Gary & Rhinestone's Thread on Burial and Resurrection of Christ

[Doug Shaver]

Do you have non-genetic fallacy reasons for rejecting them?

It's just your dogma that infers rejection from skepticism. I'm not talking about rejecting anybody. I'm talking about using relevant data when forming judgments about someone's opinions, even when that someone happens to be a certified authority.

[Gary]

The most that can be said of Habermas' research is this:

[psstein]

[QUOTE=Gary;339318]Hello, dear TW friends,

1. This is not a peer-reviewed article. That is a BIG problem. Unless Habermas opens up his records; shares his data with other scholars; and allows other scholars to critique his data and methodology, all we have in this article is one man's hearsay.

You're joking, right? The Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus is a peer-reviewed journal, published by Brill. I know several of the editorial board members.

2. Habermas did NOT take a survey of scholars to arrive at his claim that 75% of scholars believe in the historicity of the Empty Tomb. This could have very easily been done. Why didn't Habermas do this and why has he still not done this? No, instead of surveying scholars on this question, Habermas reviewed all articles on the subject of the Empty Tomb and recorded how many articles supported the historicity of this claim and how many did not support the historicity of this claim. There are several problems with this methodology. First, it only includes scholars who have written published articles on the Empty Tomb. What percentage of NT scholars have done so? He doesn't tell us. However, it is safe to say that fundamentalist and evangelical NT scholars, whose faith and world view depend on the existence of an empty tomb, will have written many more articles on this subject than NT scholars for whom an empty tomb is unimportant (say, a Jewish scholar or a liberal Christian scholar).

There are probably 5,000+ NT scholars in the United States alone. I can't imagine sending 50 emails out on the same topic, yet alone 5,000. Habermas is doing what's known as a literature review- he's examining the literature and discussing its claims. I've done the exact same thing with the Synoptic Problem. Most peer-reviewed books do the exact same thing. Some scholars don't think about the empty tomb at all. For example, I think it unlikely that a Hebrews specialist will think about the Passion Narrative in Mark. NT scholarship has gotten ridiculously specialized in recent years.

Secondly, Habermas does not tell us whether or not he counted only authors of Empty Tomb articles or the total number of Empty Tomb articles. The problem here is that if he is basing his percentage on articles, not on scholars, his number will be biased towards the fundamentalist/evangelical position of an empty tomb and a bodily resurrection, as these scholars are much more motivated to write on this subject. For instance, if Mike Licona has written ten articles on the Empty Tomb, and someone like Levine has never or rarely ever written on this subject, Habermas' statistics will be biased towards the conservative Christian position. We need to know this information before asserting just how accurate Habermas' study really is.

It's articles, not scholars. Again, this article is a literature review, Gary. Also, it was conducted in 2005, before Licona really published much of anything. You're also committing the genetic fallacy. While it may be true that evangelicals are more likely to write on the empty tomb, it does not follow that their conclusions have been predetermined. Robert Gundry, himself an evangelical, was kicked out of ETS for his claims that Matthew 1 and 2 were midrashic.

3. Habermas states that the participants in his survey are primarily (Christian) theologians and NT scholars, with a smaller group of historians and philosophers. Why? This is an historical question, not a theological question. We are not asking scholars to tell us the meaning of Jesus' death, for instance. That is a theological question. Why not ask the experts in the relative field: HISTORIANS! But I doubt that Habermas will ever want to do this because he knows that the results of this survey would most likely be very different from the results of his survey of mostly theologians and NT scholars.

NT scholars are historians, broadly construed. There have been probably 15 conferences in the last 5-10 years about how NT scholarship works with history. Many theologians also double as NT scholars. For example, the Catholic theologian Edward Schillebeeckx wrote a long work on the historical Jesus. Rudolf Bultmann, the great German NT scholar, was himself closer to a theologian. The vast majority of historians in this area are in Christian Origins, which has heavy overlap with NT.

[psstein]

Which suggests a resurgence of what I have called quasi-inerrancy, which was ascendant during the 19th century among Protestant scholars who believed in the divine inspiration of scripture but rejected the occurrence of miracles. Any modern scholar, even if not an inerrantist, who is committed to a belief that the New Testament writings are the word of God must regard them as more or less reliable history, even if the scholar admits that the writers might have gotten a few incidental details wrong.

No, not really. Bultmann considered the NT revelatory but believed that we couldn't know anything about the historical Jesus. Alfred Loisy, himself a Roman Catholic, considered large parts of the gospel tradition unreliable.

Absolute nonsense. NT scholarship uses what are known as the criteria of authenticity to determine what is authentic and what isn't. For example, Jesus' baptism by John the Baptist satisfies the criterion of multiple attestation, the criterion of embarrassment, and the criterion of coherence. The NT has been systematically picked apart over the last 200 years in the hopes of finding the authentic teachings and deeds of Jesus.

He doesn't have to. Sanders outlines the reasons for his "secure facts" in both Jesus and Judaism and The Historical Figure of Jesus.

James Crossley and Maurice Casey are atheist/agnostic. Gerd Ludemann is an atheist. Bart Ehrman is an agnostic. Nobody denies that the disciples had some sort of experience that convinced them that Jesus had risen from the dead. I can't think of any scholar who denies the appearances, even relatively liberal ones like James M. Robinson. The NT has been found to have reliable material after generations of scholars argued that it didn't.

Yes, it is at least the New Testament claim, but it is also only the New Testament claim. There is no other independent evidence for any of it.

You seem to have this fundamentalist mindset that the NT dropped from heaven fully formed and without any human discussion at all. A cursory understanding of Christian Origins would disabuse you of that notion.

Not necessarily. All we really need is a plausible explanation for how a particular set of religious writings (1) came to exist in their extant form and (2) came to be considered authoritative by leaders of a religion that evolved into the historically orthodox version of Christianity.

No, Habermas is correct. We have reports of an empty tomb and appearances. You have to reckon with them when you discuss the Easter events.

[Gary]

[QUOTE=psstein;339987]

Hello, dear TW friends,



You're joking, right? The Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus is a peer-reviewed journal, published by Brill. I know several of the editorial board members.



There are probably 5,000+ NT scholars in the United States alone. I can't imagine sending 50 emails out on the same topic, yet alone 5,000. Habermas is doing what's known as a literature review- he's examining the literature and discussing its claims. I've done the exact same thing with the Synoptic Problem. Most peer-reviewed books do the exact same thing. Some scholars don't think about the empty tomb at all. For example, I think it unlikely that a Hebrews specialist will think about the Passion Narrative in Mark. NT scholarship has gotten ridiculously specialized in recent years.



It's articles, not scholars. Again, this article is a literature review, Gary. Also, it was conducted in 2005, before Licona really published much of anything. You're also committing the genetic fallacy. While it may be true that evangelicals are more likely to write on the empty tomb, it does not follow that their conclusions have been predetermined. Robert Gundry, himself an evangelical, was kicked out of ETS for his claims that Matthew 1 and 2 were midrashic.



NT scholars are historians, broadly construed. There have been probably 15 conferences in the last 5-10 years about how NT scholarship works with history. Many theologians also double as NT scholars. For example, the Catholic theologian Edward Schillebeeckx wrote a long work on the historical Jesus. Rudolf Bultmann, the great German NT scholar, was himself closer to a theologian. The vast majority of historians in this area are in Christian Origins, which has heavy overlap with NT.

I retract my statement that Habermas' research was not peer-reviewed.

However, the issue still remains that the conclusion of Habermas' research was NOT that "75% of scholars believe in the historicity of the Empty Tomb" but rather, "75% of scholars writing on the subject of the Resurrection AND positing a position on the historicity of the Empty Tomb between 1975 - 2005, believed in the historicity of the Empty Tomb."

Very big difference.

Do Christian apologists point out this distinction when using Habermas' research to support their position on the historicity of the Resurrection? Maybe, maybe not. I would bet that if we did a search of statements on this issue even here on TW, we would find numerous examples of Christians claiming that Habermas' research proves that "75% of scholars believe in the historicity of the Empty Tomb".

Some will claim, "but this is how scholarly consensus is obtained; by doing a literature search." This may be true for historical issues such as whether or not Caesar crossed the Rubicon or whether or not Alexander the Great invaded India, but the issue of an Empty Tomb has a very strong religious significance to it that these other alleged historical events do not. Imagine doing a literature search on articles discussing the historicity of whether or not Joseph Smith and thirteen eyewitnesses viewed golden plates from an angel. Wouldn't it be quite likely that most articles written on this subject are written by Mormons? I haven't seen a study on this issue so I can't make any claims, but common sense gives you a pretty strong indication that such a literature search is not going to be a good indication of the position of most "scholars", which would included historians, on this issue.

So we see that the strength of the claim regarding the historicity of an Empty Tomb is not nearly as strong as many Christian apologists would like it to be. And without an Empty Tomb, the conservative Christian argument for the historicity of a bodily resurrection of a three-day-dead corpse becomes dependent on the eyewitness claims of a handful of "unlearned", first century peasants who claimed to have received appearances from their recently departed loved one, a claim made by tens of thousands of other grieving friends and family of other deceased persons down through the millennia of human existence.

If I am not mistaken, I DID include NT scholars in my list of appropriate scholars for this research. My issue is that Habermas' states that the majority of the authors in this literature search were theologians and NT scholars. He then says that the remainder (a minority) were historians, philosophers, and "others". Why include theologians who likely have a religious bias? If these theologians are also professional historians, fine, but then why make a distinction between "theologians" who are in the majority and "historians" who are in the majority in this study? And the same for philosophers. If some of the authors have credible PhD's in philosophy and history, fine, include them. So why not state that the articles consists of "critical scholars" in history and/or NT studies, some of whom are also theologians and philosophers. But as it appears by his statement, the majority of authors are scholars who, while discussing the Resurrection, AND, who within their Resurrection articles expressed a position on the historicity of the Empty Tomb, were either theologians or NT scholars as a majority, who I would suggest were, most likely, overwhelmingly Christian believers.

[Gary]

No, not really. Bultmann considered the NT revelatory but believed that we couldn't know anything about the historical Jesus. Alfred Loisy, himself a Roman Catholic, considered large parts of the gospel tradition unreliable.



Absolute nonsense. NT scholarship uses what are known as the criteria of authenticity to determine what is authentic and what isn't. For example, Jesus' baptism by John the Baptist satisfies the criterion of multiple attestation, the criterion of embarrassment, and the criterion of coherence. The NT has been systematically picked apart over the last 200 years in the hopes of finding the authentic teachings and deeds of Jesus.



He doesn't have to. Sanders outlines the reasons for his "secure facts" in both Jesus and Judaism and The Historical Figure of Jesus.



James Crossley and Maurice Casey are atheist/agnostic. Gerd Ludemann is an atheist. Bart Ehrman is an agnostic. Nobody denies that the disciples had some sort of experience that convinced them that Jesus had risen from the dead. I can't think of any scholar who denies the appearances, even relatively liberal ones like James M. Robinson. The NT has been found to have reliable material after generations of scholars argued that it didn't.



You seem to have this fundamentalist mindset that the NT dropped from heaven fully formed and without any human discussion at all. A cursory understanding of Christian Origins would disabuse you of that notion.



No, Habermas is correct. We have reports of an empty tomb and appearances. You have to reckon with them when you discuss the Easter events.

Habermas is correct about what? The probable historicity of the Empty Tomb? Not hardly, as I have explained above.

Unless you can provide a peer-reviewed SURVEY of all the experts in the field in question (historians, including NT scholars) then all you can claim is that most scholarly articles written between 1975-2005 on the subject of the Empty Tomb favor it's historicity. Habermas' research does not take into account the strong religious bias that many of the historians/NT scholars in his sample have on this issue, a bias which does not exist on most other debated historical issues.

It is a very biased study.

No one should be pushing Habermas' research as evidence that most experts believe in the historicity of a empty rock mausoleum in first century Palestine.

[psstein]

Gary, you seem to not understand that NT scholarship has historically been incredibly skeptical of Christian claims.

Some Christian NT scholars I know hold to the empty tomb, while others (some of whom are religious men!) reject it. It's not as clear cut as "Christian=believe, non-Christian=don't believe."

[Abigail]

Romans 8 is not a resurrection passage. Read the context. I was asking for clear passages where Paul says the Risen Jesus was on earth and experienced in a physical way. These passages fail to show that.

It is a resurrection passage and results in confusion if you try and interpret it in a singularly spiritual sense. You aren't even trying to interact with what other posters write and just restate your theory. Look at verse 22-23 "22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; 23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies."

It doesn't say anything about raising mortal bodies from the dead. You're just trying to read that in when it's not there. The emphasis is on the "spirit," not Jesus' dead body.

The problem is that it is definitely there and you are trying to read it out.

No, Paul is asserting he had a "vision" like everyone else had 1 Cor 15:5-8. You're just refusing to accept it. He makes no distinction between the appearances and uses the same verb.



You're missing the entire point! The only ways Paul says that the Risen Jesus is experienced are through "visions" and "revelations". You can't claim these were physical occurrences.

So your case basically is to insist that wherever Paul is writing about mortal bodies being given life or bodies being redeemed he is meaning it in a spiritual sense. Therefore whenever he is talking about Christ appearing to him it is non physical. Therefore any appearances of Christ to others were non physical too because since his own experiences were non-physical and he mentions theirs alongside his, theirs are non physical too. Your whole case rests on your own preassumptions . I am starting to think you are a troll

Is the appearance Paul mentions in 1 Cor 15:8 his Damascus Road "vision" or have you discovered some other source that narrates the appearance to Paul? He himself admits that to having multiple "visions" and "revelations" of the Lord in 2 Cor 12:1. He says he had an internal "revelation" in Gal. 1:12-16.

We went over this already. Paul saw Christ on the Damascus road and Christ told him he was going to appear to him things of which he wanted Paul to testify about. So it was not just Christ's initial appearance that he was to testify about but the sense seems to be that situations and events were going to arise which would afford Paul opportunities to tell of the initial appearance and more such as the situations when Christ was delivering him from his people and the Gentiles who Christ was sending him to. It is this 'vision' Christ entrusted him with, which Paul had obediently undertaken (Acts 26:19) and this is what he is telling Agrippa.

Everytime this word όπτασία is used by Luke it is used in relating an experience/happening which is understood to be extra-ordinary and personal to the person/people who were eyewitness to it. It is making the point that something was witnessed by the see-er which is not directly available to the hearer. The word from what I see in these contexts, in no way makes a statement about the whether what was seen is concrete or not but rather it is the surrounding text which informs us if what was being eyewitnessed was concrete or not.

[Gary]

Gary, you seem to not understand that NT scholarship has historically been incredibly skeptical of Christian claims.

Some Christian NT scholars I know hold to the empty tomb, while others (some of whom are religious men!) reject it. It's not as clear cut as "Christian=believe, non-Christian=don't believe."

I never claimed that.

Let's take the 75% number. This statistic represents the number of authors in Habermas' research who expressed an affirmative position regarding the historicity of the Empty Tomb in one of the 1,400 articles reviewed by Habermas'. What percentage of this 75% are evangelical Christian scholars? As far as I know, we have know idea as Habermas did not give us this information in his study. But let's say that 50% of the 75% are evangelical scholars or scholars from a conservative Protestant denomination such as the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. I would bet that this is a very conservative number. I would bet that the percentage of articles written on the Empty Tomb by evangelical or conservative Protestant scholars is much higher. Why? Answer: Because the Empty Tomb is a cardinal doctrine/belief in these denominations. To suggest that the Empty Tomb is an embellishment; fiction; would be an act of heresy. And beyond that, how many evangelical/conservative Protestant scholars work for a college or university in their denomination? How many have been required to sign a Faith Statement in which they agree not to teach or publish any teaching that is not in line with the denomination's teachings? How many evangelical/conservative scholars could lose their jobs and have their careers ruined by publishing an article in which they express their true personal opinion that the Empty Tomb is NOT historical?

Now. How many scholars of the Roman Empire are going to be fired from their university for expressing doubt on a controversial issue within ancient Roman scholarship? How many scholars of ancient Greece are going to be fired because they dispute an issue related to Alexander's campaign into India?

Probably not many, if any!

But we know for a fact that evangelical/conservative scholars can get into BIG trouble for publishing positions that contradict the teachings of their denomination and their denomination's college or university for which he or she is an employee! That is not honest research, folks.

Habermas' research should in no way be trusted to accurately reflect the opinion of relevant scholars on the issue of the historicity of the Empty Tomb of Jesus. Not only is there a strong religious bias among evangelical and conservative Protestant Christian scholars in favor of the historicity of this claim (it is part of the very foundation of their Faith and entire world view), there is also a very strong disincentive for evangelical and conservative Protestant scholars to express their true feelings and beliefs on this issue if they happen to doubt the historicity of this Christian claim: ...LOSING THEIR JOBS!

Habermas' research should NOT be used by Christian apologists to claim that the historicity of the Empty Tomb is supported by the majority of scholars! It is not.

The evidence for the bodily resurrection of Jesus just got a lot weaker, folks.

[Doug Shaver]

Any modern scholar, even if not an inerrantist, who is committed to a belief that the New Testament writings are the word of God must regard them as more or less reliable history, even if the scholar admits that the writers might have gotten a few incidental details wrong.

No, not really. Bultmann considered the NT revelatory but believed that we couldn't know anything about the historical Jesus. Alfred Loisy, himself a Roman Catholic, considered large parts of the gospel tradition unreliable.

Absolute nonsense.

Have you got some data other than the NT accounts?

NT scholarship uses what are known as the criteria of authenticity to determine what is authentic and what isn't.

The NT has been systematically picked apart over the last 200 years in the hopes of finding the authentic teachings and deeds of Jesus.

Yes, but nearly always on the prior assumption that the NT contains some authentic teachings and deeds of Jesus.

Habermas says almost nothing about how his scholarly sources defend that presupposition.

He doesn't have to.

If Habermas can assert it without argument, I can deny it without argument.

Sanders outlines the reasons for his "secure facts" in both Jesus and Judaism and The Historical Figure of Jesus.

And we know that the New Testament is reliable history because Christianity says so.

James Crossley and Maurice Casey are atheist/agnostic. Gerd Ludemann is an atheist. Bart Ehrman is an agnostic.

Nobody denies that the disciples had some sort of experience that convinced them that Jesus had risen from the dead.

Not quite nobody, but yes, almost nobody. But this is just an argument from consensus. The issue on the table is whether the consensus is justified.

I can't think of any scholar who denies the appearances

The NT has been found to have reliable material after generations of scholars argued that it didn't.

I have never heard of even one generation of scholars in which there was a consensus that the NT had no reliable material.

but it is also only the New Testament claim. There is no other independent evidence for any of it.

You seem to have this fundamentalist mindset that the NT dropped from heaven fully formed and without any human discussion at all.

We have reports of an empty tomb and appearances.

We have documents in which such reports are narrated.

You have to reckon with them when you discuss the Easter events.

Those events are part of the narrative. Besides the narrative, there is no evidence that the events even happened.

[Adrift]

No, not really. Bultmann considered the NT revelatory but believed that we couldn't know anything about the historical Jesus. Alfred Loisy, himself a Roman Catholic, considered large parts of the gospel tradition unreliable.



Absolute nonsense. NT scholarship uses what are known as the criteria of authenticity to determine what is authentic and what isn't. For example, Jesus' baptism by John the Baptist satisfies the criterion of multiple attestation, the criterion of embarrassment, and the criterion of coherence. The NT has been systematically picked apart over the last 200 years in the hopes of finding the authentic teachings and deeds of Jesus.



He doesn't have to. Sanders outlines the reasons for his "secure facts" in both Jesus and Judaism and The Historical Figure of Jesus.



James Crossley and Maurice Casey are atheist/agnostic. Gerd Ludemann is an atheist. Bart Ehrman is an agnostic. Nobody denies that the disciples had some sort of experience that convinced them that Jesus had risen from the dead. I can't think of any scholar who denies the appearances, even relatively liberal ones like James M. Robinson. The NT has been found to have reliable material after generations of scholars argued that it didn't.



You seem to have this fundamentalist mindset that the NT dropped from heaven fully formed and without any human discussion at all. A cursory understanding of Christian Origins would disabuse you of that notion.



No, Habermas is correct. We have reports of an empty tomb and appearances. You have to reckon with them when you discuss the Easter events.

I'm not sure if you've ever interacted with Doug, but just a heads-up, he's about three steps past Jesus Mythicism into the realm of almost complete ahistoricism. His brand of super-skepticism for anything any ancient historian might be able to relay to a non-expert through their years of hands-on exhaustive research, is practically impenetrable. He's skeptical of the entire enterprise of NT scholarship from the ground up. Unless he dug it out of the sand himself, or unless it's presented by folks like Carrier or Doherty (who Doug gives a pass for some reason) he's unlikely to accept it, offering instead his catch-phrases "So you say", "on your say so?", and "Why should I believe that?", to which the answer would normally include something like a detailed course in historical and textual criticism, and the history of NT scholarship (that he'd still probably shrug off as "just someone's say so").

[Gary]

Here are examples of Christian apologists misstating the findings of Gary Habermas' research in an effort to enhance the evidence for a bodily Resurrection:

"Most scholars today argue that the tomb of Jesus was found empty. Gary Habermas, a noted resurrection expert, states that about 75% of critical scholars today accept the historicity of the empty tomb.1"

Source: http://carm.org/empty-tombhttps://jamesbishopblog.wordpress.co...peters-sermon/

[Gary]

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/evide...#ixzz4DYDbxJY4

This statement is better than the statements from CARM and James Bishop above, but it is still false. Habermas did not find that 75% of scholars accept the historicity of the Empty Tomb, he simply found that 75% of scholars who have written articles on the Resurrection and have expressed a position on the historicity of the Empty Tomb accept the historicity of the Empty Tomb. Big difference, folks! Christian apologists need to STOP the deception.

[Adrift]

That's exactly what your cite of Craig says, "...the majority of New Testament scholars who have written on this subject..." Also, no one expects people who have not written on the subject to voice their opinion on anything, so you're making a fuss over something no one is really arguing, or cares about.

[Gary]

That's exactly what your cite of Craig says, "...the majority of New Testament scholars who have written on this subject..." Also, no one expects people who have not written on the subject to voice their opinion on anything, so you're making a fuss over something no one is really arguing, or cares about.

about 75% of scholars believe that the tomb of Jesus was discovered empty by a group of his women followers on the Sunday following his crucifixion (Habermas and Licona, 60, 70).http://christianapologeticstraining....-tomb-of-jesus