History and Christianity (incorporating Historiography)

Hello,

I'm going round in circles a bit with my thesis at the moment, so I'm going to follow some good advice given to me once and just write something else for a while.

The following is a quote from a book called Lifted, by Sam Allberry (Assistant Minister of St. Mary's Church, Maidenhead, UK). In this first chapter the statement of Peter in Acts 3:15 ('You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witness to this') is being analysed:

'Peter's final comment indicates that the vindication of Jesus is public. None of these has happened behind closed doors. It wasn't human sleight of hand or trickery - God did this. And he did it publicly on the stage of human history. It happened, we're told repeatedly, on the third day. Jesus' resurrection was as precise a historical event as his birth or death'

(pp. 31, Lifted; Sam Allberry; Ashford Colour Press, 2010)

Christianity is undoubtedly a faith that placed great store in its own history. Allberry goes on to note that in 1 Corinthians 15 Paul is careful to note the various times when Christ reappeared to his followers (five times, including Paul himself). Indeed the very nature of Christian faith is tied up in these reappearances. One of the more common criticisms aimed against the idea of faith is that it negates reason. Faith here is belief without proof. Now in another post I quoted from the Book of Job to the effect that lying for God is unacceptable. 2 Hebrews 1 meanwhile tells us that 'we must listen very carefully to the truth we have heard, or we may drift away from it' (mine is the New Living Translation). A degree of study therefore is not only beneficial but expected.

Allberry's case is that the fact of the Resurrection is the cornerstone for such faith. In the manner that one accepts that sodium reacts with water because you are told so and see the evidence (this sentence was not written by a chemist), Christ related the facts of his death (Matthew 17:22, Mark 8: 31, Luke 9: 22 and 44, John 12: 23-26) and Resurrection to the Apostles, and then was resurrected Himself. The Resurrection is the cornerstone of Christian belief. Christianity links together sin and spiritual death. Sin leads to that death, but following Christ saves you (John 5: 24). Through the act of the Resurrection, Jesus, the son of God, came to die for our sins and overcame death itself, breaking the hold of sin. 'If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless and you are still guilty of your sins' (1 Corinthians 15:14-15).

In other words the historical reliability, the historicity, of Christianity is central to the tenants of the faith. The question then arises how reliable is that historicity. I'm not expert on biblical interpretation and dating, and I won't try and claim to be one here. One of the central principles of historiography though is analysing likely patterns of behaviour. If, for instance, you are told that person X did something, and that something seems logically or reasonably unlikely to have occurred, then it probably didn't. Let us say, for instance, that one afternoon while researching in the British Library I came across a letter from Harold Laski referencing a time when Napoleon dressed up in frilly knickers one afternoon in August 1801 and can-canned his way down the Champs Elysees in Paris. Now there are several reasons that I can reasonably discount that letter as a source. Firstly Laski is well-known among political history circles for not being the most reliable font of historical knowledge - he enjoyed retelling a good apocryphal story as fact. Secondly such behaviour would be completely out of character for Napoleon. Thirdly the Can-Can didn't originate until the 1830s (I did look that up on Wikipedia, so don't take it as face value).

One of the most common arguments in favour of the historicity of the Gospels is that without these the behaviour of the early church makes little to no sense whatsoever. Let us theoretically say that Christianity was a con-trick, designed as an ego trip and then adapted to elicit gullible Palestinians to hand over their goods to the Apostles (for the sake of argument I'm interpreting Acts 4: 32-36 in a very negative light). If so, itt would have to be an enormously complicated conspiracy. The following, for instance, is a list of fate of Christ and the Apostles as accepted within Christianity (I've adapted this from Wikipedia, but as far as I can see the list seems accurate):

Jesus Christ - crucified
Simon Peter - crucified
James, son of Zebedee - beheaded
John, son of Zebedee - died of old age
Andrew, brother of Peter - crucified
Philip - crucified
Bartholomew - flayed alive and then beheaded
Matthew - killed by a halbeard (a two-handed pole weapon)
Thomas - killed by a speak
James, son of Alphaeus - beaten to death with a club after being crucified and stoned
Jude - crucified
Simon the Zealot - crucified
Matthias - stoned and beheaded

(Matthias replaced Judas Iscariot, who hanged himself after betraying Jesus)

Of the 13 men on that list, 1 died of old age. Either Jesus found the 12 most gullible men in first-century Palestine, or he was enormously convincing himself. Why though would he himself undergo crucifixion?

I hope to do more in this topic, but I'll need to read up on my first-century Palestinian history beforehand.

Now, lunch.