We Can Corroborate the Gospels without Verifying Every Detail

When jurors evaluate witnesses in criminal cases, they examine evidence in an effort to corroborate the statements offered by these witnesses. Jurors are looking for some limited confirmation of the facts offered on the stand. Imagine, for example, a witness testifies that the robbery suspect approached the bank teller, pointed a gun at her (using his right hand), began to climb up onto the counter (using his left hand), screamed at the teller, and demanded that she give him the money from the cash drawer. Jurors who hear this testimony may want some additional evidence to confirm that the witness statement is accurate. As a result, prosecutors may introduce fingerprint (or shoeprint) evidence from the counter in an effort to corroborate the witness. If the fingerprints on the counter match the fingerprints from the suspect’s left hand and the shoeprint matches the suspect’s shoe, the statement of the witness would be considered reliable and corroborated by the evidence.

But did you notice that print evidence from the counter did nothing to confirm the specific actions of the suspect, beyond his contact with the surface? This corroborative evidence told us nothing about why he climbed the counter, nothing about his possession of a firearm, and nothing about his demand for money. While the fingerprints and shoeprint corroborate the statement of the eyewitness, they do so without establishing every possible detail. This is the nature of corroborative evidence; each piece addresses and verifies a “touchpoint”, a small aspect of the testimony that is sufficient to corroborate the larger account. Even if the prosecution had a video tape of the entire robbery, many aspects of the witness’ testimony would still be missing (like the audio portion of the crime, most likely). At some point, jurors have to trust what the witness has to say about the event. Corroborative evidence always verifies a limited range of witness claims.

This is also the case with the evidence that corroborates the witness testimony of the Gospel accounts. Skeptics often argue that corroboration of the Gospels is too limited, but the nature of the corroborative evidence shouldn’t surprise us. We should expect to find “touchpoint” corroboration; partial details that tend to corroborate the larger account. So when archaeology confirms some limited percentage of the geographic claims of the Gospels, this should be seen as a significant step toward corroboration. When a first century non-Christian author mentions some limited aspect of the Christian narrative, this should be seen as a significant step toward corroboration. When internal evidence (the correct description of proper names, government structure and cultural setting) substantiates some limited aspect of the Christian accounts, this should be seen as a significant step toward corroboration. And when all these corroborative evidences are considered in unison, this should be acknowledged as reasonable verification of the ancient accounts contained in the Gospels.

Corroborative evidence is always limited; it always addresses some small aspect of the event under consideration. Jurors then extrapolate from this corroboration to determine if the broader testimony is reliable. They do this after they assess the testimony with the three other questions I described in Cold Case Christianity (“Were the witnesses present?” “Were the witnesses accurate?” and “Were the witnesses biased?”). We can’t expect the corroborative evidence to establish every claim made by the witness. Instead, the corroborative evidence provides us with another important piece of the puzzle related to reliability. At some point, we then have to trust what the witnesses say about the event.

Comments

[RonH]

Trusting a source means using the products of that source without checking them.

Trust is rational to the degree that 1) the source has passed a test of reliability and 2) the trust extended is reasonable given the scope of the test.

It is not reasonable to trust a a source's extraordinary claim just because a source has proven correct about an ordinary claim. Scope.

Getting archaeology right doesn't qualify you as trustworthy about miracles. Scope.

It's Bayes again.

RonH

[Darth Dutch]

RonH,

What would you personally feel is adequate proof for something extraordinary, such as a miracle?

Darth Dutch

[RonH]

Darth Dutch,

That's easy to answer and also hard.

Suppose I thought on Monday that the chances that some miracle, M, had happened were about 1 in a trillion.

On Tuesday you show me some information/evidence. Call it E.

I consider:

1) How likely is this evidence given M is true?

. . What is P(E|M)?

2) How likely is this evidence regardless of M?

. . What is P(E|M) + P(E|not-M)

If P(E|M) / (P(E|M) + P(E|not-M) ) is about 1,000,000,000,000, then I think E is adequate evidence of M.

That's the easy part.

The hard part is: What might E look like?

I don't know. I've never seen it.

In practice, what's offered as evidence for miracles is either not very well established itself or not so terribly UNlikely without the miracle. Or both.

See that? Even if your evidence is true, you have to consider it might be true without the miracle.

If you think you have evidence for a miracle Ask yourself:

1) What is the probability that the evidence is true?
2) What is the probability of that evidence given the miracle never happened?

RonH

[Darth Dutch]

So basically your answer is that no evidence will ever satisfy your requirement to believe a miracle took place. That's what I suspected.

Darth Dutch

[RonH]

If you want to put words in my mouth after I took the time to answer you that is your call.

[Darth Dutch]

"See that? Even if your evidence is true, you have to consider it might be true without the miracle."

Not putting words in your mouth at all. Your quote above makes it clear that you will always leave room for the fact that a miracle may not have occurred even if the evidence is clearly pointing that way. You have just given yourself an out by doing this.

Darth Dutch