Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code by Bart D. Ehrman

Author:Bart D. Ehrman [Ehrman, Bart D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780195307139
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2004-01-15T07:00:00+00:00

Our Need of Sources

The first thing I need to stress is a point that I made in the introduction: anyone who says anything about Jesus (or about anybody else from the past) has to have a source of information. This should seem obvious, but maybe it’s not so obvious to everyone, for there are lots of people who say lots of things about Jesus all the time—preachers, televangelists, historians, theologians, Sunday school teachers, Mormon missionaries, even the guy next door. How does everyone seem to know so much—or to have so many opinions—about who Jesus was? The reality is that people can’t know anything about Jesus unless they have learned it from a source. Or rather, there are two options (this, again, is true of everything from the past): either they have learned something from a source or they have made it up themselves.

The problem, of course, is that most people don’t have ancient historical sources for their claims about Jesus. Most people have learned what they know, or what they think they know, from other people (for example, a minister or a talking head on a TV program). But where did these people get there information? Usually from other people. And where did they get their information. From others. And so it goes.

Ultimately, everything goes back either to a historical source or to someone who made things up. Even historical sources, though, were written by people. Where did the authors of these historical sources get their information? Same options—either from others or from their own imaginations. The mere fact that a source is ancient doesn’t necessarily make it reliable; it simply makes it older than sources today. No one who thinks about this at any length really doubts it—it’s just that many people have never thought about it. For we know beyond a reasonable doubt that even ancient sources, close to Jesus’ day, sometimes made up information (or relied on others who made it up). Otherwise all the stories we have already discussed in chapter 3 would be historically accurate—that Jesus really did go around zapping his playmates when he was five years old, as in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, or really did emerge from his tomb as tall as a skyscraper with a walking, talking cross following him, as in the Gospel of Peter. But everyone recognizes these accounts as fictions. Which means these are stories that someone made up.

Since all the stories about Jesus ultimately go back to one source or another, the question naturally arises of which sources are historically reliable. Are there sources that give actual historical information instead of fictional flights of fancy? And how do we know which sources can be trusted as historical? These are questions that historians wrestle with as they try to establish the facts of Jesus’ life. These facts cannot be based on mere hearsay or historical imagination. They have to be based on reliable sources. But what sources are there, and how can we extract historical information

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.