Ted Hoffman

Hi,
There is this professor from a Theological school. I thrashed an article he wrote in the newspaper about Christs resurrection and thats how he came to know me.
He has been coming to have talks with me. I think my article shook his convictions. Nice simple chap, very methodical and unhurried he gave me a bible and some book about christian living. He has today Given me The NEW EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT. He specifically wants me to read chapter 9 and maybe share my thoughts (or position)on the issue (christs resurrection) with him.

This guy seems intent on honest dialogue and I am planning on flattening his beliefs with unprecedented force and resoluteness. I plan to do it methodically and clinically.

Have any of you read books on Josh McDowell? I would like to know your impressions before I embark on rigorous reading of the book.

Links on the veracity of christs resurrection would be of some help too.

Oh, I have just noticed that post on Josephus passage can be very useful to me.

[ May 03, 2002: Message edited by: IntenSity ]</p>

CX

I think McDowell's work is pretty much eviscerated in the II library. Look around.

BibleBelted

IntenSity,

Jeffery Jay Lowder does a thorough dissection of McDowell here: <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/jury/index.shtml" target="_blank">The Jury is In</a>

And it's not pretty.

He also has a short bit on his New Evidence called Evidence that Demands a Refund.

LMAO. Enjoy, but don't be too hard on the guy. Making him defensive will just cause him to shut his brain back off.

[ May 03, 2002: Message edited by: BibleBelted ]</p>

Radcliffe Emerson

I read some of his book New Evidence That Demands A Verdict, and find his arguments extremely weak.

[ May 03, 2002: Message edited by: Tyr Anasazi ]</p>

MOJO-JOJO

Ditto, there are lots of good essays and debates here that dismantle McDowell's arguments. I don't think Gosh McDowell and his brand of Evangelists ever contemplated that their mini$trie$ would one day be undermined by the information disseminating power of the internet or the SecWeb.

James AD

The courtroom is a good analogy for Josh McDowell. He is like a slick defense lawyer putting his best spin on the evidence in favor of his client. Unlike a courtroom, however, most of his jury will never hear the DA's case, and he knows it.

Don't trust him on anything. Check everything.

Peter Kirby

[I posted the message "Spurious Evidence from McDowell" below to the XTIANITY discussion list. Nobody was surprised at all, not even the Christians. I don't think McDowell is considered a respectable source, even among Christian apologists.]

In reading Josh McDowell's _Evidence that Demands a Verdict_, I found three places in his chapter on the resurrection in which McDowell commits a scholarly _faux pas_, any one of which would draw his competence into question.

On pp. 185-6, McDowell quotes from the Roberts-Donaldson edition of Ignatius, part of which states, "He also rose again in three days. . . On the day of preparation, then, at the third hour, he received the sentence from Pilate, the Father permitting that to happen; at the sixth hour He was crucified; at the ninth hour He gave up the Ghost; and before sunset He was buried. During the Sabbath He continued under the earth in the tomb in which Joseph of Arimathea had laid Him."

It appears from the quote that Ignatius, who wrote early in the second century, gave a very detailed account of the death and burial of Jesus. However, it is easily verified that the quote comes from the so-called "Longer Edition" of the corpus of Ignatius. In other words, it is a forgery, and McDowell either is ignorant of this fact or deliberately deceptive.

Both the shorter and longer versions of the epistles of Ignatius are available online. See chapter IX.

<a href="http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-01/anf01-18.htm" target="_blank">http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-01/anf01-18.htm</a>

On p. 187, McDowell quotes the Testimonium Flavianum as evidence in favor of the resurrection of Jesus. The vast majority of scholars recognize that this passage has been tampered by Christians, if not inserted whole-cloth -- Josephus was manifestly not a Christian and did not, for instance, believe in the resurrection of Jesus. McDowell's one paragraph discussion of this passage mentions only the facts that this passage "was in the text of Josephus used by Eusebius in the fourth century" and is "reiterated by the most recent Loeb edition of his works." Do I really need to explain how inadequate a defense this is?

On p. 208, McDowell mentions the gloss in the Codex Bezae that states, "And when he was laid there, he (Joseph) put against the tomb a stone which twenty men could not roll away." On the basis of this fourth century interpolation, McDowell proceeds to speculate:

"The significance of Dr. Thorburn's observation is realized when one considers the rules for trasncribing manuscripts. It was the custom that if a copier was emphasizing his own interpretation, he would write his thought in the margin and not include it within the text. One might conclude, therefore, that the insert in the text was copied from a text even closer to the time of Christ, perhaps a first century manuscript. The phrase, then, could have been recorded by an eye-witness who was impressed with the enormity of the stone which was rolled against Jesus' sepulchre."

Which is more likely? That Joseph (presumably with at least twenty other men?) rolled this huge stone in front of the tomb, that a witness of the burial (one of the women?) lived on to be a scribe who copied the Gospel of Mark in the late first century, and that this ancient comment only came to surface in the Codex Bezae? Or that the spurious phrase was inserted by an imaginative scribe?

Any one of these errors would be considered egregious. But all three in one chapter? Is McDowell really that incompetent, or perhaps does he not care about the quality of his evidence so long as someone less knowledgeable might fall for it?

sincerely,
Peter Kirby

Egoinos

I like the scholarship he shows about Josephus there, right enough.

"Its in a book I read, so of course its true!"

<img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Ted Hoffman

Thanks a lot everyone, and Peterkirby, that was right on point.
I have read the book so far and I am unimpressed. When I am done I will draft a rebuttal for chapter 9 and will post a copy here.

MOJO-JOJO

Haaa! the same evidence christians use to make the claim that the events in the bible are true........