From Lowly Beginnings

Of all of the skeptical arguments marshaled against the historicity of the New Testament, few are as absurd as one promulgated by atheist Frank Zindler and propagated on the internet: that there was no town of Nazareth in the time of Jesus, and that the description of Jesus as having grown up there was a later fabrication, possibly based on a corruption of the Hebrew word for Nazarite. The basis for this argument was entirely an argument from ignorance, and not a very good one at that. Zindler’s points include the following:

• No "ancient historians or geographers mention [Nazareth] before the beginning of the fourth century.”
• Nazareth is not mentioned in the Old Testament, the Talmud, nor in the Apocrypha and it does not appear in any early rabbinic literature.
• Nazareth was not included in the list of settlements of the tribes of Zebulun (Joshua 19:10-16) which mentions twelve towns and six villages
• Nazareth is not included among the 45 cities of Galilee that were mentioned by Josephus (37AD-100AD).
• Nazareth is also missing from the 63 towns of Galilee mentioned in the Talmud.

Apparently someone forgot to tell him that arguments from ignorance don’t prove anything, and that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But what really makes this argument rather bizarre is that it has been known for a long time that the area around the modern city of Nazareth was inhabited in the periods before and after the time of Jesus. Some skeptics speculated that it was uninhabited for the period in which Jesus was a child, but not because of evidence that it wasn’t. It was based on the lack of solid evidence that it was, and apparently this was enough to try to throw more doubt on the historical details and setting of the New Testament, even though those details have been well confirmed by historians.

In any case, today the announcement was made of the discovery of a dwelling in ancient Nazareth from the time period of Jesus, in this article from the AP: “The humble dwelling is the first dating to the era of Jesus to be discovered in Nazareth, then a hamlet of around 50 impoverished Jewish families where Jesus spent his boyhood.” This points to the most obvious reason why Nazareth was left off of the lists of towns pointed out by Zindler - Nazareth was too small and insignificant. Even the response of Nathaniel to Philip in John 1:46 points to the lowly status of this little town: “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?”

This is yet another victory for the Gospels in the long-standing war of skeptics who have tried to undermine it on various grounds. Recently I spoke in a Sunday School class on the historical evidence for the NT, and mentioned the story of Sir William Ramsay, the skeptical archaeologist who set out to prove that the book of Acts was a late second- or early third-century forgery, and ended up becoming a Christian instead because of the overwhelming historical evidence supporting Acts.

In the middle of the Christmas season, it’s also worth reflecting on the background of the One who was born in a lowly manger in Bethlehem and lived his childhood in a poor Jewish village with no status and no prestige, the One who came to redeem the world, to exalt the humble and to tear down the proud. In a world that still values the prestige and honor of the “elites” above all else, it’s a reminder that ultimately it will not be the elites who will inherit the earth, but the meek.

Reasonable Faith

Tonight I begin leading a small group here in Houghton, NY, called "Reasonable Faith". The name is taken from the book by William Lane Craig of the same title. Dr. Craig also has an apologetics website, www.reasonablefaith.org. I'm looking forward to a good discussion about many interesting topics related to apologetics, some of which I've already covered in previous blog entries. To kick things off, I wanted to bring an old post out from the archives titled, "What evidence were you expecting, anyways?" I'm hoping this will lead to some discussion here on the blog, but if not, at least I'll be talking about it tonight with my small group!

The atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell was famously asked what he would say if after he died he found himself standing before the God in whose existence he did not believe, and God asked him, “why didn’t you believe in me?” Russell’s reply was, “not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence!”

I was having a blog debate with an atheist not long ago. The atheist said, “after centuries of theism and all of the searching we’ve done without finding any evidence, I think we’re justified in discarding religion and moving on.”

In my response, I conceded that we can be justified in disbelieving the existence of some entity E if we expect certain kinds of evidence in the case of E’s existence, and after thorough investigation that evidence does not turn up. I then asked the atheist what evidence he was expecting to find in the case of God’s existence which had not turned up.

Being the good sport that I am, I offered a couple of suggestion for him to consider while formulating his answer. For starters, I said, if God existed we might expect to find that the universe had a beginning rather than finding that the universe had always existed. Hey, wait a minute. According to a considerable amount of evidence that cosmologists have discovered, the universe did have a beginning. That’s pretty interesting when you think about it, since according to the First Law of Thermodynamics (also known as the Law of Conservation), matter can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed into energy (and vice-versa). So if there is no God, we might well expect that the universe had always existed. In fact, that was the dominant view among cosmologists in the early part of the 20th century before the Big Bang theory became widely accepted.

Another bit of evidence that we might anticipate if God existed is evidence of design in the structure of the universe itself (as opposed to it being a haphazard jumble). Again, the evidence for design based on the fine-tuning of the universe for life is extremely well documented. The structure of the universe both in terms of the values of the fundamental constants of physics and the initial conditions at the very first moment of the universe’s existence had to be within a staggeringly small range in order for life to exist. Even the skeptic Fred Hoyle was so impressed by this cosmic fine-tuning that he remarked that it appeared that a superintellect had monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry and biology. He further commented that the numbers were so overwhelming “as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.” Since Hoyle wrote that statement, the list of “anthropic coincidences” (those values that are necessary for a life-sustaining universe) has continued to grow longer.

My atheist interlocutor never did answer the question as to what evidence he expected to find in the case of God’s existence that hadn’t turned up. That seemed a little odd to me. If you’re going to conclude that there is no evidence for something, I think you should have some idea of what evidence you might expect. I wonder what Bertrand Russell would have said in answer to that question. Maybe after he died he did say to God “not enough evidence!”, I don’t know. If so, I can imagine God saying in response, “what evidence were you expecting, anyways?”

Whom would you most like to meet?

It’s interesting that a recent poll conducted in the U.K. asked respondents which dead person they would most like to meet. Princess Diana was expected to be number one. But in fact, she came in at the number two spot behind Jesus. What this shows is that even in the heart of secular Europe, interest in the historical person of Jesus is as high as it has ever been. Even in America, Jesus remains a highly popular, enigmatic, and fascinating figure. As Dr. Ben Witherington III says, we live in a Jesus-haunted culture that is biblically illiterate. Unfortunately, because of that almost anything can pass for knowledge of Jesus. Thus have we seen a slough of popular and supposedly scholarly books on Jesus in the last decade that are based on flimsy foundations, weak theories, and pseudo-scholarship.

My introduction to Ben Witherington was when I took a class from him in my last year at Asbury Seminary, the year he started teaching there. This was back in 1995, and he had already written several excellent, scholarly books on the New Testament. Within a few classes I was thinking to myself, “why have I never heard of this guy before?” Before the end of that class, I thought to myself, “this guy is going somewhere.” While I hadn’t seen his name quoted or cited as an authority up until that time, I had a strong feeling that that would happen. Sure enough, in the 14 years since that class, I have seen Ben Witherington’s name come up repeatedly in different places. He has written many more books, including the best-selling title “The Gospel Code”, which was written in response to Dan Brown’s horrible and now thoroughly discredited book, “The Da Vinci Code.” He has been interviewed by every major TV network as well as appearing on the History Channel and the Discovery Channel, and is cited as an authority by many other scholars. One of my regrets from my time in seminary was that I didn’t have opportunity to take more classes from Witherington.

So I was excited to find out that he was teaching a one-week intensive class at Houghton College at the end of June on “The Jesus of Film, Fantasy, and Faith.” The purpose of the class was to cut through all of the pseudo-scholarship and popular level works about Jesus that have become so prominent in the last decade and show the evidence for the canonical Gospel portraits of Jesus, the books developed out of the collective memory of those who were closest to Jesus and knew him the best. I’ll be blogging about some of the insights I gained from that class. But as Dr. Witherington puts it, Witherington shared in the class how he has spoken to audiences across the country and has been amazed at the number of Christians who don’t realize, for example, that the New Testament doesn’t say that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, or in fact that he was married at all! In fact, there is no historical evidence for that claim at all even though many popular writers treat it as a serious hypothesis.

Another atheist comes back home

On another internet site I came across some posts by a former atheist from the U.K. who had actually served as the director of the Rationalist Press Association for almost 10 years, as well as a one-year stint as the president of the National Secular Society. He gives the following reasons for his return to Christianity after 20 years as a hardened atheist:

1. A realisation that the universe is not self-explanatory, and that - unless it is completely absurd - it needs a transcendent explanation.2. A realisation that science cannot - even in principle - even begin to explain why there is something and not nothing.3. A realisation that Hume's critique of theism is far from watertight; that Darwin's theory of evolution does not begin to explain either the emergence or the complexity of life, and that much 19th century criticism and modern scientism is founded on an untenable world-view.

My return to the Christian faith was facilitated by a recognition that much biblical criticism from the Enlightenment until quite recently was based on faulty premises, and by a recognition that - notwithstanding some legendary elements - the Gospel story of Jesus, his teaching, his death and resurrection were historically well-founded. Furthermore, the experience of worship and reconciliation was a source of inner conviction that has remained with me, and I hope always will.

There are a growing number of testimonies on the internet of atheists coming to Christ, or coming back to Christ. Some have come as a result of internet apologetics. This one appears to have come back to the fold through his own study on issues of theology and religion, and his recognition of the limitations of scientific explanations for the world as well as the ultimately incoherent worldview of scientific materialism.

Of course skeptics will point out that there are also testimonies of former Christians – even former ministers in some cases – becoming atheists. While this is true, the skeptical position is that atheism is strictly based on pure reason while religion is irrational. For a knowledgeable and highly educated atheist to turn to religion, then, should necessitate that a rational person has suddenly become irrational. However, these individuals do not give evidence of being irrational, and are able to give good rational arguments as to why they abandoned the atheistic worldview. Of course, these defectors are generally treated with the great contempt, mockery and abuse that are so typical of the atheist internet community.

Stay tuned, as there are surely more exciting conversion stories to come!

Resurrection Faith (part four)

And last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also.

The appearance to Paul is one of the most controversial ones listed. Many skeptics suggest that Paul’s claimed experience was not an experience of the risen Christ in person, but was rather a vision or a “spiritual” experience. In other words, Paul made no claim to having had an physical encounter with Christ in the real world. This, they say, also means that Paul thought of these other appearances to the apostles in the same way – merely as some sort of undefined vision. The stories in the Gospels arose later, and are of a different nature altogether than the claims made in this early church creed that Paul uses. The first question, then, is what was the nature of Paul’s experience? Is it true that Paul only reported a spiritual vision rather than a physical encounter with Christ? Let’s examine the evidence.

Paul’s encounter with Christ on the way to Damascus is recorded 3 times in the book of Acts: once when it is narrated, and twice when Paul is recorded as giving speeches about it to others. In addition, Paul alludes to his experience three times in his own letters: once in Galatians and twice in 1 Corinthians. So if critics want to make a case that Paul only reported having a vision of some kind, this is the primary data.

The three descriptions of Paul’s experience in Acts are found in 9:3-9; 22:6-11; and 26:12-16. There are several important features of all three descriptions. One of the first things to note is that in every case the men who were with Saul (Paul’s pre-Christian name) also experienced something. In none of these descriptions is this simply a private experience that only Paul was privy to. Something supposedly happened in the real world. But what exactly? Each of the descriptions include a bright light described as being “from heaven” and a voice. Unlike the light, it is not said where the voice came from. In the first account, we are told that the men heard the voice but saw no one. In the second account, Paul specifies that the men saw the light but did not hear the voice. In the third account it says the light shone around them all and they all fell to the ground.

So it’s clear that what is being described here is a real-world event and not a private vision that was only taking place in Paul’s mind. But the question is raised as to whether the men heard the voice or not. Luke wrote both accounts, so it’s unlikely he would have left them this way if it was an actual contradiction. As Ben Witherington points out, in classical Greek the verb akouo (“to hear”) can be used either to hear the sound of something or someone, or to hear and understand. In the former case it’s used with the gentive form of the noun, while in the latter it’s used with the accusative.[i] This is what we find in Acts: in 9:7 the genitive of the noun is used, while 22:9 it’s in the accusative. The men with Paul heard something, but it was not intelligible to them.

But another important clue to what happened is that it specifically says in Acts 9:7 that the men with Paul saw nobody. But why say this unless Paul himself DID see somebody? It seems to imply that Paul saw somebody but the men with him did not, though they did, apparently, see a bright light (perhaps obscuring their sight temporarily). But there are other clues as well. As N.T. Wright points out, Barnabas describes Paul’s experience to the other apostles in Acts 9:27 as him having “seen the Lord on the road.”[ii] But more importantly, in 1 Cor. 9:1 Paul says, “Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?”

Perhaps the skeptics strongest argument comes from Acts 26:19, where Paul says “So, King Agrippa, I did not prove disobedient to the heavenly vision”. This should settle it, right? Paul had a vision, not an objectively real experience. Actually, it turns out not to be the case. The word Paul uses here is the Greek word optasia, which is used four times in the NT. Besides this occurrence, it is found in Luke 1:22; Luke 24:23; and 2 Cor. 12:1. In the cases in Luke it appears to refer to appearances of angels which appear to be objectively real. This is especially clear in 24:23 where it refers to the angels at the tomb which appeared to the women. 2 Cor. 12:1 is ambiguous, although Paul himself says he doesn’t know if the experience described there was “in the body” or “apart from the body.” But the important thing is this is NOT the word used to describe visions which clearly were simply spiritual or private in nature, such as the vision of Ananais in Acts 9:10 (and the parallel vision of Paul in 9:12), the vision of Cornelius in Acts 10:3, and the vision of Peter in Acts 10:17. These all use the word opama. And actually in Acts 12:9, when Peter is miraculously released from prison, we read “And he went out and continued to follow, and he did not know that what was being done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision (opama).” So here it is clear that the word opama is a vision that is not objectively real. This is not the word that Paul used to describe his vision of Jesus, which would be better described as heavenly appearance.[iii]

Thus the idea that the appearance of Jesus to Paul was just a spiritual vision of some kind is just mistaken. All of the accounts make it clear that it was experienced by Paul’s companions as well, though their experience apparently differed from his in some ways. We also have the implication that Paul saw a person, and elsewhere he says specifically that he has seen Jesus. Yes, Paul’s experience was different in many ways from the experiences of the other apostles (and he describes it with the word ektroma – “untimely born”), but still at it’s core involved seeing Jesus physically.

More importantly was the effect of this experience in changing Paul from a violent persecutor of this new sect to one of its leading proponents. Even skeptics recognize that Paul had an experience of some kind that transformed him from a violent zealot bent on destroying the Christian faith to its most famous missionary, one who endured persecution, imprisonment, and ultimately martyrdom for his proclamation that Jesus was the Messiah who had risen from the dead. A change of this magnitude and with such suddenness can only be explained by a life-changing event. Paul testifies to what that life-changing event was: “He appeared to me also.”
__________________

[i] Ben Witherington, The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary, (312).
[ii] Wright, 389-390.
[iii] Witherington, (746).

Resurrection Faith (part three)

He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep; then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles;

Here Paul begins to list the eyewitnesses – not to the Resurrection itself, but to the risen Christ. Keep in mind that these reports were in circulation within 2-3 years after Jesus’ death. There can be no doubt that these people actually reported having seen Jesus after his death. Those reports were either true or false. One thing they were not were myths and legends that developed over a long period of time. Paul himself checked with the apostles to verify the contents of his preaching as he writes in Galatians 1:18-20. He says, “Then three years later I went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas, and stayed with him fifteen days. But I did not see any other of the apostles except James, the Lord's brother. Now in what I am writing to you, I assure you before God that I am not lying.”

Skeptics sometimes like to use the illustration of the game where you have a line of people and the person at the start of the line gives a message to the next person. They pass it to the next person and so on, until it gets to the other end. Then you see how the message got garbled in the process. This, they say, is how we got the stories about Jesus in the New Testament. The problems with this illustration are numerous. The biggest problem is this: all you need to do to find out what the original message was is to ask the person at the front of the line. In fact, that’s the only way you can tell that the message was changed is by comparing the last person’s story with the first person’s story. So in order for this to be the process by which we arrived at the stories of Jesus in the New Testament, you have to assume that nobody checked with those who were reported as eyewitnesses. However, we have specific claims that people DID check with the eyewitnesses, and not just by Paul. Luke also specifically claims to have checked with eyewitnesses, as does John. Paul even basically swears an oath here in Galatians that he’s telling the truth. But if those claims were false, then these men were lying. Is it possible Paul was lying? The early and consistent testimony of church history is that Paul died a martyr’s death in Rome around 64 AD under Nero after having risked his life countless times to proclaim the Gospel message throughout the Roman Empire. Of first importance in that proclamation was the eyewitness testimony of those who had seen Jesus after his Resurrection. This was not a game for Paul and for the other eyewitnesses – it was quite literally a matter of life and death.

He Appeared to Cephas

The first appearance Paul reports is one to Peter (Cephas is Peter’s name in Aramaic), and evidently to Peter by himself since it’s listed separately from the appearance to the Twelve. Some skeptics object that we have no report in the Gospels of such an appearance. But this is not entirely correct. It’s true that there’s no narrative of such an appearance, but in fact an appearance to Peter by himself is mentioned by Luke. This happens after the narrative of Jesus appearing to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Luke writes, “And they got up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem, and found gathered together the eleven and those who were with them, saying, ‘The Lord has really risen and has appeared to Simon’” (Luke 24:33-34). Simon is Peter’s original name which Jesus changed to Cephas (or Peter), meaning rock. So here in Luke we have a clear reference to this first appearance to Peter mentioned by Paul in 1 Corinthians. We have no other details of this appearance, but Luke indicates that Peter, after going to the tomb himself to verify the incredible story of the women, returned to his home “marveling at what had happened” (Luke 24:12). This private appearance to Peter most likely occurred at his home.

Then to the Twelve

The next appearance listed by Paul is to the Twelve. Luke and John both record an appearance of Jesus to his disciples on the evening after his resurrection. In Luke it occurs immediately after the passage given above. The Emmaus disciples return to Jerusalem to find the eleven and others who are with them talking about Jesus’ appearance to Peter. The two from Emmaus then recount their own testimony. Jesus then appears to all of them. Interestingly, Luke records that they became frightened thinking that it was a spirit. Jesus says to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” He then asks them if they have something to eat, and eats a piece of broiled fish in front of them. This is an absolutely remarkable story given the completely unexpected nature of it. Luke does not portray Jesus here as a spirit-like being at all, but as having the properties of a normal human being. At the same time, he also can do things normal people can’t do, like appearing and disappearing at will. But the Gospel narratives give nothing else unusual about Jesus, except that he is sometimes recognized immediately and sometimes not recognized until later. If this was a legendary development, why does Jesus’s body not glow or something else to indicate its supernatural qualities? Luke indicates that the angels in the tomb were “dazzling” in appearance – why not Jesus? Even the disciples seem to have doubts and questions about their experiences. This is consistent with what we would expect from anyone who sees a person they’ve known after their death, but hardly as an apologetic for the Resurrection written afterwards to dupe a gullible populace.

The skeptic likes to raise the objection that at this point in the story the Twelve was no longer twelve, since Judas had reportedly committed suicide after betraying Jesus. In fact Luke says the disciples on the road to Emmaus returned to “the eleven.” So how can Paul say that Jesus appeared to the Twelve? One solution immediately presents itself in Luke’s account of the election of a replacement for Judas in Acts 1. We are told that Matthias was chosen for this role. But we are also told that Peter gave the necessary qualifications for this office in Acts 1:21-22: “Therefore it is necessary that of the men who have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us -- beginning with the baptism of John until the day that He was taken up from us -- one of these must become a witness with us of His resurrection.” So the only candidates were apparently those who had accompanied the apostles from the beginning. Luke has already indicated that there were others gathered with the eleven when Jesus appeared, so it’s quite possible, even probable, that Matthais was one of those present at that appearance on the first evening. Of course, John reports that Thomas was NOT present for that first appearance, but that eight days later Jesus appeared to them again when all of the disciples were present.

Then to more than 500

Paul makes a remarkable report that Jesus also appeared to a group of more than five hundred people at one time. He also adds the note “most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep.” This obviously was not part of the original creed which Paul had received, but was added by him when he wrote the Corinthians. Skeptics will argue that this appearance must be fictitious, because there is no record of such an appearance in the Gospels. Some suggest that the appearance in Matthew 28 on the mountain in Galilee may have been this event, although Matthew only mentions the eleven. It’s conceivable that Matthew just omitted reference to a large crowd besides the disciples, although arguments from silence make for poor evidence. But the skeptic’s argument is itself an argument from silence: the Gospels do not specifically mention such an appearance, so there must not have been one. Of course, even when multiple accounts mention the same appearance (such as the one to Peter and to the Twelve), the skeptic says those ones didn’t happen, either for some other reason!

What is remarkable about the five hundred is Paul’s statement that most of these eyewitnesses are still alive. For one thing, it indicates that he must have known who these people were and had some sort of up-to-date information on their whereabouts in order to make such a claim. After all, he was writing to the Corinthians some 20 years after the events in question. How could he claim that most of these eyewitnesses were alive without having some reliable source of information on them? And of course it also raises the question of why he would add this to his letter. He’s clearly using this list as evidential support for the claim that Jesus had really risen from the dead. The information could be verified by his readers, and Paul is staking not only his own apostolic authority on the veracity of his claims, but also the entire truth of the Gospel message itself, a message which he had risked his life to proclaim and eventually gave his life for it. Would he have made a claim like this if such an event had not been reported by eyewitnesses? And again, since the event itself appears to have been part of the early creed and was thus in circulation within 2-3 years after Jesus’ death, how could such a story have originated? Skeptical theories such as hallucinations absolutely won’t work. For more than 500 people to have a hallucination of the same person at the same time would be at least as great a miracle as the Resurrection itself.

Then He Appeared to James

This James is not the same James as the member of the original apostles by that name, the son of Zebedee and the brother of John. Paul is referring here to James, the brother of Jesus (Mark 6:3) who became a leader in the early church (Gal. 1:19) and wrote the book of James. This is in itself a remarkable fact. The portrait of Jesus’ siblings in John’s Gospel is that they did not believe in him and may in fact have been somewhat embarrassed by him. How is it, then, that one of Jesus’ brothers not only became one of his followers after his death but a leader in the early church? According to this early church creed, it was because Jesus himself appeared to James after his resurrection. Paul himself met personally with James to confirm this story. So there can be no doubt that James, the brother of Jesus, reported having seen his older brother after he had risen.

Then to All the Apostles

The penultimate appearance on Paul’s list is to “all the apostles,” apparently meaning a different group than the Twelve. The word “apostle” means one who is sent or commissioned and is used in the New Testament to refer to individuals other than the Twelve. A.T. Robertson believes this final appearance to be the one narrated in Acts 1 at Jesus’ ascension. While this is a plausible explanation, we don’t have enough information to be certain.

The list of eyewitnesses that Paul gives here is impressive. He says that all of these people claimed to have seen Jesus after his resurrection. As we have already learned, this creed was almost certainly in circulation among the churches within 2-3 years of Jesus’ crucifixion. Is it possible that these stories had developed as legends in such a short period of time? That’s out of the question. Legends take far longer than that to develop. As A.N. Sherwin-White notes, even two full generations is not sufficient to wipe out a core of historical facts. Besides that, Paul himself met with at least some of these eyewitnesses personally, and was also able to make the claim that most of the 500 were still alive at the time of the writing of his letter to the Corinthians 20 years after the crucifixion. They weren’t legends.

Could the reports have been mistaken in some way? Did people simply think they had seen Jesus but they actually didn’t? Natural explanations involving things like hallucinations are just not plausible. Hallucinations are subject-dependent, so it’s not possible for two people to have identical hallucinations at the same time, let alone 500 people! Even taking just the testimony of the apostles, it’s impossible that they could have all been deceived into thinking that they had seen Jesus when in fact they had not.

It’s also inconceivable that they could have fabricated the story. What would have been their motive? To achieve fame and glory? If that was there motive, they would have had plenty of opportunity to recant after it became clear that their “reward” for their deception was going to be persecution, imprisonment, and martyrdom. But tradition records that all of the apostles except for John were martyred for their faith without ever recanting of their testimony. Skeptics have challenged how good the evidence is for the martyrdom of all of the apostles. The accounts for some of the apostles are admittedly sketchy, but there are good early traditions for many of them, including James the brother of John who was put to death by Herod in Acts 12:2, Peter, and Paul among several others. As Tim and Lydia McGrew point out, even the fact that the apostles had seen others of their number put to death would have been enough to give strong motive to recant on their testimony. So how strong is this eyewitness testimony? Strong enough for the eyewitnesses themselves to have risked, and in many cases given their lives for it, to deliver their message to future generations.

Resurrection Faith (part two)

that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures

Paul begins here to lay out what exactly it was that was of “first importance.” Three historical events are given here: that Christ died, was buried, and was raised on the third day. Paul also uses the expression “according to the Scriptures” twice. Finally, he states that Jesus died “for our sins.” N.T. Wright points out that Paul probably doesn’t have any specific proof-texts in mind, but the Scriptural revelation as a whole. The themes of redemption and atonement are, of course, prominent themes in the Old Testament. Jesus’ death is shown in the New Testament as being prefigured in the Passover, and in the Old Testament sacrificial system. Paul may have meant that Jesus’ Resurrection was prefigured in the Scriptures (Jesus himself referred to it as the “sign of the prophet Jonah”), or perhaps even that the Resurrection on the third day was prefigured. Some have seen this in Hosea 6:1-2: “Come, let us return to the LORD. For He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bandage us. He will revive us after two days; He will raise us up on the third day, that we may live before Him.” Some messianic passages in the Old Testament were originally predicated of the nation of Judah. This is the clearest passage in the OT that looks like a resurrection on the third day.

Christ Died For Our Sins

The death of Jesus by crucifixion is, of course, recorded in all four Gospels. Some critics have alleged that Jesus didn’t actually die on the cross, that he just fainted and then later revived. This is sometimes known as the “swoon” theory, and is an attempt to explain how the disciples came to believe that Jesus was alive after his death (or apparent death as the theory goes). However, this idea is utterly implausible for several reasons. First, Roman centurions were very experienced in executing people, and knew how to tell when someone was dead. We have testimony from John’s Gospel that indicates that the soldiers took Jesus to be dead. In order to hasten death for the two criminals executed beside Jesus, the soldiers broke their legs with a heavy mallet. This would result in death in short order, since crucifixion victims must push up on their legs in order to take a breath. Lacking the ability to do that, they would die of asphyxiation quite quickly. But when the soldiers came to Jesus, they saw that he was already dead and didn’t break his legs. Furthermore, John records that one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear to double-check that he was dead.

According to John, “one of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe” (John 19:33-34). This is a remarkable statement. First, the fact that this is given not one but two attestations as to its veracity (“the man who saw it has given his testimony which is true and he knows it’s true”). This sounds almost like an oath in a court of law. Second, what the eyewitness saw was blood and water flowing out of Jesus’ side. Apparently this was unexpected and unusual which is why he commented on it and reinforced the comment with an oath as to its veracity. But it’s also consistent with the mode of death. According to Dr. Alexander Metherell (M.D.), “Even before he died . . . the hypovolemic shock would have caused a sustained rapid heart rate that would have contributed to heart failure, resulting in the collection of fluid in the membrane around the heart, called a pericardial effusion, as well as around the lungs, which is called a pleural effusion.” This unexpected event was noteworthy to John. It’s consistent with Jesus’ medical condition at the time of his death. It also proves that he was, in fact, dead.

He Was Buried

All four of the Gospels record the burial of Jesus in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea who was a member of the Sandhedrin, the ruling council that condemned Jesus to death. Matthew and John both indicate that Joseph was a follower of Jesus, with John adding that he was a “closet disciple” for fear of the other Jews. It seems highly unlikely that this was a legend or an invention of the early Christians. There would have been no reason to invent a member of the council that condemned Jesus to come forward and to be the person who gave Jesus an honorable burial in his own family tomb. And while the Gospels include different details in the post-Resurrection narratives, all four include Joseph’s involvement in the burial. For these reasons the late Cambridge University NT scholar John A.T. Robinson said, “the honorable burial of Jesus is one of the earliest and best-attested facts that we have about the historical Jesus” (Strobel, 210).

Skeptics object that there is no other historical record of such an individual, and no clear identification of a city called Arimathea. However, there are many other references to Joseph in non-canonical literature. Some of it is clearly legendary, but the city of Ramah, which was the birthplace of the prophet Samuel, is called Armathaim in the Greek translation of the Old Testament (1 Sam. 2:2). This may well have been the city where Joseph was from. For the early Christians to have invented and named a specific individual from a specific group if that person did not exist would be a curious move, given that the information could be checked out.

He Was Raised on the Third Day

Some skeptics argue that Paul did not believe in a physical resurrection, but a spiritual one. Thus Paul doesn’t specifically mention the fact that the tomb was discovered empty as the Gospels indicate. These skeptics sometimes point to 1 Cor. 15:42-44 as evidence for this contention: “So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.”

Paul makes a number of contrasts between the present body and the resurrected body, including that the present body is “natural” while the resurrection body is “spiritual.” This is taken to mean “physical” and “ghost-like" by the skeptic. However, this is a mistake. Paul uses the exact same contrast with the exact same words (“natural” and “spiritual”) at the beginning of the letter. In 1 Cor. 2:14-15 Paul writes, “But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one.” When he speaks of the “natural” man and he who is “spiritual,” he doesn’t mean one with a physical body and one who is a ghost! Rather, he’s talking about the orientation of the person, whether towards the earthly (natural) realm or towards the heavenly (spiritual) realm. This skeptical theory is rather bizarre for another reason. Skeptics normally assert that the belief in the Resurrection was a process of accumulating myth. Yet according to the skeptics’ theory here, the earliest belief (in 1 Cor. 15) is more mythologized than the later versions which appear in the Gospels where Jesus is physically resurrected!

There is also the point that if Paul thought the Resurrection was spiritual and didn’t involved Jesus’ body coming back to life, what was significant about the third day? Why the delay? A spiritual resurrection wouldn’t require a waiting period of three days. Presumably Jesus would have gone to heaven spiritually immediately upon his death. But Paul says he was raised on the third day, the same day that the tomb was discovered empty by some of Jesus’ women followers according to all of the Gospel reports. This story is also a very unlikely invention, as women were not considered to be reliable witnesses in Jewish culture. In fact Paul’s list of appearances in 1 Cor. 15 fails to mention any of the appearances to the women reported in the Gospels. This can be explained in one of two ways. Either the story of the women was invented later and inserted into the Gospel accounts (highly unlikely), or the early church creed left out the appearances to the women in part due to the cultural stigma against having women as witnesses, and in part because creeds only record information which is deemed essential. This explanation makes much more sense of the evidence.