Jason Dulle on Evidence for the Resurrection

This is responding to this blog post:

https://thinkingtobelieve.com/2019/04/21/the-historical-evidence-for-the-resurrection-of-jesus-a-short-case-2/


Dulle starts by saying, very reasonably:

You might be thinking that this is not fair because the gospels and Paul’s epistles were written by Jesus’ disciples, and therefore are biased.  That may be true, but all historical documentation is biased.  That does not prevent historians from sifting through the material to discover what is historical versus what is not.  They don’t need to presume the NT documents are divinely inspired or inerrant.

He goes on to give some criteria (and he explains them in the post):

  • The date and number of testimonies
  • Eyewitness testimony
  • Criterion of embarrassment
  • Lack of embellishment
  • Coherence

From there he goes on to say what historians consider to be facts. The first is that "Jesus was crucified by Pontius Pilate", and that is fine; not going to disagree with that.


Jesus was buried in Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb

But then he goes off the rails. The next claim is "Jesus was buried in Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb". He say historians believe this because:

There are multiple, independent, early attestations to Jesus’ burial in a tomb[2] and that it belonged to Joseph of Arimathea[3] in the NT.

Joseph of Arimathea was part of the Jewish Sanhedrin responsible for condemning Jesus to death. If the Christians were inventing the burial story, surely they would be the ones to give Jesus an honorable burial, not a stranger from the Sanhedrin.

The burial stories lack embellishment.

There are no competing stories concerning the fate of Jesus’ body.

All of this is very suspect. Any historian studying the event knows that the gospels of Matthew and Luke are based on that of Mark - that is to say, there is just one attestation there. The situation with the Gospel of John is less clear-cut, but it seems very likely that all the gospels we have are ultimately derived from a single account.

The claim that Joseph of Arimathea was part of the Jewish Sanhedrin is found only in the gospels - all derived from a single source, of course. Not only does the man not appear in any other work or anywhere else in the Bible, neither does the place he comes from. Richard Carrier tell us Arimathea means "Best Doctrinetown" (or "Best Disciple Town"), a hint from Mark that it is made up.

Then there is the matter of whether Jesus would be buried in a nice tomb, or a communal one for criminals. If Joseph of Arimathea really was a  member of the Sanhedrin, he had just voted to have Jesus condemned for blasphemy, and the Bible is clear that those executed for blasphemy are to be buried without honour. The Romans condemned Jesus as a rebel leader, and had good reason also to deny honourable burial.

Further, the Christian who made this up could not pretend Jesus' disciples buried the body. They were hardly in a position to ask Pilate anything; Pilate would be more likely to put them up on their own crosses. And, when the burial was made up, some disciples were still alive and would know it was made up. Whoever made up the burial had to have it done by a man in authority, and not by a Christian.

The claim that the burial stories lack embellishment is just plain wrong; read the account in John to see how fanciful it got.

There are no surviving competing stories, but it would have been the Christian community that chose which stories to preserve, and which would quietly die away. They had very good reason to want to promote the story that their lord and saviour was buried in a richman's tomb, rather than a communal tomb for criminals.


Jesus’ tomb was found empty by a group of women followers on the Sunday morning following the crucifixion

Dulle says: "Historians believe Jesus’ tomb was found empty for the following reasons:" He makes it sound as though there is a consensus that the empty tomb is real, and that is simply not true. Habermas did a survey of this, and showed about 75% of historians believe it, but also admitted this was split of party lines. That is to say, most Christian historians believe it actually happened.

So what are his reasons?

There are multiple, early, independent attestations to this fact.[4]

As discussed, this is simply not true. Any historian with half a clue knows that this is not true.

Women’s testimony was considered generally unreliable. A legendary account would have surely made male disciples the principle discoverers of the empty tomb.  To report that it was women who discovered the tomb empty would have been an embarrassing fact for the early disciples, and thus this testimony is historically reliable.

The fact is the empty tomb was made up decades after the crucifixion, and whoever made it up had to account for the disciples not knowing about it at the time. In Acts we read about the disciples preaching, and they never once mention the empty tomb - because it had yet to be made up.

If someone made up Peter finding the empty tomb, all the disciples still alive would know that that was not true. Whoever made it up had no choice but to have witnesses who did NOT tell anyone. Two women, dead by the time the story was made up, was ideal.

Christianity could not have begun and flourished in Jerusalem if the tomb was not empty. The site of the tomb was known to the religious leaders in Jerusalem, so if the apostles were preaching the resurrection of Jesus despite the fact that His body was still in the tomb, the religious leaders could have quickly discredited their claims of resurrection. Disciples wouldn’t have made up a story so easily falsifiable.  One can imagine how Christianity could have started in Rome since Jerusalem would be too far away for anyone to verify the claims of the apostles, but it’s not plausible for Christianity to begin in Jerusalem if Jesus’ body was still in the tomb.

The original claim was that Jesus was raised in a new spiritual body. Read 1 Cor 15; Paul is very clear on that. The early Christians did not claim there was an empty tomb, so the religious authorities had no reason to produce a body.

Further, this pre-supposes anyone even knew where the body was. Assuming Jesus was buried (likely, but not certain), he will have been buried in a communal tomb for criminals, and it would not be too long before the body had deteriorated so much it could not be identified. Christianity would have us believe the disciples were proclaiming the resurrection from that Easter Sunday, but Mark indcates the risen Jesus was seen in Galilee, which extends the timeframe to at least a few days later, and possibly months later. By the time they returned to Jerusalem to proclaim the Bible, that could be a year later.


Many people had experiences of Jesus after He was crucified that they believed to be appearances of a resurrected man

Dulle says: "While not all historians believe that Jesus actually rose from the dead, they are convinced that people had experiences of Jesus after His death that they interpreted to be appearances of the risen Jesus because:" I think Dulle is being a bit loose with the truth here. I can accept many historians are convinced many people thought they saw Jesus, but not that those people actually saw Jesus.

That is a huge difference! It is hard to imagine any real historian concluding it was actually Jesus as opposed to the people thinking it was Jesus. But this is apologetics, and you are supposed to just believe what he says.

So what are those reasons?

There are multiple, independent, early testimonies to these appearances.

Again, no there are not. And remember, he is claiming it was actually Jesus they saw, not that they believed it was Jesus.

Jesus appeared multiple times, not just once; to many individuals, not just one; to groups of people, not just individuals; in various locations, not just one; under a multiplicity of circumstances, not just one.

It is as easy to make up five appearances as it is to made up one, so this is hardly evidence.

Jesus not only appeared to disciples, but to skeptics (James) and enemies (Paul) as well.

James is a weird one. Why would someone who was not a disciple of Jesus be accepted as the leader of the disciples after Jesus died? I think there is some confusion in the various people with that name. It is also telling that James is later in the creed in 1 Cor 15; likely he was a later addition to the early creed (but before Paul recorded it). There was also some attempt to erase James from the record - he gets no mention in John - which further muddies the waters. I do not think we can conclude much about James at all.

Paul presumably saw something; how do historians know it was actually Jesus? They cannot. Paul was a devout Jew, eagerly awaiting the messiah, the new king, who would usher in the new world. What he experienced made him think Jesus was that messiah. I think we can be sure he saw something, but the account in Acts says it was a bright light and a voice - quite different to the accounts in the gospels.

Unlike Elvis sightings, these appearances were not fleeting.  People not only saw Jesus, but they engaged Him in sustained conversations[6], had physical interactions with Him,[7] and witnessed Him eating food.[8] That’s why the disciples did not merely conclude that they were seeing Jesus’ spirit, dreaming, hallucinating, or experiencing a mere vision of Jesus. The nature of the appearances caused them to conclude that Jesus was alive in the flesh.

There is some legendary development here. Paul's sighting described in Acts was pretty fleeting. The accounts of Jesus engaged in sustained conversation, eating fish, etc. were all written many decades after the event. Even Mark has no such sightings, it is only in Matthew, written perhaps 50 years later, that a sighting of Jesus is recorded, and the more involved accounts were later still. Why so late? Because they were made up after all the original witnesses were dead.


The disciples believed Jesus rose from the dead despite every predisposition not to

For example, we know the disciples proclaimed Jesus as the Messiah even after His crucifixion. This is an historical oddity because the Jews had no concept of a dying, yet alone rising Messiah.  They saw the messiah as a conquering king.  When other would-be messiahs were killed, his disciples would give up their messianic hopes or find themselves a new messiah.  No one ever continued to believe that their leader was truly the messiah, yet alone claim that he rose from the dead.  The disciples of Jesus did, however.  What can account for this bizarre conclusion given their Jewish understanding of the messiah?

The Jews did indeed believe the messiah as a conquering king, but they did already believe in resurrection (other than the Sadducees). So why believe Jesus was a resurrected messiah?

Quite simply because they saw something they believed was the risen Jesus. I am with Dulle on this, but with some important differences. What they saw was not what was later recorded in the gospels. What they saw was fleeting - like those Elvis sightings - and in Galilee.


Hallucination

Dulle addresses whether the disciples hallucinated it all in another post, and it is worth looking at that.

Skeptics have proposed several theories, but one the most popular and enduring theories is the hallucination theory.  It is said that the disciples of Jesus had hallucinations of Jesus, leading them to believe that Jesus had come back to life.  There are several problems with this theory.  First, hallucinations are private, subjective occurrences.  How can we explain why so many people experienced the same kind of hallucination over a period of 40 days?  Secondly, why would the hallucinations stop after 40 days?  We have no evidence of anyone claiming to see the resurrected Jesus in the flesh after His ascension.  Thirdly, the Gospels and Paul report Jesus’ appearance to groups of individuals.  Seeing that hallucinations are private, subjective experiences, it is most improbable that every person would have the same hallucination at the same time.  Just as a group of people will not share the same dream, a group of people will not share the same hallucination.  Fourthly, a hallucination cannot explain the empty tomb.  If the disciples were merely hallucinating that Jesus was alive from the dead, then His body should still be in the tomb.  And yet, the tomb was found to be empty.

Generally hallucinations are indeed private, but mass hallucinations are not unknown. The original account has an appearance to just one person, Peter, and it is not a stretch to suppose he told the other disciples, and the power of suggestion led to a collective hallucination based on what Peter had seen.

Dulle talks about "so many people experienced the same kind of hallucination over a period of 40 days" but the sightings described in the gospels in and around Jerusalem were made up later. What convinced the disciples was what they saw in Galilee, according to Mark. That could have been as simple as a bright light - that is all Paul saw.

And, of course, the empty tomb was made up later.

A blogger by the name of “Sam” adds one further argument against this hypothesis: it lacks explanatory power.  In other words, it can’t explain what it purports to explain because a hallucination involving a deceased person would not be enough to cause someone to think that person had risen from the dead.  All sorts of other conclusions are much more likely to be drawn.  The last thing someone would conclude upon seeing a recently deceased person walking and talking to them would be that the person was raised from the dead.  To draw that conclusion, much more evidence would be required than a mere post-mortem appearance.

That is an interesting point, and needs some consideration. But one point to bear in mind is that it cuts both ways. Whether they saw the actual risen Jesus or they hallucinated it, the effect is the same. To them the experience convinced them it was the actual risen Jesus, and everything that followed from that would be the same either way.

What Dulle is saying is that if he was a disciple and Jesus appeared before him, he would think he was dreaming - whether it was the risen Jesus or a hallucination.

Something about the experience convinced them it was real. That could be that it was real, but it might not. We know very little about what the disciples actually saw in Galilee, because later Christians were more interested in making up fanciful appearances in Jerusalem than recording what really happened in Galilee.

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