How To Figure Out If a Miracle Happened...

[00:00:01] How to Figure out if a Miracle Happened By Bart Ehrman More interesting questions for readers, including issues connected with miracles I have a question about the epistemological limits of historical inquiry, one that I have long wondered about. Without finding a clear answer, my understanding is that historians work without surviving evidence and attempt to reconstruct what what most probably happened. [00:00:29] Because historical method generally operates with methodological naturalism. Events such as miracles, for example the resurrection, appear either extremely improbable or methodologically excluded within historical analysis at least methodologically speaking. [00:00:46] If this is the case, theology or faith seems to operate on a different explanatory level, allowing for the possibility that events beyond currently known natural laws may occur. [00:00:57] This raises a question for me. If historical method assumes methodological naturalism in advance, how can it fairly evaluate historical claims whose very content is supernatural without narrowing the range of possible conclusions beforehand? [00:01:13] Related to this, I wonder whether historical reasoning itself, because it relies heavily on probability and patterns derived from repeated experience, may face limits when addressing singular events in the past. [00:01:26] If historians must explain events only in terms of natural causes, how could they ever conclude that a genuinely supernatural event occurred, even if it did? [00:01:38] Yes, if a historian automatically rules out claims of supernatural intervention, claiming they cannot happen, that means they cannot or will not agree that they ever have. [00:01:49] My approach is different from that. My view is that even if a historian grants that supernatural interventions can happen, they have no way of showing that they have. That's because other explanations are necessarily more probable. [00:02:03] If you have five people claim they saw Joe Jones walk across his swimming pool one afternoon, then the historian has to ask what's more probable? [00:02:12] Is it that he played a trick on them? That they mistook what they saw? That they made it up? That they were drunk out of their gourd? That that there is some way to explain why these people said what they did, or to claim Joe really did walk across the lukewarm water of his swimming pool, if you'd say that the testimony of five people is more powerful an explanation than the laws of physics, then I'd say that you're not seriously doing history. [00:02:42] The other options happen millions of times every day. The other one has happened never in documented history. [00:02:49] So which is more likely? [00:02:51] I'm not saying with this approach that it could not have happened. Whatever my personal views of miracles are, what I'm saying is that even if it did happen, it can never be the most probable explanation of the reports. [00:03:03] And so, yes, there are limits to what history can show. The big mistake people make is thinking that the Past is history. [00:03:10] The past is everything that's ever happened. History is the reconstruction of what probably happened, and that ain't the same. [00:03:21] In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says that the resurrected Jesus appeared to 500 followers at 1 time. [00:03:29] Was the critical scholarship on this claim? And what are your thoughts? [00:03:33] I know from experience that this is sometimes used as a proof of the resurrection response. I think generally scholars are suspicious of the claim. If it were true that a huge number of people all saw Jesus possibly at one time, then surely the Gospel writers many years after Paul would have heard about it. And if they did, surely they would have mentioned it. It seems like a pretty important point to overlook. [00:03:57] Paul's the only one who speaks to the 500, and he doesn't indicate where he got his information from and whether he himself actually knew anyone in the alleged group. It seems more likely that it's a rumor that he's heard. [00:04:10] There were at least as many religious rumors floating around then as now, and rarely did anyone check them. In fact, it's hard to figure out how they actually could. [00:04:20] I myself hear rumors and stories and tales of great miracles all the time. In our own age, you may as well. The fact that people say something happened doesn't mean it did happen. [00:04:34] I understand the persecution in Lyon and Vienne in 155 CE as reported by eyewitnesses in a letter recorded by the church historian Eusebius was citizen initiated. [00:04:46] Roman officials got involved once it was underway. [00:04:50] Early Christian accounts of martyrdom almost always are written to glorify ascetic athleticism. [00:04:56] They don't usually help much in identifying root causes of conflict. [00:05:01] What do you think Christians were doing that causes public reaction against them in Lugdunum in Lyon? My understanding is that because religion is a behavior, not just the acceptance of doctrines, Christians were reviled for setting up a rival economic system involving worship that was disruptive to existing local economies and for refusal to participate in the already existing economic worship infrastructure. [00:05:26] There were certainly conflicting ideas and values involved, but economic hardship would cause people to pick up pitchforks and torches to face down a threat response It's a fascinating and powerful text. It's worth reading for blog members who don't know about it. It's in Eusebius Church History 5.1, but I don't believe it gives any suggestion that the conflict arose out of economic issues involving alternative economic systems. On the contrary, the text indicates that the Christians wanted to participate in local public life outside of pagan religious practices, including in the forum, in the marketplace, and so on, but they were banned. [00:06:06] The grounds for attack mentioned are that the Christians were godless and irreligious, and that the religious practices involved cannibalism and incest. [00:06:15] The latter were standard charges against hated groups. But the real issue in almost all the early Christian persecutions of record and ancient discussions of them, c. Tertullian and so on, it was the refusal to participate in the public cult of the gods. [00:06:29] As you say, that's not a question of doctrine, but of religion in the Roman sense. For festivals, sacrifices, public prayer and so on, Christians didn't participate. They were blamed for any hardships that hit the community, and the community tried to root them out of their midst.