You wrote: The Emperor is unimpressed. However, the composer insists that the Emperor has to listen to the entire opera before making judgment. How do you think he should have reacted?
Response: Being an Emperor, I would keep my mouth shut. I would not want to end up in the dungeon! However, depending upon the situation, I would respectfully ask / plead that the Emperor listen to the entire opera.
Obviously, in sports [and other disciples], there are countless examples when fans leave a sporting event early in the game [baseball, basketball, football, etc] because the home team is being wiped out. Then, there is a “miraculous” comeback / recovery, and the team wins…
I find it amusing that so many TE/EC proponents have told ID proponents that natural theology is “bad theology” because, by giving evidential arguments for the existence of God, it takes away the need for faith, while some of those same TE/EC proponents don’t hesitate to give evidential arguments for the truth of the Resurrection. Yet if such evidential arguments were rationally compelling, they would, by the same logic, take away from the need for faith as well! And since they concern Jesus, and not merely a generic “Designer God”, they would actually do more damage to specifically Christian faith than natural theology ever could.
My own approach is inverted from that of such people. I find no theological objection to natural theology arguments, but I’m utterly without enthusiasm for proof of Resurrection arguments. The New Testament doesn’t give us proof; it gives us testimony. I see no evidence that most Christians, from before the time of Nicea to the time of Luther and Calvin and a bit beyond, were anxious about finding “proofs” as opposed to accepting testimony. The obsession with proof seems to be part of the modern mind-set. Maybe it’s an overcompensating reaction to modern skepticism. In any case, it’s a phenomenon that seems much more common in the Protestant than in the Catholic or Orthodox worlds. Perhaps the Protestant tradition is more infected by modern criteria of truth than those older traditions.
I am in total agreement with your comment about Gary’s 75% claim. In volume 2, I devote many, many pages to refute his claim. However, let me mention that currently I am working on a bibliography [English books, NO journals] on the Resurrection. To date, I have approximately 7,000 sources. In entire books written in support [PRO] resurrection and exceeding 47 pages, I located approximately 700 works. In contrast, fewer than 50 books were written in opposition [Excluding Christ Myth advocates and most books asserting Jesus survived the crucifixion [I totally reject this hypothesis.] and moved to India. Approximately, 15 were written prior to 1975. So, it is no wonder that 75 percent have in support in the burial.
Okay, I‘d still like to address your last point since this raises some big problems with your approach and why Christian should be skeptical of you claims
Well, I’d like to think it’s also because I actually have some training in NT studies. What’s more important, however, is that you cannot be legitimately informed about scholarly consensus without access to a good library and academic database. There’s simply too many journal articles and books that you cannot find on the internet.
Virtual and absolute are just weasel words. Part of the problem is that scholars in NT studies often misuse the word consensus. It usually means something like majority or strong majority, and saying virtually everyone agrees is not the same most people agree. Markan priority would fall under strong majority, but there are number of prominent dissenters that can’t be relegated to a marginal or fringe position. I don’t really like using blog posts, but see here.
Troxel is using consensus in the sense of strong majority.
It’s definitely debatable, seeing as how there still a number of books and articles being published about the Matthew being written first. That’s why Craig Evans has to argue for it in The Synoptic Problem: Four Views
Also read this this from the article I linked.
“Nevertheless, this position has come under attack on several fronts. In some ways, the oldest attack is by the Orality and Memory Hypothesis, which also dates to the nineteenth century (at least in one of its forms, the oral) and has continued to be promoted to the present, even if it has not commanded nearly as much widespread assent as the now-usual theory ofMarkan Priority and Q. The Two-Gospel Hypothesis dates back at least to Griesbach, if not earlier to Augustine (a debated point, as indicated earlier), and has been renewed in more recent work by Farmer and his followers. The Farrer Hypothesis, although perhaps argued in an earlier form by others (e.g. Lummis), dates to the 1955 essay by Farrer on dispensing with Q, even if it was developed much more rigorously by Goulder and then by Goodacre. By any reckoning, these four theories of the Synoptic Problem (as well as others, even if they have commanded less attention) have been on the table for consideration for a minimum of fifty years and quite possibly a minimum of one hundred years, if not longer for at least some of them. And yet we are still seriously debating the fundamental plausibility of the various proposals, with most of the essential arguments being the same ones that have been used over and over during the same time. ”
I never said it was the consensus position. I’m already on record on saying there are very few consensus positions in NT studies. The independence of John from the Synoptics, however, is the majority position. Your link mixes together theories of independence with awareness, which is clarified by Paul Anderson in the The Origins of John’s Gospel. You can access a prepublished version of his chapter here. Also note that I am providing an genuine academic source, not something from google search.
I don’t think you get it. My position is the majority position. I cited Keener because he lays out the common objections to your argument (he remarks that it is difficult to argue for your position today. Chapman and Schnabel confirm what I’m saying as well as offering an overview of scholarship which thinks along the same lines that I do. I am stating the majority opinion in the field, contra to your assertions. The only line of support you have is from an article that was written 26 years ago. Anyways…
It’s not enough to say that Jesus’ trial broke every rule in the book. The Mishnah is late and does not reflect legal practices during pre70 Jerusalem. You have to prove that the rules in question date that early. You cannot assume it. The article from Hamilton offers no substantial argumentation on that score, just that he thinks it might be done.
Even if we admit that some laws held in pre70 Jerusalem (it’s highly unlikely that all or most would have been), it wasn’t uncommon for the Jewish elite to abuse their power in this type of situation. Josephus refers to several instances of such abuse as do other Jewish texts. So historians do, in fact, think the account of Jesus’ trial is perfectly plausible.
This only reinforces my point about you being unaware of what scholars are currently thinking. John Granger Cook is one of the go-to scholars for issues surrounding crucifixion and resurrection. You being unaware of his article shows that you don’t know who the experts are on the issue. Furthermore, you cited an article from Magness but were unware that one of the key criticisms of Ehrman was that he didn’t interact with her work at all. Blog posts from Ehrman aren’t academic articles at all and don’t count as scholarly literature. The article from you referenced from Evans is iffy because it is only a summary of an actual academic article in a book.
See what I mean? This is another link to a totally unqualified blogger with an agenda. If you want to show me that less than 75% of scholars support the empty tomb, cite some current scholars and use their work as a starting point.
So… you think that Mary and Peter couldn’t find the body within the tomb? It’s not hard to find a three day old corpse in an enclosed space. Plus I already mentioned that Jews would have to have some means of identifying different niches within the tomb since they might move bodies at a later period. The Gospels don’t mention that the other apostles or Jewish high priests visited the tomb, but it’s logical that they did so. A resurrection means a raised body, and that means that the body would no longer be in the tomb. If you were a disciple and Peter told you that Jesus was resurrected, the first thing you would do is check to see if you could find his body. Maybe some disciples would take what Peter and Mary said on faith, but most probably would check the tomb. Likewise, the high priests would want to find his body because they could use it to stop those rumors they heard about Jesus’ resurrection (corpses are still recognizable after 40 days).
Historians don’t need texts to spell things out for them in this manner. Even in your proposed explanation, collective hallucinations are still subjective events. They don’t naturally synchronize together, especially when verbal communication is involved. Any sort of discussion between the apostles would have revealed major discrepancies in what each one experienced, so they would have inevitably had to have checked what they had saw and heard. Do you think the apostles never talked about what they had seen? What you are proposing is that the apostles never discussed the appearances with one another which is entirely implausible since they resurrection was the foundation for their preaching.
I can’t speak for everyone else, but what bothers is that there are many other Christians out there with more experience, training, and qualifications to speak about the resurrection than you. Alter’s book reads like he was trying to throw as much has material as he possibly could against the wall and in order to see what sticks. I don’t think this is a good way to do history, but more importantly, critically investigating his book takes a lot of skills and resources that you do not have. You cannot substitute good academic resources with the internet, just like you need actual training to use the historical method.
The additional evidence that is compelling is the conversion of Paul and his testimony of the resurrection in his letters. Paul with his conversion, education and relationship with James and Peter is compelling evidence.
I also see problems with Vincents statistical argument. How is it possible that additional evidence for an event reduces the probability the event occurred?
I’ll be extremely brief. Re Habermas’s claim that 75% of New Testament scholars accept the reality of the empty tomb: (i) apparently the true figure is somewhere between 67 and 75%, according to theology student and apologist James Bishop; (ii) in any case, Habermas’s figure is based on “a private manuscript of more than 600 pages that simply does little more than line up the scholarly positions and details on these 140 key questions, without additional interaction or critique. Most of this material is unpublished” (see here). Hardly a reliable source, in the absence of independent corroboration.
The view that Jesus’ trial was illegal even by first-century standards (never mind the Mishnah) is not old hat. It continues to be the common view. See Jeffrey Walker’s 2006 paper, The Trials of Christ: The Silent Defense (Walker is is an adjunct professor of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University and at the Brigham Young University Law School.) See especially footnotes 29, 45 and 46. See also pastor Stephen Davey’s online article, “The Illegal Trial of Jesus Christ” (2009), which lists six illegalities. In a 2017 online article, Dr. Daniel Woodhead, dean of Jewish Studies, Scofield Graduate School and Theological Seminary, asserts that the Sanhedrin “violated all their laws to arrest, charge, try and execute Jesus.”
What in detail is driving the difference of opinion?
I think you can pick at any detail here however it is the collection of all the evidence that is most compelling.
If Jesus was thrown in a common grave and still appeared to the 12 after the crucification and some of the 12 were martyred for their faith how much does the overall story really change?
Torley’s core argument: lack of independent testimony
Now, I wish that instead of writing a 60,000 word blog post, Vincent had simply condensed his argument to this single argument, which he seems to regard as the most important against the historical case for the Resurrection. I suppose this is the "devastating bombshell." Perhaps in the future, if people want to reply to Vincent’s case, they can focus on this point. (The empty tomb is another one, although Vincent seems to be willing to concede even that.)
It is however, not a new argument at all. Many Christian apologists have already written about this, and it is not clear what Alter or you bring to the table. Certainly nothing "devastating".
The odd, ubiquitous physicality of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances
I am merely repeating a pretty common line of argumentation that you surely are familiar with:
We have multiple lines of evidence (the four Gospels, Acts, the creed of 1 Cor. 15) that the disciples of Jesus thought they had witnessed a physically resurrected Jesus. Even though the details differ, they all agree that they were not merely witnessing a spirit or apparition, but something real and tangible enough that they were convinced it was a resurrected person. Even if the differing accounts of the appearances are not very detailed, they do agree in the physicality of the appearance. Mary Magdalene takes hold of Jesus (Jn. 20:17), Jesus breathes on people (Jn. 20:22), Thomas and other disciples touch and hold Jesus on different occasions (Jn. 20:27, Lk. 24:40, Matt. 28:9), Jesus eats with the disciples (Lk. 24:30). No vision or apparition happens to multiple people simultaneously, much less 500 people at once (1 Cor. 15). And as many authors have argued, Jewish people wouldn’t believe someone was resurrected if they had merely witnessed apparitions or visions, which was not unheard of. Clearly there was something weirder going on here than just normal grief-induced hallucinations. There is a clear core of physicality.
In fact, the differences between the accounts only add to the credibility. It was believed that Jesus appeared to different people at different times, so it makes sense that he would say and do different things. I am not sure what sort of "eleven independent testimonies" would convince you. It seems that you want an appearance of Jesus which was witnessed by multiple people, who then left the area without talking to each other, wrote their own accounts of what happened, which are then found cross-checked to be exactly the same. If that is the standard you are going for, then yes, the gospels do not give you that. I am not sure what kind of historical document could stand up to that standard.
Also I noticed we are playing a losing game here: if the testimonies agree exactly, you are likely to accuse them of not being independent. If they do not completely agree then you argue they are contradictory and hence fabricated. This lack of clear historical method is annoying to me.
Why did the post-resurrection appearances stop?
Even more interestingly, the accounts of Jesus’ appearances abruptly stopped by the beginning of Acts, with the exception of Paul. If this was a series of mass hallucinations, then experiences like Paul’s should have been reported multiple times throughout Acts and the early church, especially as more and more people became converted to Christianity. Instead of relying on the testimony of a limited group of several core disciples, every Christianity community should have had plenty of people ready to proclaim that Jesus had appeared to them as well, similar to charismatic phenomenon like the Toronto Blessing. But we have nothing of that! Instead we have an ancient creed (1 Cor. 15) that lists specific witnesses to Jesus’ appearances, like witnesses to some crime scene.
In my mind, it is likely that there were Christians experiencing psychological visions or hallucinations of Jesus, as is common in religious movements. But the early church must have worked hard to comb through those reports and differentiate them from the ones that eventually made it into that creed.
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.