What About Casualty Numbers?

The following article is from the 1995 / January-February issue of  *The Skeptical Review*:

by Farrell Till

William Sierichs' article [See previous article on this blog published yesterday, 5-5-18] on biblical armies should convince any objective reader that Yahweh's inspired writers had a penchant for hyperbole. If the great armies of fairly modern times, such as those that fought in the Napoleonic wars, numbered only in the tens of thousands, what reasonable person can believe that tiny Israel and its neighboring nations could have fielded armies that numbered in the hundreds of thousands? Obviously, then, biblical writers were prone to exaggeration.

Those Amazing Biblical Numbers: Taking Stock of the Armies of Ancient Israel

The following article is from the 1995 / January-February issue of  *The Skeptical Review*:

by William Sierichs, Jr

The survival of ancient Israel must have often been in doubt, since armies numbering in the hundreds of thousands repeatedly attacked the nascent state. The Israelites once stood off an Egyptian army of a million. Miraculously, for several centuries, Israel survived attacks by armies larger than those commanded by Napoleon, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the generals of the American Civil War, and even the massive forces of Prussia and France in 1870.

The Historicity Of Jesus

More common sense from Farrell Till concerning the 
historicity of Jesus (read Mt 27:45-55 to get the 
background for the following comments). From the 
Errancy Discussion list, 19 June 1997:

> TILL
> Peter, there are arguments from silence, and there are arguments from
> silence. It is unreasonable, for example, to suppose that certain events
> could happen and go unnoticed in contemporary records. How likely 
   would it be that the bombing in Oklahoma City would not have been 
   mentioned in contemporary records?

KIRBY
OK, I'll buy that. I would agree with you that the saints and the darkness
probably didn't happen. This only seems to have relevance to the doctrine
of inerrancy, not the historicity of Jesus.

TILL
But can't you see! The complete silence of secular contemporary records on
the life of a man who allegedly attracted multitudes from foreign countries
and surrounding towns and cities, and performed in their presence all sorts
of amazing signs and wonders makes it extremely important that the writings
about him that were left by his avowed disciples be exceptionally
trustworthy, but how can anyone consider records trustworthy that contain so
many impossible-to-believe entries like the three-hour period of darkness
and the resurrection of the many saints? If we wouldn't give claims like
these the time of day if we found them in any other book, why should we
accord them any more consideration just because they are found in a book
with "Holy Bible" embossed on the cover?

My argument all along has been that the NT gospels are so saturated with
fantastic claims about this man Jesus that, without extrabiblical
corroboration, it is impossible to determine what is fact and what is
fiction. Unfortunately for the Christian position, there just are not any
extrabiblical corroborations for its central claim of a resurrection from
the dead.

>TILL
> Far more likely than that a three-hour period of
> darkness from the failure of the sun's light would go unmentioned.
> Josephus's father was a priest "of great reputation in Jerusalem" (*The
    Life of Flavius Josephus,* 1:2), who would have therefore moved in priestly
> circles at the time Jesus was allegedly tried, crucified, and resurrected.
> Chapter 1 of the autobiograph will give a chronology that establishes the
> time frame. Matthias would have been in his 20s at the time. Chapter 2
> discusses Josephus's education, but he makes no mention of his father 
   ever having referred to the extraordinary events that allegedly 
   accompanied the crucifixion of a man named Jesus. I find this very 
   unbelievable and a most compelling "argument from silence."

KIRBY
I think you mean "believable."

TILL
No, you missed the point I was making. I was saying that I find it
unbelievable that Josephus's father could have witnessed three hours of
darkness at midday and a resurrection of many saints and yet not talked
about them enough to have made an impression on Josephus that would
have been reflected in his works by references to those events. When
World War II ended, I was 12 years old. I had a first cousin who piloted
an LST (landing barge) on D-Day that ferried soldiers from ships out at
sea to Omaha Beach. When he returned home, family members would
sit mesmerized and listen to him tell about his experiences that day, and
all that he experienced were only ordinary, perfectly natural events that
accompanied a massive invasion. I had another cousin on the other side
of my family who was a tail-gunner on a B-29 in the pacific area, and
we enjoyed listening to his reflections on bombing missions his crew
had flown, but there was nothing miraculous about any of the events
he talked about. Are we to assume that Josephus's father and countless
other contemporaries saw very phenomenal events in Jerusalem one
day and just shrugged them off and never talked about them or reported
them to people they had contacts with. Again, I will say that I find this
very unbelievable.

Farrell Till

Extraordinary Evidence

Farrell Till comments on a debate that he had with 
Michael Horner concerning extraordinary claims requiring 
extraordinary evidence. From the Errancy Discussion list 
18 Oct., 1995:

...you will remember that Horner would not agree that any of the nonbiblical miracles that I questioned him about had actually happened. He kept saying, "I would have to research that." Finally, you may recall, he simply said, "No," when I asked him if he could think of a single miracle not recorded in the Bible that he believed happened. So even though he chided me for saying, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof," it turned out that he himself apparently accepts this principle as long as it is not an extraordinary claim that the Bible makes.

How, for example, could Horner possibly "research" to see if he can believe that a heifer being led to the temple altar in Jerusalem gave birth to a lamb or that a light glowed around the altar in the middle of the night so brightly as to give the appearance of daylight? Josephus made both extraordinary claims, along with others, but the only evidence for them is the mere fact that Josephus said that they happened. He, of course, *said* that others saw them, but I doubt if Horner would accept this, although he thinks it is "good" evidence when Paul said that Jesus appeared to 500 brethren at once. He will argue that Paul wouldn't have said this if it weren't so because people could have asked the 500 and caught him lying if the claim had not really been true. How exactly one could have gone about questioning 500 anonymous witnesses is a mystery, but, anyway, one could make the same argument about the claims of Josephus. If these miracles had not really happened, would he have said that people had seen them at a time when these people were still alive and could have been questioned?

My point is that what Horner et al consider "good" evidence in terms of "proving" the resurrection, they won't consider good evidence as they "research" the claims of Josephus, Suetonius, Tacitus, and others to decide if their miracle claims should be believed. I think that the criterion that I stated in the debate is valid: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And I have kicked myself a thousand times for not nailing Horner to the wall when he came at me with his counterargument that said, in effect, that my criterion makes it impossible to prove a miracle ever happened, because I was demanding miraculous proof that the miracle had happened. In other words, his admission that providing miraculous proof that a miracle had happened is impossible was an admission that miracles don't happen and so no such evidence would be possible. If no such evidence is possible because miracles just don't happen, then why is it logical to argue that the original miracle for which the evidence is being demanded had happened? His own argument would have backfired in his face if I had recognized the implications of it soon enough, but that is one of the hazards of public debating. The debater always thinks of things later that he should have said.

I really think that it is not at all unreasonable to say that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. An extraordinary claim doesn't necessarily have to be a miracle claim, but if it is, I think it is reasonable to argue that such a claim can never be proven. That claim is justified by the simple fact that the past is inaccessible. If a miracle ever did happen, how could one possibly prove it because it would have happened in a past that is inaccessible to the present?

F. Till