Bart Ehrman vs Mike Licona Debate the Resurrection

welcome along this Saturday afternoon to unbelievable with me Justin Briley the show that gets Christians and non-christians talking both here on a Saturday afternoon on premier Christian radio and online with the podcast premiere dot oqk slash unbelievable a real cracker of a show for you today we're looking at the resurrection well I'm really thrilled about the program that we're bringing to you today a special program for Easter on the resurrection and my guests today are Bart airman he's James a gray distinguished professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill but is a former Christian he abandoned his face though after among other things coming to doubt the reliability of Scripture he's written many best-selling books including misquoting Jesus he appeared a couple of years ago on the program in conversation on that particular subject his latest is called forged writing in the name of God we'll find out a bit about that book in a moment time Michael okona is our Christian guest today he's apologetics coordinator at the North American Mission Board and research professor of New Testament at southern evangelical seminary he's a world expert on evidence for the resurrection his latest book is the resurrection of Jesus a new historiographical approach what are they talking about on today's program well because it's Easter time we're asking is there good biblical evidence for the resurrection that's the subject of our program today do hope you enjoy it as much as I'm going to well gentlemen thank you both for being with me on the program today it's a it's a great pleasure to have you in and let's start with you but thank you for joining me in the studio today at the time of recording you are just over here to do a lecture or two and a little bit of research as well last time you came on you were talking about a best-selling book you wrote called misquoting Jesus in conversation with Peter J Williams I'll put of course the the link to that program with the podcast of this one um you're back with another book this year forged writing in the name of God tell us quickly what what that's about well first of all thank you for for having me on the program so the the the new book is about how a number of early Christians wrote books claiming to be people they weren't and so sometimes somebody would write a letter and claim to be the Apostle Paul even though it wasn't or would claim to be Peter or somebody would write a gospel claiming to be Peter or Thomas or Philip and so the book is about a forgery in early Christianity which I argue was seen as a deceitful practice in the ancient world people considered it to be a form of lying and it was not it was not widely accepted in the in the ancient Roman Empire well it would be fascinating maybe down the line to get you back on at some point to have a discussion with someone about that book but that's not the topic we're talking about today we're talking about the resurrection before we bring Mike in I guess at one point you believed in the resurrection didn't you BA oh absolutely I was a very strong conservative evangelical Christian going to the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and I took courses on apologetics where we learned how to argue for the resurrection historically and I I spend a number of years trying to prove to people that in fact Jesus had been raised from the dead and what in the end dissuaded you from that view well there are a number of things for I I was the strong evangelical for a long time and in part my biblical scholarship showed me that my earlier views that the Bible was without mistake was wrong that in fact there are mistakes in the Bible and there are mistakes in the resurrection narratives there are contradictions between the different accounts about how Jesus was raised from the dead this eventually led me to become a more liberal Christian who didn't hold to the inerrancy of the Bible what ended up leading me to be a non-christian all together was unrelated to that it really had to do with the problem of suffering and how to explain why there can be so much pain and misery in the world if there's a god who's in control of it and I came to a point where I simply didn't believe that there was a God who was active in the world and that necessarily had implications for beliefs from the resurrection because of course there there can't be a miraculous resurrection of Jesus if there's nobody who's performing miracles and so I don't I don't believe that that God is active in the world in such a ways we allow for something like the resurrection of Jesus mmm I mean I mean that's interesting and I'm we'll get to it later on as to what kind of as it were presuppositions we bring with us to the historical study of the Bible and and what kind of evidence and conclusions that allows us to draw but we're going to be doing that with the help today of Mike Leake owner who is as I said apologetics coordinator at the North American Mission Board and a research professor of New Testament at southern evangelical seminary he's joining us today though by a radio link from Atlanta Georgia courtesy of the kind people at talk 9:20 a.m. WG k a and he's joining us by a fabulous quality radio link so a warm welcome to you Mike well thank you Justin and thank you for having me on as well it's I'm so pleased to have you on I've long wanted to have you on Mike and pleased that you're able to do this with with Bart here Mike and we heard a little bit of Bart's story there tell us something of yours and because you've you've been through as it were your own sort of crisis of faith in some ways today though you preach right teach on the resurrection but tell us what happened in your story well you know we all have our idiosyncrasies and one of mine is that I'm a second guesser I second-guess everything and I went to a Christian University I was brought up in a Christian family so I was a strong Evan Jellicle Christian and I went to graduate school because I wanted to specialize in the learning of Koine Greek which is the Greek of the New Testament and in my last semester there I just started to question my faith from I have my doubts how do I know that Christianity is true it's the only thing I'd looked at I believe I've got this relationship with God but then I thought you know Mormons think that as well so do people of other religious beliefs could it be that the reason that I believe this is because this is the way it was raised up of course that doesn't mean it's wrong I could believe for all the wrong reasons and what I believe is still right but it did in introduce a degree a significant degree of doubt and so I started to look into the evidence for Christianity and for other world religions not all of them but Buddhism Hinduism Islam atheism and became reconvince that Christianity was true I decided to go for a PhD and I wanted to approach the rose direction of Jesus from a different approach to prove it from a different approach but as I started to study the massive literature written by professional historians outside the community of biblical scholars it became abundantly clear in those writings that every historian is biased in many different ways and so and that there are no such things as an objective historian at least completely objective and so I realized that this became a serious problem for me because I had my own biases and so this led me into greater strife in my own life and and anguishing over my own doubts and wrestling through my own biases and so I went on a very involved six-year study one that did resolve in not only my doctoral dissertation that the new book out the resurrection of Jesus and in there I just tried my best to shelve my bias so nobody can do it completely I was not able to do it completely and then I would you know bump off these different ideas that I was having and and researching I would purposely get involved in public debate and tried to debate some of the brightest minds out there that was one of the reasons I wanted to debate Bardem and I've really respect him and you know to see if these ideas would hold up to strong critical scrutiny and after this time I'm more convinced than ever that Jesus rose from the dead well it's an fascinating stuff and we'll obviously be providing links to both your websites gentlemen and from the podcast of this program if you want to visit them though bart d herman comm is the place to go for Bart's resources and Risen Jesus calm is the place for Mike Leake owner now both of you gentlemen as you've just referenced there Mike have met before not usually via a transatlantic radio link rather face to face but but in a sense you've debated this very subject before in the form of I think the last debate you had at southern evangelical seminary asked can we prove by history if you like the resurrection rather than is it were just repeating that debate today I'd like us to maybe explore some of the aspects of from the Bible what counts as good biblical evidence for the resurrection and whether we can even talk about evidence for something which at its core is a a miracle and whether we can talk about that is as it were in in a historical sense which which does take us into the ground that you discussed previously but as we do that I'm sure we're going to uncover all kinds of interesting areas as we chat through the issues today we're looking at today the question is there good biblical evidence for the resurrection here on unbelievable the show that aims to get you thinking with me just in Briley with justin brierley [Music] well gentlemen let's get into today's topic then and Mike perhaps will turn first of all to the book you've written the resurrection of Jesus a new historiographical approach does this kind of bring into what I've heard you talk about before as it were the minimal facts approach to proving if you like that the resurrection is a reasonable way of sort of if you like making the case for the various elements that we find in history about the resurrection well anyone who studies the past we we begin to realize that there are certain events that are better attested than others that's just the way the game works and so what we call minimal facts or historical bedrock are those facts that are so strongly evidenced that they are virtually beyond dispute and that indeed virtually a virtual universal consensus of scholars who specialized in the subject regard them as historical facts so whether one's an agnostic like Bart or an atheist or a Jew or a liberal conservative Christian they would all be persuaded that these things are facts they're called historical bedrock because any reconstruction of the past is going to have to be founded upon or built upon these virtually undisputable facts when we come to these then regarding the fate of Jesus the relevant historical bedrock would be things such as Jesus death by crucifixion that secondly shortly after his death a number of his followers had experiences that they were convinced were appearances of the Risen Jesus who appeared to them personally and that these experiences occurred in both the individual and in group settings and number three that there was a an enemy of the church named Paul who likewise had an experience that he was convinced was an appearance of the Risen Jesus to him and this radically transformed his life from you know a persecutor of the church to one of its most able defenders again most almost everyone who studies the subject agrees on these three facts so that's what we would refer to as the historical bed rakh the real question that that remains then is what do you do with these facts and that leads to method hmm and and as you say as far as you're concerned these three facts are uncontroversial in terms of the majority of scholars accept them and and and so in that sense are they they in some way free from bias or is is that the danger of bias when you come to how you interpret those facts I suppose well there's always going to be bias I'm going to be biased in in them and insofar as I want to use them to show that Jesus rose from the dead others are going to be biased and want to try to explain them in another way such as the appearances as hallucinations because they don't want the resurrection to happen so we're all kind of biased in different ways it's just when you have a heterogeneous consensus of scholars that is people of all different worldview backgrounds who agree on these facts even though you have the biases they're still arriving at these facts so it's like Barton said a moment ago and and he's an agnostic you know he had problem with the biblical narratives because of contradictions he said that in the resurrection erred as well that becomes irrelevant when we're talking about these three facts because even he would acknowledge the three things that I mentioned as virtually 100% of all scholars would acknowledge them go ahead Bob do you agree with those three facts well yeah it's very interesting and I you know I think Mike's on to something here there are these three things I think on the whole scholars would agree with them the one thing there might be disagreement on is his second category of visions that that we have solid evidence for their being visions not only to individuals but also to groups I'm not sure that every historian would agree with that but the thing I want to say about these three things is that the it sounds like he's mike is building a case that he's got three indisputable facts that he's going to build on in order to lead to a view the resurrection but in fact these three facts aren't really three facts related to the resurrection when you look at the the list of three there's only one thing that relates to the resurrection the fact that Jesus died is here relevant to the question the resurrection only to the extent that of course to be raised he would have had to die but everybody dies and so it isn't really germane to the question of whether he was raised so there can't there's no evidence no evidentiary value to saying Jesus died if you what you want to know is whether he was raised and the second and third points are not two separate points they're the same point which is that people after Jesus death claimed that they saw him alive afterwards Paul was one of those people so my point is is that that that you should that somebody shouldn't think well we have these three indisputable facts and therefore we're gonna build a case that's based not just on one thing but on three things because in fact we don't have three things we have one thing I mean going going to the whether Jesus died is relevant to the resurrection I mean to some if you if Mike was engaging with a Muslim apologist it may be relevant because someone like Shabbir Ali claims that Jesus didn't die on the cross he merely swooned and therefore any account of him resurrecting is actually just him kind of you know being resuscitated in some way I mean is it not important to establish that Jesus really did die in order for because that then says whatever did happen if there was a resurrection it involved coming back to life not coming out of it yes no that's no that's a good point but but Mike's point is not that he died on the cross his point was that he died mmm and so everybody who I think every I think every historian agrees that if Jesus lived he also died and so if that's the point then there was no evidentiary value to it if the point is that he died on the cross then that's not an indisputable fact because there are historians who who disputed it Mike what do you make about kind of whittling down your points here to say there's only really one pertinent point well first I would agree with you Justin that it the death is important because just as you said with Shabbir Ali and Muslims who deny Jesus death because of what the Quran says but it also answers others with the age-old apparent death theory the swoon theory some would call it that Jesus survived his crucifixion so that's why I included in there you don't have a resurrection of course without death but even more important historians don't just take and isolate a single fact when we consider hypotheses and what occurred in the past we gather as much data as possible and we look at you know the relevant historical bedrock is what I would call it here I mean there's other historical bedrock in terms of what we know about Jesus that he was a Jewish itinerant preacher who mainly preached around in Judea and he performed what he and his followers thought were miracles and exorcisms and he claimed to be god's eschatological agent chosen to usher and his kingdom that has special relationship with God virtually all historical Jesus scholars acknowledge that minimal kind of stuff but when I'm talking about the relevant historical bedrock you can't just focus on a couple of those things we want to focus has to account for all of the facts not just a couple of different things so that's all I'm saying here these are just trying to to have a springboard for the discussion and say okay well here are some things that virtually all scholars who study the subject a heterogeneous universal consensus of scholarship agree upon now let's try to find the best explanation for these things and when we do this using the criteria typically employed by professional historians the resurrection hypothesis wins and it wins big yeah I don't think it wins big but I want to insist that your first point is not that Jesus died your point is that Jesus died on the cross right and that's an important distinction that itself is no is not a piece of evidence about resurrection your other two points are a piece of evidence about resurrection namely the people saw him alive afterwards but you're making two points out of one point because my it's my case for the resurrection of Jesus but you're right Bart I agree with you technically speaking Jesus death is not evidence for his resurrection right and the other two points are one point so I really you've got one you've got one piece of evidence that you're going to start with which is that after Jesus died people claimed to see him alive afterwards well I'd also say it did happen in individual and in group settings I mean you do have the earliest the very early report we have in first Corinthians 15 gives us three post-resurrection appearances I'm sure you'd agree that this is oral tradition that can be traced back yea earliest no my point is simply that you're trying to list three things that all historians agree on and once you start talking about group appearances that's not something all historians agree on well I'd even even if you give me a couple of scholars who who have specialized in the subject who deny that that these Dolorosa didn't that he said damn Crossin says that the groups did not experience them I don't think that's the case I have half a dozen friends who will tell you this who are all New Testament scholars have they written I mean can we go to then the question of okay let's take some of these you know group experiences of Christ's resurrection that are described Mike just pinpoint a few verses that you believe you know support the case for the fact that people experienced something that you believe obviously was the risen Christ presumably Bart says if they assume it's anything it was some kind of a vision what what are these and why for you are they you know not controversial as far as there being reliable evidence that that people experienced visitations of the risen Christ well the text that most scholars appeal to today that is pretty much the the crux of this that the whole thing is 1st Corinthians 15 verses 3 through 8 and virtually all scholars who are commenting and writing on this and you they agree that this is pre Pauline tradition that Paul received from at a very early date from sources he deemed reliable most probably the Jerusalem apostles when did he receive it we can only speculate we really don't know when precisely he received this particular oral tradition but we know that he knew Jesus disciples the Jerusalem apostles he met with them on several occasions he was traveling with other Jerusalem leadership and so he probably received him from them and in here this oral tradition says not talks not only about the death and burial resurrection but of Jesus but also his resurrection and a number of post-resurrection appearances to Peter to James to whom Paul had met with on at least two occasions that we know of T'Pau himself another post-resurrection appearance to an individual there were three group appearances such as to the twelve to the more than 500 at one time and to all the apostles so this is very early tradition and say any eyewitness in that sense for those who say well any these claims are just legendary you know built up over time you're saying no this stuff is too early it could easily have been contradicted there's this for you is is good evidence because it's so close to the events that they're being claimed that that these things really did happen I don't think that necessarily rules out legend I mean Lucian in the passing of peregrinus talks about how legend developed just within a few moments after the guys suicide so and and he started the legend himself he said that is Lucien did so it can't start quickly but I think you're right they're just an insane you know the eyewitnesses are alive that Paul is repeating what he heard from them this isn't like a game of telephone this is Paul getting it directly from the eyewitnesses and of which he was one and and passing along in this formalized creedal formula are you happy to grant then but that this was it this is where is a reliable bit of evidence for the fact that people experience some kind of resurrection experience I I think it's right that that some of Jesus followers can be shown to have thought that Jesus was raised from the dead within a few years after his death and that they claimed that they saw some and his best Corinthians 15 a case in point well I wouldn't quite go as far as mike does on first Corinthians 15 because then he doesn't actually say that you know that he learned this from Peter or anything like that he he says that he received it and so you know it's plausible that that this is an account that he heard from the Jerusalem apostles although he doesn't he doesn't actually come out and say that so he's riding first Corinthians probably about 25 years after the fact and so it's not as if we have somebody who's riding two weeks after Jesus died saying that five hundred people saw him last week we don't have that what we have is somebody riding 25 years later saying that that he has heard this that these people saw him and for you that introduces an element of sort of you know things change in 25 years there is an accretion of you know possible I think there is that but I mean Mike is absolutely right you don't need a long time for legends to crop up you need no time at all as anybody knows who has heard an account of something that happened yesterday and the account turned out to be wrong you know these things take almost no time at all all I'm saying is that from is if you're just looking at from a strictly historical point of view the way Mike is what we have is somebody writing 25 years later saying that he's heard these things and that other people have passed this along to him and it's not implausible that some of the people who passed these along to him were apostles were some of the disciples of Jesus we're gonna take a quick break and we'll come straight back into this with Mike and where he takes this then from first Corinthians 15 in these early accounts of resurrection appearances gentlemen let's continue where we left off we were talking about first Corinthians 15 which as you mentioned Mike written by Paul is as it were one of the earliest accounts of resurrection appearances in terms of when it was actually written down will move maybe on to the Gospel accounts it in a little while but but you wanted to keep talking about this Mike you heard what Bart had to say there at the end of that last section why why for you do do we have to kind of take this seriously as it were as an evidence for the resurrection well we have to keep in mind that most people in antiquity could not read or write probably estimates I've heard are around 10% could read and 3 to 5% could read and write so a lot that was learned in antiquity was learned through oral tradition people had phenomenal memories back then because they trained them they didn't have all the written kind of materials and iPads and everything like we have today so they worked on their memory oral traditions Creed's sermon summaries or speeches even entire volumes like the Homeric epics could be memorized in and and performed so people did a lot with their memory the Pharisees were really good at this and they had tradition when we come to the New Testament and we read Paul he puts an emphasis on tradition to a key to the tradition you receive from us or if someone stops following the tradition that we handed along to you you're not even to associate with such a person so there was a big emphasis on this so the question would be is where did Paul receive this this tradition from it would seem given rabbinic sources and where they talked about how the tradition comes down from Jerusalem the fact that the Jerusalem church was the the capital for Christianity at that point would strongly suggest that the traditions going to come from Jerusalem the question that then would remain as well did Paul just say these things to give himself Authority or was he passing along actual tradition was Paul willing to corrupt the Jesus tradition and we can test them on this because in first Corinthians 7 he's talking about marriage and at one point we see where he makes his odd statement after saying hey you can't get divorced and unless your spouse cheats on you he's answering a question well what if my spouse is a non-believer and then he says well not the Lord but I and he's not saying necessarily okay well this isn't the red letter edition of the Bible that you're reading here he's just saying hey listen there was some Jesus tradition Jesus really didn't deal on this he didn't deal with a number of issues that have now come up in the church such as circumcision eating meat sacrificed to idols non-believers hey there was no church then so there wasn't a matter of being married to a non-believer and he says okay here here's the deal in Marian and divorce and a non-believer and it gives the teaching and then he says this is my command pass it along in the churches important thing to recognize is that here Paul had a perfect opportunity to invent some teachings about the manner imparted on the lips of Jesus to make them authoritative but he refused to do that he carefully distinguished the Jesus tradition from his own apostolic ruling which was equally binding by the way it seemed to him so when we are hearing this Jesus tradition we can be entirely confident that we're hearing the voice of the Jerusalem apostles and this Jesus tradition is what precisely we have in 1st Corinthians 15 3 through 7 hmm and obviously a lot has been made in modern biblical studies but about whether Paul as it were kind of reinvented Christianity in some way in his own image to some extent I mean do you accept what Mike has to say here though that we can trust that that Paul isn't kind of turning it into something that it wasn't originally when it comes to the resurrection well I think the I think the important Mike make some several important points one of which is that there were not there were not written documents floating around for the most part about what had happened and that most of it's being passed along orally in a society where where most people cannot read or write I think where we disagree is on whether oral societies passed along things traditions reliably or not in point of fact cultural anthropologists who have actually studied oral cultures tell us that things get changed radically in oral societies and that that even cultures that pride themselves on memory never pass along oral traditions verbatim that what happens in oral cultures is that it's simply assumed that whenever you pass along a tradition you modify it for whatever context you're telling it in and so things get changed by their very nature and they're supposed to change by their very nature what these anthropologists have told us is that the idea that something should be passed along without changing it is a phenomenon found only in written cultures and so people who live in written cultures who know that you can pass along things unchanged by writing them down have argued without any basis that in fact this also have in oral societies but in fact it doesn't happen in oral societies things always get changed and we know that the traditions about Jesus were constantly being changed all you have to do is to take two take the same story in any two Gospels and compare the stories with one another take the resurrection narratives somebody is changing the stories in probably almost certainly at the oral level and certainly as well in the written level well we did want to come to the Gospels themselves but but what what do you make of Bart's claims about oral traditions did involve change mom oh I agree to an extent with that you know certainly you could take and and modify and adapt to the particular context we see Luke doing that on a number of occasions you know some things and we see John doing it you know there is let narrative elasticity in there there's no question about that when we see this in the Gospels the question is does that really apply to the oral tradition itself as it's being passed along as oral tradition and I would say he would not have the same kind of evidence for that we do studies that have been done by I agree with Bart on the oral tradition as it's done and there are questions about which one is more reliable there's some that look at African tribes today and how they're passing along oral tradition and then there are others that go back to the rabbinic tradition which was far more careful on passing along word for word than say African tradition is today which one goes back to the New Testament times we really can't say for certain obviously I would prefer to think that it was the rabbinic mode but in all honesty I can't choose between the two because you know the African tribes of today don't exactly reflect first century second temple Judaism and second century rabbinic Judaism doesn't represent first century so it's hard to say but the amount of elasticity elasticity with in the oral tradition I think was much less than it was when it came to writing narratives that used that so you're confident that first Corinthians 15 it doesn't sort of it isn't kind of bear too much if you like wait when it comes to that possible changes in in oral tradition you feel this this was something which was established and was was passed along faithfully in that sense well sure and you know remember who Paul is getting information from he according to Galatians 1 and Galatians 2 a letter that virtually all scholars regard as one of Paul's authentic letters he talks about going up twice to Jerusalem and meeting with the Apostles Galatians 2 he's running everything past them to make sure he hasn't been working in vain all these years he's running the very message he's been preaching past them Galatians chapter 1 he uses the term history side to meet with Peter meaning he's getting histories doing an investigation about the past about Jesus okay so I think there's really good evidence here that Paul's got reliable tradition yeah let me just give you a piece of evidence that in fact things got changed fairly radically at the oral level most scholars agree that Matthew Mark and Luke are so similar to each other because they have common sources written and oral and that John John may have access to what the other three say but he may also have been writing independently it's story Seton certainly seemed to to be independent of Matthew Mark and Luke if Mark for example got his stories from the oral tradition and John got his stories from the oral tradition all you have to do is compare what mark says about Jesus with what John says about Jesus to see if the oral choral tradition is perfectly consistent and not changing stories or not and the reality is Mark is very different from John in just about every aspect of his portrayal of Jesus and why would that be it's not just because mark and John had different personalities it's because they heard different stories as the story circulated in different ways through the oral traditions down to the communities that then later recorded them well I agree that again they there are differences within the narratives there's no question about that there they're evident but there is a difference we're talking about did the oral tradition itself change I'm contending that that remained intact I am acknowledging narrative elasticity but that doesn't mean that the oral tradition changed yes but my point is that John and Mark both got their stories from the oral tradition and that the changes are it's not just a matter of stretching a little bit here or there the changes are enormous in the Gospel of John Jesus goes around proclaiming that he is divine I and the father are one before Abraham was I am I am the way the truth and the life no one comes to the Father but by me Marc doesn't have any of these sayings I mean is it that Mark didn't think the this would be important to point out that Jesus called himself divine it would certainly be the most important thing so why don't why doesn't Mark have you because he hadn't heard these things well I think that John I think that John doesn't do some he adapts here he does what like F F Bruce claimed he said that what Shakespeare did to Plutarch's life of Brutus that's what John has done to with the Jesus tradition and I think he makes it more dynamic he paraphrases but the claims for Jesus being divine are very evident in mark especially when we consider him within the second temple Judaism his claims to be the apocalyptic son of man I think are are very strong everywhere you see it Jesus is claiming to be the apocalyptic son of man and this is an every layer of the gospel tradition it's in metates and markets and q it's in Emmet's and el it's in john it's in thomas and it's in multiple literary forms it's in parabolic apocalyptic didactic forms this is the strongest kind of multiple attestation historian can look for and this apocalyptic son of man figure is worshipped he served as only God has served and he's not called that in the Gospel of John my point is is that this is the apocalyptic son of man there's no apocalypse and in a sense like when he know you said the apocalyptic son of the apocalyptic son of man you don't have apocalyptic son of man talking John at all oh you have it it's very clear in John a I disagree for example when you've got the man who was born blind and then he is healed and kicked out of the temple later on and then Jesus sees him and he says to the guy do you believe in the Son of Man and he says well who is he Lord that I may believe in him and Jesus said I'm the one talking to you he wears the apocalypticism he said Lord I believe and he worshiped him where's the versus him because Mike where is the apocalypticism okay he worships him and that's something that is according to 4th Ezra and and first Enoch and similitudes the worship goes to the son of man it's in Daniel 7:13 and 14 were all nations peoples and languages serve Him litter oh the word that's used always to mean a service that's given to God that's not just the only passage I mean it's it's you've got word Jesus says all the father does not judge but the father gives all judgment to the son so that they may honor the son even as they honor the father well if Jesus is going to be the one judging and the father gives the judgment to the son this is precisely which talked about the apocalyptic son of man and in the similitudes of Enoch and forth Ezra so wait yeah he doesn't come out and say the term apocalyptic son of man but he says a pocket he says son of man and he does he talks about him in the sense of the apocalyptic son of man he's doing those things he's judging and he's being worshipped I'd like us to get back into the the question of the actual resurrection narratives in the Gospels [Music] unbelievable with justin Brierley gents i do want us before we have to finish up the second half of the program to talk about the resurrection accounts I mean take for instance mark and Matthew and Luke and obviously there are differences between them but you've could I'm sure outline ten or more differences in in the the the accounts of both use his death and his resurrection and of course you have things like the fact that it's commonly acknowledged that the end of Mark's Gospel where you get more detail on the resurrection as it were after the women have fled the empty tomb is a later edition but for you does this kind of impair the evidential aspect of these documents for evidence well yeah this isn't the biggest argument against Jesus haven't been raised from the dead but one always does have to look at what kind of witnesses you have and when you look at the Gospels of the New Testament it's striking just how many differences there are in there in their accounts of the resurrection I I have my students do an exercise my undergraduates I I have them simply do a careful study of what Matthew Mark Luke and John all say about what happened when on the morning of the Resurrection the the alleged resurrection and and to compare their notes and they're struck by just how different they are who actually goes to the tomb that morning is it Mary Magdalene by herself or with other women if with other women how many other women what are they named it depends which gospel you read was the stone rolled away from the tomb one before they got there or after they got there depends which gospel you read what did they see there did they see a man there did they see two men there did they see an angel there depends which gospel you read do they are they told to go to get to tell the disciples to go to Galilee where Jesus will meet them or are they told to tell the disciples what Jesus had said to them while he was in Galilee depends which gospel you read do they tell anyone Mark's Gospel says they didn't tell anyone Matthew says they went and told the disciples well which is it depends which gospel you read did the disciples go to Galilee or not in Matthew's Gospel Jesus disciples go to Galilee they see him there he gives the final Commission they're in Luke's Gospel they never leave Jerusalem they're told to stay in the city they stay in the city until the day of Pentecost they never go to Galilee at all so I mean up and down the line when you look at these accounts there are there are massive differences precisely the kind of differences that would make any any historian of any other account simply scratch his head and throw up his hands and say we have a problem here because there are so many contradictory accounts Mike what would you say well a lot of these can be understood when we in light of seeing the Gospels as ancient biography and the narrative type of elasticity the Liberty literary liberties that could be taken for example Bart mentioned about the appearances did they happen in Galilee or was everything in Jerusalem like Luke says and they never went to Galilee I think Luke is certainly using time compression here Luke is Luke is certainly aware that Jesus appeared to them more than just on Easter it's everything happens on Easterns is gospel but in a sequel in Acts chapter 1 he says that Jesus appeared to them over a period of 40 days before ascending so he knows these things and time compression happens all throughout the Gospels we see it happening the healing of Jairus daughter we see it happening and the cursing of the fig tree it's in all the Gospels do it and it's a common of device in the ancient writings as we read through the ancient biographies there are idioms involved so it wasn't just Mary that went to the tomb yes John just lists Mary in chapter 20 verse 1 where it says Mary got up early in the morning and went to the tomb but look at the next verse she came back in and ran and told Peter and the Beloved Disciple they have taken the Lord and we don't know where they've laid him and Luke does the same thing later on when it says that Peter got up and ran to the tomb when the women told them and then 12 verses later they're the Emmaus disciples saying yeah and then some of our own got up and ran to the well wait a minute Luke just said it was just be it well no he didn't say just Peter he only listed Peters so this was an idiom that they did back then we may not do it today but it doesn't matter what we do today I've had and what they did back then when it comes to the women not telling anyone in marquel that's really they must have told someone if he wrote it down at some point it doesn't mean they never told anyone it's just they maybe didn't immediately tell anyone who's is that kind of the way you take that kind of yeah because if you look at the same grammatical structure and words they're used in mark 144 where Jesus tells the man whom he had healed is leprosy go now and say nothing to no one but show yourself to the high priest in other words he's saying hey don't stop along the way in your excitement and show how you're healed just go straight and and you can show yourself and explain everything when you get to your point of destination and I would also add a lot of folks a growing number of very significant scholars now hold that marks the ending of Mark's Gospel that we don't have it that either it was lost or mark just never completed it but it seems odd that it would end at mark 16 8 yeah so I'd like to respond to some of that I think that the idea of time compression is an interesting one but it doesn't really work with the Gospel of Luke Luke says that Jesus appears to the disciples in Jerusalem and tells them not to leave the city until they receive the power from on high he's referring to the day of Pentecost 50 days later and in the book of Acts he does spend 40 days with them doing miracles but they don't leave the city and they don't leave the city until after the day of Pentecost and that's after Jesus ascends to heaven so in fact they don't go to Galilee I think the problem is that in order to make these accounts consistent with one another you have to rewrite what they say so that if a gospel says the women didn't tell anybody you say well they actually did tell somebody if the Gospels say they didn't leave Jerusalem you have to say well they really did go to Galilee and they did leave Jerusalem so what you end up doing is you take the four Gospels and you try and reconcile their differences by rewriting what each of the what each of them actually had to say I think that's perfectly fine if that's how you want to treat the Gospels which means that you you don't pay attention to what each one has to say you write your own gospel by combining the four but you need to realize that when you're doing that you're writing your own gospel and you're not paying attention to what each of these individual Gospels has to say for themselves certainly I would I would grant the narrative elasticity that we've been talking about here I don't think that there's the kind of precision that they were given to these kind of precise details as we would want today so yeah I grant those I just don't see that those are necessarily you know problematic you know I mean to the court details I mean when it comes to the you know what these stories will obviously share in common is the belief that Jesus rose again but d-does does any of this as it were detail and Mike says it's its elasticity there are ways of looking at it which you don't have to see a contradiction necessarily but but but you believe obviously there are obvious differences between the stories does it kind of as an ultimate level kind of take away from their credibility as evidences for this this story of the resurrection well the bottom line I think is one we haven't even talked about which is whether there can be such a thing as historical evidence for a miracle and I think the answer is a clear no and I think virtually all historians agree with me on that but but apart from that Michael wants to look at these as historical documents and wants to ask how reliable are they as historical documents so if that's the game you want to play you want to ask are these historically reliable documents then the first thing a historian looks at is evidence for reliability if you've got four documents that are contradictory at every point then then you say well they actually aren't all that reliable and so if the question is are these reliable witnesses the answer would have to be no the only point agree on every point the only peripherals well the one point they all agree on was that Jesus was raised from the dead but of course they agree on that these are written by Christians who are trying to convince people that Jesus is raised from the dead so of course they agree on that but the question is are they reliable historical you think I think it's big but I think it's irrelevant to the question you're asking about whether these are reliable historical sources okay so we all agree that Jesus died by crucifixion you with that you agree that afterward that a number of people and because we've had two debates and I know what you say in your books and what you said during the debates you you hold that these Christians early Christians had experiences in individual and in group settings that they believed were appearances of the Risen Jesus you hold to that I don't know that I don't know about the group settings I think there were probably individuals who said they saw Jesus alive afterwards so you're not certain or you hold that these things did not occur in group settings I don't know if they did or not okay so we have some facts here that there were these appearances some individuals you think Paul had one right I don't agree that there were appearances I agree that people claim they saw something afterwards okay so do you agree that they had experiences that they sincerely believed were other risen Jesus who had appeared to them well I wouldn't quite put it that way I mean what I think is that I think Jesus certainly died on the cross and I think afterwards some of his disciples I don't know how many one two three I don't know including later Paul claimed that they saw him alive afterwards okay I mean that goes against what the majority of scholars say at least in my studies on that but yeah but the majority of scholars are Christians who study this stuff and so of course disagree with that I I don't I don't think so Bert come on it really to the how many you remember we're both members of the Society of biblical additionally everybody there's a Christian I only think so yes I'm one of the few agnostics there I could count the agnostics on my right hand who are you thinking of who's not a Christian all right John Dominic Crossan does not believe God exists he does he call himself a Christian he does so and so does Elaine Pagels I'm not trying to judge these folks or anything sounds like you are Elaine Pagels is a faithful member of the Episcopal Church okay let me ask you a question though so why are they not written would Jesus or the Apostles recognize that definition of Christian if you denied the like cross and my view is that Jesus and the Apostles would not recognize an evangelical Christian as a Christian my view is that because Evan Jellicle Christianity is so far removed from anything Jesus ever preached well we can debate on that on a different time 75 do you really think that that if someone like Crossan who says he doesn't think God exists or like my friend Steve Patterson who isn't certain whether God exists and if he does he's nothing like the judeo-christian god he's not even certain of an afterlife Crossan doesn't believe in an afterlife they all deny look Mike you would agree that these people are unusual in the society biblical literature the vast majority of people in the society biblical literature are are Christians by your definition are evangelicals only let me clarify that you have to be an epigenetic we'll be okay we're gonna take a quick break here guys and we'll give you a chance to finish this up but I mean I think this has brought us into the area of you know whether you're your obviously your presuppositions and we might call them biases how they lead you to interpret and talk about the the data you have and that's obviously very different between the two of you but we're going to take a quick break we're talking about is there good biblical evidence for the resurrection back with my guests Bart Airmen and Mike Leake owner in just a moment for the conclusion of today's program you're listening to unbelievable on premier Christian radio and we're gonna conclude now is there good biblical evidence for the resurrection and don't forget you can find this online at premier dot org dot u K slash unbelievable Mike Laconia and Bart airmen have been joining me today but in the studio here in London Mike via radio connection from Atlanta Georgia and thanks again to Talk 9:20 a.m. WG ka who have provided us with a great quality feed from Atlanta Georgia Mike before as we're kind of starting to wrap up here I mean what we got - I feel at the end of that last section was that that Bart was was not kind of totally coming on board with the idea that the the resurrection appearances two groups and two individuals is something we can kind of nail down in the way that you say we can and and you you said Mike that well the majority of biblical scholars would say that that's you know uncontroversial Bart says yeah but they're Christians it says to me but Bart wonders if there's obviously a bias going on there that you're you're you're willing to look at the facts in a certain way if you've got a kind of Christian preconception and we had a little discussion about well whether they they really are Christian you know in in what that would obviously depend on our definition of Christian to some extent but but what I'm getting from you Mike is that most people don't have a kind of particular if you like bias that isn't necessarily the case that people are going to be very conservative if you like in their take but they still see this as not particularly a controversial claim to make when it comes to biblical scholarship yeah and I do want to clarify that one statement I made toward the end there I I do not believe that one needs to be an evangelical to be a Christian I do not hold that they have to be in heaven Jellicle to be a Christian I just wanted to clarify that sure in terms of the bias would that mean that since the majority of Jewish scholars believe that the Holocaust occurred that we should discount the Holocaust well of course not because the evidence is strong so even if a majority of scholars believe that Jesus rose from the dead I don't think that's the case but even if that is the case and that the majority of Christian scholars believe that Jesus rose from the dead and they argue such the issue isn't whether they believe because they're biased we're all biased in different ways the issue is are the arguments is the evidence is the methodology that's being used sound to show that Jesus rose from the dead yeah that's what it really comes down so let me respond to that it's a good point Mike but you're taking an incident incident the Holocaust that virtually everybody agrees on if you had a an event that only Jews believed for example suppose suppose it's not true but suppose that only Jews believe that Elijah was taken up into heaven by a chariot that he that that he never died and the only people who believed this were Jews wouldn't you wonder if the historical evidence was very good if the only people who believed this were Jews yeah yeah I have to you know that's where that's what you have on the resurrection the only believe I know but it doesn't my point is that if there's no bias involved why is it that only Christians believe it well I guess it's oh it's a game-changer in terms of one's worldview if you believe in the resurrection the next step is you should be a Christian and yeah I mean a sense of change that you do have stories of people who didn't believe in the resurrection came to believe in the resurrection well the natural next step was they became a Christian is it's not just a it's a correlation but it makes a lot of sense as far as it being a correlation it goes the other direction to a lot of people who were Christian stop believing in it because they don't see the historical evidence for it well in a sense that's that's your story you know that you'd in a sense you'd stopped believing in God that obviously discounted a miraculous event being you know you were happy up to that point well at a point at least an effort for this to be a historical resurrection my point is that it's not it's not unconnected to one's bias and you shouldn't pretend that the historical evidence can be looked at without a bias and I never have well so mounting a historical case easily isn't isn't your bias just as much a bias the problem is you believe in God and therefore the resurrection will never be a satisfaction my bias is just as much Mike the question has to do whether his history can be done on purely historiographical answer is absolutely not and I can answer then the question is if that's the case can miracle be a category that can be applied in historiographic research well if you can't do miracle because of bias then you can't do anything because there's always bias involved in any investigation yes but the but miracle is a special category because unlike the Holocaust it's it's invoking something outside of our natural experience to explain what happened in the past okay so the real issue then isn't bias it's because it's smoking invoking something outside of our experience it's well that's the problem with miracle I've moved from talking about bias to talking about the problem of miracle that miracle cannot be something that is encapsulated within historiographic method we simply don't have historiographical to deal with miracle even if miracles do happen this is what I thought before I was an agnostic by the way when I was a Christian I thought that you cannot apply historiographical happened I think what we do is we we look at the evidence and we let try to let the facts speak for themselves in a manner that's worldview independent in other words we don't presuppose God's existence we don't opera re exclude it we try to adopt the patient it just reminds me slightly of an argument we've had on here in a different field which is the intelligent design argument and and that there are meant there are certain scientists who are Christians who believe that the origin of life can only explained by divine means but there are others who say that's not allowed in science so your conclusion is invalid because you can't draw a divine conclusion in a scientific sphere you're saying the similar thing for history here you can't draw a divine conclusion in a historical setting but but but I suppose the question is why is that out of bounds well let me ask this let me ask this suppose we bracket the resurrection and just ask about miracle in general so Mike yuuna are both located in the United States where most historians research historians teach at major research universities and so can you think of any incidents incident instance in which secular or Christian historians teaching at major research universities in the United States agree on any event in the past that they would label a miracle no I can't right and it doesn't matter whether they're Christian or non-christian they don't invoke miracle because how would that part how would that be because you you would have to have pretty much a consensus of people who would acknowledge that God exists and we don't have that so I think you have some folks who would say well this is a really interesting thing it's an anomaly perhaps we don't know the cause but well can't think of a naturalistic explanation it'd be a matter of faith it's not a matter of history and that's where the resume our worldview no you have to have faith for it to be a miracle and so the resurrection is not subject to historiographical I think that would be the question I ask I don't know what you mean by rose from that it you mean raised from the dead and never died again yeah let's say that Jesus is certainly dead and then he's raised bodily from the dead and that he has headed to heaven well forget that part was he saying he's still alive today yes he's still alive today he was risen from the dead right and and you could show that he had been I mean let's suppose you have a decapitated person uh-huh and then you see them come back to life and they're walking again is that a miracle what do you mean by miracle there's a divine act is it I don't know what it is it's weird right is it beyond weird a natural is it a supernatural cause let's put it that way I don't know what it is it's it's I mean of course it never happens but I mean I've never seen it to come back to decapitate a person but you're asking if I saw a decapitated person have his head reattached and and he lived then for another two thousand years what would I call that mmm-hmm I would call it very very strange let's put it this way if the historical evidence is good enough to show that Jesus rose from the dead we'll just not call it a miracle we'll just say well we don't know how he was raised we don't know the nature of this body in which he was young but all you're showing is that people claimed they saw him alive afterwards I think the evidence is there to show that not only did they claim it they actually believed it and the best explanation for that is that he actually rose from the dead you want to leave the cause of the resurrection as a question mark it's fine with that know you've moved from history to faith so you can show historically that people claim they saw him alive afterward you can draw the conclusion that they probably believed it but if you yourself agreed that Jesus was raised from the dead you're saying that is an act of God in history and you've already agreed that historians don't invoke God when they come up with their explanations so what you're doing is not history anymore it's faith no I I think you misunderstand a little bit what I'm saying there we look for inferences to the best explanation in history now if I can conclude that I look at the evidence say I know some people in some of Jesus friends and at least one of his foes had a sincere belief that they that Jesus had been raised and had appeared to them and now I go through and I weigh different hypotheses such as resurrection hallucinations metaphor apparent death Theory theft all this kind of stuff and when I applied the criteria for the best explanation and the resurrection hypothesis wins by a significant margin I'm I am justified as a historian I'm warranted in concluding that the resurrection hypothesis is most what why why is it good why is it that historians unlike you do not invoke divine causality maybe they don't believe in divine cooperation is lower human would say I don't believe God exists no no what about his we just agreed that every historian and every research university in North America would refuse to invoke miracle or reviews to talk about divine causality and yet you're saying that in this one instance we're going to make an exception actually I said just a moment ago that we could say Jesus was raised and leave a question mark pertaining to the cause of his resurrection but historians use this on a regular basis really yeah it have it give me another instance when they do that when they mom about of the death of carlomon we don't know whether Charlemagne had him killed or whether he died of natural causes in the eighth century how about the death of Skippy Oh Africanness the famous general who defeated and historians say it was a miracle no I'm saying we leave the cause of how they died or of a certain event a question I think you would agree that everybody dies so there's no there's nothing particularly R de bout that okay but everybody's raised from things to the cause right I can see that we look and look what I'm doing here - let's suppose all right I I'm fine with leaving a question mark in the fish say that God raised Jesus from the dead and that's why I think we would admit it's not that he's the best candidate wouldn't you it's exactly that's my point it's a matter of faith it's not a matter of history okay so what I think the thing you're struggling with is the theological implications of a historical conclusion this is not a historical conclusion what you don't understand is that what you're doing theology you're not doing history there's no historians there's no histological implications that if Jesus was raised there is no historian in the country that would agree that the resurrection of Jesus is historically demonstrable the only people who would say that are evangelical Christians who happen to have the faith that Jesus was raised from the dead so you're you're you're doing a I think you're saying this is what historians do historians demonstrate what probably happened in the past had no historian on the planet claims that you can invoke a miracle as saying that it's a historical event demonstrated on historiographical what I am saying in arguing contending bart is that when you take the facts that virtually every scholar who studies the subject agrees upon and you employ the inference to the best explanation using the criteria generally employed by professional historians outside the community biblical scholars and you weigh different hypotheses the resurrection hypothesis is the best hypothesis and what probably occurred weaknesses I would contend that Jesus was raised from the dead and be very happy to leave the cause as a question mark we're gonna have to leave it there gentlemen and obviously we're not gonna get you guys to agree on this before the end of today's program but it's interesting because obviously you fundamentally disagree on as to what is admissible as an explanation for something historically and that very much obviously plays into where you're coming from with your your your you know from from the original point of view you hold on the existence of God and whether miracles can occur but fascinating discussion today thank you both gentlemen with Justin brierley [Music]

Channel: Bart D. Ehrman

Views: 45,204

Rating: 4.7438426 out of 5

Keywords: Mike Licona, Resurrection, Agnostic, Bart Ehrman, Christianity, Justin Brierley, Forged

Id: DgcHGnjN1PQ

Length: 64min 33sec (3873 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 31 2017