Patrick F

I came across this biblical problem recently, and I’m actually amazed I hadn’t realized its significance before. Probably most people here will be familiar with this but here’s the quote from Matthew 27:


This has to be one of the most astounding miracles in the NT, if not THE most. Yet, it is only mentioned in one of the gospels. Matthew actually has two earthquakes that are not mentioned in any of the other gospels.

Some of the questions that arise are as follows:

Why did the other gospel writers not mention it?

Who were the “saints”?

How long had they been dead for?

How long did they live for?

Where did their clothes come from?

Were they in new bodies and did they go to heaven or were their bodies the same mortal ones that died and were buried a second time?

If they had mortal bodies, what state of decay were they in.


Does anyone know what the normal Christian responses to this problematic verse is? Is there any response that doesn’t render the passage as nonsensical?

skepticdude

I don't remember who William Lane Craig's opponent was, but he got Craig to admit that the zombie-resurrection report you refer to here, is not the sort of historical report Craig could demonstrate to be true.

Also, standard rules of evidence in a court of law say that the argument from silence is victorious, when the silence screams:

From "Wigmore On Evidence", section 1042:

"A failure to assert a fact, when it would have been natural to assert it, amounts in effect to an assertion of the non-existence of the fact. This is conceded as a general principle of evidence...[it is] 'prima facie' an inconsistency"

If Matthew's zombie-resurrection report gives us true history, is it absurd to think contemporary historians would either have not noticed, or "choose to exclude" this spectacle.

Therefore by the rules of evidence in a court of law, the failure of any other first-century writer to corroborate this, who were in positions to know better, constitutes proof that Matthew's report is false.

Of course, it could still have happened, and accidents of history or plain stupidity have hidden the corroborative reports from us until today. Unfortunately for apologists, if they have no evidence, then the possibility that such evidence may still somehow exist, is nothing but speculation. There might also come a time when Jim Jones is found to have been the reincarnated Jesus, but no Christian will hold off condemning Jones merely because of that speculative possibility.

So the failure of Matthew's zombie-report to be corroborated by contemporaries from the same area, constitutes an argument that his report is most likely embellishment and not historical fact.

What you should now do is follow this argument out to it's glorious skeptical conclusion:

We've now demonstrated that Matthew DOES include false history in his "gospel", not the most cheerful news apologists ever heard...so we now have to wonder...what's the likelihood that the zombie report is the only time Matthew used false history?

What's the likelihood that a bank robber hasn't stolen before? It's called attacking the credibility of the witness, standard accepted procedure according to rules of evidence accepted by courts.

We are the jury, and if we decide that Matthew's zombie reports make his other claims suspicious, we've all the legal justification in the world for reaching that conclusion.

When apologists tell me "just because they lied once, doesn't mean they will do it again!"

I respond "I know a man who molested a child once and was convicted of it. Would you hire him as your babysitter, saying "just because he molested a child once, doesn't prove he'll do it again!"

Apologists are clearly in agreement with us that the dirt in somebody's personal history DOES indeed count against their reliability, amen? Yeah, there's no proof that child molester will ever committ the same crime again, but his having done it once, is sufficient to justify remaining suspicious of his ability to control himself in the future.

Likewise, the zombie-resurrection report in Matthew may indeed be the only time Matthew lied in that gospel. But that's irrelvent, the fact that he did indeed lie, is sufficient for his readers, the jury, to make a judgment call on his level of trustworthiness for other assertions he makes, which are also not corroborated.

(Mark Luke and John don't count as corroboration, the Synoptic problem demonstrates a high degree of literary interdependence among the 4 authors. For example, we can never know whether Mark says the same thing as Matthew, because he is an independent witness, or because he is simply copying Matthew's text.)

Prosecutors don't bring out the dirt in a defense witness's history for nothing, you know...

This doesn't prove the entire gospel false, but proving the entire gospel false is hardly necessary to sustaining a suspicion against Matthew's concern for historical accuracy.

The door has now opened to the possibility that gospel authors used false history to help compose their gospels, and that's a door evangelicals were wetting themselves hoping would never open.

Patrick F

I think that was Hector Avalos. I actually thought his debating performance there was fairly poor, but he did get Craig on that one. You know for sure the passage is problematic when even William Lane Craig thinks it may not be literal.

Roland

The tale also contains internal problems for the story itself. If so many recently dead people were seen wandering around that weekend, that sort of diminishes the uniqueness of Jesus' resurrection and makes it illogical that the apostles - especially Thomas - would be so skeptical about the reports about Jesus' rising. After all, if Jesus were just one of many confirmed zombies, Thomas would have had no reason to disbelieve his fellow cohorts when they told him that Jesus had appeared to them.

show_no_mercy

Just a minor nitpick (though the rest of the post was kickass) "John" isn't a synoptic gospel. The synoptic problem only deals with which of the first three (Mark, Matthew, Luke) came first and which of the other two copied off of each other and/or the first one.

S.C.Carlson

Is this published or on the net somewhere?

Stephen

mountainman

Dear Patrick F,

If we are to make the simple assumption like everyone else appears to have done that the author of the apochyphal "Acts of Philip" was a "christian author" then we see that author causes a zombie to attend the christian apostle Philip by means of a sick ox. Both the zombie and the sick ox prostrate themselves before Philip and talk. The Zombie's name was Ananias, who was a Jew kicked by the Jewish priest to death (and then buried) in a synogogue "for confessing Jesus". Previously in the Syriac narrative the soon-to-be-zombie Annianus is suspended by a presumably christian angel who bound him by the great toes and hung him head down on the top of the sail during a gale-force wind.

Where else in the corpus of early christian literature do zombies appear? Perhaps there were zombies in the land of the Cannibals, mentioned in another apochyphal new testament act. In one sense the apochyphal tractates are even more nonsensical than the above references in the canon, but what significance is there in this observation?

Best wishes,


Pete

skepticdude

Excellent point! Why didn't I think of that? Probably cuz I'm just too smart.:constern01:

skepticdude

I rediscovered it was Hector Avalos who caught Craig on that point. His debate with Craig can be downloaded in mp3 format at

http://www.geocities.com/biblicalstu...hdownloads.htm

search the page for "Avalos", it's about halfway down.

Lugubert

Now and then I ask apologists if there is any archaeological evidence of disturbed graves in the area during the first century or so. Nobody ever even tried to answer.