Yeah, 300 rounded, about 300. Not 200. And proves nothing at all.
Here is the opinion of an expert. It might help you understand:
âThe name of Eusebius of Caesarea has been mentioned quite frequently in these pages. His Ecclesiastical History gives us access to a host of sources and traditions otherwise long since lost. The âFather of church historyâ had at his disposal the library at Caesarea which Origen built up after he had been forced to leave Alexandria and take up residence in Palestine. Pamphilus, an enthusiastic adherent of Origen, had sought out and added many volumes to the library, and Eusebius, the pupil, co-worker, and friend of Pamphilus, became his successor when Pamphilus died as a martyr in the Diocletian persecution.
Although Eusebius leaves much to be desired as an exegete or an apologist for Christianity, he had, on the other hand, one quality that was lacking in all his predecessors as well as in all his contemporariesâthe instinct for historical research. In the congenial setting offered by a well-stocked library in Caesarea, as well by visiting the Christian library at Jerusalem, founded in the previous century by Bishop Alexander (Hist. eccl. VI. xx. 1), âEusebius indulged his appetite for Christian antiquities, and began the task of collecting and organizing material covering the history of the Church, chiefly in the East, during the preceding three centuries.
Born about A.D. 260, Eusebius became bishop of Caesarea before 315, and died about 340. He wrote his Ecclesiastical History in sections, and issued it, with revisions and additions, several times during the first quarter of the fourth century.29 What renders Eusebiusâ work most valuable to us is the marked attention that he directed towards all that concerns the history of the Christian Bible. He had read a prodigious number of authors, and in the extracts that he gives from their writings he never fails to note the use they made of Scripture, the lists of books they quote in passing or fully discuss, the judgements they pronounce on them.â
Excerpt From
The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance
Bruce M Metzger
This material may be protected by copyright.strong text
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I need no help.
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In answering the question, âAre the Gospels Trustworthy?â, I think we need to approach the Gospels on their own terms, and not in terms of what we would like them to be. When done so, I think they stack up well both historically and scientifically. However, before addressing the Gospels, I think we need to think about what history and science actually are.
A historian cannot tell you âwhat actually happenedâ. A historian can only tell you what people at that time believed had happened. To use a modern example, and since we are living through history all the time, what is the nature of Donald Trump? One person might answer that Donald Trump suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder which tempted him to accept manipulative support from a foreign government leading to compromised decisions by the USA on the world stage. Another might argue that Donald Trump conquered the political culture of government (âdrain the swampâ) to make the sweeping changes that made America great again. I am not asking for alternative proposals here, but rather to quickly illustrate how history begins and remains as a way of telling a story.
The Gospels are ways of telling the story of Jesus of Nazareth. While each Gospel has its own particular ânarrative strategyâ, they all share a way of looking at Jesus through the eyes of faith. Not all stories about Jesus share this perception. Some around Jesusâ time said that Jesus was a sorcerer who led Israel astray. The Gospels are sometimes quite explicit about this goal. Johnâs Gospel tells us that âthese are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:31 NIV)
Because of this acknowledged goal in the writing of the Gospels, some scholars believed that they might be able to go beyond the Gospels and discover the âreal historical Jesusâ. The result of this search has been a number of mutually contradicting portrayals of Jesus which have no more claim to historical reliability than that of the Jesus of faith. In fact, the Jesus of Christian Faith has more documentary evidence to support it than all the other so-called âhistoricalâ Jesus figures. No doubt this is largely because those who saw Jesus through the eyes of faith were motivated to gather and publish the documentation.
A problem that arises in the search for the historical Jesus occurs when historians start to imagine that they can establish âwhat actually happenedâ. To do this they draw upon assumptions of their own time and culture. As one experienced searcher for the historical Jesus eventually concluded, the search for the historical Jesus is a bit like someone who looks down into a deep well. What they see is a pale reflection of themselves.
An illustration of this can be found at the end of the 19th century. Infatuated with Newtonian science, scholars seeking the historical Jesus concluded that neither the miracles of Jesus nor his resurrection could be literally true. Into the early 20th century, scholars like Rudolph Bultmann promoted the demythologisation of the New Testament. By myth they meant that stories of the miraculous could not be literally true so must all be fictional stories told to illustrate spiritual truths. But while there are certainly myths in this technical sense in the Bible, I very much doubt that the resurrection (for example) was intended as a myth by the Gospel authors. The foundations of such 19th century liberal theology were eventually shaken by scientific discoveries taking place even then. The world would soon know about the bizarre aspects of quantum physics and the strange behavior of time, which could slow and even stop. If God truly exists and has designed this universe, he (or she) could easily manipulate aspects of the universe. We humans even do so in our own small ways.
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This morning in his sermon my pastor recommended this book:
Funny I actually have that book. But havenât read it yet. Currently âreadingâ The Case for Jesus by Brent Pitre
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