My name is Stephen Bedard and I am the pastor of Woodford Baptist Church and First Baptist Church, Meaford. I am a graduate of McMaster Divinity College with a Master of Divinity, Master of Theology (New Testament and Early Judaism) and Master of Arts (Biblical Studies). I am also a graduate of the Arrow Leadership Program and am currently in the Doctor of Theology program at the University of South Africa. I live with my beautiful wife Amanda and our five wonderful children on the shores of Georgian Bay in Meaford Ontario. My passion is to present the truth of the Bible in an understandable and relevant way. I am the co-author of Unmasking the Pagan Christ: An Evangelical Response to the Cosmic Christ Idea and the author of Finding a New Land: From Canaan to the Resurrection. You can find out more about me at www.stephenjbedard.com.
5 responses so far ↓
Jeff Clarke // February 1, 2008 at 8:59 pm |
Hi Steve,
Thanks for posting on the MacDiv wall regarding your blog. I read a few of your postings and enjoyed it very much. I’ll be back for more!
Have a great weekend and take care!
Jeff
jonswales // March 20, 2008 at 3:00 pm |
thanks for your blogging. Every Blessing to you this Easter
http://ordinand.wordpress.com/
Nicholas Dykema // March 5, 2009 at 11:38 pm |
Mr. Bedard, your quest is futile. You’re trying to use a tool — historical analysis — that by its very existence disproves what you’re trying to prove — as Jeffry succinctly points out. To support you in this brief exchange only Warren Martin provides a type of credibility. He believes in fairy tales. Which is fine — once you enter the hermetic world of might-have-been or what-might-be — the world of faith — his position is unassailable. No rational person would find it credible, but it is still unassailable.
Historians do not prove, beyond peradventure, anything. But whenever they can, they assemble sufficient data so that doubt about authenticity and veracity is reduced. But even the best of modern historiography is far from infallible. For instance, there is not much doubt that Kennedy was shot. But, despite the oceans of ink that have been expended on this event, the libraries full of books and documents, the congressional investigations, blogs without end, etc., etc., etc., despite all this, no single remotely un-contested explanation of exactly who or why or how has emerged. We have the Zaprudar film, radio reports and commentary, magazine articles, books ad infinitum, ad nauseam — and there are plenty of people still around who were actually there when it happened — only 46 years ago! And with all that, you have almost as many explanations of what did happen as you have people proffering them.
Yet here for something that happened two millennia ago you are undaunted. With Josephus you have the almighty gall to take a source that is widely suspect, the most recent copy of which dates, I believe, only from the 12th century, unattested by any other historical document, from an age when history was as much story telling as unadulterated recounting of facts — and try and use that as proof of anything ? !
Textual criticism has labored for years to establish the oldest and most accurate version of the Gospels, but from Gutenberg’s bible in 1455 back to the beginning of professional scribes, around 300 A.D., back through the 200 years prior to that when the Gospels (and probably Josephus) were ideological and theological footballs, changed and edited by the combatants in the wars for dominance in the new religion of Christianity, to the time they were actually written or dictated around the year 100 — is a period of around 13 centuries. During which every scribe, amateur or professional, who copied Josephus, or the Gospels, was to some or a great degree free to add or subtract text that confirmed or disproved this or that ideological, political or theological position.
So it is that, just as we have no idea what was in the original manuscripts of the Gospels, so also have we no idea what Josephus originally wrote. Including whether or not the two mentions of Jesus were in the original. (Bart Ehrman in “Misquoting Jesus” gives an interesting demonstration of just how problematic, for the Gospels, all this is.)
That to begin with. But then let us suppose we somehow had manuscripts fresh from the hands of Josephus himself, or from the unknown individuals who wrote Mark, Mathew and Luke: would we have any reason to accept as accurate what they had written? The Gospels present enormous difficulties of authenticity in and of themselves; with Josephus there is the monumental problem of works written by a traitor and a turncoat, a sycophant whose life depended on writing what was pleasing to his masters, an apologist for the Romans, writing in Rome where he had little or no access to documents and sources (if any existed), works about which scholarly research has significant reservations, and (and in this no different from other pseudo historians of the time) when history — as an accurate and honest recording of the facts — was unknown.
And you have, as Bertie Wooster would say, the immortal rind to use Josephus as a proof text for the validity of anything ?
You should stay with Warren Martin. He at least is on firm — albeit invisible — ground.
Nicholas Dykema
Cleveland, Ohio
Stephen Bedard // March 9, 2009 at 7:07 pm |
Thanks for your opinion but I must respectfully disagree. Almost every Josephus and ancient historian agrees that Josephus said something about Jesus even if some Christian eventually enhanced it. Origen talks about Josephus’ witness to Jesus while claiming that Josephus did accept that Jesus was the Christ, supporting an original Josephus testimony about Jesus. As for the Gospels, I think you misunderstand textual criticism. If we had these amount of variants with only two or three late copies, we would indded have something to be concerned with. Instead we have a huge number of copies, many of them very early. Read Ehrman’s book more carefully. Only a small number of the changes are based on theological motives, most are simply due to human error. Also, Ehrman seems relatively confident that he can get to the original reading of some difficult passages following the rules of textual criticism. That is what scholars do and because of that we have a very good idea of the shape of the earliest form of the text. Believe what you want theologically, but historically the story of Jesus is on firm ground.
Jerry Anderson // May 4, 2009 at 1:08 pm |
Stephen,
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Hope you find it helpful!
Cheers,
Jerry