Recently I purchased a debate between Christian scholar William Lane Craig and atheist Gerd Ludemann titled Jesus' Resurrection: Fact or Figment? There were four respondents to the debate, two on Craig's side and the other on Ludemann's: Stephen T. Davis, Michael Goulder, Robert H. Gundry, and Roy W. Hoover. Here is my conclusion and input on the debate. I believe that Jesus did rise from the dead, and reading this debate was good for me because I got to listen to the opposing side from themselves, not just by running into counter-arguments in my Christian books. William Lane Craig attempted to establish four facts as historically reliable, and I found his argument convincing. Here are reasons why even critical scholars - not fundamentalists, not conservatives - believe in these facts, and the first and second rebuttals to their plausibility. Please read the book for yourself if you are still interested.
Fact 1: After Jesus' crucifixion, Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea in the tomb.
Fact 1: After Jesus' crucifixion, Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea in the tomb.
- Jesus' burial is attested in the very old information handed on by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 15:3-5).
- The burial is part of very old source material used by Mark in writing his Gospel.
- As a member of the Jewish court that condemned Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea is unlikely to be a Christian invention.
- The burial story itself lacks any traces of legendary development.
- No other competing burial stories exist.
"According to Matthew, Joseph was a rich man - presumably because he knew that only a rich man would own such an expensive burial site - but he is not said to be a member of the council. So Matthew resolves one of the puzzlements of Mark's texts by omitting it. Then Matthew decides that 'looking for the kingdom of God' must mean that Joseph was a disciple of Jesus and that he had access to the new, rock-hewn tomb in which he buried Jesus because it was his own property. ... Matthew adds that Joseph wrapped Jesus in a clean linen cloth, but he omits Mark's statement that Joseph had purchased it immediately prior to using it.
"Luke also uses Mark as a source and independently alters it to resolve the puzzlements in it. Luke repeats Mark's statement that Joseph was a member of the council but adds that he was (obviously?) a good and just man who had disagreed with the council's decision. ...
"The author of the Gospel of John adds to the mounting historical uncertainties when he tells us that Nicodemus assisted Joseph in the burial of Jesus by bringing a hundred pounds of spices to be placed in the linen cloths with which they wrapped the corpse..." (Hoover, p. 131-32)
Craig responded to this in his closing response with that in Mark 15:43 Joseph was "a man who was himself waiting for the Kingdom of God." Mark already had a high view of Joseph; theological development is not necessary of a conclusion drawn from the other Gospels. And even if there was a development on the view of Joseph, this doesn't mean an invention on the historicity of him burying Jesus. Actually, such a tendency to show that he was a follower of Jesus would show just how uncomfortable the early church felt with a Sanhedrist's honorable burial of Jesus. Why? Well, Ludemann interprets the animosity toward the Jewish leadership as anti-Semitic. So given Joseph's status as a member of the Sanhedrin - who all voted to condemn Jesus says Mark - he is the last person one would expect to care properly for Jesus. Even with Joseph as a (later!) friend of the church, their hostility toward the viewed murderers of their savior wouldn't put him first, it would make them all look bad!
Second, it was asked how William Lane Craig knew that the tradition of Mark was early. Mark was claimed to have been written at around 69 A.D. However, that is debatable. Mark was a source for Luke, which came before Acts. Acts was written no later than AD 62, as evidenced by: He makes no mention of the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, of the Jewish Wars in AD 66, of the statewide persecution of Christian's under Nero mid-AD 60's, or of the deaths of James, Peter, and Paul, who were martyred at around AD 61-69. Luke came before Acts (see the beginning of both books), and so Mark was no later than AD 62. The Greco-Roman historian A.N. Shermin-White shows that even two generations are too short a span to allow legendary tendencies to prevail over the hard historic core of oral tradition(1). His point is reinforced when we are dealing with the transmission of sacred tradition under apostolic supervision in a Jewish culture in which such skills were highly prized and developed. The oral tradition is within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses (first generation), and so if he believed in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, why didn't he just ask around when Jesus' younger brother and the apostles were active there? Goulder believes that Joseph was a real person, but falsely associated with Jesus' burial. And if he was writing from Rome and couldn't ask (even though there was active exchange of correspondence around the Mediterranean world), how did he know of the esoteric, historical figure of Joseph of Arimathea?
Remember, the four facts that Craig is using is one that many, many scholars accept - not conservatives, not fundamentalists. Rudolf Bultmann, one of the most skeptical New Testament scholars of the 1900s, wrote "This is a historical report which makes no impression of being legendary, apart from the women who appear again as witnesses in v. 47 and vs. 44, 45." (2)
So there are three developed and defended reasons for believing in the honorable burial of Jesus.
Fact 2: On the Sunday following the crucifixion, Jesus' tomb was found empty by a group of his women followers.
- The empty tomb story is part of the very old source material used by Mark.
- The old information transmitted by Paul implies an empty tomb.
- The story is simple and lacks signs of legendary development.
- The fact that a women's testimony was worthless counts in favor of the women's role in discovering the empty tomb.
- The earliest Jewish allegation that the disciple's had stolen Jesus' body shows that the body was in fact missing from the tomb.
Ludemann argues that when Paul wrote "He was buried," that is only to enforce Jesus' death to those who held a Docetic viewpoint, that He wasn't dead. He also proposes that ophthe, the Greek word for appeared, implies a vision, as it is the same for the appearance to Paul in the creed as for the rest. But Craig responds that that is shows the same significance, but doesn't necessitate the exact same details. Even the incredibly skeptical scholar John Dominic Crossan realizes that, he cited. But something that is important is that what most versions leave out and that's from the creed. The creed really goes like this: "that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve." The usage of that and the usages of the and that's show that they are all of the same importance. His burial isn't just an amplifier of His death (and I also think, if you say someone is dead they are dead. Really, get real. A point Gundry makes is that a burial doesn't necessitate a death, you can be buried alive). Gundry also notes that the word used for raised - egeiro - is the opposite of being buried (as everyone knows you are laid down), and so Jesus being raised is the undoing of His burial. Now here is another point against Ludemann that Gundry makes: he dates the creed's origination to the first two years after the crucifixion of Jesus, in Jerusalem, where everyone knew that Christ died! Does he expect that the denial of Jesus' death originated in the place of the eyewitnesses? It makes no sense.
Another point is the women at the tomb. "Goulder says that since only women were at the cross, only they were able to serve as witnesses in Mark's fictional burial-empty tomb narrative. But this response is peculiar. Since when are legendary fictions so concerned about faithfully sticking to the facts? Why not have a few male disciples at the cross as well? If they weren't around, just invent somebody to be there? How about Joseph of Arimathea? It is strange how much creativity skeptical critics can ascribe to legend and redaction when they need to and how unimaginative and conservative they take it be on other occasions." (Craig, p. 177) In Habermass and Licona's The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus they introduced me to the claim that since the women were going to anoint the body as was their job (which Craig mentioned is supported in the Mishnah), of course they would be the first ones to see the tomb. But Craig's rebuttal works here again: why so faithfully stick to the facts? Critics can lend the gospels the claim credibility when it is convenient, but myth writers could so easily just add in any one else, and forget about the women entirely. Just make something up. At any rate, the men could have been there first, or with the women: the appearance could have been to the men while waiting at the tomb for the women to show up or after the women did their part in dressing the corpse; there is no need for them to be the primary witnesses.
So there are two reasons to believe in the empty tomb.
Facts 3, 4, and argument: The Origin of the Christian Way
The Disciples came to believe in the resurrection of Jesus despite having every reason not to:
Examples mentioned by Gundry are 2 Maccabees 7:1-23; 1 Enoch 24:1-27:5; 2 Baruch 29:1-30:5; Sibylline Oracles 4:171-92; Testament of Abraham B7:16; Pseudo-Philo Bibilcal Antiquities 3:10.
"But, Goulder protests, it was believed that although Moses had died, nevertheless he 'was around' and that Jeremiah 'was alive after his death and able to encourage the Maccabees in their wars.' These examples are counterproductive for Goulder's claim. For as Grundy explains, the appearance of departed figures like Moses and Elijah at Jesus' transfiguration had nothing to do with literal resurrection. Neither did Jeremiah's giving to Judas Maccabaeus a golden sword 'with which you will strike down your adversaries' (2 Macc 15:16), for this was the content of a dream that Judas related in order to rally his troops. ... Goulder thinks that Peter, as an uneducated man, may not have been sufficiently sophisticated to realize that resurrections do not occur apart from the general resurrection at the world's end. But popular religious mentality, precisely because it is less nuanced, will tend to accept standard religious categories. Everybody knew that the resurrection would occur when God raised the dead at the end of the world." (Craig, p. 184-85)
In Did Jesus Exist?, famous agnostic Bart Ehrman mentions two key data for knowing that Jesus was real. One is that the idea of a crucified messiah was not expected, and would not have been invented(3). It was waaaaaaaaay too weird and humiliating.
According to Jewish law, since Jesus was crucified, He was under the curse of God.
Deuteronomy 21:23 ...you must not leave the body hanging on the pole overnight. Be sure to bury it that same day, because anyone who is hung on a pole is under God's curse. You must not desecrate the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance.
Now, I will be making the best case I can with the least amount of evidence I need (a more robust case was made by Craig, but it isn't necessary). I am going by the best-case scenario for the skeptic. The early creed tells us that Jesus appeared to:
1. Peter, and the rest of the Disciples
2. Paul, an enemy of Christianity
3. James, a skeptic
These people came to believe in the risen Jesus, even though they had every reason to disbelieve. Goulder attempts to explain away the appearances by assigning conversion visions to Paul and Peter, and the secondary appearances were delusions by Peter.
Well, accept for James. As a matter of fact, I don't even remember the atheistic side of this debate mentioning James at all. Craig did point that out and cite how Ludemann wrote elsewhere that it was "certain" that James received an appearance. (4)
Something that both sides pointed out was that "psychoanalyzing" somebody is hard to do with them sitting right in front of you, much less people from 2000 years ago. Thus, we can't surely postulate if they were fertile for hallucinations or not. But what we do know is that hallucinations are "relatively rare," as Goulder called them. So the problem here is 3 different men - Paul, James, and Peter - having the same hallucination.
Another good point is this: Just because someone is in an emotionally challenging spot does NOT mean that they are going to hallucinate. Hallucinations usually occur to the insane or drug-induced. How many people do you know of who have hallucinated because of emotional trauma? Hallucinations are not necessitated in this situation after Jesus' death.
Notice I didn't mention that group hallucinations don't happen. Jesus appeared to "...Cephas, and then to the Twelve" shows us that He appeared to multiple people.
But a theory worth entertaining is the delusion theory. This holds that just Peter hallucinated, and then he convinced the others into believing that Jesus had risen from the dead.
Well, if Peter is going to have a fertile mind for hallucinating (he may not! Jesus looked like a failed messiah, and he was afraid of being killed for his faith; was he really expecting Jesus to come back?), and if Peter did hallucinate Jesus, would you, as a fellow disciple in the same state as Peter, just believe him? It would be more likely for you to say, "Come on Peter. He's gone. He didn't appear to me. All this weirdness with Him has just left you a little crazy... Peter, you hallucinated." There is too much at stake to base your faith off of one man's claimed appearance(5).
Throw in Paul, an enemy of Christ at the time, and the hallucination theory has been blown into the next universe over.
(Oh, and P.S.: even if Jesus' tomb wasn't empty - which it was - the hallucination theory still has lost explanatory power, and Jesus would have appeared as a spirit.)
1. William Lane Craig is alluding to Colin J. Hemer The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History (Eisenbrauns: Winona Lake, Indiana. 1990), 376 and 378. See also: J.P Moreland, Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity (Baker Books: Grand Rapids, MJ. 2005),152-154.
2. Rudolf Bultmann, Die Geschichte der synoptischon Tradition, 2d ed., Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten un Neuen Testaments 12 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970), 296.
3. "In all of [the ideas of the Messiah] would be a future ruler of the people of Israel, leading a real kingdom here on earth. ... And who was Jesus? In all our early traditions he was a lower-class peasant from rural Galilee who was thought by some to be the future ruler of Israel but who instead of establishing the kingdom one earth came to be crucified. ... The crucifixion of Jesus is the core of Paul's message... It is no wonder that Paul found their views so offensive." Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (HarperOne: New York 2012), 162-163.
4. Gary R. Habermas and Micheal R. Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Kregel Publications: Grand Rapids, MI. 2004),67. Of the over 2 thousand books and journal articles Habermas compiled, there was only about a 75% scholarly consensus over the empty tomb. But, as is noted in his book on page , for some reason or another, there are critical scholars who believe in the empty tomb, such as noted on page 287: Blank, Blinzler, Bode, von Campenhausen, Delorme, Dhanis, Grundmann, Hengel, Lehmann, Leon-Dufour, Lichtenstein, Manek, Martini, Mussner, Nauck, Rengstorff, Ruckstuhl, Schenke, Schmitt, Schubert, Schwank, Schweizer, Seidensticker, Strobel, Stuhlmacher, Trilling, Vogtle, and Wilckens. These are listed by New Testament critic, Jacob Kremer, whose own name can be added (Die Osterevangelien - Geschichten um Geschichte [Stuttgart, Germany: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1977], 49-50).
What did have a virtual consensus is that James thought Jesus appeared to him.
5. Habermas notes that "at the center of their faith, there was too much at stake" in Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus (Zondervan: Grand Rapids, MI. 2016), 261. For reasons to believe that the disciples took their faith seriously, see here:
https://sites.google.com/battlegroundps.org/believing-in-jesus/martyrdom-of-apostles
Facts 3, 4, and argument: The Origin of the Christian Way
The Disciples came to believe in the resurrection of Jesus despite having every reason not to:
- The Messiah was expected to be exalted, not crucified.
- Jewish law says that because He was crucified He was under God's curse.
- Jewish belief about a physical resurrection was only for the end of days, not an individual one.
Examples mentioned by Gundry are 2 Maccabees 7:1-23; 1 Enoch 24:1-27:5; 2 Baruch 29:1-30:5; Sibylline Oracles 4:171-92; Testament of Abraham B7:16; Pseudo-Philo Bibilcal Antiquities 3:10.
"But, Goulder protests, it was believed that although Moses had died, nevertheless he 'was around' and that Jeremiah 'was alive after his death and able to encourage the Maccabees in their wars.' These examples are counterproductive for Goulder's claim. For as Grundy explains, the appearance of departed figures like Moses and Elijah at Jesus' transfiguration had nothing to do with literal resurrection. Neither did Jeremiah's giving to Judas Maccabaeus a golden sword 'with which you will strike down your adversaries' (2 Macc 15:16), for this was the content of a dream that Judas related in order to rally his troops. ... Goulder thinks that Peter, as an uneducated man, may not have been sufficiently sophisticated to realize that resurrections do not occur apart from the general resurrection at the world's end. But popular religious mentality, precisely because it is less nuanced, will tend to accept standard religious categories. Everybody knew that the resurrection would occur when God raised the dead at the end of the world." (Craig, p. 184-85)
In Did Jesus Exist?, famous agnostic Bart Ehrman mentions two key data for knowing that Jesus was real. One is that the idea of a crucified messiah was not expected, and would not have been invented(3). It was waaaaaaaaay too weird and humiliating.
According to Jewish law, since Jesus was crucified, He was under the curse of God.
Deuteronomy 21:23 ...you must not leave the body hanging on the pole overnight. Be sure to bury it that same day, because anyone who is hung on a pole is under God's curse. You must not desecrate the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance.
Now, I will be making the best case I can with the least amount of evidence I need (a more robust case was made by Craig, but it isn't necessary). I am going by the best-case scenario for the skeptic. The early creed tells us that Jesus appeared to:
1. Peter, and the rest of the Disciples
2. Paul, an enemy of Christianity
3. James, a skeptic
These people came to believe in the risen Jesus, even though they had every reason to disbelieve. Goulder attempts to explain away the appearances by assigning conversion visions to Paul and Peter, and the secondary appearances were delusions by Peter.
Well, accept for James. As a matter of fact, I don't even remember the atheistic side of this debate mentioning James at all. Craig did point that out and cite how Ludemann wrote elsewhere that it was "certain" that James received an appearance. (4)
Something that both sides pointed out was that "psychoanalyzing" somebody is hard to do with them sitting right in front of you, much less people from 2000 years ago. Thus, we can't surely postulate if they were fertile for hallucinations or not. But what we do know is that hallucinations are "relatively rare," as Goulder called them. So the problem here is 3 different men - Paul, James, and Peter - having the same hallucination.
Another good point is this: Just because someone is in an emotionally challenging spot does NOT mean that they are going to hallucinate. Hallucinations usually occur to the insane or drug-induced. How many people do you know of who have hallucinated because of emotional trauma? Hallucinations are not necessitated in this situation after Jesus' death.
Notice I didn't mention that group hallucinations don't happen. Jesus appeared to "...Cephas, and then to the Twelve" shows us that He appeared to multiple people.
But a theory worth entertaining is the delusion theory. This holds that just Peter hallucinated, and then he convinced the others into believing that Jesus had risen from the dead.
Well, if Peter is going to have a fertile mind for hallucinating (he may not! Jesus looked like a failed messiah, and he was afraid of being killed for his faith; was he really expecting Jesus to come back?), and if Peter did hallucinate Jesus, would you, as a fellow disciple in the same state as Peter, just believe him? It would be more likely for you to say, "Come on Peter. He's gone. He didn't appear to me. All this weirdness with Him has just left you a little crazy... Peter, you hallucinated." There is too much at stake to base your faith off of one man's claimed appearance(5).
Throw in Paul, an enemy of Christ at the time, and the hallucination theory has been blown into the next universe over.
(Oh, and P.S.: even if Jesus' tomb wasn't empty - which it was - the hallucination theory still has lost explanatory power, and Jesus would have appeared as a spirit.)
1. William Lane Craig is alluding to Colin J. Hemer The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History (Eisenbrauns: Winona Lake, Indiana. 1990), 376 and 378. See also: J.P Moreland, Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity (Baker Books: Grand Rapids, MJ. 2005),152-154.
2. Rudolf Bultmann, Die Geschichte der synoptischon Tradition, 2d ed., Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten un Neuen Testaments 12 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970), 296.
3. "In all of [the ideas of the Messiah] would be a future ruler of the people of Israel, leading a real kingdom here on earth. ... And who was Jesus? In all our early traditions he was a lower-class peasant from rural Galilee who was thought by some to be the future ruler of Israel but who instead of establishing the kingdom one earth came to be crucified. ... The crucifixion of Jesus is the core of Paul's message... It is no wonder that Paul found their views so offensive." Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (HarperOne: New York 2012), 162-163.
4. Gary R. Habermas and Micheal R. Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Kregel Publications: Grand Rapids, MI. 2004),67. Of the over 2 thousand books and journal articles Habermas compiled, there was only about a 75% scholarly consensus over the empty tomb. But, as is noted in his book on page , for some reason or another, there are critical scholars who believe in the empty tomb, such as noted on page 287: Blank, Blinzler, Bode, von Campenhausen, Delorme, Dhanis, Grundmann, Hengel, Lehmann, Leon-Dufour, Lichtenstein, Manek, Martini, Mussner, Nauck, Rengstorff, Ruckstuhl, Schenke, Schmitt, Schubert, Schwank, Schweizer, Seidensticker, Strobel, Stuhlmacher, Trilling, Vogtle, and Wilckens. These are listed by New Testament critic, Jacob Kremer, whose own name can be added (Die Osterevangelien - Geschichten um Geschichte [Stuttgart, Germany: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1977], 49-50).
What did have a virtual consensus is that James thought Jesus appeared to him.
5. Habermas notes that "at the center of their faith, there was too much at stake" in Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus (Zondervan: Grand Rapids, MI. 2016), 261. For reasons to believe that the disciples took their faith seriously, see here:
https://sites.google.com/battlegroundps.org/believing-in-jesus/martyrdom-of-apostles
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