Ave Maria!
On Credibility
Rev. Fr. Chas. T. Brusca
2 November AD 2010“It is to be remembered that, at best, historical evidence cannot produce mathematical certainty; it can only exclude reasonable doubt. It is to be remembered that an event which has no public, no political significance will be recorded only by unofficial documents; there will be no State record of the facts, no legal inquiry to establish them.”[1]
What is Msgr. Knox saying here? Is it not possible to prove the central truths of the Catholic Faith? If not “mathematical certainty” can we not have certainty as we have it in the physical sciences? Are they any more or less inductive than the historical truth of Christianity?
Without question we cannot have “mathematical certainty” about the Faith. Remember that most mathematics are part of a “closed system,” a generality that is carefully stated and simply assumed to be true. Given the truth of the generality—a truth that is just accepted as part of the system—careful deductive logic will give us what we like to call “mathematical certainty.” But often the price paid for this “certainty” is the requirement to ignore some significant fallacy in the generalized rules. The so-called “parallel postulate” in geometry breaks down on any curved surface—parallel lines either meet or diverge on curved surfaces—and certainty vanishes from any geometric proof that ignores this reality. (See Handout "On Reasoning" for deductive and inductive logic.)
While both history and (say) physics are both inductive in their methods, physics enjoys a real advantage in that it is conducted in the here and now, often with the possibility of a “hands-on” examination of the matter at hand. Physics experiments can be designed and published so that independent observers all over the world can recreate the experiment and determine the outcome for themselves. The observer does not have to rely on the integrity of some other observer whom he does not know and who is long dead. In physics, the observer can usually make the observation for himself. Performing actual physical observations has the added benefit of suggesting those additional parameters that must be considered—things like temperature, pressure, radiation, and gravity. Publication of the research increases the likelihood that someone will identify a missing variable.
History has some limitations on the inductive reasoning, but many of the limitations suggest a means of compensation.
The inability to get one's “hands on” the subject directly urges the historian to make use of primary sources. If the evidence is documentary, we will want documents from the time of the event—preferably written by an eye witness or someone closely associated with the event. It will help if the writer has nothing to gain or lose by his writing—it will help if we know something about his other writings; he generally objective or is he writing to please someone in order to receive a reward. Although they are more limited in scope than writings, artifacts like coins, jewelry, and architecture may be less capable of bias.
From the historical point of view, writings ought to be studied in their context—when they were written, who and what were the important political, military, social, economic, religious, and philosophical powers and systems. People's actions can often be understood only in terms of the culture in which they lived.
Particularly with ancient texts, there is the problem of finding the best copies of originals. No original texts (autographs) of the biblical books are known to exist today. The papyrus materials on which they were written were simply too fragile to survive. The parchment and vellum that came next were extremely costly—so much so that faded texts might be erased so the material could be used for a newer work! For centuries the only copies of books were handwritten by human beings who might accidentally omit or add words to the text, who might not take care to distinguish comments from the text, who might mis-read or mis-hear the text they were to be duplicating.
In point of fact, we have a surprising number of ancient copies of the biblical texts—particularly when compared with other ancient texts. The oldest fragment of Tacitus’ The Annals of Imperial Rome dates from 850 AD. Homer wrote the Iliad around 800 BC, but the oldest known of about 650 Greek manuscripts dates from the second or third century AD. By comparison, we have 306 Greek uncial (all capitals) manuscripts, including the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus which date to about 350 AD. There are over five thousand Greek miniscules (cursive), about half in scriptural texts and half in lectionaries compiled for the liturgy. In the John Rylands library in Manchester there is a fragment of Saint John’s Gospel that dates to around 100-150 AD, When you count manuscripts translated into scores of other languages, the textual evidence for the Bible is staggering.[2]
There is even a fragment, 7Q5 (the fifth fragment from the seventh cave at Qumran) which was generally regarded as indecipherable, but in 1972, a Spanish Jesuit scholar, Fr. José O’Callaghan claimed that it was a part of Mark vi: 52-53. Other scholars, a bit derisively, suggested that it could be made to fit virtually any Greek manuscript, religious or secular. The only word more or less clearly seen is “KAI,” meaning “and.” O’Callaghan’s thesis was revived again in 1986 by the German, Carsten Peter Thiede, and others who relied on computerized graphical analysis. Thiede’s work has been challenged by others, but if correct it puts the fragment in a Dead Sea cave uninhabited from 68 AD until modern times![3]
