In this extended discussion, we have covered a lot of bases. Some of the discussion has been summarized in our Wiki article here: Guide to Alter and Torley on the Resurrection (which I intend to massively update as soon as everyone has gotten in their closing statements). While I have not read Alter’s book, nor have I read the entirety of Vincent’s 60,000-word blog post, he has kindly enough bothered to engage us here with what I hope is the strongest selection of his case. I will provide an overview of the threads which we have explored and my final statements on those.
Summarizing the Alter-Torley approach
The Alter-Torley case against the Resurrection, based on this exchange, in my opinion, can be summarized as follows:
- Questioning the historicity of Jesus’ burial and the empty tomb (by invoking skeptical scholars such as Bart Ehrman)
- Questioning the historicity of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances to the disciples (the argument viewed as the strongest)
- Questioning the historicity of a long list of other narrated events in the gospels to cast doubt on their overall reliability (the “17 points”).
I believe that point 1) has been more adequately answered by @Freakazoid. Here it is again unclear what new work Alter-Torley brings to the table other than summarize the arguments of Ehrman, Carrier and other skeptical/atheist scholars and bloggers, as well as rehash several long-standing alternate theories, such as the possibility that the disciples went to the wrong tomb (a hypothesis that was first proposed by Kirsopp Lake in 1907).
Point 2) has been dealt with in the preceding post. Again, it is unclear what is new in A-T, other than possibly putting more emphasis on the argument that the disciples never corroborated their experiences of the risen Jesus exactly and without pre-conceived bias. However, as I have sought to demonstrate above, this requirement is both unreasonable and a red herring, as everyone agrees that the post-resurrection appearances were physical and several accounts of them involving touch.
We have debated numerous times on this thread regarding point 3), so I will summarize some of its conclusions in the next section.
Probability Arguments
Throughout this exchange, Vincent has repeatedly made references to how some event in one of the gospels is more or less probable, and several times he quantified that with actual probability estimates, such as his contention that it is improbable that Pilate was reluctant to convict Jesus as the gospels say. I have three objections against that:
- Making a rigorous estimate of the prior probability of an ancient historical event is difficult, even impossible, due to the many unknown factors involved connected to human psychology, environmental and situational factors.
- Most historians do not use Bayesian probability arguments to decide on the historicity of an event.
- How do we rigorously differentiate genuinely improbable events from those which are simply improbable because there are a multitude of possibilities that nature can take even for relatively mundane events?
Vincent has at least partially conceded on points 1) and 2) - he agrees that human psychology can make probability estimates iffy. Point 3) has been driven home not just by me but also by Josh both here and in other contexts such as biology. These three objections significantly weaken the legitimacy of Vincent’s methodology in claiming that the Gospels are historically unreliable.
Other methodological concerns
As I have emphasized since the beginning, the onus is on Alter and Vincent to show that despite not being professional historians, they know what standard historical method is and they are applying it properly to their case. Although Vincent has linked to several Reddit posts and atheist blogs which purport to spell out what historical method is, examining bits of his reasoning more closely reveals oddities.
One major issue I have concerning the A-T case is a lack of charity and historical imagination. For example, one of the pillars for his case against the empty tomb is that in Jewish culture, a body was supposedly deemed to be unrecognizable by the third day. On this basis, Vincent argues that because it seems nobody besides Mary Magdalene and some other women visited the tomb before the end of the third day, the case for the empty tomb rests solely on their testimony. This seems inane. He is basically suggesting that if the body of Jesus was found on the 4th day in the tomb, the disciples would not have accepted it as a disproof of the resurrection since it would be legally considered unrecognizable. Were people seriously that senselessly rigid to the “rules”? Now that seems like a very improbable event, given how the disciples were shaken, skeptical of the Resurrection, and thus unlikely to believe based on the sole testimony of a couple of women who just happened to come on the third day. If we want to use our common sense, people do not slavishly follow cultural habits to the dot, especially if something as spectacular as a resurrection is being claimed. It is extremely likely that multiple disciples would have revisited the tomb multiple times over the next few weeks, just to make sure they were not hallucinating or mistaken. Thus I call this a lack of imagination.
Another example: his continued insistence that Jesus’ trial is viewed by several scholars as illegal according to Jewish law. Does that mean that if a historical source reports something illegal, I should assume it is a fabrication? Does nobody ever break the law and abuse their power? Especially given that the Jewish authorities then had a second trial (a more legitimate one) in the morning (Mt. 27:1), then went to the trouble of going to Pilate to have him sign off on the execution? I’m expecting more nuance here in handling the connection between il/legality and historicity which I don’t see. If this illegal show trial actually happened, how were gospel writers supposed to report it without losing credibility in the eyes of A-T?
What is the purpose of the historical case for the Resurrection?
Vincent’s case sought to show that after the work Alter has done, it is impossible for Christian apologists to make a convincing historical case that the Resurrection happened. To quote him:
I now regard the enterprise of trying to prove [the Resurrection of Jesus] (or at the very least, demonstrate it to be more probable than not) is a doomed one.
In light of the various objections that have been raised by Josh, Freakazoid, myself and several others on this thread, I do not think that Vincent’s case demonstrates this. As we have seen, despite its length, most of his arguments are self-admittedly weak and inconclusive, and amount to a massive Gish Gallop against the reliability of the gospels. The one or two arguments that he thinks are the strongest are also not novel and have been discussed endlessly by apologists, historians, and NT scholars.
However, to reiterate an earlier point, I do not think this means that the historical case for the Resurrection is so strong that no unbeliever can rationally reject it. There is a lot of uncertainty in what we can know about 1st century Palestine, given that very little of it was written down. In general, very few extended historical arguments are airtight to the point that no other explanation is possible. Rather, the purpose of defending the historical case for the Resurrection is to provide a credible defense of Christian belief to the outside world, such that someone interested in Christianity would not view belief in the Resurrection as a form of intellectual suicide or dishonesty. For that purpose, the case has to be convincing not just to biased apologists, but also to a neutral observer.
In practical terms, this means that the case has to be respectable and reasonably defendable to experts in the field. A good resource is Freakazoid’s link to a blogpost by NT scholar Jonathan Bernier, who explains what different levels of consensus exist in a scholarly field like NT studies. He defines the terms consensus (~100%), majority (>50%), minority (<50%), dominant (a plurality), marginal (<1%), idiosyncratic but respectable, and quackery. Most interesting to me is the difference between “idiosyncratic but respectable” versus quackery:
Idiosyncratic but respectable: a proposition affirmed by just one, or at most a statistically negligible number of scholars, yet which is sufficiently warranted by the data that it cannot be simply dismissed as quackery. An example might be the arguments in J.A.T. Robinson’s Redating the New Testament. For those unfamiliar with his work, Robinson (by no means a conservative) argued that the entirety of the New Testament dates to before 70 C.E. Few have followed him on this. Yet Robinson advances sufficiently robust argument that one who disagrees must bring equally robust counter-arguments.
Quackery: a proposition affirmed by no or at most a statistically negligible number of scholars, and which is so inadequately warranted by the data that it can be dismissed. Jesus’s non-existence solidly falls into this category, as does creationism in biology. This has to do ultimately with the robusticity of the argumentation. Whereas idiosyncratic but respectable propositions are supported by robust arguments that fail to persuade many qualified experts, quackery is supported by utterly non-robust arguments. As such the one critiquing quackery need only bring non-robust counter-arguments to bear. Put more colloquially, the idiosyncratic but respectable position requires the critic to bring her or his A-game, whereas the same critic can bring the D-game and still prevail over quackery.
I believe that as long as the historical case for the Resurrection does not fall into quackery but is at least “idiosyncratic but respectable”, most of the goals of Christian apologetics have been achieved. However, based on the exchanges in this thread, we can clearly see that the case is much, much stronger than that, since many of the elements of the case are supported by multiple respected scholars, not just one or two idiosyncratic ones (Evans, Bauckham, Wright, Keener, Blomberg, etc.). While Vincent is able to find a few more liberal scholars who dispute various aspects of the case, this is not news. Nobody was arguing that there is a scholarly consensus that every single event in the Gospel certainly happened from a historical viewpoint.
Vincent closes his case with a final argument against why the historical case should be important at all:
The answer is that a strong historical case (I would not say “proof”) helps to remove intellectual objections against faith, which might prevent them from even considering Christianity as an option, given how central the Resurrection is to Christian faith. The case for the Resurrection is strong, but not airtight, and being willing to definitively reject the alternative explanations such that one is forced to grapple with its implications takes a leap of faith that requires the work of the Holy Spirit. The fact that Muslims or Jews like Alter already believe in a theistic God does not lessen the requirement of this leap of faith, as people have very different ideas of what that God is like and how He is supposed to act.