Let us
say Bill is a churchgoer who works fifty hours per week at a local
penitentiary. Bill has a lot of stress
on his job, dealing as he does with manipulative criminals, and when he comes
home from work, he must help with dinner, cleanup, and with putting the
children to bed. Before this, he plays
with his children, and after dinner, the family enjoys fellowship and devotions
from the Bible, replete with catechism, prayer, and a song. It is now late, and Bill and his wife decide,
before collapsing into bed, to watch the latest documentary on A&E’s
“Mysteries of the Bible,” where scholar Pete, who claims to be an orthodox
Christian (say, he devoutly subscribes to the Apostle’s Creed), says there is
no evidence whatsoever for the Exodus, and that the Old Testament account of
the event written in the book with its namesake is a myth, and is best
understood as a theological and moral lesson.
Upon seeing the program, Bill experiences an “epistemic
crisis” (his wife, fortunately, fell asleep during the program). Bill knows his
Bible well, and reads throughout it how it seems as if the people of God have
always believed in the historicity of the Exodus, as is told in the entire
Tanakh and in the New Testament as well (especially 1 Corinthians 10:1ff.). Bill wonders, “How could scholar Pete, who is an
orthodox Christian, say the Exodus never happened, and why would he say such
things?” Meanwhile, Bill understands
that the New Testament is chock full of allusions to the Exodus event in the
births of both John the Baptist and Jesus, in Jesus’ life (baptism and
temptation in the wilderness, choosing of the twelve, sending out the seventy
[the seventy elders of the desert sojourn]), death (Jesus is the Paschal Lamb)
and resurrection (he transfers his people from the power of darkness to the kingdom
of light [Col. 1:13]).[1]
Bill is therefore vexed in his mind, as he
now doubts other parts of Scripture as well: was Jesus wrong about Moses
writing the Pentateuch? Or, was Jesus accommodating to the peoples' ignorance of these things? Since Bill has a
healthy respect for experts in the field, he wonders what he should do. The question before him concerns his epistemic duty and how may he obtain to epistemic virtue and ease in light
of his epistemic crisis? Here's the important thing for Bill: he has his limits. He simply cannot afford, in terms of income, time, and
energy, to read all of the critical, biblical scholarship (CBS) out there before he makes a decision on whether
to believe in the historical reliability of the Exodus account. He may involve himself in a life-long habit
of collecting and reading CBS, but do both epistemic duty and virtue demand that
Bill suspend judgment at this point about the historicity of the Exodus until
he has read all of the relative literature?
How is it even possible to sift through all the written data? The shelves are stacked with a "new insight" into the life of Jesus or the Bible every day, it seems, from some expert who has "fresh insight" or a "new perspective" or a "key to the lost secrets" of the Bible. What's a hard-working man to do?
Well, in order to obtain epistemic virtue, Bill, out of his own
sense of duty, reads two books written by evangelical, “Bible-believing”
scholars: one, On the Reliability of the
Old Testament by Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen, and two, Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the
Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition, by professor of biblical studies and
archaeology at Wheaton College, James K. Hoffmeier. Now that Bill has read these two scholarly
tomes which both testify to the veracity (or plausibility) of the Exodus
account, using all the best tools of CBS, is Bill now justified in believing as he always has before watching the
program on A&E?
But ah, Bill’s friend Bob the Skeptic[2] reminds Bill that while Kitchen and Hoffmeier may have their say on the subject, surely Bill needs to be fair and read “the other side.” Bob the Skeptic is placing Bill back onto square one, in his epistemic crisis: that Bill surely has not encountered all of the evidence and research available (does not have “direct access”), but only the “biased opinions” of “fundamentalist scholars.” And now, the volumes, journal articles, etc. pile up in the catalogues of Bill’s mind and overwhelm him. How much evidence is needed for Bill and other members of the laity who desire to believe the Bible as inspired and historically reliable in order for them to be justified in doing so?
But ah, Bill’s friend Bob the Skeptic[2] reminds Bill that while Kitchen and Hoffmeier may have their say on the subject, surely Bill needs to be fair and read “the other side.” Bob the Skeptic is placing Bill back onto square one, in his epistemic crisis: that Bill surely has not encountered all of the evidence and research available (does not have “direct access”), but only the “biased opinions” of “fundamentalist scholars.” And now, the volumes, journal articles, etc. pile up in the catalogues of Bill’s mind and overwhelm him. How much evidence is needed for Bill and other members of the laity who desire to believe the Bible as inspired and historically reliable in order for them to be justified in doing so?
Bob the Skeptic confirms Bill’s epistemic crisis by citing
philosopher Richard Feldman, who writes, “It is extraordinarily difficult to
state in a general way the conditions under which a body of evidence provides
evidential support for a belief.”[3] Accordingly, no amount of evidence is going
to give Bill peace of mind. Bill now has
two problems: first, even the evangelical scholars say the Exodus account is plausible[4]
(in contrast to certain), and second,
CBS says the Exodus certainly is not plausible at all; in fact, it didn’t
happen. Or if it did, it was a mere
migration, happening over eons of time, or it was a “mnemonic event,” meant to
impress the ethos of the postexilic Israelite community of a proper memory in
search of communal identity.[5] Bob then suggests to Bill that he place
belief in the Exodus account in the bin of skepticism in order to be
intellectually honest and epistemically virtuous, based on that “fact” that
there is insufficient evidence for Bill to be epistemically justified in
believing in the historicity of the Exodus account. We can state Bill’s predicament technically
with the help of philosopher Paul K. Moser whose work on the nature of evidence as it relates to knowledge is helpful
here:
For a person, S, to have
knowledge that p on justifying
evidence e, e must be truth-sustained in this sense: for every true proposition
t that, when conjoined with e, undermines S’s justification
for p on e, there is a true proposition, t¹,
that, when conjoined with e &
t, restores the justification of p for S in a way that S is actually
justified in believing that p.[6]
On Moser’s proposition (he is
attempting to resolve the Gettier problem), Bill would be justified in
believing the historicity of the Exodus account given that the “true
proposition t¹” is fused with other
evidence that Bill has for believing the historicity of the Exodus
account. If Bill receives “truth
proposition” t, such that “in all the
Egyptian and Sinatic desserts, there is no trace of a mass of 2 million (or
200,000 or even 20,000) people who traversed on a 40-year journey some 3500
years ago” as it were, then Bill, upon obtaining t
in his cognitive faculties, lands himself in an epistemic crisis. But, if Bill later obtains to t¹, such that “a careful reading of the
Hebrew text of the birth narrative [of Moses] reveals that a number of words
used are of Egyptian origin,”[7]
and given that this propositional knowledge obtains using the tools of philological
investigation, then Bill is justified in his belief that the Exodus account is
historically reliable (p). This is because, as Moser states, t¹ restores the justification of p for S (Bill). But what if there is, following t¹, a counter-proposition, t², such that t² is a rebuttal of t¹?
The stacking of evidence in order to obtain justified true
belief places Bill in similarity to the problem of the infinite regress common
to classical foundationalism.[8] Here, Bill finds himself back to square one
of the epistemic dilemma. What should he
do? Moser’s solution is that a healthy
epistemology of justified true belief with have a fourth condition of
“evidential truth-sustenance”[9]
“that is sustained by the collective totality of truths”[10]
which are themselves to be countenanced by “varying strengths in notions of
propositional knowledge.”[11] Moser further adds that “These strengths are
determined by the accessibility qualifications on the set of relevant
knowledge-precluding underminers.”[12] Moser’s idea of having a defense against
epistemic underminers fits with Reformed Epistemology’s defensive position of “properly basic”
beliefs of the “great things of the gospel” (Trinity, Incarnation, Atonement,
Resurrection, etc.), and having acceptable rubrics for establishing the evidence
required for justified true belief as well as having fulfilled epistemic duty
and obtaining epistemic virtue. .
However, we might object to this notion. It seems here that we are saying that in
Bill’s case of evidence and counter-evidence (t...t¹...t²...tⁿ), in order for Bill to have justified true belief
regarding p, Bill needs to be on a
continual plane of evidence compilation regarding his belief in the historical
reliability of the Exodus. How might
this be any different from an internalist approach to justified true
belief? But, if Moser is correct that
the evidence for p is “truth
sustained,” and if Bill can use proper techniques for investigation, then he
should be justified in believing p.
In support of this concept of “truth-sustainability,” historical scholar Gary Habermas offers four criteria of historical epistemology that may be used for obtaining justified true belief when he cites Oxford university professor Richard Swinburne. These four criteria are: our own apparent memories, the testimony of others (either spoken or written), physical traces left behind that may point to the event in question, and the application of scientific principles.”[13] Clearly the latter three can be plausibly applied to the event in question, and can serve as Moser’s “truth sustaining” exemplars of Bill’s cognitive apparatus, providing Bill with epistemic ease. So far, if Bill holds to an externalist account of justified true belief, he has fulfilled his epistemic duty by investigating the relevant data (by reading Kitchen and Hoffmeier) as this data has been compiled in accordance with Swinburne’s recommendations for historical epistemology. Thus, the work of Kitchen and Hoffmeier serve as “evidential truth-sustenance” for Bill and he is therefore justified in knowing he has done his epistemic duty, he is justified in having his epistemic ease, and for Bill, epistemic virtue obtains.
So yes, Bill can believe in the historicity of the Exodus account simply by virtue of believing the Bible for one, and secondly by reading believing scholars like Hoffmeier and Kitchen because of the evidence they provide for Bill. Bill can be open to "hearing the other side." And he should be open. But, his trust in the Bible's historical veracity should not be held in check or dismissed to the dust bin of skepticism until he has read all of the relevant literature. If that were the case, Bill would never be able to make a decision about what to believe about the Exodus, or anything, for that matter.
*This post is part of a paper submitted for a class on Epistemology in the graduate program at Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, NC for professor Dr. J.T. Bridges.
[1] For a thorough study of New
Testament allusions to the Exodus, see R.E. Nixon, The Exodus in the New Testament, http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/exodus_nixon.pdf. Accessed December 4,
2013.
[2] Who among the Christian
fold that dares to speak to apologetic issues such as “Science and Faith” and
so on, hasn’t heard from a friend or family member, “You need to read the other
side”?
[4] In Israel in Egypt, Hoffmeier writes, “It is my contention and the
purpose of this book, that in the absence of direct archaeological or
historical evidence, one can make a case for the plausibility of the biblical
reports based on the supporting evidence.” (preface, x). Kitchen, in Reliability of the Old Testament, concludes his book with a more
user-friendly quip, writing, “In terms of general reliability--and much more
could have been instanced than there was room for here--the Old Testament comes
our remarkably well, so long as its writings and writers are treated fairly and
evenhandedly, in line with independent data, open to all,” p.500. This notion of plausibility fits well
actually, within the framework and modus operandi of RE.
[5] For more on this, see Peter
Enns’ blog at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2013/07/archaeology-and-the-exodus-story-as-a-mnemo-narrative-and-no-cracks-about-finding-mnemo-please/. Accessed on December 6, 2013.
[8] It should be noted that
Moser is not a foundationalist, but an evidentialist. See his Knowledge
and Evidence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
[13] Gary Habermas, “Historical
Epistemology, Jesus’ Resurrection, and the Shroud of Turin,” p. 2. Located at http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/habermas.pdf. Accessed December 6, 2013.
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