Hi @swamidass
Thank you for your response. I’d just like to take issue with a comment you made:
@vjtorley goes so far as to equate your analysis with that of a neutral historian, when you are neither neutral nor a historian.
I’ve been looking over my September 2018 post, titled, Michael Alter’s bombshell demolishes Christian apologists’ case for the Resurrection. Nowhere in that post did I claim that Michael Alter was a historian. Instead, I described him as “a Jewish author who has spent more than a decade researching the Resurrection,” and as “intimately familiar” with the subject of “the historical reliability of the Gospels.” I referred to his “seemingly effortless ability to cut down arguments put forward by leading Christian apologists.” But I also added that “some of the speculations he entertains are rather fanciful” and that Alter’s book was “broader than it was deep” in its treatment of certain topics. I acknowledged upfront that Alter was a Jewish writer, but I added that Alter “willingly grants for the sake of argument the existence of a personal God Who works miracles and Who has revealed Himself in the Hebrew Bible.” In other words, he isn’t a skeptic.
I’m afraid I don’t know where you got the idea that I equate Alter’s analysis with that of a neutral historian. Here are some things which I did say about neutral historians, in my post:
The question which a Christian reading the Gospels should ask is not, “Are there any knockdown arguments against the historical accuracy of the Gospels?” but rather, “Would an impartial historian, reading the Gospels, conclude that they probably contained factual errors which call into question their reliability?”
And if it turns out that an impartial historian would query even the set of “minimal facts” employed by Habermas and Licona, then the entire enterprise of arguing for the Resurrection on historical grounds collapses like a house of cards.
The Gospel accounts of Jesus’ trial, crucifixion, death and burial contain at least 17 factual claims which an impartial historian would judge to be either doubtful or highly improbable.
In conclusion: The cumulative weight of 17 improbable claims in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ crucifixion, death and burial completely destroys the “maximal data” approach to Resurrection apologetics, as the facts that can be checked by historians simply don’t hold up to scrutiny. The “minimal facts” apologetic fares no better, as it assumes that Jesus received a proper burial – which, as we’ve seen, is highly questionable.
There are about fifteen key areas in which the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ burial are at odds with the known facts. The only conclusion which an independent historian can draw is that the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ burial are fundamentally unreliable.
There are about eleven [Resurrection] appearances recorded in the New Testament, and none of them are of a sufficiently high evidential quality as to satisfy an independent and impartial historian.
The New Testament contains almost a dozen accounts of appearances by the risen Jesus to his disciples and friends. Christian apologists contend that the only satisfactory explanation for these appearances is that Jesus had actually risen from the dead. After reading Alter’s book, I have become convinced that the apologetic arguments don’t work, and that even when we limit ourselves to Jesus’ best-attested appearances to his disciples, alternative explanations cannot be ruled out. Faced with this evidence, no fair-minded historian would conclude that Jesus’ resurrection was more probable than not: all we can say is that the evidence is inconclusive.
The upshot of all this is that the Resurrection accounts would never pass muster in a court of law: there are too many holes in the stories, and they don’t meet standards of good evidence. No impartial historian would find them convincing evidence for Jesus’ Resurrection.
I don’t think anyone could say that I equate Alter’s analysis with that of a neutral historian. What I do say is that the arguments he brings forward in his book would suffice to convince any fair-minded historian that the evidence for Jesus’ Resurrection is no longer convincing. I don’t think that’s at all controversial, as Alter freely admits that he obtained these arguments from books which he read on the subject, including books by trained historians. I mentioned Maurice Casey in my previous comment. In other words, Alter is not making anything up.
You referred to Alter’s work as a “polemic effort.” My question is: how does that invalidate it? At the end of the day, the only question which matters is: do his arguments stack up? You seem to think they don’t because of “large methodological flaws.” But the fact is that for most of the issues he raises in his book, Alter quotes from the writings of trained historians and archaeologists.
In any case, I don’t think it requires a history degree to see that the apologists’ case for Jesus having been buried in a new rock tomb is fraught with difficulties, to say the least. I’ve explained why in my comments above and in my September 2018 post. Without a new rock tomb for Jesus’ burial, the case for an empty tomb is profoundly weakened. And in that case, the case for the Resurrection becomes correspondingly harder to make.
Cheers.