Why do Some Historians Treat Religious Texts as Sacred?

The Uncontested Word: Why do Some Historians Treat Religious Texts as Sacred?

In history, there are two main types of document: primary and secondary. A primary document is one that is from the time and place in which the events took place. Some primary documents, like birth certificates, court records and tax details, are as close to certain as we can ever get. Others, like records of the First Crusade, have to be taken with a pinch of salt. Very often the originals are lost and our knowledge that these documents existed at the time they describe has to be deduced from other period documents that mention or quote from them. Worse still, these non-original primary sources are very often altered in copying: by mistake, through the inclusion of marginalia and other notes or for political and religious reasons.

Any postmodernist will tell you, if you should care to risk turning a rock or going in the darkest corners of certain universities to find one, that history is subjective.

But some things in history cannot be interpreted subjectively.

When we look at documents, even the most committed postmodern historian will reject the impossible all the time. Cyrus was not suckled by dogs as claimed by Herodotus. St. Patrick did not lead the snakes from Ireland. There was not a dragon on the Isle of Lango as claimed by John Mandeville. Jesus did not rise from the dead. These are, or should be, all in the same category of ‘fantastical and impossible, so probably myth or allegory’. You cannot say ‘well, subjectively, I think there actually was a dragon and Cyrus actually was suckled by dogs’ without being laughed out of academia. The claim that someone rose from the dead cannot be exempt from that. In all these cases, a good historian would think, ‘that can’t be true, so what is going on’. Subjectivity cannot rescue religious scripture.

All that remains is a third path: the intersubjective. Religious texts are accepted because there are enough people who believe them without question.There are enough people out there who point to them as an object and say ‘I think they mean this’ and others who agree. This intersubjective stance is what philosopher Donald Davidson called ‘triangulation’. It is when two people agree what a third object is. Without such triangulation, Davidson maintained, we would have no language. Without language, we would not have thought and without thought we could not have propositional attitudes: wants and desires, needs and, most importantly, beliefs. Belief is the most important of the propositional attitudes because the others are, in themselves, based upon beliefs. Religious texts are, to those who believe in them, a powerful object to focus this triangulation of thought upon. When combined with rituals, upbringing and circumstance, they satiate our propositional attitudes, our needs, our desires, our wants, in a way few things outside addiction can (some might argue such beliefs are an addiction).

So are religious documents good historical sources? Not really. They fail on an objective level in that they are at best unreliable secondary sources.

From a historian’s perspective, all they can really do is tell us something about the societies that created, edited, spread and preserved them and even then, especially then, you need to that truckload of salt to be parked nearby.

http://www.skeptic.org.uk/magazine/onlinearticles/705-uncontestedword

Apparently I have always been a bit of a skeptic, my mother tells me that as a little boy I would never believe what people told me. At school I was always arguing with teachers, often spending my lunchbreak in the library researching some obscure point that a teacher had offered as fact, but just did not sound right to me. And I was a complete nightmare for the local vicar often arguing with him in Sunday school.
Lately I have become interested in the history of the Bible, and despite what the majority of historians still say, the remarkably small amount of evidence for Jesus. And this introduced me to a new concept for me

The Intersubjective
This idea that religious texts are accepted because enough people believe them without question. I think it explains alot of the intransigence that I perceive when discussing religion with Theists Simply their upbringing and environment makes it almost impossible for them to question what so many believe without question.

I am interested in what others think on why Religious texts do not seem to be subject to the same scrutiny as other historical texts. And why do some go against accepted belief? What is it that makes the convert not only go against the religion that they were exposed too, but change to another religion?

 

Well, in Islam at least, authenticity is crucial. Proof is paramount. When it came to compiling the hadiths, for example, meticulous methodologies were used to make sure that these were the actual sayings of the Prophet. Further, theses sayings were subcategorized based on the level of authenticity (sound, good, weak, forged). More so, regardless of the genuineness of a particular hadith, it was sometimes fully dismissed, because it may have went against the very teachings of the Qur'an.

Questioning is important in Islam. The Qur'an itself tells us to question matters pertaining to the religion. Reason and faith go hand in hand.

http://www.detailedquran.com/quran_data/Why won't you think.htm

 

There are a great many Muslims who reject the authenticity of the hadiths

 

That's too funny. The hadiths were simply lies made up to explain the practical application of the stuff in the Koran. They were written centuries after Mohammed supposedly bit the dust.

 

Yes, they are called Qur'anists. They are a significant minority.

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Interesting, and where did you study Islamic Studies?

 

When do you think the hadiths were written, in the year 635?

 

The whole reason why they were compiled in the first place was because people kept reciting fabricated hadiths.

Like I said a above, the compilers used strict and meticulous methods to authenticate hadiths. For example, the narrator himself was fully scrutinized- did he have a good memory?; did he ever lie?; etc.

http://lostislamichistory.com/imam-al-bukhari-and-the-science-of-hadith/

And like I also said, not all hadiths are considered completely sound. Some may be sound with regards to the chain of transmission, but the content itself may be weak due to the number of reasons.

It's really much more complex than you think it is.

 

This is really getting to be hilarious. Bukhari was a Persian who was born in Uzbekistan in 810. He bit the Uzbekistan dust in 870. His family was a bunch of religious freaks. There wasn't much else to do in such an out-of-the-way place at that time. By 828 Bukhari was creating his own series of lies to gain creds as a "scholar".

We are talking about a guy who lived in some remote dust bowl in 9th Century Asia. Do you really think he had access to 7th Century Arabs from Mecca and Medina who could tell him stories about the Mohammed guy? The hadiths are pure BS. And guys after Bukhari made up their own stories. Please use your 21st Century intellect and dump such lies in the Uzbekistan trash can where they belong.

 

Even a tiny minority would be a great many because of the size of the faith. It just merited pointing out that your statement was not accurate in that regard. The reality is that authenticating the contents of ancient documents is largely subjective and a self-fulfilling prophecy as much has verification.

 

It is the idea of intersubjective I find interesting, that if enough people agree on something it almost becomes fact. I do not know much about the Qur'an and trying to find honest historical critiques has become very difficult. Are there supernatural acts chronicled?

 

You like skepticsm, is it OK if I'm skeptical of your argument? How do you know miracles never happened, because you've never seen one? That is circular reasoning, i.e., we know miracles never happened, but only if we disregard accounts to the contrary.

Historians can observe, for instance, the radically changed behavior of the disciples after the resurrection and conclude the resurrection is the most rational explanation of said behavioral change.

 

HOW do historians "observe" the changes in the disciples?

 

From written records, the same way we know anything about the disciples or any other ancient historical event for that matter.

 

The gospels were written 60-100 years after the cruxifixion...

 

Remember I am trying to look at this from a historians point of view,
Are the stories of the disciples primary documents? No
Are they secondary documents? Possibly
So maybe the accounts of the changes to the Disciples behaviour might be considered subjectively, but the accounts of the resurrection cannot
"You cannot say ‘well, subjectively, I think there actually was a dragon and Cyrus actually was suckled by dogs’ without being laughed out of academia"

So that leaves the idea of intersubjective.

 

Actually some were written a few decades after, but so what? Do you think all our knowledge of ancient history was written the day of the events? It was common knowledge at the time of the events, so naturally histories were written later as the eyewitnesses began to die off.

http://carm.org/when-were-gospels-written-and-by-whom

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A agree, what does your dragon have to do with the resurrection?

 

I was quoting from the text of the article, but it would be equally true to say "you cannot say well subjectively I think the resurrection did happen, jesus arose from the dead, again you would be laughed out of academia"

However by the standard of the intersubjective because so many agree that the resurrection did happen, it can at least be considered. We can understand how historical books include the narrative

 

Interesting points. I think we can only know "facts". We can believe what we will and many of us can believe the same thing but believing something doesn't make it a fact. However if we come across a concept that is strongly believed in by many people then we should investigate it for truth.

 

You're assuming Bukhari stayed his whole life in Uzbekistan.

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Well, the reason it's a tiny minority is because their very beliefs can't be taken seriously.

 

So he accumulated a lot of frequent camel miles and hotel loyalty points. He still made up the hadiths out of his imagination.

 

I did not study History beyond O level at school ( I knew I wanted to be an engineer) and what I was taught was taught as fact. It is only in latter life I have had time to study History and realise most history books dealing with before the middle ages are mostly subjective. As far as I can see there is not one single fact about Jesus for instance. Some of the evidence is secondary and subjective, but most looks to be intersubjective. Rather than beat Theists over the head shouting "there are no facts"(which gets boring after a while!) it does allow someone like me to understand why Jesus and other religious beliefs do not fall into the category of Myth. So the way I see it when I use the argument, what's the difference between believing in a Unicorn and believing in god? I already know the answer, belief in God can be seen as a intersubjective belief. Of course all this is purely philosophical but I did hope this thread would be more philosophical rather than confrontational for a change.

 

I think it's possible to have a justified true belief in Jesus but the divinity, not so much.

 

According to your baseless claims, of course.

 

I ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and know the difference between them.

 

I would go further and say it is possible to follow the core teachings of Jesus without even acknowledging his existence!. In a sense whether he really existed or not is irrelevant his "message" was the important thing.