Papias says about Judas Iscariot swelling up bigger than an oxcart and pissing
live worms (J. A. Cramer's Catena in Acta SS. Apostolorum on Acts 1:8)?13 The
sole surviving example (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3:33:3-4) of Papias's
collection of Jesus traditions supposedly derived from "the Elders" sounds like a
garbled quote from the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch 29:5.
I suppose the clearest, most outrageous example of Boyd and Eddy advocating
old-time fundamentalism and calling it criticism is their defense of
harmonization, indeed, their attempt to elevate it to an axiom of criticism! They
proudly point to a pair of reports about the hanging of two men; according to one
report, they were strung up from trees, but according to another, they depended
from a bridge. A contradiction, no? What do you know? News photos
demonstrated that both were true! For some unknown reason, the bodies were
displayed first in one circumstance, then the other! Strange but true. And so it
would it turn out, if we had the photos, in every case of Gospel contradictions
they could be solved (pp. 421-26). Oh, would it? It seems to me that Eddy and
Boyd are trying to persuade us to make the exception into the rule. Do they
really think every secular, nonbiblical "apparent contradiction" can be resolved
in such a way? If not, what's the point of invoking this example? We are
henceforth to baptize the improbable into the probable. But as E C. Baur said
long ago, the true critic admits that anything is possible but asks "What is
probable?"
Finally, let me venture to agree with Greg Boyd and Paul Eddy on one major
methodological point. Although they quote me out of context on the question,
my approach is to assume the burden of proof in challenging the historical
accuracy of any and every bit of Gospel material I analyze. I believe it is best
and only natural not to dismiss any of the Gospel sayings or stories unless there
seems to be some problem, for example, an anachronism, a contradiction. And
never do I count it against a story when it involves ostensible supernaturalism. I
do not want to beg the question. See my Gospel analyses in
Deconstructing.7esus and The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man, and you will
see my approach. What Boyd and Eddy do not like are the results I have come to
in this manner. Naturally they would prefer to be able to rule them out of court
apriori by accusing me of sweeping away all the material on the basis of a
naturalistic bias, which in fact I do not hold.
One may render the following verdict on the case the authors have made on
rehabilitating the historical reliability of the Synoptic Gospels: Nice try, but no
good.
NOTES
1. Ken Olson of Duke University has also surveyed their apologetically
tendentious and questionable methods in his critical review of their book at
Review of Biblical Literature Online (December 2008),
http://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/ 6281_6762.pdf.
2. Robert M. Price, The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable Is the
Gospel Tradition?(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000).
3. See William F. Hordern's crystal-clear summary of Barth's view in "Faith,
History and the Resurrection," [a symposium] appendix to John Warwick
Montgomery, History & Christianity (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press,
1974), pp. 86-87.
4. Boyd and Eddy, Jesus Legend, p. 454.
5. David Hume, "Of Miracles," in On Religion, ed. Richard Wollheim (New
York: Meridian Books, 1964), p. 211.
6. Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus and the Word, trans. Louise Pettibone Smith and
Erminie Huntress Lantero, (New York: Scribner, 1958), p. 173.
7. Gerhard Maier, The End of the Historical-Critical Method? (St. Louis, MO:
Concordia, 1977).
8. Van A. Harvey, The Historian and the Believer: The Morality of Historical
Knowledge and Christian Belief (New York: Macmillan, 1966).
9. Margaret Barker, The Older Testament The Survival of Themes from the
Ancient Royal Cultin Sectarian Judaism and Early Christianity (London: SPCK,
1987) and The Great Angel. A Study of Lsrael:r Second God (Louisville, KY:
Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992).
10. See Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, Riddle of Resurrection: "Dying and Rising
Gods" in the Ancient Near East (Coronet Books, 2001).
11. Theodore J. Weeden, "Theories of Tradition: A Critique of Kenneth
Bailey," Foundations and Facets Forum, New Series 7/1 (Spring, 2004): 45-69.
12. For the documentary and historical evidence, and legendary fabrications,
about Wallace see: Alan Young and Michael J. Stead, In the Footsteps of
William Wallace (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton, 2002); Andrew Fisher,
William Wallace, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2001); and Joseph
Stevenson, Documents Illustrative of Sir William Wallace, His Life and Times
(Edinburgh: The Maitland Club, 1841).
13. Vol. 3, p. 12, reproduced in Robert M. Grant, ed., Second-Century
Christianity A Collection of Fragments.- Translation of Christian Literature
(London: SPCK, 1946), p. 67.
ohn Loftus has more than adequately defended the Outsider Test for
Faith (OTF) in chapter four. If he's right, and he is, it is simply unreasonable to
believe anything extraordinary that hasn't passed that test. So what happens
when we apply that test to the resurrection of Jesus? As the apostle Paul aptly
declared, "if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, and your faith
is vain" (1 Corinthians 15:14). And he was right. If the resurrection of Jesus is
unbelievable, then so is Christianity. Since, as I'll show, the resurrection does not
pass the OTF, neither does Christianity.
SEEING MIRACLES FROM THE OUTSIDE
Fifty years after the Persian Wars ended in 479 BC Herodotus the Halicarnassian
asked numerous eyewitnesses and their children about the things that happened
in those years and then wrote a book about it. Though he often shows a critical
and skeptical mind, sometimes naming his sources or even questioning their
reliability when he has suspicious or conflicting accounts, he nevertheless
reports without a hint of doubt that the temple of Delphi magically defended
itself with animated armaments, lightning bolts, and collapsing cliffs; the sacred
olive tree of Athens, though burned by the Persians, grew a new shoot an arm's
length in a single day; a miraculous flood-tide wiped out an entire Persian
contingent after they desecrated an image of Poseidon; a horse gave birth to a
rabbit; and a whole town witnessed a mass resurrection of cooked fish!
Do you believe these things happened? Well, why not? Herodotus was an
educated man, a critical historian, and he consulted eyewitnesses, and he clearly
saw nothing to doubt in these events.1 So why should we? If you're smart,
reasonably educated, and honest, you'll have to admit your doubts here are rather
strong. And I'm sure if someone came knocking on your door, insisting these
things were true, you'd defend your doubts as entirely reasonable. So think for a
moment what you'd say to them. I bet you'd come up with several good rules of
thumb about what kinds of stories to believe or doubt. You'll say, for
example,
that these sorts of things don't really happen because nothing like them happens
today, certainly never when you're around. Cooked fish don't rise from the dead.
Rabbits don't pop out of horses. Temples don't defend themselves with
miraculous weather and floating weapons. The oceans do not selectively drown
blasphemers. And tree limbs take much longer to grow than a single day. You
know these things because of your own experience, as well as that of countless
other people, especially after centuries of scientific research. But you also know
people lie, even if for what they think is a good reason. They also exaggerate,
tell tall tales, craft edifying myths and legends, and err in many ways. As a
result, as we all well know, false stories are commonplace. But miracles, quite
clearly, are not.
So what is more likely? That miracles like these really happen, while you and
everyone else you trust, including every scientist and investigator for the last few
centuries, just happens to have missed them all? Or that these are just tall tales? I
think the latter. And I suspect you agree. But that's just one rule of thumb we all
live by Your doubts become stronger when you can't question the witnesses;
when you don't even know who they are; when you don't have the story from
them but from someone else entirely; when there is an agenda, something the
storyteller is attempting to persuade you of; when the witnesses or reporters are a
bit kooky or disturbingly overzealous. And so on. We all think this way, and
rightly so. Any of these factors will call into question the stories we're told, and
many apply here. We don't really have any of Herodotus's stories from the
witnesses themselves, we don't know who exactly they are or how trustworthy or
level-headed they were, we don't know what agenda they might have had, we
can't question them, we don't even get to hear anyone else question them-nor do
we hear from anyone who was also there and might have seen things differently.
For all these reasons and more, we rightly dismiss such wonders as fan tales that
simply aren't true.
IF WE DON'T BELIEVE HERODOTUS, WE CAN'T BELIEVE THE
GOSPELS
I see no relevant difference between the marvels in Herodotus and the many and
varied tales of the resurrection of Jesus. Even the most fundamentalist of
Christians don't believe half of them. When the Gospel of Peter (yes, Peter) says
a Roman centurion, a squad of his soldiers, and a gathering of Jewish elders all
saw a gigantic cross hopping along behind Jesus as he exited his tomb, and then
saw Jesus grow thousands of feet tall before their very eyes, there isn't a
Christian alive who believes this. And yet that was among the most popular
Gospels in the Christian churches of the second century, purportedly written by
someone who was alive at the time. So why don't Christians believe Peter's
Gospel anymore? Well, for many of the same reasons we don't believe the
marvels of Herodotus. But why then believe any of the other Gospels, those
according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?
The Gospel of Matthew claims that as Jesus died:
The veil of the temple tore in two from top to bottom, and the earth quaked,
and the rocks were rent, and the tombs were opened, and many bodies of
holy men who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs
after Jesus' resurrection they entered into the holy city and appeared to
many. And then the centurion and those who were watching Jesus with him,
when they saw the earthquake and the rest that happened, were quite
terrified, saying, "Truly this was the Son of God!" (Matthew 27:51-54)
How is this any less fantastic than the Gospel of Peter? None of the other
Gospels report anything like this. Nor in fact does any other historian or writer
of that place or period. Somehow all the educated men, all the scholars and
rabbis of Jerusalem, failed to notice any rock-splitting earth quake, or any hoard
of walking dead wandering the city, or any of the numerous empty tombs they
left behind. The lone exception among all these wonders is the miraculous
tearing of the temple curtain, which Matthew and Luke both borrow from Mark,
but still no Jew ever seems to have noticed this, apparently not even the priests
whose only job was to attend to that very curtain.2
Like the tall tales in Herodotus, we don't hear any of this from any of the
actual witnesses. In this case we don't even know their names, even though there
are supposed to have been a lot of them, including highranking Roman officers
and temple priests. There also had to have been thousands of witnesses to so
devastating an earthquake, and hundreds of witnesses to the hoard of resurrected
dead. We're never told who. And we don't hear any of this from them. Worse, we
don't even know for sure who Matthew is, or when exactly he wrote, or where,
or who his sources wereexcept we know he copied Mark almost verbatim, and
then embellished his story with fantastic details like these. But we don't know
who Mark is, either, or when or where he wrote or who his sources were. Even
so, he never heard of any of this stuff either. Nor do we know who Luke or John
were, or when or where they wrote, or who any of their sources were. The
authors of John (and yes, that's plural) claim they got their information from
some anonymous disciple (John 21:24 and 19:35) who is never clearly named
and nowhere mentioned in any other Gospel, yet it's generally agreed that "John"
wrote last of all-well after the other three Gospels were already circulating-and
that "his" entire story fundamentally contradicts the others in countless details.
And yet his authors hadn't heard of any of Matthew's marvels either.
Just read the resurrection accounts yourself, the ones Christians are supposed
to believe (Mark 16, Matthew 28, John 20-21, and Luke 24, with Acts 1:1-14),
and you'll see far too many contradictions to plausibly reconcile, as well as
patent wonders that you wouldn't believe from Herodotus, and certainly
shouldn't believe coming from complete unknowns, working from unidentified
sources, without any evidence of a critical analysis of any conflicting or suspect
details. Matthew's account is particularly amusing:
As it began to dawn ... Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the
tomb. And behold! There was a great earthquake, for the Angel of the Lord
descended from Heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door,
and sat upon it. His appearance was as lightning, and his gown white as
snow. And for fear of him the guards shook and became as dead men. And
responding [to this], the Angel said to the women, "Don't be afraid, for I
know you seek the crucified Jesus. He isn't here, for he has risen, as he said.
Come, see the place where the Lord lay!" (Matthew 2 8:1-6)
Compare this to Mark's version of the same event:
Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome ... came very
early to the tomb as the sun was rising. And they were saying among
themselves, "Who will roll away the stone from the door of the tomb for
us?
" and when they looked up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back,
for it was very large. And when they went inside the tomb they saw a young
man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were
amazed. And he said to them, "Don't be amazed. You seek Jesus, the
Nazarene, who was crucified. He is risen. He isn't here. Behold the place
where they laid him!" (Mark 16:1-6)
Basically the same story. Except in Matthew the young man sitting inside the
tomb has become an angel descending from heaven, causing an earthquake and
paralyzing some guards that Mark has no idea were ever there. Now imagine
you're a police officer who arrives at the scene of a bank robbery and finds an
empty vault and two tellers. One says they went to get some money and found
the vault empty and no one was there except a young man inside in a white suit-
who has since mysteriously vanished, but at the time said "Don't worry! We took
it for a good cause!" Already a suspicious story. But then the other employee
says when they went to the vault, a robot with a jet-pack descended from the sky,
paralyzed two United States marines who were guarding that vault for some
reason, then singlehandedly tore it open, revealing that somehow (as if by
magic) it was already empty, and then this flying robot sat on top of the vault
door and said "Don't worry! We took it for a good cause!" Now be honest.
Would you ever believe the second witness? I doubt you'd have much confidence
even in the first one's already very odd story, much less the second's wild tale.
And yet when it comes to Jesus, we don't get to interview any witnesses like this.
We just get to hear what some unknown guy decades later said someone else
saw, with no idea how he even knows that, or who told him (or why we should
believe them).
There is no good reason to treat these stories any differently than those we
find in Herodotus, certainly not if these claims are to pass the OTF. Yet at least
we know when and where he wrote; and something of who he was and how he
got his information; and that he was trying to report the facts as best he could
find them out; and that he personally had no agenda here, no need for us to
believe him, and no great mission he was trying to accomplish by telling these
tales. Not so for the Gospels. So when it comes to miracles, if we don't believe
Herodotus, we surely can't believe the Gospels. That's why I don't believe Jesus
rose from the dead: it simply isn't a plausible event, and is not supported by any
sources I trust.
If this were any other religion, say the Heaven's Gate cult or a growing sect of
Victor Hugo worshippers, then that would be the end of it. No one would need
any further argument. After all, if a bunch of well-dressed men went around
knocking on doors claiming Victor Hugo rose from the dead, and all they had to
prove it were their own creepy convictions, some wild miracle tales written
decades after the fact by unknown persons who never even say how they know
anything they claim to know, and some vaguely obsessive letters written by one
guy who claims he saw Hugo's heavenly ghost, you'd tell them to go away. And
you'd never feel any need to inquire further. Because we all know poppycock
when we hear it.
But these are weird times. We live in an age of science and reason, and yet
millions of people still seriously believe the world's dead will rise again when an
immortal superman flies down from outer space to destroy the earth. I'll be
honest with you: people who believe things like that scare me. But I have to deal
with them every day, and one thing I've learned is that they get very angry and
indignant when we close the door on them, telling them to go away without
Why Faith Fails The Christian Delusion Page 38