Torley on The Resurrection: Take Two

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

@vjtorley

I’d like to apologize. My words were too harsh and sweeping: there were some comments where you attempted to address my arguments, even if the majority of them related to methodology and Michael Alter’s credibility.

Apology accepted, though you seem to misunderstand @dga471 and I.

First of all, You are claiming that a neutral historian would be convinced by @MJAlter but you have not produced any evidence this is the case. Obviously, @MJAlter is not a neutral historian (or a historian of any sort). This is not an attack on his character, but just a brute fact of direct relevance to your claim. I’ve asked you for evidence that any historian has been convinced by his arguments. None have been produced. In fact, people with training in history have noted several of the problems that both @dga471 and I have noted.

Second, we do not believe you are using a sound historical methodology. @dga471 has been explicating this, and I can agree with what he has written. This not a logical way of reasoning, because (as I have said before) it leads ot nihilism. One could not know anything about anything with this sort of reasoning. This is why historians do not reason this way.

Third, we do no believe you are using a fair rhetoric. I’ve compared this to a Gish Gallop, and that is very much what this continues to look like. You flooded the conversation with dozens of weak arguments that are individually easy to refute, but in some total would take too much too much time to deal with in totality. When we have presented explanations of problems with specific arguments, you have essentially ignored them, retreating back to the gallop. This is not a convincing strategy when YECs or anyone else execute it.

You’ve asked to engage the arguments, and we have. We are waiting for you to respond. For example, see what I wrote about communion, one of the more bizarre arguments made by @MJAlter,

@swamidass

The Blood Drinking Ritual (Communion)

These Gospels also depict Jesus as telling his disciples to drink blood (the blood of the new covenant), but to a Jew, any kind of blood-drinking was disgusting and unthinkable: you weren’t even allowed to do it to save your own life.

The argument seems to be that this story is implausible because Jews just don’t do this, so it must not have happened. This misses the point entirely.

We know for a fact:

1. Somehow a symbolic blood drinking ritual actually does arise among devote Jews in the 1st Century. There are so many independent sources attesting it that no serious historian doubts it, and it is not clear that even @MJAlter disputes this.
2. Moreover, there appears to be no debate among early Christians (1st century Palestine) about communion and how it arises. There is discussion about the correct way to conduct the Lord’s Supper, but there is not debate about whether to do it or that it represents the body and blood of Jesus.
3. Agreeing with @MJAlter this is highly unusual . In all the comparator Messiah movements, not once does a comparable tradition arise of symbolic blood drinking. This is not what Jewish people usually do when their Messiah-leader dies. But this is the whole point in the first place. We have increased urgency in asking: how does this happen?

So we see something that is (1) highly unusual and (2) undoubtably took place at some point in the first 50 years of the Church. The historian has to ask: “how did this very unlikely event arise?” @MJAlter does not at all seem interested in this question. No matter how we look at it, at some point we would see very devout Jews instituting this ritual.

Whether it be Jesus, Peter or Paul that institutes it, we face the same objection that @MJAlter raises. This isn’t likely. This objection is entirely missing the point, because we already know that something very unlikely actually happened. We know it happened. It was one of these devout Jews who did it, and somehow convinced all the rest to go along, without argument. How could that be possibly happen?

Their own explanation is that Jesus institutes this shortly before he dies. They all seemed to be confused by it in the moment. It is only later they realize its significance, after Easter sometime. It is because of something that happened after Jesus died ( what??? ), they all come to this point of view, without any dissent, and without any argument. That is what they say. And it makes sense of the data.

The notion that Jesus didn’t institute communion, but it was added in later, raises far more questions, without even answering the first question . If Paul, for example, gets this idea 10 years afterwards, why does everyone go along with it then? Why would he even do it? We isn’t there a massive debate about this recorded in history? We are still left with the original problem: why would devout Jews go along with this? Why and how did they unanimously create a false story about Jesus? What would motivate them to do this?

The best answer is that Jesus himself instituted this right before He died. It is surprising, and is not what we expect. This heightens the question of the Resurrection. What happened to the disciples after he died so that they would institute the communion ritual? If he does not think Jesus institute it, who did? How did they convince the twelve disciples to go along with it without any argument? Why does such an unlikely ritual become a foundational event in this single messiah movement, and no others?

Those are the historian’s questions. @MJAlter and @vjtorley don’t give us a good account of how the ritual arose. This is an example of argument from incredulity , that ignores rigorous engagement with the fundamental historical questions being raised.

You responded:

@vjtorley

You are entirely correct in your assertion that I don’t put forward an explanation of how belief in the Eucharist arose. As I wrote in my OP:

You propose, without evidence, that it arose gradually, when in fact this does not actually match the evidence we have about the early church.

@vjtorley

Now, is that what really happened? I don’t know. I’m just writing about what a neutral historian would conclude.

This is just my point. You are whistling past the graveyard where bad historical arguments go to die. It is a nihilistic argument you are making, leaving all the important questions unasked and ignored. For this reason, I’m certain that this is not what a neutral historian would conclude. At the very least, this is not how they would come to conclude it.

You’ve fallen into a objectively false rhetoric about neutral historians that really needs to be stopped. You can’t justify it, so why continue insisting on it?