Unlike in Medicine, historians lack an evidence rating scale for the strength or weakness of historical evidence. Wouldn’t it be helpful if theists and non-theists were able to use an agreed upon evidence quality rating scale when discussing historical claims made by Christianity? Here is my historical evidence rating scale. Let me know what you think.
Level 5: Multiple (3 or more), undisputedly independent, undisputedly contemporary sources corroborate the event.
I appreciate the desire for shared standards - but I think this scale might oversimplify how historians actually work from my understanding. A few thoughts:
Contemporary is tricky: In ancient history, what counts as ‘contemporary’? Paul’s letters (50s CE) are 20-25 years after Jesus’ death, yet that’s remarkably close by ancient standards. Tacitus on Tiberius wrote ~80 years after the emperor’s reign, yet he’s a prime source. The scale needs to define this clearly.
Quality matters as much as quantity: Three terrible sources don’t beat one excellent one. We’d rather have one inscription or archaeological find than three late, derivative texts. Type of evidence matters - material culture, inscriptions, enemy attestation, criterion of embarrassment all carry different weights.
Independence is complicated: Sources can share oral traditions yet be independent witnesses. The Synoptic Problem shows this isn’t binary. And sometimes ‘dependent’ sources preserve independent earlier traditions.
What’s being claimed matters: ‘Jesus taught in Galilee’ needs different evidence than ‘Jesus rose from the dead.’ Your scale treats all claims the same.
The scale reflects modern historiographical assumptions: Our current focus on reconstructing specific events in strict chronological order is, I believe, quite modern - largely emerging from 19th-century German critical historiography. Ancient historians, including ancient Jewish and Greco-Roman writers, often had different goals. They were doing history, but as rhetoric - shaping events to reveal character, meaning, and significance. Chronological precision wasn’t always the point.
Ancient biography (which is perhaps the best genre fit for the Gospels) was about portraying who someone was, not just documenting what happened when. Thucydides rearranged speeches; Plutarch compared moral characters; ancient writers telescoped events or arranged them thematically. This doesn’t make ancient sources ‘unreliable’ - it means they’re reliable for different purposes than modern positivist history.
So when we impose a scale built on modern historiographical values (multiple independent contemporary sources for specific event reconstruction), we’re potentially judging ancient texts by standards they never claimed to meet. That doesn’t resolve the historical questions, but it means we need to ask: What kind of text is this? What was it trying to do? What claims can it actually support?
Rather than a 0-5 scale, historians use convergence of evidence, contextual plausibility, and Bayesian reasoning. Could we discuss what specific claims you’re evaluating? That might be more productive than debating a universal methodology.
I just wanted to say your post was excellent overall. But I wanted to add some nuance to this small snippet. I think this just means no matter how good the historical evidence is, someone can dismiss it on the basis that miracles don’t happen. Your “different evidence” just simply isn’t realistic to me. Either we believe miracles can happen or we don’t. That is an infinite gap in most cases. If you don’t then there is no amount of historical evidence from 2,000 year old texts that would convince you the impossible happened. And that is a philosophical judgment, not a historical one.
If we treated all claims equally on methodological grounds then the resurrection of Jesus would be very strong and hard to deny.
But I’d say a difficulty for historians is if we don’t treat all claims equally on methodological grounds, then our reconstruction is going to be partially rigged. A historian should, in theory, evaluate evidence consistently. But just as science seeks natural explanations, many historians seek natural, probability based reconstructions of the past. Thus, miracles are methodologically excluded from consideration even if the evidence for some of them is otherwise quite solid.
And there is nothing to stop a person from saying “historical reconstruction is too tenuous and uncertain a discipline to believe something that defies our understanding of physical laws occurred 2,000 years ago.”
So while I understand “extraordinary claims require extra….” if the miracles of Jesus and resurrection were mundane claims, the evidence for them would be quite strong. But still, one is mostly going to accept or reject that evidence based on their worldview going in. I don’t think a different type of historical evidence would matter.
And this has ramifications for the rest of the material in the gospels. One of the things historians might look at during source analysis is the “laurels of the author” and if a gospel has a bunch of clearly fictitious and made up miracle accounts (maybe based on some kernel incident or not), this is not lending credibility to the gospel accounts and will cause some to treat more of it skeptically. Miracles are a very thorny issue for the historian “who is scarcely equipped to deal with them”—as one older guide to historical methodology noted.
We have no sources contemporaneous with Jesus and the dating and authorship of the four gospels is disputed. We only possess the testimony of the earliest church who carried on his mission and message. Your standards — much like those imposed in your other threads—look suspiciously rigged against Christian faith which is in line with your continued anti-Christian agenda here. You are also woefully ignorant about historical Jesus research which many would say is in the 4th quest at the moment where some scholars have come to see the demise of the criteria of authenticity (e.g. multiple attestation, embarrassment etc) used by third-questers like John Meier and his magisterial Marginal Jew series.
Many works on Jesus specifically discuss methodology and the better historians lay out their methods in their works and engage in source evaluation and state up front beliefs in regards to things like the synoptic problem going on. Your standards just show a complete unfamiliarity with ancient history and how it is reconstructed. Maybe try picking up a book on the subject before laying out your rigged standards.
But I doubt you even take your own level 5 standard seriously because if you did you would believe the Virgin Mary appeared in Portugal in 1917. A lot more than three people saw that.
Some historians find recurrent attestation an excellent way of reaching historical certainty when dealing with gospel materials. When dealing with them, much of it comes down to source evaluation (who wrote it and when) and whether or not you believe miracles are possible or not. There is no way to approach the issue in an unbiased vacuum.
What we do have contemporary primary data for is the belief of Jesus’s earliest follower and that comes from Paul who met and knew them by his own autobiographical testimony. If you accept traditional authorship the we would have several contemporaneous and independent sources attesting to Jesus’s teaching and deeds in the gospels.
I’m open to modifications, would you kindly redo the scale as you see appropriate? I want it to be fair to everyone. I don’t want anyone to say that it is biased.
The children first saw a flash of light, followed by a woman described as “clothed in white, brighter than the sun”. She asked them to return to the same spot on the 13th of each month and to pray the Rosary for world peace and the conversion of sinners.
The lady revealed the “Secret of Fatima,” which is said to contain three parts: a vision of hell, a prediction of the end of World War I and the start of another, and a vision of the death of the Pope and other religious figures.
The final apparition took place amidst a large crowd gathered to see the predicted miracle. The children reported the lady appeared and that the sun then performed miraculous actions, such as spinning and changing colors. The crowd also reported witnessing these unusual solar events, which became known as the “Miracle of the Sun”.
I have never read the details of the first two alleged appearances, but what evidence would be good from these alleged events?
Level 5 evidence: The three children claim to have seen the Virgin individually. They didn’t know each other. They never met each other. Their testimony is completely independent. Each child, interviewed separately, describes what the Virgin looked like and what she said with no significant discrepancies between the three. Their testimony corroborates.
Level 3 evidence: The three children knew each other and were together when these alleged appearances occurred. They therefore had time to talk about the event and share details…or invent details.
Level 2 evidence: In 1947, three adults who have known each other their entire lives, come forward claiming that when they were children, in 1917, they as a group saw the Virgin Mary, each giving similar corroborating testimony of the event
And what about the last appearance to the crowd of thousands? None of the eyewitnesses claimed to see Mary. Thousands claimed to see the sun make unnatural movements. That’s it. How should we rate it? Well, it has to be rated as a level 5 for unnatural movements of the sun, but it can’t be used as evidence for Mary because no one claimed to see Mary.
Your OP assumes the “need” for evidence at all. If you had actually taken notice of the discussions you have had already you would see that faith does not rely on evidence and , at least with God, the evidence tends to appear once the faith is established.
This is the problem with the empirical approach. You start with needing something that is contrary to the nature of faith.
I’m not questioning the existence of your faith, Richard. I am trying to establish a common framework for evaluating historical claims. My historical evidence rating scale cannot prove or disprove the existence of God or the workings of the supernatural. In regards to Christianity’s core claim, the resurrection of Jesus, it cannot prove or disprove Jesus’ resurrection but it can evaluate the quality of the evidence for his alleged post-mortem sightings.
Interesting proposition. Especially today, when history is being re-written by some like Eric Metaxas who has taken liberties with many sources.
Something we find true in medicine all the time. Some of the early meta-analysis studies done on the effect of ivermectin were promising, but based on very limited and poorly done studies, and ultimately it was shown ineffective for Covid when good data came out.
This is very much true in textual criticism as well. “Earlier is better” is not the most reliable methodology to use. A late, carefully transmitted 500 year old text is certainly better than a thousand texts based on a 300 year old manuscript that was poorly copied itself. Apostolic teaching in the 30s is going to be apostolic teaching in the 80s just the same. Im sure memory will play some tricks but it’s still eyewitness recollection.
Even when it comes to the gospels, source evaluation is far more important than dating. Whether Mark dates to 38-40 CE as two credentialed and prominent atheist scholars have argued (Casey and Crossley) or 75 CE after the temple was destroyed…or some time in between in the 60s as tradition seems to suggest, the issue is who wrote it and where does the information come from? Knowing where information comes from is of monumental importance. Was the author in a position to know these things? Fact check and so on. What level or historical accuracy did they hope to achieve?
I would generically assert something written in 40CE has had less time for development and the telephone game than something 75CE but if a companion of Peter wrote Mark, its going to carry more weight whether written in the late 30s or 70CE than if it was by some anonymous Christian just pooling random stories together in 70CE or later after the apostolic era had waned and Jesus had not yet returned as expected. Source evaluation is probably the most important aspect of reconstruction of the historical Jesus and the early church and it is honestly very difficult as internal arguments always carry a degree of subjective judgment (an author wouldn’t write this or would include that and so on) in them. For example, contextual plausibility mentioned by @pevaquark is utilized by many (Sanders, Fredriksen, Pitre and any scholar who tries to think if something attributed to Jesus fits in a first century Jewish context) but that requires making subjective judgements: what do I consider plausible in a first century Jewish context? And that is when biography about Jesus can turn into autobiography and the historian reconstructing Him ends up producing an image of themselves.
But Scripture is no a historical document under the rigours of historical fact. The Gospels are not chronologically organised, especially John. Luke admits ti being based on witnesses not chronological historians, you cannot assess Scripture by such methods, It does no stnd up. People have made many attempts to harmonise or get a timeline out of the Synoptic Gospels (MML) but any attempt to include John fails. Even then there are disputes .I am sorry, but you are trying to assess Scripture from the wrong perspectives,
So you believe that the historical claims in the Gospels cannot be evaluated using the standard methods of historical research? The Gospels cannot be examined in the same way we evaluate the writings of someone like Plutarch or Philo?
T_aquaticus
(The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)
13
I don’t think a strict hierarchy for evaluation is necessary. A dispassionate source is usually better. Agreement between multiple independent sources is better. A source closer in time to the historical event is usually better. I think these are 3 solid criteria for assessing the quality of historical sources, and criteria that nearly all historians use.
Scripture is a theological document designed to inspire faith. There was no Chronicler, except for Jeremiah. It is closer to propaganda than history. You believe it at face value, not by verifying.
Contrary to claims on this forum you do not get very far spreading lies and falsehoods, but it depends on your view of truth, or the specifics involved. I have no doubt ruffled a few Christian feathers with this rather bold assertion.
The trouble is that people get very personal. possessive, and touchy about the truths they hold and can be very derisive of those who do not hold them or try to contradict them.
The result is not discussion but assertion and counter assertion. All too common here, unfortunately.
I am trying to find a fair, unbiased method for examining the historical claims and sources of the Christian Bible, a fair method that could be used for every other book from Antiquity. If you think my system is biased, improve it.