4.20 Accusation: Biased testimony

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It’s important to cover biased testimony as this is probably one that will come up pretty quickly in conversation. Critics will say that all we have are testimonies by Christians! Who surely transferred their personal biases and traditions into their writings! Therefore, we must suspect what is communicated here must be considered biased and been reported inaccurately. This theory is plagued with difficulties (especially that assumption)

1. Paul’s testimony is stronger than that of a neutral witness of the risen Jesus, since his bias ran in the opposite direction

He was not sympathetic to the Christian cause, he viewed Jesus as a false Christ and also severely persecuted Jesus’ followers. They might say “Yes, but after he became a Christian, he lost his standing as an unbiased source”. Granted he lost ‘hostile status’ after he became a Christian, however, he maintained hostility right up to the point when he believed, there was no gradual transition. So we still have an appearance of the risen Jesus as the reason for the belief of a hostile source. 

With one who persists in asserting that Christians still lack the testimony of someone who actually saw the risen Jesus and did not convert, we might ask “If someone actually witnessed the risen Jesus and was not changed by the experience, wouldn’t this indicate that the person was too biased against Jesus to act on the facts?”.

Biases go both ways. We would seriously question someone who saw the risen Jesus and rejected him as 

2. The bias of James, brother of Jesus also ran contrary to Christianity.

The gospels report he was an unbeliever during the life of Jesus, later we find reports of the risen Jesus appearing to James and of his death for his belief that Jesus was risen. So we have testimonies from the disciples, James and Paul. Friend and foe testimony

3. Bias does not automatically mean distortion of the facts

But it can be maintained that those who had a passionate interest in the story of Christ, even if their interest in events was parabolical and didactic rather than historical, would not be led by that very fact to pervert and utterly destroy the historical kernel of their material

A.N. Sherwin White, Ancient Historian

Modern Jewish historians of the Nazi holocaust carefully have chronicled Nazi atrocities because they are passionately committed to exposing what really occurred, whereas mostly secular historians try to downplay events. In this case, personal bias encourages historical accuracy.

4. If we reject testimony of interested parties, we have to throw out most of our standard historical sources. 

Most historical sources have written due to some personal interest. The historian’s role is to comb through literature and attempt to see past the personal biases to ascertain what really happened. For example Tacitus claims to write without bias but we see that he clearly does. The historian can see through this bias and determine the facts

5. The sceptic must be cautious not to commit the genetic fallacy

We must understand the difference between understanding why something is true versus understanding why something is believed or how one came to believe that it is true. For example if you present evidence for the resurrection to Bob, but they say you believe it you were brought up a christian, this commits the genetic fallacy. Bob is shifting the issue to why you may have initially believed rather than the truth of that belief. It’s evidence dodging. Assuming New Testament authors were bias commits the same and doesn’t address the data provided. The prominent New Testament historian N. T. Wright puts it like this:

It must be asserted most strongly that to discover that a particular writer has a ‘bias’ tells us nothing whatever about the value of the information he or she presents. It merely bids us be aware of the bias (and of our own, for that matter), and to assess the material according to as many sources as we can.

N.T. Wright, New Testament Scholar

6. The sceptic must also avoid arguing ad hominem,

This is a tactic that focuses on the person rather than on the content of the argument being considered. Someone who claims the arguments of an atheist are invalid because the atheist has a bias against God is using an Ad Hominem argument. Bias against God doesn’t mean we can’t consider the legitimacy of their arguments. Bias does not mean lying, you can be bias and correct. So even If the disciples would benefit from the claim they had seen the Risen Jesus, this does not mean they lied.

Structured response

  1. Paul’s testimony is stronger than that of a neutral witness of the risen Jesus, since his bias ran in the opposite direction
  2. The bias of James, brother of Jesus also ran contrary to Christianity.
  3. Bias does not automatically mean distortion of the facts
  4. If we reject testimony of interested parties, we have to throw out most of our standard historical sources.
  5. The sceptic must be cautious not to commit the genetic fallacy
  6. The sceptic must also avoid arguing ad hominem, a tactic that focuses on the person rather than on the content of the argument being considered.

Sources for ‘Bias’

  • Bias quote — White, Roman Society and Roman Law, 191
  • Personal bias — Blomberg makes his comment in Real Answers: Jesus, the Search Continues (produced for Inspiration Network), tape 1. A transcript of this video series is available at www.insp.com/ jesus/ transcripts.htm.
  • Tacitus — Cornelius Tacitus, Annals 1: 1.
  • Tacitus bias — Colin Hemer, The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1990), 89
  • Genetic fallacy — N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 89.

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