The Compelling Nature of Corroborated Testimony
Program Note: I'll be on the road for a while so the next episode of The Humble Skeptic will be released on Tuesday, October 22nd.
On recent episodes of The Humble Skeptic podcast, I reopened my investigation of my dad’s story of seeing Billy Joel perform at a Los Angeles piano bar. This was primarily due to the fact that so many of the details he related ended up being independently corroborated by John Gibson during a recent interview (for a compelling list of some of the corroborated facts of this case, click the button below to download a PDF chart).
Though I still have several unanswered questions, as I recently discussed with J. Warner Wallace, it would be difficult—if not impossible—to explain how both Gibson and my dad could independently come up with so many of the same details about the bar they visited if they both were remembering things incorrectly. Why would they each describe the bar as being located in the lobby of a large office building if in reality it was a single-story building several blocks away? The fact that Gibson worked with Billy Joel in those days and visited the bar on multiple occasions makes his testimony extremely compelling and serves to confirm the Western and Wilshire location that my dad has suggested from the beginning.
On the last two episodes, I’ve also discussed how this type of “evidential reasoning” relates to the story of Jesus and the rise of Christianity. In the section below, I’ve assembled a number quotes from atheist New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman related to his assessment of the strength of the case for the historical Jesus, particularly in light of all the corroborated testimony we have from a variety of independent (and early) sources. These quotes are presented here, not because Ehrman is the world’s authority on this topic. Rather, I believe it’s helpful to consider what a person coming from his particular worldview and background is willing to concede.
Selections from Bart Ehrman’s book, Did Jesus Exist?
[H]istorians who try to establish that a past event happened or that a past person lived, look for multiple sources that corroborate one another’s stories without having collaborated. And this is what we get with the Gospels and their witnesses of Jesus…For a historian these provide a wealth of materials to work with, quite unusual for accounts of anyone, literally anyone, from the ancient world.1
We are not dealing with just one Gospel that reports what Jesus said and did from sometime near the end of the first century. We have a number of surviving Gospels…that are either completely independent of one another or independent in a large number of their traditions. These all attest to the existence of Jesus. Moreover, these independent witnesses corroborate many of the same basic sets of data—for example, that Jesus not only lived but that he was a Jewish teacher who was crucified by the Romans at the instigation of Jewish authorities in Jerusalem. Even more important, these independent witnesses are based on a relatively large number of written predecessors, Gospels that no longer survive but that almost certainly once existed…If historians prefer lots of witnesses that corroborate one another’s claims without showing evidence of collaboration, we have that in relative abundance in the written sources that attest to the existence of the historical Jesus…And some of these traditions must have originated in Aramaic-speaking communities of Palestine, probably in the 30s CE, within several years at least of the traditional date of the death of Jesus.2
Since no one would have made up the idea of a crucified messiah, Jesus must really have existed, must really have raised messianic expectations, and must really have been crucified. No Jew would have invented him. And it is important to remember that Jews were saying that Jesus was the crucified messiah in the early 30s. We can date their claims to at least 32 CE, when Paul began persecuting these Jews. In fact, their claims must have originated even earlier. Paul knew Jesus’s right-hand man, Peter, and Jesus’s brother James. They are evidence that this belief in the crucified messiah goes all the way back to a short time after Jesus’s death.3
The opening words of the Gospel of Luke bear repeating: “Whereas many have attempted to compile a narrative of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as the eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them over to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all these things closely from the beginning, to write for you an orderly account” (1:1-3). As we will see more fully in a later context, one needs to approach everything that the Gospel writers say gingerly, with a critical eye. But there is no reason to suspect that Luke is lying here. He knew of “many” earlier authors who had compiled narratives about the subject matter that he himself is about to narrate, the life of Jesus.4
As a result of our investigations so far, it should be clear that historians do not need to rely on only one source (say, the Gospel of Mark) for knowing whether or not the historical Jesus existed. He is attested clearly by Paul, independently of the Gospels, and in many other sources as well: in the speeches in Acts, which contain material that predate Paul’s letters, and later in Hebrews, 1 and 2 Peter, Jude, Revelation, Papias, Ignatius, and 1 Clement. These are…sources that broadly corroborate many of the reports about Jesus without evidence of collaboration. And this is not counting all of the oral traditions that were in circulation even before these surviving written accounts. Moreover, the information about Jesus known to Paul appears to go back to the early 30s of the Common Era, as arguably does some of the material in the book of Acts. The information about Jesus in these sources corroborates as well aspects of the Gospel traditions, some of which can also be dated back to the 30s, to Aramaic-speaking Palestine.5
[B]oth the literary character of 1 Corinthians 15:3-5 and the logic of Paul’s understanding of the resurrection show that he thought that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus were recent events. I should stress that this is the view of all our sources that deal with the matter at all…These sources, I should stress, are all independent of one another; some of them go back to Palestinian traditions that can readily be dated to 31 or 32 CE, just a year or so after the traditional date of Jesus’s death.6 …The idea that Christians were telling stories of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection before Luke, before Mark, and before Paul is held by virtually all scholars of the New Testament, and for compelling reasons.7
Related Articles
Outside The Gospels, What Can We Know About Jesus? Shane Rosenthal
Can We Trust Luke’s History of the Early Jesus Movement? Shane Rosenthal
The Authenticity & Genuineness of The Fourth Gospel, J.B. Lightfoot
Is Luke a Trustworthy Historian?, Sir William Ramsay
Joanna: Obscure Disciple or Luke’s Key Witness?, Shane Rosenthal
How to Detect Deception, Shane Rosenthal
Related Audio
The Pilot Episode, Humble Skeptic #01
New Evidence for The Executive Room, Humble Skeptic #55 with John Gibson
Evidential Reasoning, Humble Skeptic #56 with Craig Parton
Dealing With Discrepancies, Humble Skeptic #57 with J. Warner Wallace
The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, Humble Skeptic #48
Faith Founded on Facts, Humble Skeptic #15
Are the Gospels History? Humble Skeptic #52
Questioning Conventional Wisdom, Humble Skeptic #13
UPCOMING EVENTS
Milan, Italy
On Sunday, Oct. 13th, Shane will discuss “The Thing of First Importance” at Chiesa Riformata Filadelfia which is located on the northwest side of Milan. For more info or directions, click here.
St. Louis, Missouri
On Friday, Oct. 18th, Jeremy Smith will talk with Shane about why he lost faith in atheism, along with what it means to be a “humble skeptic” at this year’s ReThink315 fundraising dinner, which will take place at the Missouri Athletic Club in Des Peres. To purchase tickets for this event or for more info, click here.
Troy, Illinois
On Sunday, Nov. 3rd, Shane will be speaking at a youth event from 3:30 to 7:00 pm at Providence Presbyterian Church. Shane will be addressing the topics: “Is Faith Blind?” and “Are There Contradictions in the Gospels?” For more information about this event, send a text to 619-820-4908.
Houston, Texas
On Friday & Saturday, Nov. 8-9, Shane has been invited to participate in a panel discussion with Gary Habermas and others on the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection. This event will take place at the Lanier Theological Library.
St. Charles, Missouri
On Sunday, Dec. 8th at 6 pm, Shane will discuss some of the challenges related to Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth. Some believe that the account of the census that took place in the days of Quirinius (Luke 2) is at odds with other known historical facts. Did Luke make a mistake or can the apparent contradiction be resolved? This discussion will take place at Christ Presbyterian Church (cpcopc.org).
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Bart Ehrman, Did Jeusus Exist? (New York: HarperOne, 2012), 75, 78.
Ibid., 92-93
Ibid., 164
Ibid., 79
Ibid., 140-141. See pages 50-68 for Ehrman’s discussion of 1st-century sources for the life of Jesus from non-Christian writers such as Tacitus, Suetonius, and Josephus.
Ibid., 251
Ibid., 262
You've probably already seen this, but you're not the only one trying to de-mystify Billy Joel's early years. :^)
https://starsafterstarsafterstars.substack.com/p/maybe-billy-joel-is-the-one-whos