I don't have a load of time to waste on Craig's crap, but here's a partial examination.
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Of course, during the last century liberal theology had no use for the historical resurrection of Jesus. Since liberal theologians retained the presupposition against the possibility of miracles which they had inherited from the Deists, a historical resurrection was a priori simply out of the question for them.
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This is a shallow and inaccurate rendering of methodological naturalism.
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What are the facts that underlie this remarkable reversal of opinion concerning the credibility of the New Testament accounts of the resurrection of Jesus?
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No such reversal has occurred. The vast, vast majority of scholars do not believe that the Resurrection can be demonstrated as a historical fact
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probably received the formula at this time, if not before. Since Paul was converted in AD 33, this means that the list of witnesses goes back to within the first five years after Jesus' death.
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Assumptive. Assumes Jesus was historical person and gospel accounts are accurate, rather than demonstrating that.
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Thus, it is idle to dismiss these appearances as legendary. We can try to explain them away as hallucinations if we wish, but we cannot deny they occurred. Paul's information makes it certain that on separate occasions various individuals and groups saw Jesus alive from the dead.
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No one disputes that the early Christians claim that they had visions of the Risen Jesus.
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reliable as Paul's. For in order for these stories to be in the main legendary, a very considerable length of time must be available for the evolution and development of the traditions until the historical elements have been supplanted by unhistorical. This factor is typically neglected in New Testament scholarship, as A. N. Sherwin-White points out in Roman Law and Roman Society tn the New Testament. Professor Sherwin-White is not a theologian; he is an eminent historian of Roman and Greek times, roughly contemporaneous with the NT. According to Professor Sherwin-White, the sources for Roman history are usually biased and removed at least one or two generations or even centuries from the events they record. Yet, he says, historians reconstruct with confidence what really happened.
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Sherwin-White is decades out of date. His remark of "40 years is too short" is assumptive....the very issue that is at issue is whether the events depicted in the Gospels occurred, and this arguments assumes, without proving it, that they actually did.
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He chastises NT critics for not realizing what invaluable sources they have in the gospels. The writings of Herodotus furnish a test case for the rate of legendary accumulation, and the tests show that even two generations is too short a time span to allow legendary tendencies to wipe out the hard core of historical facts.
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Incorrect, as legendizing is quite rapid. There are numerous examples. In any case, this argument is a strawman.
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When Professor Sherwin-White turns to the gospels, he states for these to be legends, the rate of legendary accumulation would have to be 'unbelievable'; more generations are needed.
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They are not legends, but fictions. Hence Sherwin-White's argument is a straw man. Fictions can be created instantly.
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All NT scholars agree that the gospels were written down and circulated within the first generation, during the lifetime of the eyewitnesses.
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Complete and utter bullshit.
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Indeed, a significant new movement of biblical scholarship argues persuasively that some of the gospels were written by the AD 50's.
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Craig does not inform his reader that only conservative religious scholars believe this. Mainstream scholarship places the gospels all after 70.
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This places them as early as Paul's letter to the Corinthians and, given their equal reliance upon prior tradition, they ought therefore to be accorded the same weight of historical credibility accorded Paul.
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Bogus. First, Craig gives unacceptable dates for them, and then claims they rely on prior tradition, although he has made no argument for that. It is a typical Craig argument, composed of unsupported claims mixed with a few judicious lies and misleading statements.
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It is instructive to note in this connection that no apocryphal gospel appeared during the first century.
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Another unsupported claim. Further, "apocryphal" is a theological rather than historical judgment. The canonical gospels are also apocryphal.
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These did not arise until after the generation of eyewitnesses had died off. These are better candidates for the office of 'legendary fiction' than the canonical gospels.
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Certainly! That is because the gospels are not legendary fiction. They are theopolitical fictions.
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Second, the empty tomb. Once regarded as an offense to modern intelligence and an embarrassment to Christian theology, the empty tomb of Jesus has come to assume its place among the generally accepted facts concerning the historical Jesus. Allow me to review briefly some of the evidence undergirding this connection.
(1) The historical reliability of the burial story supports the empty tomb. If the burial account is accurate, then the site of Jesus' grave was known to Jew and Christian alike. In that case, it is a very short inference to historicity of the empty tomb. For if Jesus had not risen and the burial site were known:
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If we had ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had some eggs. Clearly the burial account is not accurate; it is a Markan fiction.
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(a) the disciples could never have believed in the resurrection of Jesus.
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Incorrect. For even if they saw him killed and saw his dead body, they could have still believed in a resurrected Jesus. We do not know WHAT beliefs they held, if any, about the nature of the Resurrection -- we only know later theological and political posturing. There is also good reason to believe that the disciples of the Gospels are fictional.
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For a first century Jew the idea that a man might be raised from the dead while his body remained in the tomb was simply a contradiction in terms. In the words of E. E. Ellis, "It is very unlikely that the earliest Palestinian Christians could conceive of any distinction between resurrection and physical, 'grave emptying' resurrection. To them an anastasis without an empty grave would have been about as meaningful as a square circle."
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People are not culturebots. First century judaism was not a monolith, but a rich and variegated set of beliefs that had been thoroughly Hellenized. First century Jews believed all sorts of things.
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(b) Even if the disciples had believed in the resurrection of Jesus, it is doubtful they would have generated any following. So long as the body was interred in the tomb, a Christian movement founded on belief in the resurrection of the dead man would have been an impossible folly.
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Why?
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(c) The Jewish authorities would have exposed the whole affair. The quickest and surest answer to the proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus would have been simply to point to his grave on the hillside.
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This argument assumes again that the burial actually occurred as written. AND THAT IS THE POINT UNDER DISPUTE!
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(ii) It is part of the ancient pre-Markan passion story which Mark used as a source for his gospel.
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Evidence or argument is offered to support this claim below.....
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(iii) The story itself lacks any traces of legendary development.
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Quite true. Instead, its traces are literary and fictional. It is not a legend, but a fiction. Different entirely.
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(v) No other competing burial traditions exist.
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Incorrect, as there are several.
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For these and other reasons, most scholars are united in the judgment that the burial story is fundamentally historical.
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Most scholars believe that Jesus was buried, as dead bodies were in Judaism. But as Theissen and Merz put it in their review of the topic, historical critical methods are not capable of determining whether this is a true story.
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(2) Paul's testimony supports the fact of the empty tomb. Here two aspects of Paul's evidence may be mentioned.
(a) In the formula cited by Paul the expression "he was raised" following the phrase "he was buried" implies the empty tomb.
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Perhaps, but not necessarily the gospel one.
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A first century Jew could not think otherwise.
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Ah, the culturebot argument again. Not a viable argument.
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As E. L. Bode observes, the notion of the occurrence of a spiritual resurrection while the body remained in the tomb is a peculiarity of modern theology.
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Totally incorrect. The ancients believed in ghosts and other disembodied spirits, and had a whole slew of them.
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For the Jews it was the remains of the man in the tomb which were raised; hence, they carefully preserved the bones of the dead in ossuaries until the eschatological resurrection. There can be no doubt that both Paul and the early Christian formula he cites pre-suppose the existence of the empty tomb.
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Wrong. They presuppose a risen Jesus. In 1 Cor Paul makes clear that the old bodies will be replaced by new stuff. Hence no empty tomb necessary to Paul's belief.
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(b) The phrase "on the third day" probably points to the discovery of the empty tomb. Very briefly summarized, the point is that since no one actually witnessed the resurrection of Jesus, how did Christians come to date it "on the third day?"
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Where did three days come from? They retrieved that from scripture, or because it was a predominant belief in the Jewish world that a body was not truly dead until it had rested in its tomb three days. Carrier notes:
- Thus, a resurrection on the third day reverses the expectations of the Jews: to physicalists, instead of departing, the soul of Jesus reunites with his body and rises; to spiritualists, instead of departing, the soul of Jesus is exalted by God, raised to his right side, thence to appear in visions to the faithful. Either way, a resurrection before the third day might not be a true resurrection, but a mere revival, or the ghost of a not-yet-departed soul, but a resurrection on the third day is true evidence that death was in either sense defeated. This "third day" tradition in Jewish law may in fact be very ancient, possibly lying behind the prophecy of Hosea, "He will revive us after two days, He will raise us up on the third day, that we may live before him" (6.2), and no doubt had something to do with Paul's conviction that Jesus "was raised on the third day according to the scriptures" (1 Corinthians 15:4).
and Crossan:
- Those who spoke of Jesus’ resurrection insisted that it was “after three days� or “on the third day.�15 That was when, in Jewish tradition, it was customary to visit the tomb not just for mourning but to make sure the person was definitely dead. That, of course, is why Jesus waited until, Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days� (John 11:17), until, that is, he was securely and definitely dead. When Christian Jews spoke of Jesus’resurrection after or on the third day, therefore, they were insisting that he had been really and truly dead.
Three-day motifs are widespread in the OT, as Carrier notes. In 2 Kings the men search 3 days for Elijah, who cannot be found. Many of the Jesus tales are taken from the Elijah legends.
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Thus, in the old Christian formula quoted by Paul we have extremely early evidence for the existence of Jesus' empty tomb.
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Only if you distort it completely!
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(3) The empty tomb story is part of the pre-Markan passion story and is therefore very old. The empty tomb story was probably the end of Mark's passion source. As Mark is the earliest of our gospels, this source is therefore itself quite old. In fact the commentator R. Pesch contends that it is an incredibly early source. He produces two lines of evidence for this conclusion:
(a) Paul's account of the Last Supper in 1 Cor. 11:23-5 presupposes the Markan account. Since Paul's own traditions are themselves very old, the Markan source must be yet older.
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Not if the writer of Mark based his tale on Paul, which he did. Pesch is an arch-conservative.
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The pre-Markan passion story never refers to the high priest by name. It is as when I say "The President is hosting a dinner at the White House" and everyone knows whom I am speaking of because it is the man currently in office. Similarly the pre-Markan passion story refers to the "high priest" as if he were still in power. Since Caiaphas held office from AD 18-37, this means at the latest the pre-Markan source must come from within seven years after Jesus' death. This source thus goes back to within the first few years of the Jerusalem fellowship and is therefore an ancient and reliable source of historical information.
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In Xenophon's Ephesian Tale Habrocomes is brought before the "prefect of Egypt". He is crucified, prays, and survives due to a miracle. Do you think that because the prefect is not named that this is evidence that the tale must not be fiction?
Here's a fact -- crucifixions, empty tombs, and resurrections were staples of the Greek novels.
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(4) The story is simple and lacks legendary development.
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The strawman again. It is not legend but constructed fiction.
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The empty tomb story is uncolored by the theological and apologetical motifs that would be characteristic of a later legendary account.
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Utter bullshit, for many have argued that the ET is itself a theological apologetic tale!
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empty tomb. Any later legend would certainly have made the male disciples to discover the empty tomb. The fact that women, whose testimony was worthless, rather than men, are the chief witnesses to the empty tomb is most plausibly accounted for by the fact that, like it or not, they were the discoverers of the empty tomb and the gospels accurately record this.
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Or it is a fiction created as part of Mark's polemic against the disciples.
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(6) The earliest Jewish polemic presupposes the empty tomb. In Matthew 28, we find the Christian attempt to refute the earliest Jewish polemic against the resurrection. That polemic asserted that the disciples stole away the body. The Christians responded to this by reciting the story of the guard at the tomb, and the polemic in turn charged that the guard fell asleep. Now the noteworthy feature of this whole dispute is not the historicity of the guards but rather the presupposition of both parties that the body was missing.
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Or Matt was simply insulating against this charge. But here Craig admits that these details are invented. Since he concedes that some details are invented, how does he go about establishing which are historical facts and which are fictions? Craig doesn't tell us. Because he doesn't himself know.
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If one denies that Jesus really did rise from the dead, then he must explain the disciples' belief that he did rise either in terms of Jewish influences or in terms of Christian influences.
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Or in terms of Hellenistic. Or Egyptian. Or Persian....
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The resurrection of Jesus is therefore the best explanation for the origin of the Christian faith. Taken together, these three great historical facts--the resurrection appearances, the empty tomb, the origin of the Christian faith--seem to point to the resurrection of Jesus as the most plausible explanation
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A fiction.
Vorkosigan
12-02-2005, 11:33 PM
