and mythologies" in the first place, unless it is something written in the modern era when that kind of breadth of knowledge and cultural consumerism is commonplace.

In short you may have an argument against particular "mythicists" who have emphasized some certain ideas along such lines.

[Adam]

Do you mean the earliest EXTANT Christian texts or do you mean such underlying documents as Q? If the former, I'm with you. If the latter, you know from editing me that you are thusdisagreeing with my Thesis that there are seven written eyewitness documents underlying our four gospels. (That of course does not include my new suggestion that Apollo-Apelles was the Redactor for GJohn.)

[gmx]

It was probably more the converse, "If the NT was cobbled together from many and varied discrete traditions and mythologies, over a period of one to two hundred years, in a process spanning a wide geographic area, in what was therefore a chaotic or perhaps organic theological evolution, then one should expect the NT to exhibit more obvious and widespread dogmatic contradictions than it contains." I agree, that is an assumption that should be tested, but it seems logical / self-evident to me.

I would date the earliest NT text around AD 50 (at the earliest) and the latest NT text around AD 150 (at the latest), with the range easily tightening to AD 55-145 or AD 60-140 depending on how you want to split the hairs. That implies a range of 80, 90, or approximately 100 years. I don't know of anyone stumping for 200 years.

That criticism seems a bit opportunistic. It was clearly enunciated in my OP that I was referring to the NT, apostolic fathers and ante-Nicene fathers.

The geographic area would seem to be wide in that some come from the area of Asia Minor, some from Rome, and some from Syria, among other potential locations.

Neither the date range nor the geographic range seem particularly relevant to the question of "more obvious and widespread dogmatic contradictions." Indeed, everyone would grant the geographic range bit in any case. Some would try to squeeze the range to AD 40-70 at one extreme or AD 50-100 from a more mainstream perspective, but honestly I fail to see what difference the extent of the range makes here. It's certainly not self-evident that the exact amount of time is relevant to the point.

It seems obvious to me, on a fundamental level, that the geographical footprint encompassing early Christian theological development is highly relevant. There are no cell phones or chat groups to facilitate the cross-pollination of ideas. Christianity spread quickly and was therefore highly vulnerable to the development of location-specific wrinkles with the potential to dilute what became known as proto-orthodoxy. The mere existence of proto-orthodoxy and eventual orthodoxy speaks to a core, fundamental set of beliefs that define the apostolic period and which were preserved as original / traditional beliefs.

If the Bishop of Lyons is on-message in 180 CE (from France), it speaks to uniformity of belief across the Orthodox Christian world.

[iskander]

The ghost of councils past.

The Apostolic Age, the Nicaea and pos-Nicaea epoch is a time full of confusion and fighting.


Second Creed of Sirmium or “The Blasphemy of Sirmium”
http://www.fourthcentury.com/councils-and-creeds/

The Trinitarians said Sirmium 357 was a blasphemy, but the Arian Christians respond :

You thought it right to approve of this sort of blasphemy at Sirmium [year 378], which exhibited to the churches of God a crime of idolatry unheard in all past ages .For, as the confession placed in your book proves, you thought we should believe in three almighty gods, three eternal, three true, three coactive, three seated together, three indistinct, three confused, three lacking nothing in irrationality

The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy, 318-381 by R P C Hanson, 931 pages ISBN 056709485 5 , In page 577

[Ben C. Smith]

If the Bishop of Lyons is on-message in 180 CE (from France), it speaks to uniformity of belief across the Orthodox Christian world.

Is this not a tautology? Since Orthodoxy, by definition, entails a great deal of uniformity of belief, is this statement not tantamount to affirming that there was much uniformity of belief among those who kept their beliefs uniform with one another?

[Secret Alias]

Again jumping into a thread having read only the last seven posts is often a bad idea but nevertheless here goes.

Why do we consistently assume that if - let's say - 'Paul' wrote a text in 50 CE and we have a copy of that text today that we have THAT edition of Paul's original text? I find this among the most moronic habits of people who study these things.

A parallel example. A prostitute at one point in her life was a virgin. But she is a changed person after sleeping with her 1000th john. If I knew a virgin when she was still a virgin and met her after her 1000th sexual encounter surely we are dealing with two different individuals between the sheets.

To the same end why is it that people who study texts always assume we have a convent of texts rather than a brothel?

Before I hear objections from many of the (male) virgins at the forum (or those whose monogamy was enforced upon them by their general unattractive appearance) let me say that the identification of texts as whores and virgins is well established in the Biblical tradition. One example, Abu'l Fath reports the sectarian Sakta (Sextus?) a Dosithean describing the Torah in these terms (evidently because it was corrupted). I think the gnostic identification of Sophia (= Hochmah) is similarly rooted. My seeming 'obsession' with sexual imagery and ideas is quite normal in the real world. Most of my friends in the real world discuss nothing but sex when you get to know them. But among people who study the Bible and at this forum, kitomba is scandalous, 'reckless' behavior.

Maybe that's why you all are stuck on the idea that these texts are virgins, you're not living in the real world of whores and whoremongering. The world is a brothel, my brothers. As soon as anyone gets an abundance of cash they race to get kitomba. That's the way of the world at least for men. Get used to it and give up on this naive notion that our texts are virgins. Our surviving texts are survivors of a brutal gang rape by the ecclesiastical authorities. Repeated abuse from the second to fourth centuries. Get over your outdated notions ...

[Secret Alias]

And rather than having to argue against the purity of these texts (which is what is inevitably demanded from those who know the ways of the world) I would turn things around and demand that that those who assume virginity for written texts in a debauched cesspool of a world are the ones who need to defend their views. Prove that these texts aren't sullied in the way that all things get sullied when they walk through the corridors of power and privilege. That should be the order of the day. Assume the worst and have to prove that these 'immaculate texts' are indeed immaculate. That it is possible for a message which was wholly 'against the world' didn't succumb on its hands and knees to the power of this world. This is the absurdity. The world is a brothel and always was. The two thousand years of Christianity was a break from reality, the reality of human nature - an eternal human nature. I would even go one step further and argue that the Church only sublimated the whoring in nature and made people whore their integrity and honesty in the name of self-improvement. We're still the same assholes before and after Christianity. It's just that we learned to dress up our evil in new guises and pretenses. To that end, the onus on anyone who assumes that the nature of the church is somehow 'different' that our innate selfish - even evil - 'human nature' needs to prove that the church is an exception not the rule. Stop buying into this idea that someone didn't change the gospel, someone didn't change the writings of Paul and the rest of this nonsense. It wasn't one alteration but many. The fact that the Marcionite objection surfaces in the writings of these 'Church Fathers' only confirms what we already know from nature. The New Testament canon was corrupted. It had to have been. A profoundly anti-worldly message could not survive in the world. Like the virgin who resists the sexual advances of a brute it was raped, not once but repeatedly.

[Adam]

If the Bishop of Lyons is on-message in 180 CE (from France), it speaks to uniformity of belief across the Orthodox Christian world.

Is this not a tautology? Since Orthodoxy, by definition, entails a great deal of uniformity of belief, is this statement not tantamount to affirming that there was much uniformity of belief among those who kept their beliefs uniform with one another?

Yes, Ben, you're so right. I was about to jump in and say the same. What about the Docetists and Gnostics, the Ebionites, Montanists, and Adoptionists (soon to be called Arians, I guess).