Comment Thread for The Resurrection of Jesus - Apologiaphoenix vs Gary

[Gary]

Matthew 27:57-61 talks of how Joseph of Arimathea buries Jesus as evening approaches on Friday. Matthew 27:62-66 then states:

The next day, the one after Preparation Day, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate. 63 “Sir,” they said, “we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ 64 So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people that he has been raised from the dead. This last deception will be worse than the first.”

65 “Take a guard,” Pilate answered. “Go, make the tomb as secure as you know how.” 66 So they went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting the guard.

So according to Matthew, the tomb wasn't guarded on the first evening after Jesus' death.

Not necessarily.

The new day in Judaism began at sunset that evening. So, "the next day" could have referred to one minute after sundown. Therefore the guards still could have been posted the first night. But there is a gap between Aramathea placing Jesus' body in the tomb, rolling the stone in front, and, the Jews going to Pilate, asking and receiving the guards, and the guards coming to the tomb and sealing the stone.

[tabibito]

Not necessarily.

The new day in Judaism began at sunset that evening. So, "the next day" could have referred to one minute after sundown. Therefore the guards still could have been posted the first night. But there is a gap between Aramathea placing Jesus' body in the tomb, rolling the stone in front, and, the Jews going to Pilate, asking and receiving the guards, and the guards coming to the tomb and sealing the stone.

That's what I said.

[Gary]

Nonetheless, while it is logical to assume that the tomb would have been checked, the Bible doesn't actually declare it. The tomb was in fact unguarded for a time, even taking into account that, by Hebrew reckoning, "the next day" began at sunset. Of course the "unguarded tomb" objection does nothing to address the matter of a guarded and sealed rock being rolled away from the tomb entrance a few days later.

You are correct, again assuming that the empty tomb story is historical, which for the sake of this discussion, I am willing to accept. So now we have to ask the question, "Are there any naturalistic explanations for an empty tomb, a broken seal, and a stone rolled away from the front of the tomb?"

I can think of one: Aramathea was not a believer as one or more of the gospels assert. After all, he had participated in the sentencing of Jesus the night before. Aramethea placed the body of Jesus in the tomb for the purpose of not defiling the Sabbath, and his newly hewn, empty tomb was the closest available tomb to Golgatha. However, once the Sabbath/Passover had ended on Saturday evening at sunset, he asked Pilate permission to move the body to the criminal section of the Garden and buried Jesus in an unmarked grave. Pilate consented, the guards were informed, the seal broken, the body removed, and the stone left lying on its side.

The next morning the women arrive at the tomb...and it is empty.

I am not trying to assert that this is what actually happened. I am just trying to demonstrate that there are other explanations for the empty tomb other than a miracle.

[Gary]

That's what I said.

I apologize. I did not see your comment when I responded.

[Gary]

Here are a couple more possible explanations for an empty tomb, broken seal, and moved stone:

1. Pilate had second thoughts about giving the "King of the Jews" a proper burial in a known location; a location that every trouble-making Jew could visit and revere as a nationalistic shrine or resistance to Rome. On Saturday night, he sends a messenger to the tomb ordering the guards to move the body: the seal is broken, the stone moved away, the body removed and buried in an unmarked hole in the ground. Sunday morning the women show up and find an empty tomb.

2. There were no guards. Matthew is the only gospel author who says anything about guards. The guards, the sealed tomb, the multiple earthquakes, the temple veil tearing in two, the dead saints roaming the streets, are all literary embellishments to assist in supporting the theme of "Matthew's" book.

[One Bad Pig]

You are correct, again assuming that the empty tomb story is historical, which for the sake of this discussion, I am willing to accept. So now we have to ask the question, "Are there any naturalistic explanations for an empty tomb, a broken seal, and a stone rolled away from the front of the tomb?"

I can think of one: Aramathea was not a believer as one or more of the gospels assert. After all, he had participated in the sentencing of Jesus the night before. Aramethea placed the body of Jesus in the tomb for the purpose of not defiling the Sabbath, and his newly hewn, empty tomb was the closest available tomb to Golgatha. However, once the Sabbath/Passover had ended on Saturday evening at sunset, he asked Pilate permission to move the body to the criminal section of the Garden and buried Jesus in an unmarked grave. Pilate consented, the guards were informed, the seal broken, the body removed, and the stone left lying on its side.

The next morning the women arrive at the tomb...and it is empty.

I am not trying to assert that this is what actually happened. I am just trying to demonstrate that there are other explanations for the empty tomb other than a miracle.

All you're demonstrating here is that you have a fertile imagination and you have no idea what you're talking about. "Criminal section of the Garden"?

[Gary]

All you're demonstrating here is that you have a fertile imagination and you have no idea what you're talking about. "Criminal section of the Garden"?

Or simply a hole in the ground...somewhere.

Why is this not a possibility, and why is it not a more probable explanation of the empty tomb?

I would like to point out to everyone that although the majority of NT scholars believe that the empty tomb is historical fact, they do not claim that the rest of the details in the Resurrection stories are historical facts. I therefore see no reason why the possible explanations for the empty tomb that I have presented above are not more probable than that an invisible god is responsible for the empty tomb.

Yes, it is within the realm of possibilities that a god, specifically Yahweh, resurrected Jesus. But what I am saying is that within this same realm of possibilities there are other, much more probable, explanations for this one fact. I don't think my assertion can be proven wrong. The only thing Christians can say is that they believe that Yahweh resurrecting Jesus is a more probable explanation than the explanations I gave above. They cannot rule out my explanations as impossible. Therefore it all comes down to who is right about the probability of each of these events.

I would bet my car's pink slip that most educated, non-Christians would say that my explanations are much, much more probable than the Christian explanation.

[Apologiaphoenix]

Okay. This is a good response here so I will offer a quick response before I take my wife to her art class.

Thank you for your polite comment, Nick.

I have read Christian scholars, Nick. How many must I read before you feel I am justified in not believing in the resurrection/reanimation of dead people?

Okay. Here's the thing. For one thing, no one reading this thread can easily believe this. Your arguments are largely emotional from the outside looking in. Now what you're talking about however is not a historical question entirely, but a philosophical one. For instance, if the question of miracles can be answered with "Miracles are possible" one should be open to evidence of a miracle. If it is in fact "Miracles are actual" one should be even more open. It is quite likely that there is no one alive today in the world of scholarship who knows more about this question than Craig Keener. His book is essential reading on the topic. One aspect of Ehrman's most recent book How Jesus Became God that I criticized is that on one page on one paragraph, he makes a rather dismissive statement concerning miracles. Does he mention Keener? No. Not a bit. Now he can say Keener is wrong. He has a right to do that. Yet since this is the greatest challenge to his position, he should at least mention Keener if anything in an end note. By not doing this, he has done a disservice to himself and to his readers. His readers who do not know better will look at this and not know of a direct challenge to their position. (This is a constant weakness of Ehrman. He ignores the best against his position. It's why one of the first aspects of a book I check is the bibliography. I even just got Spong's book on the resurrection at the library and looked through the bibliography. I'm finding it troublesome to see how few of his opponents I see mentioned.) I also recommend you read books like John Earman's Hume's Abject Failure. Earman is an agnostic, but he knows something. If we follow Hume's argument against miracles, which is very similar to your position, we might stop miracle claims, but we eliminate science as well. Want to talk about probability? Okay. He bases the argument on Bayes' Theorem also. Or consider this article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy by Tim McGrew. Tim McGrew could very well be the smartest person I know. I really mean that. The man is one of my heroes. (Allie described my getting to meet him and spend a week with him in New Orleans in January as the closest she'd seen to a bromance in a long time.) He's no slouch. He's a professor of philosophy at Western Michigan University and his specialist is epistemology and even there, Bayes' Theorem.

I respect good Christian scholars.

I do not think anyone reading this thread finds this statement easy to believe. When you keep speaking about "bias" and say "Of course, most of those scholars are Christian scholars" that is the language of dismissal and not respect. In fact, when Raphael Lataster wrote an article that somehow got in the Washington Post endorsing mythicism, John Dickson, a Christian scholar, took him to task. One statement Lataster made was to say Christian opinions in scholarship ought not count. Dickson let him have it.

Secondly, no student - let alone an aspiring scholar - could get away with suggesting that Christians "ought not to get involved" in the study of the historical Jesus. This is intellectual bigotry and has no place in academia, or journalism. I would likewise fail any Christian student who suggested that atheists should not research Jesus because they have an agenda. Nobody in the vast field of historical Jesus scholarship operates with such an us-and-them mentality. This is why the methods of history are so important. They are how we assess each other's work. We don't fret about other scholars' private beliefs and doubts. We judge their handling of the acknowledged evidence according to the rules of historical inquiry. Anything else would be zealotry.

For me, I do read Christian scholarship and I read non-Christian scholarship. In fact, I find non-Christian scholarship quite helpful. Bart Ehrman has had some good ideas that I have taken into consideration with interpreting the NT. People here can tell you my history of being fair. We used to have a section here called Remedial Christian Teachings where I answered questions in a non-debate format that people had about Christianity. Now every now and then, someone would want thoughts on a position I did not endorse, such as, say, dispensationalism. Here was a perfect chance for me to lambaste a side I did not care for and embarrass it. Instead, since this was an area we wanted staff to interact in, I got a member of the staff who held that position to answer the question so that the person could get a fair answer. My wife used to hold to a rapture and knew I didn't and still don't. We'd drive and she'd ask me about what I thought about something related to end times. I'd give my honest answer. Then she'd say "What would someone from my position say?" I'd try to give the best answer. As it stands, my wife has abandoned the belief in the rapture, but she would be able to tell you I never pressured her. She still has not embraced my preterist viewpoint. I'd like her to, but in her own time. For a final example, a church I was once attending had a student who had to do a project on a social issue. He wanted to do abortion and he had to have a project, so he asked to record a debate on abortion with one member of our church defending the pro-life position. This person was to debate a student at a university who I understand spent too much time partying the night before and could not make the debate. What happened? They called me and said "Can you act like an abortionist?" I agreed and indeed did that. I vehemently disagree with abortion. I think it's a wicked and evil act, but at the same time, I wanted people to know about the issue well so I tried to make the best argument that I could for abortion.

I am not questioning their work regarding early Christian BELIEF in a resurrection. But being an expert in what someone believes is true is not the same as being an expert in the event in question.

I know many great defenders of the resurrection in scholarship. I have interviewed them on my show. None of them are arguing just for belief in the resurrection. All of them are arguing for the actuality of the event.

I freely admit that there IS evidence for the Resurrection, I just find this evidence very, very weak. You find it very, very strong. So our issue is not scholarship, it is our criteria for what qualifies as "good" evidence.

And this is what I contend. Your worldview is dragging the data along with it. When you make statements about being educated and rational and thus not believing in the resurrection, then that means that for you to come to the position, you would have to think you became uneducated and irrational. When you speak about it being the position of ancient superstitious people, that makes it worse. When you say "I demand the same evidence the apostles had" then you are also saying no amount of rational argumentation would convince you. No historical argument would unless you had an experience.

This is not the attitude of someone open to the evidence. Now there are some positions I will say are ridiculous. Why? It's not because one side says they are. It's because ALL sides say they are. Christ mythicism and the pagan copycat thesis comes to mind. Scholars today on both sides do not defend these. Bart Ehrman even wrote a book against them and you get the feeling reading the book that he's saying "I can't believe I have to argue against this nonsense." Unfortunately, he does. I cannot take any atheist seriously who believes this kind of stuff. Nor do credentialed atheist scholars in the field teaching at accredited universities. (Ever wonder why Richard Carrier isn't teaching anywhere if he's a world-renowned speaker and thinker? Here's why. No one wants him because his views are embarrassing.)

Even if I accept the empty tomb as absolute historical fact, the fact remains that even the Bible says that the tomb was not guarded the entire time that Jesus body was inside. Someone could have moved or stolen the body. No matter how implausible you and other Christians may find that possibility, it is still a possibility. It is my position that there are many more probable, more naturalistic reasons for the early Christian belief in a resurrection, before accepting the Christian assertion that a god did it.

But here's the problem. No one I know says "The tomb was empty, therefore Jesus was raised." I know of no scholar who defends that position. What we do know is it's the empty tomb plus the appearances. Furthermore, we are to think that someone on the Sabbath would go grave robbing? They would desacrate themselves and the land? If it was necromancers or other grave robbers, these normally did not steal the whole body. I also agree the guards would have checked the tomb before they guarded it. Furthermore, had this been the case, there would have been an outcry from the family wanting the bones of Jesus and yes, Jesus would have definitely been buried because the land will not be polluted right at the time of Passover with dogs running around carrying body parts and such. The Jews would have been horrified even if Jesus had been the worst criminal in the world. Furthermore, this would only explain the tomb. It would not explain the appearances or the conversion of skeptics like James and Paul and others who had honor to maintain in the ancient world. (And yes, denying the NT as an honor-shame society is just bizarre. If you went to the Middle East today you would find it's very much honor-shame. Much of the Muslim terror we are facing today is because of views of honor and shame that Muslims have.)

So someone would need to explain to me how reading more Christian scholarship is going to change my mind regarding the statistical probability that the early Christian belief in a resurrection was due to the actions of an invisible god rather than naturalistic causes, before I am willing to read more Christian scholarship than I already have.

And herein lies the problem. Anyone who says they have nothing more to learn from the other side is not really investigating. I know I have plenty more to read from the other side as well and I look forward to it. Furthermore, if you are not reading the other side, you are only reading what agrees with you. What a shock what way you turn. As for an invisible god, yeah. That's dismissive language again. Some of us have independent reasons for believing in theism.

Again, I appreciate your polite tone and I will attempt to reciprocate.

Let's hope but until then, my stance is this. You get what you give. Around here, that's kind of a rule for many of us. You give respect and you get it. You give mockery and you get it. It's not about if you agree or disagree. There are Christians who I have no respect for and there are atheists I have plenty of respect for.

[Gary]

Okay. This is a good response here so I will offer a quick response before I take my wife to her art class.



Okay. Here's the thing. For one thing, no one reading this thread can easily believe this. Your arguments are largely emotional from the outside looking in. Now what you're talking about however is not a historical question entirely, but a philosophical one. For instance, if the question of miracles can be answered with "Miracles are possible" one should be open to evidence of a miracle. If it is in fact "Miracles are actual" one should be even more open. It is quite likely that there is no one alive today in the world of scholarship who knows more about this question than Craig Keener. His book is essential reading on the topic. One aspect of Ehrman's most recent book How Jesus Became God that I criticized is that on one page on one paragraph, he makes a rather dismissive statement concerning miracles. Does he mention Keener? No. Not a bit. Now he can say Keener is wrong. He has a right to do that. Yet since this is the greatest challenge to his position, he should at least mention Keener if anything in an end note. By not doing this, he has done a disservice to himself and to his readers. His readers who do not know better will look at this and not know of a direct challenge to their position. (This is a constant weakness of Ehrman. He ignores the best against his position. It's why one of the first aspects of a book I check is the bibliography. I even just got Spong's book on the resurrection at the library and looked through the bibliography. I'm finding it troublesome to see how few of his opponents I see mentioned.) I also recommend you read books like John Earman's Hume's Abject Failure. Earman is an agnostic, but he knows something. If we follow Hume's argument against miracles, which is very similar to your position, we might stop miracle claims, but we eliminate science as well. Want to talk about probability? Okay. He bases the argument on Bayes' Theorem also. Or consider this article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy by Tim McGrew. Tim McGrew could very well be the smartest person I know. I really mean that. The man is one of my heroes. (Allie described my getting to meet him and spend a week with him in New Orleans in January as the closest she'd seen to a bromance in a long time.) He's no slouch. He's a professor of philosophy at Western Michigan University and his specialist is epistemology and even there, Bayes' Theorem.



I do not think anyone reading this thread finds this statement easy to believe. When you keep speaking about "bias" and say "Of course, most of those scholars are Christian scholars" that is the language of dismissal and not respect. In fact, when Raphael Lataster wrote an article that somehow got in the Washington Post endorsing mythicism, John Dickson, a Christian scholar, took him to task. One statement Lataster made was to say Christian opinions in scholarship ought not count. Dickson let him have it.

Secondly, no student - let alone an aspiring scholar - could get away with suggesting that Christians "ought not to get involved" in the study of the historical Jesus. This is intellectual bigotry and has no place in academia, or journalism. I would likewise fail any Christian student who suggested that atheists should not research Jesus because they have an agenda. Nobody in the vast field of historical Jesus scholarship operates with such an us-and-them mentality. This is why the methods of history are so important. They are how we assess each other's work. We don't fret about other scholars' private beliefs and doubts. We judge their handling of the acknowledged evidence according to the rules of historical inquiry. Anything else would be zealotry.

For me, I do read Christian scholarship and I read non-Christian scholarship. In fact, I find non-Christian scholarship quite helpful. Bart Ehrman has had some good ideas that I have taken into consideration with interpreting the NT. People here can tell you my history of being fair. We used to have a section here called Remedial Christian Teachings where I answered questions in a non-debate format that people had about Christianity. Now every now and then, someone would want thoughts on a position I did not endorse, such as, say, dispensationalism. Here was a perfect chance for me to lambaste a side I did not care for and embarrass it. Instead, since this was an area we wanted staff to interact in, I got a member of the staff who held that position to answer the question so that the person could get a fair answer. My wife used to hold to a rapture and knew I didn't and still don't. We'd drive and she'd ask me about what I thought about something related to end times. I'd give my honest answer. Then she'd say "What would someone from my position say?" I'd try to give the best answer. As it stands, my wife has abandoned the belief in the rapture, but she would be able to tell you I never pressured her. She still has not embraced my preterist viewpoint. I'd like her to, but in her own time. For a final example, a church I was once attending had a student who had to do a project on a social issue. He wanted to do abortion and he had to have a project, so he asked to record a debate on abortion with one member of our church defending the pro-life position. This person was to debate a student at a university who I understand spent too much time partying the night before and could not make the debate. What happened? They called me and said "Can you act like an abortionist?" I agreed and indeed did that. I vehemently disagree with abortion. I think it's a wicked and evil act, but at the same time, I wanted people to know about the issue well so I tried to make the best argument that I could for abortion.



I know many great defenders of the resurrection in scholarship. I have interviewed them on my show. None of them are arguing just for belief in the resurrection. All of them are arguing for the actuality of the event.



And this is what I contend. Your worldview is dragging the data along with it. When you make statements about being educated and rational and thus not believing in the resurrection, then that means that for you to come to the position, you would have to think you became uneducated and irrational. When you speak about it being the position of ancient superstitious people, that makes it worse. When you say "I demand the same evidence the apostles had" then you are also saying no amount of rational argumentation would convince you. No historical argument would unless you had an experience.

This is not the attitude of someone open to the evidence. Now there are some positions I will say are ridiculous. Why? It's not because one side says they are. It's because ALL sides say they are. Christ mythicism and the pagan copycat thesis comes to mind. Scholars today on both sides do not defend these. Bart Ehrman even wrote a book against them and you get the feeling reading the book that he's saying "I can't believe I have to argue against this nonsense." Unfortunately, he does. I cannot take any atheist seriously who believes this kind of stuff. Nor do credentialed atheist scholars in the field teaching at accredited universities. (Ever wonder why Richard Carrier isn't teaching anywhere if he's a world-renowned speaker and thinker? Here's why. No one wants him because his views are embarrassing.)



But here's the problem. No one I know says "The tomb was empty, therefore Jesus was raised." I know of no scholar who defends that position. What we do know is it's the empty tomb plus the appearances. Furthermore, we are to think that someone on the Sabbath would go grave robbing? They would desacrate themselves and the land? If it was necromancers or other grave robbers, these normally did not steal the whole body. I also agree the guards would have checked the tomb before they guarded it. Furthermore, had this been the case, there would have been an outcry from the family wanting the bones of Jesus and yes, Jesus would have definitely been buried because the land will not be polluted right at the time of Passover with dogs running around carrying body parts and such. The Jews would have been horrified even if Jesus had been the worst criminal in the world. Furthermore, this would only explain the tomb. It would not explain the appearances or the conversion of skeptics like James and Paul and others who had honor to maintain in the ancient world. (And yes, denying the NT as an honor-shame society is just bizarre. If you went to the Middle East today you would find it's very much honor-shame. Much of the Muslim terror we are facing today is because of views of honor and shame that Muslims have.)



And herein lies the problem. Anyone who says they have nothing more to learn from the other side is not really investigating. I know I have plenty more to read from the other side as well and I look forward to it. Furthermore, if you are not reading the other side, you are only reading what agrees with you. What a shock what way you turn. As for an invisible god, yeah. That's dismissive language again. Some of us have independent reasons for believing in theism.



Let's hope but until then, my stance is this. You get what you give. Around here, that's kind of a rule for many of us. You give respect and you get it. You give mockery and you get it. It's not about if you agree or disagree. There are Christians who I have no respect for and there are atheists I have plenty of respect for.

I appreciate your posting this extensive response, Nick.

I would appreciate if you would kindly do the following: List in order of strength the evidence that you believe supports the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and, for each piece of evidence, mention whether or not you believe that there could POSSIBLY be other explanations for the evidence other than the miracle claim made by the gospel authors and Paul.

Let me save you some time and give my list of what I THINK you will list, and maybe then you will only need to add to it:

1. A very shameful belief arising/occurring in an Honor-Shame Society.
2. This shameful belief persisting and not dying out even under severe persecution.
3. The appearance claims listed in the early Creed mentioned in I Corinthians 15.
4. Paul's personal testimony of Jesus' appearance to him.
5. Paul's change in behavior due to the alleged appearance by Jesus to him.
6. The change in the disciples behavior.
7. The appearance stories in the Gospels.
8. The empty tomb.
9. The disciples would not die for a lie.
10. Papias' statements regarding the authorship of the gospels.

If I have left any out or have them in an order of strength that you would change, please do so. Again, do you believe that any of these pieces of evidence could be explainable by a non-miracle explanation, and if no, why not.

It is my position that there are several possible, and much more probable, explanations, for each piece of evidence listed above other than a miracle claim of the resurrection of three-day-dead prophet. The big question is, Nick, even if YOU personally do not believe that there are any other possible explanations, can you prove that?

I think it all comes down to personal opinion, because even if you say that it is impossible for this belief to have arisen and survived in an Honor-Shame Society, I don't think you can prove that. You can claim implausibility, but you can't claim impossibility. That would be no different than a skeptic saying that the supernatural or miracle claims are "impossible". I don't think that either position can be proven "impossible".

Thanks.

[Gary]

As I wait to (hopefully) receive Nick's reply to my last comment, I would like to briefly explain my deconversion from Christianity as several people have commented on it.

I loved being a Christian. I loved my Christian denomination and I loved my church. For the time I was there, I loved my pastor. I did not leave Christianity due to a desire to pursue sin or due a fight with my pastor or church. I left due to evidence.

I grew up the son of a fundamentalist Baptist pastor. At age 18 we moved to another state and I, my mother, and my siblings joined an evangelical mega-church (same doctrines but with a positive emphasis). I left the Church in my mid-twenties. I joined a liberal Lutheran denomination in my late 20's and attended church a couple times a year when I was in the mood. Religion wasn't really that important to me. I got married in my 40's and had my first child two years later. I decided that I didn't want to raise my children in a liberal church, so I investigated some conservative denominations, and really liked orthodox/confessional Lutheranism (LCMS). I loved orthodox Lutheranism! I felt I had found the true apostolic faith. I studied the Lutheran Confessions, I read Lutheran authors, I read my Bible. The Lutheran Confessions, which are the Lutheran equivalent to an evangelical church's Statement of Faith, seemed to me, to be the correct interpretation of Scripture.

I was happy and content.

Then one day as I was surfing the internet, I came across the blog of a former fundamentalist Baptist pastor turned atheist. I was shocked! I never heard of such a thing: a true believer becoming an atheist?? I took it upon myself to bring this backslidden Christian back to Christ by sharing with him the truths of confessional Lutheran Christianity.

And four months later I was an agnostic.

First, this Christian-turned-atheist showed me that all the existing manuscripts of the Bible have numerous scribe alterations to them, something as a fundamentalist I could not imagine being possible. God had promised to preserve his Word! This was a real blow to me, but I spoke to my pastor and other pastors of my denomination who assured me that it was ok to recognize minor discrepancies in the six Resurrection accounts as long as the basic facts were all the same and that the scribe alterations did not affect one single Christian doctrine. Bottom line, it was ok to believe that the MESSAGE was inerrant, not necessarily the entire written text.

Whew! What relief. I could keep my precious Faith and not turn off my brain which could see the numerous discrepancies in the Resurrection accounts and in other areas of the Bible. "Great. I'm fine now."

But then I started studying other aspects of the Bible, comparing them to modern scientific discoveries. And the more I studied, the more I realized that the Bible is not something to be relied upon for historical or scientific facts. I was very disturbed to realize that most modern archeologists no longer believe that the Exodus, the Forty Years in the Sinai, the Conquest of Canaan, nor the great kingdoms of David and Solomon were historical. "Didn't Jesus believe that they were historical?" I thought to myself. I then studied the Book of Daniel. It sure looks like the author of Daniel was very familiar with the Greek Empire, but oddly mistaken and ill informed about the Babylonian, Mede, and Persian empires, the very empires in which Daniel was supposedly a high official. Maybe critics are right. Maybe Daniel didn't write the Book of Daniel. But wait, Jesus thought he had! Then I looked at the doctrine of Hell. Why doesn't God talk explicitly about this place in the first 2/3 of the Bible? Why are the terms used for this place identical to terms and concepts used by the ancient Egyptians and Greeks?

So it wasn't just the inerrancy of the Bible that triggered my loss of Faith, it was an accumulation of things. It was as if my precious Christian belief system was nothing but a house of cards.

That is why I deconverted.

[tabibito]

Here are a couple more possible explanations for an empty tomb, broken seal, and moved stone:

1. Pilate had second thoughts about giving the "King of the Jews" a proper burial in a known location; a location that every trouble-making Jew could visit and revere as a nationalistic shrine or resistance to Rome. On Saturday night, he sends a messenger to the tomb ordering the guards to move the body: the seal is broken, the stone moved away, the body removed and buried in an unmarked hole in the ground. Sunday morning the women show up and find an empty tomb.

2. There were no guards. Matthew is the only gospel author who says anything about guards. The guards, the sealed tomb, the multiple earthquakes, the temple veil tearing in two, the dead saints roaming the streets, are all literary embellishments to assist in supporting the theme of "Matthew's" book.

In short, you're indulging in conspiracy theories. One factor that works against all of them is the presence of the burial clothing being folded and still within the tomb. A furtive and hurried removal of the corpse such as you propose would not have resulted in that condition. Removing the wrapping would have been an unnecessary waste of time and made the corpse more difficult to carry. Such action would also lend credence to the story of the foreshadowed resurrection, so Pilate/Herod/Sanhedrin or their agents wouldn't have done it. The implausibility rating of the scenarios you advance far exceed that of a resurrection.

With regard to the comments about Matthew, you do have a point. The Bible itself cautions against taking just witness as being wholly reliable.

[One Bad Pig]

Or simply a hole in the ground...somewhere.

Why is this not a possibility, and why is it not a more probable explanation of the empty tomb?

The mere fact that you have to ask this question exposes your utter lack of contextual knowledge. I would take the time to deconstruct your entire hypothesis, but there's not much point. Your unquestioning acceptance of Asher Norman's work (among many, many other examples in this thread) shows that you lack the competence to critically evaluate the arguments placed before you.

[Apologiaphoenix]

I appreciate your posting this extensive response, Nick.

I would appreciate if you would kindly do the following: List in order of strength the evidence that you believe supports the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and, for each piece of evidence, mention whether or not you believe that there could POSSIBLY be other explanations for the evidence other than the miracle claim made by the gospel authors and Paul.

Let me save you some time and give my list of what I THINK you will list, and maybe then you will only need to add to it:

1. A very shameful belief arising/occurring in an Honor-Shame Society.
2. This shameful belief persisting and not dying out even under severe persecution.
3. The appearance claims listed in the early Creed mentioned in I Corinthians 15.
4. Paul's personal testimony of Jesus' appearance to him.
5. Paul's change in behavior due to the alleged appearance by Jesus to him.
6. The change in the disciples behavior.
7. The appearance stories in the Gospels.
8. The empty tomb.
9. The disciples would not die for a lie.
10. Papias' statements regarding the authorship of the gospels.

If I have left any out or have them in an order of strength that you would change, please do so. Again, do you believe that any of these pieces of evidence could be explainable by a non-miracle explanation, and if no, why not.

I really don't think you can place a number on a lot of these. I don't place the Gospels as high because they're not the primary evidence I'd use. I place the empty tomb as greatly important, but I do understand it isn't as well-evidenced as we might like, though I think the evidence is overwhelming. 9 is important, but it's not the argument I made. 10 doesn't really have any relevance since my argument does not depend on the Gospels. Four is important, but also at the end, the information in the creed is even more important.

The others I'd rank as quite important, but the resurrection is a cumulative case.

It is my position that there are several possible, and much more probable, explanations, for each piece of evidence listed above other than a miracle claim of the resurrection of three-day-dead prophet. The big question is, Nick, even if YOU personally do not believe that there are any other possible explanations, can you prove that?

I think I have and this is the problem. You can come up with any explanation to explain one piece of evidence. That's not really a problem. What is needed is an explanation that explains all of them. The more "explanations" you have to tie in together, the more cumbersome the position gets.

I think it all comes down to personal opinion, because even if you say that it is impossible for this belief to have arisen and survived in an Honor-Shame Society, I don't think you can prove that. You can claim implausibility, but you can't claim impossibility. That would be no different than a skeptic saying that the supernatural or miracle claims are "impossible". I don't think that either position can be proven "impossible".

Thanks.

I would say little is "impossible." What we have to go with is the preponderance of the evidence.

Highly problematic is that there was not much acknowledgment of what all I said above, but the next post...

I loved being a Christian. I loved my Christian denomination and I loved my church. For the time I was there, I loved my pastor. I did not leave Christianity due to a desire to pursue sin or due a fight with my pastor or church. I left due to evidence.

Quite different from mine. Many of the pastors I've met have been jerks and I've been burned by churches way too much. We have a great church now, but I stay because of the evidence.

I grew up the son of a fundamentalist Baptist pastor.

This part I don't think is a shock to anyone.

At age 18 we moved to another state and I, my mother, and my siblings joined an evangelical mega-church (same doctrines but with a positive emphasis). I left the Church in my mid-twenties. I joined a liberal Lutheran denomination in my late 20's and attended church a couple times a year when I was in the mood. Religion wasn't really that important to me. I got married in my 40's and had my first child two years later. I decided that I didn't want to raise my children in a liberal church, so I investigated some conservative denominations, and really liked orthodox/confessional Lutheranism (LCMS). I loved orthodox Lutheranism! I felt I had found the true apostolic faith. I studied the Lutheran Confessions, I read Lutheran authors, I read my Bible. The Lutheran Confessions, which are the Lutheran equivalent to an evangelical church's Statement of Faith, seemed to me, to be the correct interpretation of Scripture.

Okay. Here's where we would differ. Right now, I do attend a Lutheran church. I write out the curriculum. My wife and I love our church. I can easily say it's the best we've ever been on. We both feel at home. We both feel like we get what we need.

And yet I do not identify as Lutheran. I really refuse to identify with any denomination. My wife would say she's Lutheran now, but I don't sign on the dotted line yet. Nothing against my pastor. He's a wonderful man who is quite godly and quite intelligent and knows the material well. Yet while I'm sure he'd say his interpretation is closest to the Bible (Who wouldn't?), he would not say the true apostolic faith I don't think.

I was happy and content.

And I can say many times for me, the Christian life can be miserable. It is the constant dying to yourself, but that also makes it wonderful in some ways. I can say the way that people see me treat my wife is a direct outworking of Christian teachings. It's nice when people compliment me on what I do in apologetics. I like it. It's a hundred times better to receive compliments on how I treat my Princess.

Then one day as I was surfing the internet, I came across the blog of a former fundamentalist Baptist pastor turned atheist. I was shocked! I never heard of such a thing: a true believer becoming an atheist?? I took it upon myself to bring this backslidden Christian back to Christ by sharing with him the truths of confessional Lutheran Christianity.

And this is part of the problem. If you are not equipped, then it's like a young soldier who's gone through basic training wanting to dive right into enemy territory. It's a suicide mission.

And four months later I was an agnostic.

I have to wonder if you took an investigation seriously. This is a question that believers and unbelievers realize have eternal ramifications so it should be taken seriously. Most of us spend more time choosing our spouses than this. (Okay. I'm not the example here. Allie and I met and married in less than a year and I proposed before four months time, but I'm an exception.)

First, this Christian-turned-atheist showed me that all the existing manuscripts of the Bible have numerous scribe alterations to them, something as a fundamentalist I could not imagine being possible.

First off, I don't see how this could be demonstrated entirely. You can go and check every single existing manuscript? Now are their some scribal alterations? Yes. Of course, some differences are accidental. We see them all the time in works today. I can read books by established publishing houses with typos. I tell myself as I read what the correct meaning is which is pretty obvious. That's also textual criticism. Even Ehrman would tell you the majority of these are incidental. They don't really matter. Then some of them are intentional, but not for malicious reasons. For instance, consider lectionary reading. This was in an age before we all had Bibles we could carry so you depended on what you heard from the pulpit as it were. You have an assigned reading for that day, say going through a Gospel. The manuscript says "He came into town." If you have the manuscript, you know that He is Jesus. (This is a supposed example. I have no specific verse in mind.) You can't say that, so the scribe writing it just says "Jesus came into town." No big deal.

Sometimes a scribe would put in a side note. Sometimes that side note would be considered as part of the text by the next scribe. IN fact, one manuscript has a rather hilarious side note with one scribe not happy with the prior.

"Fool and knave, can't you leave the old reading alone and not alter it!"

Also, keep in mind, most of these scribes were not professional scribes at the start. They were ordinary people trying to copy a text, and sometimes they actually did a better job! This is the best volume I know of on the topic of the early text of the NT right now.

Sometimes, scribes would try to flatten out difficulties and sometimes, they were trying to give a blow to a heresy (And sometimes heresies were trying to give a blow to orthodoxy). The irony is that we can recognize these. That's how we can be sure of the reliability of the text. That we can spot where the differences are is incredible. In fact, here's what one NT critic says about this:

If the primary purpose of this discipline is to get back to the original text, we may as well admit either defeat or victory, depending on how one chooses to look at it, because we’re not going to get much closer to the original text than we already are.… At this stage, our work on the original amounts to little more than tinkering. There’s something about historical scholarship that refuses to concede that a major task has been accomplished, but there it is.

That same critic in a published work of his for students of the NT says:

In spite of these remarkable [textual] differences, scholars are convinced that we can reconstruct the original words of the New Testament with reasonable (although probably not 100 percent) accuracy.

Who is this guy? A dyed in the wool Christian fundamentalist?

No. In both cases, those quotes are from Bart Ehrman. The first is from here: Novum Testamentum Graecum Editio Critica Maior: An Evaluation: TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism, 1998, a revision of a paper presented at the Textual Criticism section of the 1997 Society of Biblical Literature in San Francisco. http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/vol03/Ehrman1998.html

The second is from here: Bart Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 481.

Bottom line is if we can't trust the text of the NT has been handed down reliably, we can't trust any ancient document.

Here are some shows I have done on the topic:

http://deeperwaters.ddns.net/podcast...ielWallace.mp3

http://deeperwaters.ddns.net/podcast...harlesHill.mp3

God had promised to preserve his Word! This was a real blow to me, but I spoke to my pastor and other pastors of my denomination who assured me that it was ok to recognize minor discrepancies in the six Resurrection accounts as long as the basic facts were all the same and that the scribe alterations did not affect one single Christian doctrine. Bottom line, it was ok to believe that the MESSAGE was inerrant, not necessarily the entire written text.

Actually, I think He did preserve it, just not in the way modern Americans like. Further, I have no hang-up on inerrancy. I defend it, but it's not an essential at all.

Whew! What relief. I could keep my precious Faith and not turn off my brain which could see the numerous discrepancies in the Resurrection accounts and in other areas of the Bible. "Great. I'm fine now."

Interestingly, the discrepancies you're seeing are with the Gospels. Since my case does not rely on those, it doesn't matter.

But then I started studying other aspects of the Bible, comparing them to modern scientific discoveries. And the more I studied, the more I realized that the Bible is not something to be relied upon for historical or scientific facts. I was very disturbed to realize that most modern archeologists no longer believe that the Exodus, the Forty Years in the Sinai, the Conquest of Canaan, nor the great kingdoms of David and Solomon were historical.

I leave these questions more to OT scholars.

"Didn't Jesus believe that they were historical?" I thought to myself. I then studied the Book of Daniel. It sure looks like the author of Daniel was very familiar with the Greek Empire, but oddly mistaken and ill informed about the Babylonian, Mede, and Persian empires, the very empires in which Daniel was supposedly a high official. Maybe critics are right. Maybe Daniel didn't write the Book of Daniel. But wait, Jesus thought he had! Then I looked at the doctrine of Hell. Why doesn't God talk explicitly about this place in the first 2/3 of the Bible? Why are the terms used for this place identical to terms and concepts used by the ancient Egyptians and Greeks?

Same here, but as for Hell, why should God talk about in the Old Testament (And I think he did at places.) Did Egyptians and Greeks have similar themes? It should not surprise us that a religion has a theme of an afterlife and that the afterlife you have is based on how you live. It's like saying "All these religions believe in God. They must have copied!"

So it wasn't just the inerrancy of the Bible that triggered my loss of Faith, it was an accumulation of things. It was as if my precious Christian belief system was nothing but a house of cards.

That is why I deconverted.

I think you spent way too little time. One could spend months on just textual criticism alone. It's also dangerous that so many Christians try to be specialists in everything. You're not. You won't be. Consider for instance science as science. I have no doubt, Sea of Red would crush me on this topic. He knows it. I don't. I can talk about the philosophy and history of science, but not the science itself. (And I think it's a mistake for Christians to do such who don't study science and when I meet someone who want to argue against evolution, I tell them to knock themselves out and do so if they wish, on one condition. Let the case be scientific. If the idea falls, it does because it turns out to be bad science. (Not my call to say if it is or not.) If Christianity is true, there won't be any problem with that. If I meet someone who is a Muslim, I'm not arguing with them about the ins and the outs of the Koran. I've read it, but I'm no specialist. I will talk about Jesus and the New Testament. That's quite different.

It looks like you went from just believing something because Christians said it was true to believing something because non-Christians said it was true.

Both sides make drastic drastic mistakes.

[Gary]

In short, you're indulging in conspiracy theories. One factor that works against all of them is the presence of the burial clothing being folded and still within the tomb. A furtive and hurried removal of the corpse such as you propose would not have resulted in that condition. Removing the wrapping would have been an unnecessary waste of time and made the corpse more difficult to carry. Such action would also lend credence to the story of the foreshadowed resurrection, so Pilate/Herod/Sanhedrin or their agents wouldn't have done it. The implausibility rating of the scenarios you advance far exceed that of a resurrection.

With regard to the comments about Matthew, you do have a point. The Bible itself cautions against taking just witness as being wholly reliable.

Thank you for your comment.

First, I don't know of any prominent NT scholar, Christian or non-Christian, who claims that the "burial garments" detail is a historical fact. It could be true. It could be an embellishment. If there is such a scholar, please identify him or her.

I note that you are using the word "implausible", and not the word, "impossible". Therefore, this confirms what I said above. Neither Christians nor skeptics can state the claims of the other side are impossible, we can only express our opinion that the other sides' claims are implausible. We are stuck with a difference in opinion regarding which is more probable:

1. Romans or Jews taking the body, increasing the chances of Christians claiming the prophesied resurrection had occurred.
2. The reanimation/resurrection of dead human flesh.

I, and I would bet, most non-Christians, would say that there are plenty of more plausible and much more probable explanations for why both the Romans and Jews would risk fueling the claim of a Resurrection by moving the body, over a miracle resurrection Here is one: The gospel writers exaggerated the significance of Jesus' crucifixion. Jesus was the leader of a small rag tag group of Galilean peasants who showed up one day at the Temple and infuriated the Sanhedrin by causing a disturbance. They wanted him dead and Pilate obliged. No big deal. End of story. Another dead Jew. Nothing of any real news. Neither the Romans or the Jewish authorities could care less if a small band of peasants believed a resurrection had occurred. They just wanted the trouble maker dead.

This scenario, is much, much more probable in the cumulative history of human experience than that a dead body was resurrected. You are certainly welcome to disagree, but I would encourage you to pose this scenario to a neutral person (if such a person exists) and see what they say.

[Christianbookworm]

Funny. I did my research using apologetic resources that did good research and came to the conclusion that I did have the correct worldview and that Jesus did rise from the dead!