Some Alternative Explanations for the Resurrection of Christ

Are presuppositions always bad thing? If you believe the accusations being thrown around, we all are plagued with them (or is this a presupposition). Can we judge each of them by their results? If we claim that we are so hemmed in by our assumptions that we can’t even perceive the “truth” then we have arrived firmly at post-modernism – be sure to visit the gift shop 🙂

Hi, my name is Scott and I have presuppositions. And you know what? I stand by them with pride! They are good presuppositions which have served me and my species well over the last century or two. Besides my presuppositions could beat up your presuppositions any day of the week!

John,

Not sure if I follow. Everyone starts with an supposition that the supernatural is not likely. As a matter of fact, I would say that to suppose a miracle is self-contradictory as miracles, by definition, are not regulars and therefore not to be supposed!!

Anyone who starts with the supposition of miracles or the supernatural in an individual circumstance would need to be criticized by both Evangelicals and others.

However, the point is to say that miracles are not impossible since there is no way to test or know if they are impossible. Then you have to get into the definition of a miracle!

Either way, the point is that starting with a supernaturalistic bias or an antisupernaturalist bias is not the job of the historian. To be neutral and let the evidence create the suppositions is. If the evidence is more probable that Christ raised from the grave, then that is the direction it should take, not a “Dead people can’t raise therefore no matter what the evidence says, we must go in a different direction.”

If I applied the same methodology to creation, we would be in a great deal of trouble. For example, things don’t just come into existence (by observation), even in quantum mechanics. Therefore, in order to explain existence, we must deny existence.

“I might add that this modernistic world view has been very successful and has allowed us to advance our knowledge in ways that have produced tangible benefits in medicine agriculture and technology. None of us would be having this conversation if methodological naturalism hadn’t made possible the semi-conductor. No wonder scientists hew to it so tightly. This thing produces the goods (no, not grants – knowledge).”

We need to make a distinction between the scientific method and philosophic naturalism. Everyone uses the scientific method to test and discover truths about firsthand data. Historical events and their relation to metaphysical claims is a completely different animal.

CD,
Nothing you said here makes the resurrection less probable except your naturalistic presuppositions.

What is more probable given that God most likely exists?

He interacts with the world that He purposely made.
He doesn’t interact with the world He purposely made.

What is more probable given that God most likely interacts with the world?

A person can be raised from the dead.
A person cannot be raised from the dead.

It’s all in your presupps, My Friend. I can believe everything you’ve stated and still believe that the resurrection was a genuine event, and that it is more probable given my presupps.

To continue with the points Michael raised:

4) “the inability of skeptics to produce a body in the first century.” A body? Even the book of Acts says the apostles did not begin preaching the resurrection until seven weeks after Jesus’ death, at the following large festival in Jersualem. And if Lazarus stinketh after only three days being dead in the climate and land, what would “Jesus’ body” have looked like, the face sunken in, rotting? They didn’t exactly have fingerprints back then. I ALSO DOUBT the priests or Romans thought the newly born Jesus cult, when compared with all the other political messiahs and cult leaders was large enough or dangerous enough at that time to require direct intervention.

Even Josephus, writing in the first century only mentions Jesus in a few sentences, probably based on what some Jesus cultists or people who knew Jesus cultists believed. And most scholars don’t even believe all the sentences were written by Josephus but were either inserted, or added to, by overzealous Christian scribes copying Josephus. Josephus also mentions apocalyptic leaders like “The Egyptian” who had “tens of thousands” of followers (something he does not say about Jesus), and who predicted Jersualem’s destruction. Apparently it was a common enough prediction back then, and another fellow who also predicted Jerusalem’s destruction. Jesus was far from being the only one, or the only true prophet when it came to such dire thoughts. Even the Pharisees and Sadducees feared such a thing might happen. And the Dead Sea “War Scroll” talked about a final battle between the sons of light and darkness centered round Jerusalem with all the world’s people’s fighting each other there, and that was before Jesus’ day or the book of Revelation were composed.

5) “Not to mention how foreign it was for such a belief (i.e. a crucified and risen Messiah) to arise in this first century Jewish setting.” But the Jews knew suffering, their land and neighboring lands being invaded for centuries by all manner of larger more powerful armies. Like living in the middle of a bowling alley. The invasions of the Assyrians, Babylonians, then Alexander’s generals, forced the Jews to rethink their theology time and again. In fact the period before Jesus’ day was one in which the Jews had revolted against their Greek overlords and Jews were martyred en masse, such that the Jews came up with the idea that so many brave devout Jews could not have all died in vane, but their death had to have been redemptive in some way. That’s the conclusion they were FORCED to come to, otherwise it would make that bloody rebellion meaningless along with the loss of so many lives of devout believers in Yahweh. Followers of Jesus, like followers of John the Baptist were seeking the return of Elijah, a messiahnnic figure. There were others as well, if you read the Dead Sea Scrolls, great expectations were afoot. Eveyone wanted to know when deliverance from the…

Well, of course, if this blog was going in such a direction, some of us would just punt to everyone’s transcendental presupposition! 😉

Can’t even make an argument without properly basic beliefs or a presupposition of some sort of transcendent God…but we will leave that for another day.

I’ll just refer you to 6 and 7 (I think) here: http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2008/11/10-arguments-for-gods-existence/

To Continue from above…

Eveyone wanted to know when deliverance from the Romans would arrive (the Jews had eventually beaten back the Greeks and ruled their own kingdom for a while but at great cost with many deaths). And so people were asking John the Baptist if he was the Messiah, and asked Jesus as well. There were others too, both military people and priestly people, whom the people might be the “anointed ones” (messiah’s) to lead the Jews to freedom from Rome. When Jesus died, just as in the case of all the devout Jews who died at the hands of the Greeks, his followers could not accept he had died in vane.

Ed, those are good answers. Thanks. However, sticking with the original posts, rebuttles do not mean that they are good rebuttles! I would rebut just about everything I said two with completely different rebuttles, but that does not mean that these possibilites are probablilities. I think that your positions are possible, but not likely.

Sorry so short, I am way too busy right now.

Quick question to others (that got missed earlier):

If you did not have a anti-supernaturalistic bias against the possibility of the resurrection, wouldn’t you say that a belief that Christ rose from the grave is at least a good possibility for the evidence?

In the end, people should at least always concede that the resurrection of Christ is a good possibility so long as you don’t have an anti-supernaturalistic bias. Would you be willing to concede to this last claim?

Christianity arose in a culture in which the occurrence of miracles and supernatural events was commonly accepted. Even historians of the day recorded miracle accounts. Throw in people with a supernatural bias and my inability to trace the stories back to eyewitnesses, and I don’t see any need to posit an actual historical resurrection as the best…

That a boy, Mike! That of course is pretty much the trump card.

Regarding the failure to produce the body and all other arguments premised on the notion that someone would have disproved the early Christians claims had it been possible to do so, there is an indisputable law of human nature: Fanatics are impervious to facts.

In our present day, we have people who deny the holocaust. We have people who deny that man landed on the moon. We have people who believe that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. We have people who believe that a controlled demolition engineered by the Bush administration brought down the Twin Towers. We have people who believe that the U.S. government created the AIDS virus in order to kill Black people. We have people who believe that Jewish scientists created the AIDS virus to kill Black people. I could go on and on. There is more than enough evidence to render all of these beliefs absurd and in the age of information it is readily available at the click of a mouse. Nevertheless, people believe these theories with a passion that is frightening. What possible reason could we have for thinking that the earliest Christians would have been deterred by a corpse?

One variation on this theme that I have found particularly unpersuasive is the notion that the Romans would have produced the body in order to kill this new movement if they could have done so. I do not believe that it was the Roman Empire’s practice to logically demonstrate the fallacies in the beliefs of indigenous people that it found annoying. The Roman practice was to nail a bunch of the trouble makers to crosses and leave their bodies to rot as an example to similarly minded individuals. The Romans did not debunk. They dispatched.

Bryan —

I’d tend to dispute your theory about which is more reasonable but at least for the purpose of argument I can grant all of:

1) God exists
2) He interacts with the world
3) A person can be raised from the dead.

And it still doesn’t have much influence on the probability of Jesus’ resurrection. It doesn’t come down to the possibility but rather the probability. Actual human resurrections are very rare events. Claims of actual human resurrection are much more common events. Hence most claims are likely to be false and the evidentiary burden on a particular claim is high. The evidence in this particular case is weak and quite a bit of it argues against a bodily resurrection. It comes no where near meeting the burden. There are some resurrections in Nigeria which happened recently which are far far more likely to be true, multiple witnesses, datable documents, photographic evidence, easily identifiable people involved in verifying the claims….

You keep making this claim that everything comes down to presuppositions. I don’t see it. There are no presupposition of empiricism, the argument for it starts with the self verifiable claim, “I experience (what appear to be) sense impressions”.

Just a quick note. Remotes work on IR (infrared) beams, not radio waves. So while “the radio waves from the remote” may be a probable explanation, its still wrong.

Patrick
P.S. Read the above with the big grin I have right now, not in any negative way 😉

CD,
If you grant me those propositions, your case that a particular miracle did not occur due to empirical observations is over.

Let me explain,
Empiricism does not just claim that “I experience (what appear to be) sense impressions.” That is not what has been claimed in these comments. Everyone believes in empirical observation, which is what you are describing here. The empiricism that you have been advocating throughout is verificationism, naturalistic empiricism that obtains knowledge through firsthand experience (either by experiencing the event for oneself or evaluating the report of the event by one’s firsthand empirical knowledge).
The idea of verificationism is based on the philosophic naturalistic claim that only the physical universe exists, and therefore, only things that are observable in the physical universe are knowable and meaningful to talk about. Hence, empiricism (not empirical observation) functions from the idea of philosophic naturalism, which assumes knowledge of metaphysical reality (ironically what it cannot do).
To deny the philosophically naturalistic presupposition is to deny the validity of verificationism as the only means through which knowledge of an event can come, which in turn means that you cannot deny the resurrection of Christ based on what you firsthand observe in the normal pattern of the world (since empirical verification is not the only way to receive knowledge of the event).
Now, if you want to say that the resurrection makes no empirical sense, that’s fine. But you cannot deny it based on empiricism, if in fact, it is possible that God exists and interacts in the world, and can therefore both accomplish such a thing, and report it apart from your firsthand empirical verification of that report.
You, therefore, have to deny those propositions, or abandon your methodology of inquiry as the sole source of verification of an event.

Bryan —

I don’t think you are correct here that empiricism needs to make naturalistic claims. Lets take an example:

Sam — There exists a fairy world separate from our own.
Ben — Does it influence our world?

Here we fork

a) Sam — Yes it does influence our world
Ben — Are those influences verifiable. That is there is sense data attributable to the fairy world in a consistent, possibly reproducible manner?
Sam — Yes
Ben — Then fairies are not supernatural they are natural.

b) Sam — No it does not influence our world
Ben — Then in a material sense the Fairy world doesn’t exist.

To quote Russel, If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense.

Now I think you are going to come in with

c) Sam — Yes it does influence our world.
Ben — Are those influences verifiable. That is there is sense data attributable to the fairy world in a consistent, possibly reproducible manner?
Sam — No the influences are non verifiable and non predictable.
Ben — Then whether fairies exist is indeterminant. We are going to need to construct a probabilistic model for the existence of the fairy world. However if after investigation the existence of a Fairy world remains low probability it will be reasonable to dismiss these “influences” as being in error rather than our naturalistic model of the world as being in error.

CD,
This is a great example of what I was talking about before in the other post. There seems to be no reflection of the very system you are using. You have assumed everything I just said in my previous post that you assume, and then continue to argue as though that is true, whether my system is as probable within your system.

“Now I think you are going to come in with

c) Sam — Yes it does influence our world.
Ben — Are those influences verifiable. That is there is sense data attributable to the fairy world in a consistent, possibly reproducible manner?
Sam — No the influences are non verifiable and non predictable.
Ben — Then whether fairies exist is indeterminant. We are going to need to construct a probabilistic model for the existence of the fairy world. However if after investigation the existence of a Fairy world remains low probability it will be reasonable to dismiss these “influences” as being in error rather than our naturalistic model of the world as being in error.”

No, I would come in with:

Ben- Are those influences verifiable? That is, there is sense data attributable to the fairy world in a consistent, possibly reproducible manner?
Sam- Why should it be only verifiable within your philosophic assumptions? It is verifiable through belief in a report, not through empiricism, which you are assuming is the only meaningful avenue through which knowledge can be obtained. I don’t need to assume your criteria that is limited by your worldview in order to hold my worldview and obtain knowledge through the criteria consistent with it.
Ben- But I’m just looking at what’s in front of me and arguing from that.
Sam- No, you’re assuming that what’s in front of you is all that exists, and is therefore meaningful to discuss. All else is indeterminate. That assumes philosophic naturalism, and hence, you are making a predetermined judgment of metaphysical claims based upon that naturalism. Is the metaphysical reality that empiricism assumes verifiable via empiricism?
Ben- Well, no. I would have to believe that empiricism and all of its metaphysical assumptions are true in order to believe it is the way I ought to conduct my methods of inquiry in order to obtain knowledge of an event.
Sam- Then the claim that a lack of empirical verification makes something improbable is self-refuting because the metaphysical reality that empiricism assumes cannot be empirically verified (as you said yourself, they are indeterminate or even unknowable). Hence, a claim of an historical event cannot be solely dismissed on the basis of a self refuting system.

BTW, I agree with Sam in my post because he’s my favorite hobbit. 🙂

BTW, I agree with Sam in my post because he’s my favorite hobbit.

He was great in the book, but I couldn’t take his sobbing in the movie.

OK, well, I need to bow out of this conversation, as it is my anniversary today, and my wife isn’t going to be too happy about me being on the computer. I leave the conversation to all other able minds on both sides. This has been fun. CD, I’ll read your response still, but leave it with your closing comments. Thanks for the good conversation.

OK, last comment.

Vinny, I agree. What was with all that?

Re posts 49 and 52 about presuppositions

It’s not that everyone starts with the presupposition that resurrections are unlikely, it’s that many start with the presupposition that they are impossible.

If one thinks that resurrections are possible, even if unlikely, then one can argue about the probability that Christ’s resurrection did happen. Only then would the relative plausibility of resurrection story versus still dead stories be relevant to the assessment of the probability of resurrection.

However, if one believes that resurrections are impossible, then the relative plausibility of the resurrection story is irrelevant. There is mighty good evidence that resurrections are impossible, and if they are impossible then there must be a good “he is still dead” story even if we do not know it yet.

Christ’s appearances would have been very relevant for that first generation of believers, and very convincing. Not so for us 20 centuries later unless we already believe that the Bible is the word of a living God. If we don’t, then it’s just one more fantastic tale.

Being a believer, the stories of Christ’s resurrection are very important to me, and I would expect that there would be such stories, and I do believe that they are true. However, I don’t see much apologetic value in them in relation to the unsaved. There might be some apologetic value to the unsophisticated (i.e., not sophisticated in the use of philosophical logic and historiography). The current lack of a good, alternative “he is still dead” story is also good reason to have some doubt about whether Christ is dead and should lead an atheist to question his beliefs. However, it is by no means a clincher. But that is at it should be, God evidently does not want to give us “clincher” evidence, for reasons that may be related to faith, to real relationship, etc. or reasons that we cannot fathom (Moser has a book on the Hiddenness of God that is good).

regards,
#John

John 1453,

“However, if one believes that resurrections are impossible, then the relative plausibility of the resurrection story is irrelevant. There is mighty good evidence that resurrections are impossible, and if they are impossible then there must be a good “he is still dead” story even if we do not know it yet.”

I think you right to an extent, however I think this again only proves one of CMP’s points about naturalistic presuppositions that the supernatural is impossible being the ultimate issue here. However, at the same time this is to me fighting last centuries battles. Many post-moderns are willing to entertain the possibility of the supernatural thus making this modernist controversy increasingly obsolete. As a result to a true postmodern some of these arguments might have some weight since they are willing to entertain the supernatural. On the other hand they might just ignore them since truth and what really happened is unknowable. CMP’s presentation may be a good one since it couches it’s language in probability not certainty.

Yes, I agree with your Michael T.

Good points.

When I was disparaging the “evidence that demands a verdict approach”, I was referring primarily to it’s modernist approach to the “evidence” and to the apparent belief entailed in that approach that one could convince a modernist skeptic who did not believe in resurrections.

As soon as one is open to the possibility (as many postmoderns would be), then the high plausibility of the Jesus resurrection story in relation to the less plausible Jesus is still dead stories, and the absence of a really good Jesus is dead story, would go some distance in convincing a post modern (or to at least removing some barriers to belief).

If someone is not open to resurrections at all, the plausibility of the Jesus story would go some ways to perhaps getting that person to doubt or question their belief in “no resurrections”. But that underlying belief would still have to be addressed through other approaches as well.

regards,
#John

For those interested in reading about how unlikely option 1 (temporary burial) is, go read the article at:

http://www.christian-thinktank.com/shellgame.html

It’s not really plausible at all.

regards,
#John

Thanks for reading my blogpost (http://formerfundy.blogspot.com) this subject. I am glad to know some believers are reading my blog.
You said the following about my 4 naturalistic explanations of the Empty Tomb.

1) Jesus’ body was taken straight from the cross to the criminal graveyard by a devout Jew.

“Is this a possibility? Absolutely. Probability? I don’t think so. How could it be? There is simply no evidence to believe such. It would take a blind leap of faith to turn this possibility into a personal creed. “

Why do you say there is “no evidence” for this position? There is no evidence in the gospels but of course one would not expect there to be since the early Christians believed that Jesus was raised.

There is plenty of evidence in the Talmud and other sources to know that Jews were very concerned about a body being kept on a tree overnight and we also know there was a criminal graveyard in Jerusalem where the crucified were buried (if they were not left to hang on the cross and be eaten by birds of prey).

So why would the burial of Jesus be any different? The Gospels introduce a man named Joseph of Arimathea but what reason do we have to believe that story is true? It seems to me that if it were true, J of A would have had a prominent role in the book of Acts and no doubt would have been mentioned by Paul somewhere since they were both supposedly members of the San Hedrin.

2) Jesus’ body was taken straight from the cross and thrown into Gehenna.

“Here we are again with a possibility without any historical warrant to make it responsible to believe. (Notice the overstatement here: it “obviously did not happen the way they describe it.” Obvious to whom?”

Well it was obvious to Louis Feldman. Not so obvious to me but I am not the Jewish scholar that he is. As far as no historical warrant? We know that this did happen sometimes to the remains of criminals. Jesus was considered a criminal by the Romans. Why couldn’t it have happened? You would not expect anything to be said in the Gospels about it because again, the Gospels were written by believers.

3) Jesus’ body was taken by Joseph of Arimathea and placed into a different tomb.

“Yes, it is reasonable to believe that he may have had another tomb, but…so? It is reasonable to believe that Joseph’s son had another tomb that Jesus was taken to. It is reasonable to believe that Josephus donated tombs out of his good fortune to many who were in need so he had dozens of tombs. But because a possible condition of a historical theory (i.e. Joseph could have had another tomb) has been met, this does not mean that people are justified in placing their faith in such a theory over another that is much more probable, being supported by real evidence.”

Just a theory but again its more likely than the resurrection. We know things like this have happened in the past but we don’t know that a resurrection has ever taken place.

4) The empty tomb story was a later embellishment of the gospel narrative

“Yes, this is certainly possible, but it has no evidence to back it up. It purports, but does not create any reasonable doubt in the event of the resurrection. Especially since there is so much other collaborative evidence that Christ did rise from the grave besides the tomb (i.e. the phenomenon of the rise of Christianity in a hostile environment, the willingness of the Apostles to die for their confession, the early testimony of the New Testament, the embarrassment factor in the Gospel accounts, and the inability of skeptics to produce a body in the first century. Not to mention how foreign it was for such a belief (i.e. a crucified and risen Messiah) to arise in this first century Jewish setting.”

I think there are naturalistic explanations for each of the “collaborative evidence” (6 points) that you make. One can explain all of these points on the basis of a BELIEF in a raised Jesus without postulating a PHYSICAL resurrection. Of course, liberals and neo-orthodox have been doing this for years

“In the end, there can be all kinds of possible alternative explanations (I could come up with a thousand more), but we should never be fooled into thinking that just because an explanation is possible that this makes it worthy of actual consideration.”

I did not list every possible explanation but only the ones that I feel have some historical basis.

“In the end, the simplest explanation is that Christ did rise from the grave. If you do not start with anti-supernaturalistic presuppositions (i.e. dead bodies can’t rise, therefore, Christ did not rise from the grave), then you can truly follow the evidence and not search for far-fetched, yet possible, explanations. It is because of acrobats like these that I think it takes more (blind) faith not to believe in the resurrection of Christ than to believe.”

Its interesting how Christians like to claim that it is the unbeliever who is biased. The Christian is biased. He has come to believe in the truth of Christianity and he/she is unlikely to allow anything to disconfirm that belief (as William Craig freely admits).
The truth is that based on human knowledge and experience, any one of the possible scenarios I laid out are more likely than a supernatural act. A supernatural act, in and itself, is full of assumptions. First, there is a supernatural being (cannot be proven); Second, this supernatural being is actively involved in the world (has not been shown); Third, this supernatural being was confirming his acceptance of the death of Jesus as a substitute for man’s sin. (this is the theological explanation given by Paul in the NT but it is full of problems and assumptions. For example, why does the punishment of an innocent man in the place of a guilty run counterintuitive to man who is supposed to be made in the image of this supernatural being and endowed with rational and moral principles like his creator. )

Ken,
Thanks for your response. I think you make the point clear about presuppositions that others have been making.

As you make clear, your naturalistic interpretations have no textual evidence, but are based on speculations from traditions written hundreds of years later that don’t deal with the specific situation (Mishnah – 3rd century and Gemera – 6th century). These are important for interpreting 1st century Judaism since some goes back to the first century, but they’ve also undergone centuries of transmission and editing with all the bias that you claim against the gospels.

Does the Talmud tell us about this specific situation? Probably not. The Yeshu narratives in Talmud Sanhedrin may be a reference to Jesus, but they are heavily corrupted and incorrect (the date is a century off, Jesus was hung vs. crucified, although you can work around this…He was apparently held for forty days while the Sanhedrin looked for defendants of him and found none, etc.). No living scholars thinks these stories (if referencing the historical Jesus) are more reliable than the passion narrative beneath the gospels.

So how would your method of arguing work with regards to John the Baptist, or Julius Caesar?

Let’s look at John the Baptist first. The vast majority of people living in the first centuries died naturally without being murdered. In my personal experience, most people I know have died naturally. Medical journals tell us that most people die naturally without being murdered. Unless there is some pretty extraordinary evidence, we should assume that both John the Baptist died of natural causes without being murdered.

Why would anyone think that John the Baptist died another way? Well, the gospels say that he did. But as we know the gospels (if they weren’t concerned with history) would have a vested interest in painting John the Baptist as a political martyr. So why should we trust the gospels in this situation against everything we know about how people typically die? As you imply above, we should distrust biased accounts for secondary evidence when the claims are spectacular.

How about Caesar? Our earliest sources for Caesar’s death are Plutarch and Suetonius, both writing 150 years later in documents that are extremely politically biased. Both would have clear reasons for making up Caesar’s assassination.

In both situations, our best sources were written long after the actual events by people with strong political/theological biases. So why trust either story against our common experience of people dying naturally without being murdered?

With a healthy dose of skepticism, you can write off just about any abnormal historical event, but a healthy dose of skepticism requires all sorts of assumptions as well (just as many as you gave in regards to supernaturalism).

Of course, we do have rare experiences that teach us that people occasionally die from stabbings or beheadings so the analogy to resurrection isn’t perfect. But the resurrection isn’t the only one time event that has happened in history. When you get specific enough, there are all sorts of events that only happened once with biased sources from long after the event. Most of these we take at face value or at least mostly true, because they don’t imply the supernatural, which seems to be the real issue that nobody wants to admit since they still believe the old modernist myth of objective neutrality.

Here’s how I see your methodology:

1. You have no personal experience of seeing a resurrection, know nobody who has personally experienced a resurrection and history only has a few claims of people resurrecting. Therefore, the clear historical precedent is against people resurrecting.
2. Resurrections require all sorts of presuppositions (as you listed above…although your last assumption concerning the theological interpretation of the event has nothing to do with the historicity)
3. You no longer have personal reasons to believe these presuppositions.
4. All of the textual (let’s call it primary) evidence deals with this specific situation and it all points to some type of resurrection, and the writers clearly believed a resurrection had occurred.
5. Secondary evidence tells us about death/burial practices that were more common.

Therefore, alternatives trump the primary evidence. Why? Because you see no reason to believe the underlying presuppositions are true. So what is the deciding factor in how you deal with the textual evidence when making abnormal, spectacular or even supernatural claims? It’s your assumptions about the text. These assumptions bias everything from texts, to videos to personal experience. As such, I don’t think it’s right for believers to claim unbelievers are overly biased or vice versa…we’re both so bound up in our presuppositions that it takes something miraculous to change them.

Comparatively, I (Ranger) have good reasons to believe that theism is true and thus God can interact in history (there are countless other posts at this site dealing with this topic so I won’t get into it here).

Therefore, my syllogism looks like this:

1. I have no personal experience of seeing a resurrection, know nobody who has personally experienced a resurrection and history only has a few claims of people resurrecting. Therefore, the clear historical precedent is against people resurrecting.
2. Resurrections require all sorts of presuppositions
3. I have reasons to believe these presuppositions
4. All of the textual (let’s call it primary) evidence deals with this specific situation and it all points to some type of resurrection, and the writers clearly believed a resurrection had occurred.
5. Secondary evidence (which is indirect and doesn’t tell of the specific situation) tells us that these types of deaths/burials occurred in a similar but different fashion.

Therefore, I can follow the primary evidence where it points in this situation because I have different assumptions than you. Since I believe theism is true, I have no problems with the primary evidence in this situation.

In conclusion, I see no reason to believe your statement that “based on human knowledge and experience, any one of the possible scenarios I laid out are more likely than a supernatural act.” 1. My knowledge and experience tells me that theism is true. 2. Thus, the primary evidence outweighs secondary evidence. 3. I believe it more reasonable to trust stories with evidence for the specific situation (unless there is better historical evidence against them) over stories with speculative secondary evidence.

Thanks for a fun discussion Ken, and for a great response. I hope my perspective helps you better see where some of us are coming from to further your own thoughts on the topic.

Ranger,

You seem to be skeptical of the Talmud’s record regarding the burial practices of Second Temple Judaism but I am not sure why. What motivations would one have to invent the idea of a criminal graveyard? Even Jesus talked about Gehenna, so it seems you ought to at least believe that place existed. I don’t believe the Talmud speaks directly of the burial of Jesus but rather of the general burial practices of that period of time.

With regard to John the Baptist, a murder is not that unusual. Believe me, I live in Atlanta and every day on the news, the first 15 minutes is taken up with reporting the latest murders in our city. While obviously more people die of natural causes, we know that some die from murder. We don’t know that anyone has ever been raised from the dead.

With regard to Caesar? I am not expert in Roman history so I don’t know what other evidence there may be for the assassination of Ceasar. If all of the evidence is from Plutarch and Suetonius, then there may be reason to be skeptical. But once again, we know that political assassinations happen, so why not believe it happened then?

You say that there are other “one time events” like the resurrection and I don’t just wave them off. You would have to be more specific in order for me to deal with this point.

You say that “alternatives trump the primary evidence. Why? Because you see no reason to believe the underlying presuppositions are true. So what is the deciding factor in how you deal with the textual evidence when making abnormal, spectacular or even supernatural claims? It’s your assumptions about the text. ”

But the canonical books are not unique. There are all kinds of reports of the supernatural in the ancient world. You would probably reject all of them except for the ones recorded in your canon. That tells me that you presuppose the truth of the text. You treat the text differently than other books written during this time. I don’t. I treat them all the same.

Ranger,

You say: “I (Ranger) have good reasons to believe that theism is true and thus God can interact in history.In conclusion, I see no reason to believe your statement that “based on human knowledge and experience, any one of the possible scenarios I laid out are more likely than a supernatural act.” 1. My knowledge and experience tells me that theism is true. 2. Thus, the primary evidence outweighs secondary evidence. 3. I believe it more reasonable to trust stories with evidence for the specific situation (unless there is better historical evidence against them) over stories with speculative secondary evidence.”

I understand your presuppositions about the truth of the Bible will lead you to accept what it says as true. (seems like circular reasoning to me). The ultimate question comes back down to whether your presuppositions that “God is there and he is not silent” (to quote Schaeffer) is defensible. You obviously think it is; I used to think it was but do not any more.

I think the academic study of the Bible has pretty much shown that the Bible is not unique and there is no good reason to believe its the Word of God than there is to believe the Book of Mormon, the Koran, the Vedas, or any other holy book is the Word of God. I would suggest the book by Hector Avalos (Ph.D. Harvard) entitled “The End of Biblical Studies.” I met Avalos recently. He is an interesting individual. Began life in a Pentecostal home, was a boy preacher and then later came to conclude that his beliefs were naive and uninformed.

Hey Ken,
Thanks for a charitable and interesting response. This will probably be my only further comment since I don’t have time for these types of discussions online (I’ve got enough in person, haha).

To clarify, you said, “You seem to be skeptical of the Talmud’s record regarding the burial practices of Second Temple Judaism but I am not sure why.”

Actually, that’s not what I said nor implied. As in my comment above (#14), I think they give a good indicator for these practices, but I’m often skeptical of their discussions of individuals and events as they have undergone significant editing and revisions in the tradition prior to the 4th century…but that’s beside the point. In fact, what I actually said before mentioning their corruption was “These are important for interpreting 1st century Judaism since some goes back to the first century.” I see plenty of value, just not evidence that would cause me to take their general descriptions of general events over multiple specific descriptions of a specific event.

I’ve also met Avalos, and (like you and Hector) have degrees in Biblical Studies to hang in my office as well. Who cares? Avalos did not make a strong case in his work, and ultimately I agree with Kortner in RBL who says, “Schon deshalb ist es von Avalos wohl etwas voreilig, das Ende der biblischen Studien zu verkündigen.” Much too early indeed.

What’s much more interesting is your comment about circular reasoning and privileging the Bible over other texts. My point in the latter parts of my comments was restating what others have said about how our presuppositions guide our interpretation. That’s true of you and me both.

I gladly admit that I’ve been convinced through years of professional study and believe the Bible is the Word of God. Therefore, I’ve taken a different route than you. I’m a confessional scholar and make no qualms about it. That reality has made me more accepted in some circles and more scorned in others. I agree that my baseline presuppositions (Christian theism) are circular as are everybody else’s on the face of this earth. I’d suggest Dooyeweerd and more recently Roy Clouser (The Myth of Neutrality) for an analysis of this point.

Your personal rejection of theism also skews your work. If Christianity is true, then your assumptions are clearly misguiding your interpretations. As a former Christian you bring lots of baggage to the text whether you like it or not and that still affects your interpretation. In our post-Derrida/Rorty, et. al. world, there’s no such thing as objective, unbiased analysis of texts.

Three of the best Jesus scholars I know right now are Maurice Casey (an atheist), Dale Allison (a skeptical, lifelong Christian) and Craig Keener (an adult atheist to Christian convert). All three lay their assumptions on the table for everyone to read and then do the best historical research they can.

Thanks again for the manner in which you…

Ranger,

Thanks for the dialogue. When I was a Christian, I was a presuppositionalist after the mode of Van Til, Frame, Rushdoony, etc. When I taught apologetics, I used Norm Geisler’s book because it discussed the other apologetic methods used by Christians through the years. While I personally did not agree with Geisler’s Thomism, I still liked his book as a text. In my lectures, though, I argued that presuppositionalism is the correct method.

Much of what I disagree with today in apologetic writings goes back to what I taught years ago. In other words, evidentialism will never work because events have to be interpreted. The classic arguments for the existence of God, I don’t find convincing. And even if they were valid, they do not prove the God of Bible.

I agree that our presuppositions dictate how we interpret what we hear, see, etc. BUT our presuppositions can be changed. Mine changed. I am sure you are familiar with Thomas Kuhn’s classic, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. He shows how paradigm shifts have occured in science. These shifts do not come easily and a lot of people are never able to change their worldview but slowly the new paradigm takes hold because it is a better hypothesis. This is similar to what happened to me.

AS for Avalos, I do not like the title of the book either. I am not sure Hector picked it, it was probably the publisher. But I do think he makes some excellent points in the book about how the Bible, even in secular universities, is often taught by people with a faith committment to what it teaches thus perpetuating “exceptionalism.” What he wants and I am in agreement is to treat the Bible as any other ancient writing. When you do that, all of the mystique disappears.

Ken

Bryan —

You mentioned you were signing off but…

Why should it be only verifiable within your philosophic assumptions? It is verifiable through belief in a report, not through empiricism, which you are assuming is the only meaningful avenue through which knowledge can be obtained. I don’t need to assume your criteria that is limited by your worldview in order to hold my worldview and obtain knowledge through the criteria consistent with it.

If we are going to use the criteria of belief in a report, then non-belief in the report constitutes disconfirmation. That was easy.

Take care and enjoy your time off.

…You might want to take a look at

[…] Some Alternative Explanations for the Resurrection of Christ […]

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

—Sherlock Holmes

Yet, how many times have you heard a Christian apologist say one of the following:

—“It is implausible that any first century Jew would have moved the body of Jesus resulting in the Empty Tomb. The miracle of the Resurrection is much more probable than that a first century Jew would move a dead body.”

—“It is implausible that the Jews and Romans would not have brought out Jesus’ body to disprove the Christian claim of a Resurrection if they knew the whereabouts of his corpse. The Resurrection is much more probable than that the Jews and Romans had moved the body and did not care what a small band of religious fanatics were saying about their dead leader.”

—“It is implausible that the authors of the Gospels made up stories in their Gospels when so many eyewitnesses would still have been alive to challenge their false claims. The miracle of the Resurrection is much more probable than that the Empty Tomb and the Appearance Stories are literary fiction.”

—“It is implausible that the Jewish rabbi, Saul/Paul, would have converted to Christianity if he had only experienced a vivid dream or hallucination. The miracle of the Resurrection is much more probable than the conversion of a Christian-hating, devout, first century Jewish rabbi to Christianity.”

—“It is implausible that Paul did not know all or many of the five hundred eyewitnesses listed in the Early Creed of First Corinthians chapter 15. The miracle of the Resurrection is much more probable than that Paul was simply repeating something he had heard but not verified.”

—“It is implausible that Christianity would have grown so quickly under such difficult circumstances if the disciples had not really seen a resurrected body of flesh and blood. The miracle of the Resurrection is much more probable an explanation for the growth of Christianity than that this belief was based on hallucinations, illusions, or false sightings.”

—“It is implausible that so many disciples would have been willing to die for their belief in the Resurrection if their belief in this alleged event was based on a lie, hallucinations, or illusions. The miracle of the Resurrection is much more probable than human misperception.”

—“It is even more implausible (and practically impossible) that all these very implausible events, added together, explain the early Christian Resurrection Belief. The miracle of a once in history Resurrection is much more probable than these very implausible naturalistic explanations.”

Dear Christians: Even the extremely unlikely scenario that a group of disciples, at the same time and place, experienced simultaneous hallucinations in which they each believed they in some general sense saw a resurrected Jesus is still much more probable than a true resurrection of a dead corpse. The only reason Christians cannot see this is that they have presumed the existence of the Christian god, Yahweh, and his unlimited supernatural (magic) powers, before the debate on the probability of the Resurrection has even begun. We skeptics, on the other hand, are not claiming that a Resurrection is impossible, we are simply saying a Resurrection is much, much less plausible/probable in our cumulative human experience than any combination of very improbable naturalistic explanations. A miracle, by definition, is a very rare and very unusual event.