Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? (William Lane Craig vs Richard Carrier)

good evening good evening and welcome about a year and a half ago I began contacting our two speakers with the intention of setting up a debate between them it's taken a lot of planning and preparation to get to this point so I hope you'll all enjoy the show I'd like to thank Student Senate and culture of quality for providing the funding for it I'd like to thank our speakers for taking the time out of their schedule to be here and I'd like to thank our faculty moderator dr. Janice Brandon Falcone I was going to ask you to do that in a minute dr. Falcone is a professor of history here at Northwest and she'll be giving the introductions and telling you guys to turn off your cell phones so without further ado please join me in giving another warm welcome to dr. Falcone [Applause] can you hear me I need to bring this okay well actually I think we need to give landon Hedrick a very big thanks at northwest we like to think that we empower our students and he took this idea and ran with it as long and far as he could and he is largely the one that we should credit with organizing this with obtaining funding with you know checking with faculty so Landon um it's my privilege to introduce the debaters tonight the speakers and also to run down a little bit of the rules of the evening let me introduce dr. Craig first am i right here William Lane Craig is a research professor at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada California he earned a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Birmingham England before taking a doctorate in theology from the Ludwig maximillian's University of Munich Germany at which latter institution he was for two years a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt stick to writing on the history of the resurrection of Jesus he spent seven years at the Catholic University in Leuven Belgium before taking his post at Talbot in 1994 he has authored or edited over 30 books including the following assessing the New Testament evidence for the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus will the real Jesus please stand up with Jef that's not a question to the audience that's the title of his book he co-authored that book with John Dominic Crossan and Jesus resurrection fact or figment with GERD Reutimann as well as numerous articles in professional journals such as New Testament studies journal for the study of the New Testament expository times in charisma and dogma he and his wife Jan have two children his website is WWE's enabling dr. Richard carrier and he is a nationally renowned secular author author of sense and goodness without God and a widely heard speaker and lecturer dr. carrier earned his PhD at Columbia University in ancient history he specializes in the intellectual history of Greece and Rome particularly ancient philosophy religion and science with emphasis on the origins of Christianity and the use and progress of science under the Roman Empire his website is aptly named ww Richard carrier info so now a little briefing on the rules well we'll have dr. Craig speak warp first and he will speak for about 20 minutes and then dr. carrier will be allowed a 20-minute presentation dr. Craig will then have 12 minutes for a rebuttal and dr. carrier will also have 12 minutes for a rebuttal then dr. Craig will have eight minutes for a rebuttal and dr. carrier eight minutes for a rebuttal and then we'll limit their final rebuttals to five minutes each and then we'll follow that with a question and answer period from the audience a couple of other rules one is I know that people in Northwest Missouri are unfailingly polite and courteous but sometimes this topic might raise people's passions and I would just ask you to allow courtesy to each speaker without making collapse and yells and whistles and boos and whatever I'm so I would I would ask that of you and I know that you're all capable of that and during the question and answer period I would ask you to confine yourself to a question only if we have to listen to everybody take a position on this question we're gonna be here until one o'clock in the morning so we'll we'll have a microphone on that side and a microphone over there and what I'd like you to do is if you have a question for dr. Craig go to that microphone and a question for dr. carrier go to that microphone and we'll try to alternate those questions without having you to identify that so you can identify yourself and your question by which microphone you're going to and I'll repeat this at the end of the debate in case you have short-term memory loss or something okay so I think those are the rules and and sit back and relax and and listen to a lively conversation [Applause] good evening I want to begin by thanking the philosophy club for the invitation to participate in tonight's debate and I also am glad for Richards willingness to participate as well now the question before us this evening is did Jesus rise from the dead in my opening speech I'm going to lay out some reasons why I answer yes to this question and I presume that Richard will lay out his reasons for saying no now there are at least two ways to a knowledge of Jesus resurrection the existential and the historical tonight I want to focus on the historical case for Jesus resurrection I realized that the vast majority of Christians have not based their belief in Jesus resurrection on historical considerations but on a personal encounter with the Living Lord Himself and I think that this existential approach is fully legitimate but I also think that a good case can be made historically for Jesus resurrection as well now one doesn't come to a study of Jesus resurrection in a vacuum so let me lay out very clearly two presuppositions with which I approach tonight's question first I presuppose the existence of God as demonstrated by the arguments of natural theology this is the approach taken by classical defenders of the resurrection such as Hugo Grotius Samuel Clarke and William Paley as well as by such contemporary scholars as bullfrog Pawan bok richard Swinburne and Steven Davis and it's the approach that I've taken in my published work now I realize that Richard doesn't share this presupposition he's an atheist who denies that God exists this is a huge difference which will of course radically affect how we assess competing explanations of the facts but our time and topic are limited tonight so if we want to debate about the existence of God we may just have to schedule another debate second I presuppose that our background knowledge includes a good deal of information about the historical Jesus including his radical personal claims his teaching and his crucifixion in so doing I stand squarely in the mainstream of New Testament scholarship regarding the historical Jesus again I realized that Richard doesn't share this presupposition Richard takes the extremist position that Jesus of Nazareth never even existed that there was no such person in history this is a position which is so extreme that to call it marginal would be an understatement it doesn't even appear on the map of contemporary New Testament scholarship so I'm also very safely situated with respect to my second presupposition in tonight's debate then I propose to defend two major contentions one there are four historical facts which must be explained by any adequate historical hypothesis Jesus burial the discovery of his empty tomb his post-mortem appearances and the origin of his disciples belief in his resurrection and to the best explanation of those facts is that God raised Jesus from the dead let's look at that first contention more closely I want to share four facts which are accepted by the large majority of New Testament historians fact number one after his crucifixion Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea in a tomb scholars have established this fact on the basis of evidence such as the following one Jesus burial is multiplied attested in early independent sources the burial account is part of Mark's source material for the story of Jesus passion this is a very early source which is probably based on eyewitness testimony and dates to within a few years of Jesus crucifixion MO olver Paul in his first letter to the Church of Corinth also cites an extremely early source for Jesus burial which most scholars state to within a few years or even months of the crucifixion independent testimony to Jesus burial by Joseph is also found in the special sources behind Matthew and Luke and in the Gospel of John historians consider themselves to have hid historical paydirt when they have two independent sources for the same event but we have the remarkable number of at least five independent sources for Jesus burial some of which are extraordinarily early - as a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin that condemned Jesus Joseph of Arimathea is unlikely to be a Christian invention there was an understandable hostility in the early church toward the Jewish leaders in Christianized they had engineered a judicial murder of Jesus thus according to the eminent New Testament scholar Raymond Brown Jesus burial by Joseph is very probable since it is almost inexplicable why Christians would make up a story about a Jewish Sanhedrin who does what is right by Jesus for these and many other reasons most New Testament critics concur with Dale Allison's verdict that all in all it is highly likely that Jesus corpse was placed in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea fact number two on the Sunday after the crucifixion Jesus tomb was found empty by a group of his women followers the wide majority of scholars also concur with this fact here Richard finds himself among that minority of scholars who denied the fact of the empty tomb he claims that the empty tomb story is a fictional literary creation of mark but the reasons which have convinced most scholars of the historicity of Jesus empty tomb also go to refute Richards hypothesis one the historical reliability of the burial account supports the empty tomb if the account of Jesus burial is accurate then the site of Jesus grave was known in Jerusalem to Jew and Christian alike in that case it's a very short inference to the historicity of the empty tomb so long as a corpse lay interred in Joseph's Tomb a Christian movement in Jerusalem founded on belief in the resurrection of Jesus would never have arisen to the empty tomb is multiplied attested in independent early sources Mark's passion source didn't end with Jesus burial but with the story of the empty tomb which is tied to the burial account verbally and grammatically moreover Matthew and John rely on independent sources about the empty tomb Jesus empty tomb is also mentioned in the early sermons independently preserved in the Acts of the Apostles and it's implied in the very old tradition handed on by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthian church thus we have multiple early at a station of the fact of the empty tomb in at least four independent sources therefore it can't be a marking literary creation as Richard imagines three the tomb was discovered empty by women in patriarchal Jewish society the testimony of women was not highly regarded in fact the ancient Jewish historian Josephus says that on account of their boldness and levity women shouldn't even be permitted to serve as witnesses in a Jewish court of law now in light of this fact how remarkable it is that it is women who are the discoverers of Jesus empty tomb any later legendary account would certainly have made male disciples like Peter and John discovered the empty tomb the fact that it is women rather than men who are the chief witnesses to the empty tomb is best explained by the fact that they were the discoverers of the empty tomb and the Gospel writers faithfully record what for them was an awkward and embarrassing fact for the story is simple and lacks theological embellishment Mark's empty tomb story is uncoloured by the theological and apology motifs that would be characteristic of a Christian creation for example it's remarkable that in mark's account the resurrection of jesus is not actually described at all contrast later forged Gospels in which Jesus is seen emerging from the tomb in glory to a multitude of witnesses in mark's account there's no proof from prophecy cited no mention of jesus descent into hell no heralding of a new Aeon no description of or reflection on the resurrection body not even any use of glorious titles for christ at the very most the critical historian would want to excise from mark's account the angelic figure as an embellishment and what remains is stark in its simplicity Mark's story has all the earmarks of a very primitive tradition which is free of theological and apologetically flexion this tells powerfully against Richards hypothesis of Mark and literary creation 5 the earliest Jewish polemic presupposes the empty tomb in the 28th chapter of Matthew we find a Christian attempt to refute the earliest Jewish polemic against the resurrection what were Jews saying in response to the disciples Proclamation he has risen from the dead that his tomb still contained his body there in the hillside that the disciples were crazy no they said the disciples stole away his body now think about that for a moment the disciples stole away his body the earliest Jewish response to the proclamation of the Resurrection was itself an attempt to explain why the body was missing and thus the testimony of the very adversaries of the early Christian movement supports the historicity of the empty tomb I could go on but I think that enough has been said to indicate why in the words of Jakob Kramer and Austrian specialists in this field by far most exegetes whole firmly to the reliability of the biblical statements concerning the empty tomb now Richards main objection to the empty tomb is that Paul didn't believe in the empty tomb Paul supposedly thought that the resurrection body is a spiritual body wholly distinct from the corpse in the tomb now if this is supposed to be an argument against the empty tomb then there's a massive assumption lying just beneath the surface namely that we have no early independent evidence for the empty tomb but we've just seen five lines of such evidence so even if Paul believed on theological grounds that a resurrection doesn't require an empty tomb that does nothing to deny the historical fact that Jesus tomb was found empty in any case the key issue here is not whether our resurrection bodies will be radically different from our present earthly bodies rather the key question is how does the resurrection body come to be is it by transformation of the earthly body or by exchanging the earthly body for another body let me mention briefly four reasons to think that Paul believed in a transformation of the earthly body to the resurrection body first in 1st Corinthians 15 Paul is clearly speaking of intrinsic change not exchange the greek verb allah so has the same range of meanings as our english word change sometimes it means intrinsic change in a single subject for example we say to an old friend my how you've changed sometimes it can mean exchange as when we say I changed money at the airport now as Richard himself says when interpreting words and phrases context is everything when allah so is used as exchange the verb typically takes a direct object or prepositional phrase for example in romans 123 paul says they exchanged the glory of god or images now in first Corinthians 15 Paul never says we shall change bodies rather he says the trumpet will sound and we shall be changed the passage only makes sense as intrinsic change second Paul's verbs of sowing and raising have the same implicit subject it is sown it is raised four times Paul repeats this to escape the implication of numerical identity Richard is forced to miss translate the passage so that the verbs take different subjects one is sown one that is another one is raised thirdly Paul's use of the pronoun this points to our mortal bodies or nature that must be changed four times he says this perishable must put on in perishability this mortal must put on immortality indicating the transformation that must take place in our mortal bodies and fourth Paul elsewhere speaks of the change that our mortal bodies will undergo in the resurrection Philippians 3:21 he will change our lowly body to be similar to his glorious body Romans eight ten and eleven he who raised Christ from the dead will make alive your mortal bodies also Romans 8:23 we await adoption the redemption of our bodies for these and other reasons the vast majority of contemporary commentators agree that in the resurrection Paul envisages a transformation of the earthly body accordingly we can say no corpse left behind fact number three on different occasions and under various circumstances different individuals and groups of people experienced appearances of Jesus alive from the dead this is a fact which is virtually universally acknowledged among New Testament scholars and by Richard as well for the follow reasons one Paul's list of eyewitnesses to Jesus resurrection appearances guarantees that such appearances occurred Paul tells us that Jesus appeared to his chief disciple Peter then to the inner circle of disciples known as the twelve then he appeared to a group of 500 disciples at once then to his younger brother James who up to that time was apparently not a believer than to all the Apostles finally Paul adds he appeared also to me at the time when Paul was still a non believing persecutor of the early Jesus Movement given the early date of Paul's information as well as his personal acquaintance with the people involved such appearances cannot be dismissed as on historical and second the appearance narratives in the Gospels provide multiple independent attestation of the appearances the appearance and narrative spans such a breadth of independent sources that it cannot be reasonably denied that the earliest disciples did have such experiences thus even the skeptical New Testament critic Garrett Ludum on concludes it may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ finally fact number four the original disciple suddenly and sincerely came to believe that Jesus was risen from the dead despite their having every predisposition to the contrary think of the situation the disciples faced following Jesus crucifixion number one their leader was dead and Jewish messianic expectations had no idea of a messiah who instead of triumphing over Israel's enemies would be humiliatingly executed by them as a criminal to Jewish beliefs about the afterlife precluded anyone's rising from the dead to glory and immortality before the general resurrection of the Dead at the end of the world nevertheless the original disciple suddenly came to believe so strongly that God had raised Jesus from the dead that they were willing to die for the truth of that belief but then the obvious question arises what caused them to be such an undulating Luke Johnson a New Testament scholar at Emory University muses some sort of powerful transformative experiences required to generate the sort of movement earliest Christianity was empty right an eminent New Testament historian concludes that is why as an historian I cannot explain the rise of early Christianity unless Jesus rose again leaving an empty tomb behind him in summary then there are four facts agreed upon by the majority of scholars who have written on the subject Jesus burial his empty tomb his post-mortem appearances and the origin of the disciples belief in his resurrection that brings us then to the second major contention that the best explanation of these facts is that God raised Jesus from the dead in his book justifying historical descriptions historian C B McCullough lists six tests which historians use in determining what is the best explanation for given historical facts the hypothesis God raised Jesus from the dead passes all of these tests one it has great explanatory scope it explains all four of the facts before us - it has great explanatory power it explained each fact well three it is plausible given the historical context of Jesus own unparalleled life and claims the resurrection serves as divine confirmation of those claims for it is not ad hoc or contrived it requires only one additional hypothesis that God exists which I take to be established by the arguments of natural theology five it is in accord with accepted beliefs the hypothesis God raised Jesus from the dead in no way conflicts with the accepted belief that people don't rise naturally from the dead I accept that belief as wholeheartedly as I accept the hypothesis that God raised Jesus from the dead and finally number six it far outstrips any rival theories in meeting conditions one to five no naturalistic hypothesis has attracted a great number of scholars on the basis of what I've said then I think that the best explanation of the facts is the one that the original eyewitnesses gave that God raised Jesus from the dead today the rational man can hardly be blamed if he concludes that on that first Easter morning a divine miracle occurred [Applause] all right I'm gonna cut to the chase dr. Craig has only two sources of historical evidence in reality the epistles and the Gospels point-blank my argument is the Gospels have no relevant value as historical sources and the epistles don't tell us anything we can prove was unnatural first up the Gospels record myth not history I wanted to do I wanted to debate that subject with dr. Craig today but he didn't want to so now I can only give you some examples proving my point so I can leave room to discuss the many other topics in this debate but I can assure you if I had more time these examples could be multiplied a dozen times over one of the clearest examples of myth-making in the gospels is the BRABUS narrative according to mark the Romans occupying Judea had a custom of releasing a prisoner every year on the Jewish holiday whoever the Jews voted for so Pilate asks the Jews if they want him to release Jesus Christ and instead the chief priests convinced everyone to ask for Barabbas instead a convicted murderer who had rebelled against Rome now there is no evidence the Romans ever had such a custom of releasing just any prisoner the Jews wanted nor is it all at all plausible the Romans certainly would not let loose a murderer and a traitor least of all because the very people who rebelled asked them to but Mark's story clearly copies an actual ritual ritual the Jews performed at their temple every year at Yom Kippur two goats would be selected one would be chosen to be the scapegoat and all the sins of Israel would be placed upon it and it would be released into the wild to be claimed by the devil while the other goat would be sacrificed and its blood would atone for the sins of all Israel now as it happens Barabbas is a fake name in Aramaic it means son of the Father so here we have two sons of the Father Barabbas and Jesus one who carries the sins of Israel murder and rebellion and is released to the mob and the other whose blood atones for the sins of all Israel so here we have a historically unbelievable story involving a man with a fake name that nevertheless carries deep symbolic meaning by definition that's a myth this story has been constructed by the author for its symbolism it's not a historical report of anything that actually happened now there are many more examples like this surveyed in the works of biblical scholars like Randall Helms and Thomas Brodie and Burton Mack and Jonathan Reed and helmet coaster and many more as scholars have long known all the Gospels are filled to the brim with stories deliberately constructed for their symbolic and literary meaning rather than their historical Verity for example one indicator of myth is the inclusion of implausibly convenient story structure what literary scholars call deliberate irony mark for example has Jesus constantly talking about the reversal of expectation as the message of the gospel teaching with many parables that the least shall be first the high will be brought low the meek shall inherit the earth the poor shall be rich and so on so it's a rather implausible coincidence when the actual narrative of Mark's story is filled with remarkably convenient reversals of expectation James and John who asked to sit at the right and left of Jesus in his glory are replaced by two thieves on his right and left at his crucifixion Simon Peter Christ's right-hand man who was told he had to deny himself and take up his cross and follow denies Christ instead and is replaced by a different simon simon of cyrene ii a stranger who actually actually takes up his cross and follow likewise contrary to expectation christ's own people the jews mocked their own savior while it is a gentile officer of rome who recognizes his divinity and the male disciples abandon jesus while the women truly follow him and are thus the first to learn of his resurrection proving again that the least shall be first and on and on countless elements of Mark's story involved deliberately fabricated irony like this another indicator of myth is the construction of stories even down to the specific details using material from the old test it's well known for example that mark constructs his crucifixion narrative using material from Psalm 22 the casting of lots for his clothes Jesus's cry on the cross the taunts of the crowd all come from that Psalm often verbatim but as I show in the empty tomb mark also constructed his empty tomb narrative using material from Genesis Ecclesiastes chronicles and Psalm 24 in a similar way another indicator of myth is the inclusion of deliberate parallels and inversions of other myths for example Luke tells the story of a man named Cleopas who journeys on the road from Jerusalem to mes after the corpse of Jesus has vanished when the resurrected Jesus appears to him and explains the secrets of the kingdom then he vanishes and Cleopas goes on to proclaim what he was told as it happens the named Cleopas conveniently means tell-all in other words proclaimed moreover this tale exactly emulates and in deliberate ways inverts a story already celebrated every year in Rome and in that other story a man named proculus whose name also means proclaim journeys on the road from Alba longa to Rome after the corpse of Romulus has banished and just like Jesus the resurrected Romulus appears and explains the secrets of Empire then vanishes and proculus goes on to proclaim what he was told in both stories the men are journeying from east to west toward the sea along the path of the Sun from the city on a mountain to a city in a valley and in both stories the distance of the road is exactly the same 14 miles this these similarities are too numerous to be a coincidence again this is deliberate symbolic fiction and like many myths the way the story has changed is the whole point the similarities tell us what story to compare it to while the differences tell us what the author wants us to learn from that comparison Romulus told proculus that if the Romans are virtuous they will conquer the world but Jesus told Cleophus that the virtuous will join a spiritual Kingdom instead of a physical one Romulus appeared in immense glory as befit his message of glory but Jesus appeared in humble disguise as we fit his message of humility and while proculus receives his gospel on the road to Rome Cleopas receives his gospel on the road from Jerusalem so while the old story implies all roads lead to Rome the news story implies all roads lead from Jerusalem in almost every detail the stories are identical or exactly the reverse another indicator of myth is the reification of imaginary people into real people in the Gospel of John for example a new character is invented Lazarus whom Jesus raises from the dead an amazing event none of the other Gospels apparently had ever heard of suddenly appears in John in John chapter 11 this Lazarus is identified as the one whom Jesus loved who is later cited as a witness for the details of the crucifixion and resurrection again appearing in those narratives exactly where none of the other gospels ever imagined him before and yet we know this Lazarus didn't exist for he first appears in Luke's Gospel as a fictional person in a parable where Jesus tells a story about a rich man burning in hell who sees a dead beggar named Lazarus in heaven so he begs God to raise this Lazarus from the dead so he can warn his living brothers to avoid his own hellish fate the parable ends with God refusing telling him if they will not listen to Moses and the prophets neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead notice what happens in John he reverses the message of Luke's parable but having Jesus actually raised Lazarus from the dead which convinces many people to turn and be saved the very thing Luke's Jesus said wouldn't work in fact just as the rejected request in Luke's parable imagined Lazarus going to people and convincing them John's Lazarus is then cited as a witness to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus specifically to convince people again what Luke's Jesus said wouldn't work John has thus reified a fictional character and integrated him into the story where he never was before in order to argue against the particular message in Luke seeking instead to persuade people with the very outcome Luke said and wouldn't persuade them another indicator of myth is the acceptance of wildly contradictory versions of the same myth for example Matthew's Gospel wildly contradicts mark's empty tomb narrative in almost every detail elaborating it with incredible claims of posted guards and flying super human angels magically paralyzing people and hurling about stones again in the empty tomb I demonstrate where all these crazy changes came from Matthew completely rewrote the empty tomb story in mark in order to portray Jesus as a new daniel in the lion's den borrowing exact words phrases and details from the Book of Daniel in order to construct this new story okay I've only given you a few examples but all the Gospels are full of mythical narratives like this cover to cover where stories are constructed symbolically mining the Jewish Scriptures and pagan myths for symbolic details histories are not written this way these are myths the telling of implausible tales that never happened but are constructed with symbolic meaning the Gospels routinely invent even very public events that never happened mark invents a darkness covering the whole world for three hours that no one else saw Matthew invents a rock splitting earthquake no one else noticed as well as a horde of resurrected corpses parading into Jerusalem leaving hundreds of empty tombs behind which again no other author had ever seen or heard of and on and on as with these events and Barabbas and the guards at the tomb and so on the Gospels brought the gospel authors routinely made-up entire people and events simply to communicate their message through symbols metaphors and parables that means we can't trust anything they say is historical since we know for a fact from these very examples and many others that they were writing symbolic fiction we have no reason therefore to believe their empty tomb narratives or their appearance narratives for anything more than symbolic fiction as well even if some history is lost in there somewhere having no other sources we have no way of knowing which details are historical and which made-up and therefore no evidence in the Gospels can be used to argue for the resurrection of Jesus so we can't trust what the Gospels say what do the epistles say Paul says in Galatians 1 I make known to you brethren that the gospel which day is not according to any man for neither did I receive it from any man nor was I taught it except through a revelation of Jesus Christ when it was the good pleasure of God to reveal his son in me so I could preach him among the Gentiles I did not confer with flesh and blood right away nor did I go to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before me I went off into Arabia and then back to Damascus then only after three years did I go to Jerusalem to visit chaos and even then I remained unknown by face to any of the churches in Judea so Paul tells us he received the gospel by revelation not human testimony what gospel does he mean he tells us that in 1 Corinthians 15 for I make known to you brethren the gospel that I preached you which you also accepted and in which you now stand for I delivered to you first of all what I also received that according to the scriptures Christ died for our sins and that he was buried and that according to the scriptures he was raised on the third day and that he appeared to caphis and many others and last of all he appeared also to me note that Paul begins both statements in Galatians and 1 Corinthians with the exact same phrase I make known to you brethren that this is the gospel I preached so Paul tells us the gospel he preached was not handed down to him through any human testimony he learned it directly from God through a revelation and he says this in the same gospel he handed down he says this is the same gospel he handed down to his congregations he even went on preaching it for three whole years before he spoke to any apostles about it and even says that in all that time he was completely unknown to anyone in Judea now modern science has confirmed that experiences like this are commonly hallucinations in fact we have no scientific evidence that any such visions are not hallucinations and since fully realistic visions like this happened throughout the world confirming countless contradictory sets and traditions we can be sure of one thing even if any of these experiences are real most of them by far are not the burden is therefore on anyone who had claimed his visions real and all others hallucinatory but there's no evidence that confirms these early Christian visions were an exception so most likely they were hallucinations just like all other religious visions in history as many scholars argued Paul even tells us what inspired these hallucinations he says the Scriptures told him the Christ would raise that the Christ would rise from the dead so inspired by Scripture he and others hallucinate 'added Jesus telling them exactly that and Paul makes no relevant distinction between his experience in any one else's as far as the epistles tell us far as we can tell all the apostles learned of the resurrection of Jesus through Scripture inspired hallucinations since there is no evidence in the epistles of the Apostles having any evidence for the resurrection other than religiously motivated those hallucinations Paul never mentions for example the discovery of an empty tomb and since we know hallucinations are fabrications of the mind these experiences cannot be used as evidence for an actual resurrection of Jesus instead the epistles prove the early Christians were frequent hallucinate errs Paul had visions quite often several times in his letters he mentions receiving Commandments and instructions directly from a heavenly Jesus he once even relates an entire conversation he had with God and he implies he or someone he knew had actually visited heaven in one of these visions and saw and heard all kinds of marvelous things there and it's clear Paul completely believes all of this Paul reveals that many other Christians and his churches were hallucinating on a regular basis as well he writes entire sections about the Brethren entering ecstatic trances and prophesying and relaying communications of spirits and speaking in tongues the book of Acts confirms all of this including several instances of Christians having visions of beings and objects in the sky that no one else saw this was happening so frequently in Christian churches that Paul even had to establish rules for it now science has documented a particular call the schizotypal personality who frequently hallucinates but unlike the full-blown schizophrenic is not impaired by their hallucinations but instead gains comfort and confidence from them in antiquity such people would obviously gravitate towards the acceptance of ecstatic religious movements like the many mystical Jewish sects of the time which also reported hallucinations they took to be real communications from God the Christians came from this very background we now know many modern examples of such movements the shakers the santaros the cargo cults which arise like Christianity did in sub cultures that sanction and revere hallucinatory experience treating it as genuine and authoritative now if someone came knocking on your door and told you Victor Hugo had risen from the dead and you ask them how they knew that and all they could tell you was that mr. Hugo had appeared to them in a vision and told them so and then you visited their church and saw everyone there was channeling spirits and speaking in tongues and having visions of angels and strange objects in the sky would you believe them no you wouldn't yet these early Christians were exactly like this and the epistles tell us they had their information about Jesus from no other sources in these visions revelations and communications from the spirit world that's not going to convince you Victor Hugo rose from the dead so it shouldn't defense you Jesus did either okay what about the body since the Gospels can't be trusted and the epistles never mention a missing body it's quite possible there was none the Christians may have simply believed there was and rejected all evidence to the contrary as a trick a friend of mine a colleague of mine even told me that he had a conversation with dr. Craig in which he presented evidence if there was evidence refuting the resurrection dr. Craig said he would dismiss it as a trick so the first Christians may have done so too or they might have believed as I argue in the empty tomb that Jesus rose in an entirely new body leaving the old one still in the tomb we'll be debating that possibly later in the book of Acts for example however the authorities show no knowledge of any body having gone missing there are no accusations of theft or escape no investigations nothing Christians are questioned about it which entails either the author of Acts is hiding something or there was no missing body for the authorities to question or investigate or make accusations about and yet even if a body really did go missing most missing bodies don't go missing because they rose from the dead so to prove this missing body is different you have to rule out all the other ways bodies usually go missing and we can't do that with the evidence we have all right now let's step back and actually think about what Craig wants you to believe here a walking corpse indeed according to the Gospels of flying and teleporting corpse could have visited Pontius Pilate Herod and typists the Sanhedrin the population of Jerusalem the Roman legions even the Emperor and Senate of Rome he could have flown to America and preached to the natives as the Mormons actually believed he did or even to China preaching in all the temples and courts of Asia in fact being God he could have appeared to everyone on earth he could visit me right now or you he could appear on this stage and yet instead craig believes jesus only appeared to a few small groups of his already fanatical followers in judea and just one other obscure guy in the desert of damascus just one brief time two thousand years ago and that's it if jesus was a god and really wanted to save us all he wouldn't do that he would have appeared and delivered his gospel personally to the whole world but if christianity originated as a movement inspired by schizotypal hallucinations like every other vision based religion like the shakers or cargo cults then we'd expect it to arise in only one small group in one small place and time exactly where schizo types were respected as prophets and their hallucinations believed to be divine communications and exactly where ideas of resurrections and messiahs were already heavily preached and believed in and that's exactly when and where it began a natural explanation does predicts all the evidence we have whereas Craig only has an unnatural explanation which is entirely falsified by predicting things we don't see at all now one last point I'll make in the given time that I have dr. Craig has on other debates for example in his debate with Victor Stenger said that if there are natural explanations available we should prefer those to supernatural explanations I've given you fairly good naturalistic explanations for how the evidence came to exist there isn't any evidence to refute those naturalistic explanations we can't rule them out so what we have here is an argument that completely bypasses what dr. Craig is talking but a lot of the points he made are actually irrelevant in light of what I've argued here today now he's said one thing in particular they'll respond to in my last minute here he pointed out that I actually argue that Jesus didn't exist that's not strictly speaking true I argue that it's a hypothesis that needs to be considered that I find persuasive but I have consistently argued in public many times that this is a theory is a hypothesis that needs to be subjected to peer review needs to be moved through and generated consensus before we can argue it so in this debate here today I am completely assuming that the consensus is correct that Jesus existed and even agreeing with dr. Craig's argument that Jesus was buried completely agree with that that's the consensus position until we can actually argue against it and present evidence against it we should go with that and the appearances I also agree obviously that there were appearances but I argue that the appearances were hallucinations there isn't really any evidence to discount that and I'll end with that and we'll continue more later on [Applause] I know that Richard wanted to debate tonight the general reliability of the Gospels and I'm really sorry that he's chosen to pursue that tact despite our agreement that that wouldn't be the topic tonight but let me just say a couple of words about this in the first place the vast majority of scholars do not think that the Gospels are of the genre of myth but rather of historical biography arty France and New Testament scholar writes at the level of their literary and historical character we have good reason to treat the Gospels seriously as a source of information on the life and teaching of Jesus ancient historians have sometimes commented that the degree of skepticism with which New Testament scholars approach their sources it's far greater than would be thought justified in any other branch of ancient history indeed many ancient historians would count themselves fortunate to have for such responsible accounts written within a generation or two of the events the decision as to how far a scholar is willing to accept the record that they offer is likely to be influenced more by his openness to a supernaturalists worldview than by strictly historical considerations the majority of New Testament scholars today recognize that the Gospels are not of the genre of myth they're of the genre of ancient biography according to Craig keener a gospel scholars all four Gospels fit the general genre of ancient biography the life of a prominent person and these biographies have a historical interest qinger says that the Gospels use recent traditions and that those that can be checked are careful in their use of sources suggest that the Gospels should be placed among the most reliable of ancient biographies just to take one example the example of Barabbas the acclamation of the people acclimate Co Populi played a significant role in Roman legal administration and there are numerous examples of Roman magistrates who heeded a crowds wishes for example in Egypt and AD 85 the Roman governor released and accused to the crowd even though he deserved a scourging and why couldn't someone in that time be named Barabbas that would symbolize son of the Father there's nothing the matter with that as a Jewish name so I don't think that you can impune the evidence for the resurrection by a sort of general attack upon the Gospels reliability most scholars think that the four facts that I outlined are part of the historical core of the gospel however you might want to judge other things in the Gospels now before we look at those four facts Richard did ask a general question why did Jesus appear only to the disciples and not to everyone well the New Testament is clear that the purpose of the appearances was for commissioning the disciples for the task of world mission not for convincing people in general that Jesus was risen from the dead people who haven't yet heard the gospel won't be judged on the same basis as those who have people will only be judged on the basis of the information that they have now with that out of the way let's look at those four facts on which I based my case tonight first the burial of Jesus we saw that it was multiple e attested and the joseph of arimathea is the historical person who buried jesus and richard had no response to either of these two lines of evidence secondly i talked about the support for the empty tomb first the burial account supports the accuracy of the empty tomb story no response from richard secondly i said the empty tomb story is multiple e attested both in mark's Premack mark and passion story and in independent sources here richard reiterated his point that the passion story is constructed out of old testament motifs and i think that's simply false as Joel Greene points out studies of the use of the old testament at Qumran among apocalypta sand in post biblical historiography indicate that biblical texts were adapted to fit events more readily than where events created to fit biblical texts in other words in light of the events that had happened they would go to the Old Testament to look for proof texts for those events they don't create the events out of the Old Testament text moreover the passion there includes events for which no parallel exists in the Old Testament for example the anointing at Bethany the sword incident of Jesus arrests Simon of Cyrene and his two sons the tearing of the temple veil and so forth and finally third the passion story did not use obvious motifs from the Old Testament for example despite Psalm 22 saying they have pierced my hands and feet the passion story doesn't say that Jesus was nailed to the cross for all we know he could have been tied with ropes so they didn't use this Old Testament motif from Psalm 22 to create the passion story in any case I also indicated that there are multiple early sources for the fact of the empty tomb Matthew uses an independent sources as evident from the non methey and vocabulary in his account and the fact that he's responding to a prima the--and tradition about the empty tomb john is recognized to be independent of the synoptic Gospels Luke and John have the story of Peter and John visiting the empty tomb thus indicating an independent tradition of Mark the sermons in Acts are independent of mark and Paul's tradition is pre Paul line that's the point that Richard doesn't seem to understand it's irrelevant whether Paul learn things by revelation what he quotes in first Corinthians 15 is a pre pauline tradition that goes back within the first few years or even months of the crucifixion so we have this wealth of multiple independent early attestation in support of the fact of the empty tomb I mentioned that it was also attested by women witnesses and Richard didn't respond to that point fine then fourthly I said it's a simple and doesn't show signs of literary embellishment here Richard says well yes it does it shows the reversal of expectations motif in the Gospel of Mark I'm sorry that's that's simply not true there is no such reversal of exploit expectation motif in the Gospel of Mark rather as Robert Gundry points out in his commentary on mark Mark's Gospel is dominated by things happening just as Jesus predicted it is all about the fulfillment of expectations the final words spoken at the empty tomb in the Gospel of Mark are just as he told you so Richards examples I think are just fanciful they're there you know it's own imagination only mark is not about the reversal of expectations but the fulfillment of expectations fifthly I said that the earliest Jewish polemic presupposes the empty tomb richard says well Matthew's account of the guard is constructed from the story of Daniel in the lion's den that's irrelevant that's wholly beside the point the point is that what motivated Matthew to either tell or make up his story was that Jews were saying that the disciples had stolen the body that's what motivated Matthew and therefore we have evidence from the early adversaries of Christianity that in fact the tomb was empty so I think we have very good grounds on all five of these lines of support for thinking that in fact the tomb of Jesus was found empty I then argued that Richards own attempt to undermine the empty tomb by appeal to Paul is ultimately vain because Paul himself believed in a transformation of the body in the tomb and therefore would believe in the empty tomb in the empty tomb thirdly we talked about the two lines of evidence in favor of the appearances and Richard admits that these occurred he merely tries to explain them away as hallucinations and we'll deal with that in a moment finally number four the origin of the Christian faith again we saw that what the disciples came to proclaim and believe was completely contrary to Jewish expectations and therefore requires some sort of radical transformative experience to account for what happened to them now given that those are the four facts that are accepted by the majority of New Testament scholars today for the reasons that I've laid out the question then is what is the best explanation of these facts and here Richard talks about hallucinations occurring perhaps theft of the body or some such thing I want to suggest that none of these naturalistic explanations really stack up when they're assessed by the criteria that I mentioned in my first speech just look at them first of all explanatory scope the apparent death Theory effect theory the wrong tune theory only try to explain the empty tomb the hallucination theory only tries to explain the appearances no naturalistic theory can explain all four facts before us and this Richard says in another context the sign of a good theory is its ability to explain all the data by the same single thesis so the resurrection hypothesis exceeds these naturalistic theories an explanatory scope secondly explanatory power no naturalistic theory does a good job of explaining the origin of the disciples belief in Jesus resurrection theft and wrong two theories don't explain why the disciples would come to this outlandish of Jewish conclusion that God had raised Jesus from the dead hallucinations of the dead however really don't lead to belief that the person is alive as empty right says in the ancient world visions of the dead were not taken as evidence that they were alive they were taken as evidence that they were dead and besides that visions of the exalted Jesus would have must've led to the conclusion that he had been assumed in heaven which is a different category in Jewish thought for the resurrection from the dead thirdly plausibility the apparent death theory is utterly implausible medically and physically the pious that theory is anachronistic in attributing that Jesus disciples the motive to either fake his assumption or resurrection and the followers of no messianic movement thought through the first century before Jesus that through the first century after Jesus ever did or claimed such a thing about their executed would-be Messiah the wrong tomb or relocation theories are implausible because once the disciples began to preach Jesus resurrection the Jewish leadership would have been only too glad to point out the disciples stupid error in going to the wrong place the hallucination theory is implausible in trying to psychoanalyze past historical figures you can't do that and that's why psycho biography is a failed genre of historical writing thus Richard calls Paul a happy schizoid in his work and calls Mary a psychotic you can't do that responsibly you can't do psychoanalysis on historical figures besides the diversity and the number of the experiences outstrip anything in the psychological casebooks number four the theory must not be ad hoc the wicked witch theory that Richard is propagated is ad hoc because there's no evidence whatsoever literary or archaeological of the use of human body parts in healing or necromancy in first century Israel to postulate such practices in Judea and especially Jerusalem is completely ad-hoc now I could go on but the point is that unvirtuous every count naturalistic theories are inferior to the resurrection hypothesis look in all honesty I think that we have to say the only reason the skeptic rejects the resurrection hypothesis is because of his aversion to miracles but if God exists as my argument presupposes then how can you say justifiably that it's improbable that God would raise Jesus from the dead the real question is this then how open are you to the existence of God [Applause] well that was an enormous shotgun of arguments I must say there's no way I'll be able to address them all so I'm gonna cut to the chase of the important items that are never brought up the first item is he ended there with the argument that I reject the resurrection because I reject miracles that actually isn't the case I'm making today the case that I'm making today is most bodies that go missing don't go missing because of miracles most dead people who were seen aren't most did people and most gods who are seen are seen through hallucinations therefore the presupposition must be that even the conjunction of these two causes is more naturalistically common than the supernatural often alternative even if there are miracles that miracle like miraculous 6 cases of this even if there are miraculous missing bodies even if there are miraculous appearances of resurrected people most resurrection claims do not involve actual resurrections and there are dozens and dozens of resurrection claims in the ancient world like this so the same thing would have to be argued that we should prefer naturalistic explanations until we can rule them out and we don't have sufficient evidence to rule them out now another thing he pointed out was why resurrection why would they believe that Jesus was raised from the dead well one reason is that the conjunction of items in Scripture Daniel Isaiah wisdom of Solomon all could create this character of the Messiah who is going to be executed they can see it Daniel says the Messiah shall be executed yet there is no judgment upon him Isaiah speaks of a similar innocent man who will be executed even though there's no judgment upon him and this man will die for the sins of Israel and then God will exalt him and his days will be prolonged and he'll be executed despite the wisdom of Solomon has a similar thing where he'll be resurrected and he'll be rewarded for being executed with resurrection and we also have a recent inscription found with the apocalypse of Gabriel which says that the Messiah will be resurrected on the third day simply exactly as Paul says so here we have a conjunction of scriptural passages that could have inspired the Christians to actually come to this belief when their Messiah died when their holy man died Jesus they would be looking for any explanation for why they why that happened how that could actually be part of God's plan and they would pour through the scriptures and Paul says that's where they found these things in Romans 16 verse 25 to 26 he talks about how there were hidden messages in Scripture that they were fed that they were finding that were communicating to them aspects of the gospel so they were looking at scripture for these very things now Paul calls the resurrection of Jesus the firstfruits of the general reservoir resurrection and he repeatedly says of course in his letters that the end of the world is coming soon so imagining the resurrection of Jesus seems to have been the cult's way of proving to themselves that God had sent a decisive sign the end was nigh the resurrection of Jesus meant the end of the world was coming it was the beginning of the general resurrection so because they believed the end of the world was coming presumably because Jesus taught this which is entirely possible they were primed to believe Jesus had been raised as scripture in fact promised of God's chosen now that's entirely plausible we don't have enough evidence to confirm any particular theories or to refute any particular theories it's maybe it's not ad hoc because it's an actual natural plausible hypothesis and we don't have any further evidence to rely on to actually build what caused these particular visions and what caused this particular message what caused them to find a particular message in the Old Testament all religions are unique in their own way in forming their point of view now with regard to the empty tomb dr. Craig briefly mentioned at one point that the majority of scholars accept the empty tomb that's actually not true I think I assume this is based on Gary Habermas article and the Journal of the study of historical Jesus in June 2005 where Hubbard must made the claim that 75% of scholars accept the empty tomb that's actually not a very high percent as far as consensus goes 25 percent of scholars would be actually a sizable minority objection but in fact that's not what Hobart Moss measured he measured 75 percent of authors who've published for or against the empty tomb those who understand statistics might know what's going on with that number no control for publication bias if believers are publishing more articles of defending the empty tomb then the percentages will be skewed there's also a small sample size only 37 authors who published on this subject he also excluded agnostic so all the scholars who aren't sure whether the empty tomb is I guess or no on that are not counted in his percentage and if you include agnostics the percentage would probably go way down so that in fact we have no consensus in the scholarly community as to whether there was an empty tomb now that's that point there's tons of other things that dr. Craig has said now I don't think he says that I'm just seeing things in the Gospels when I point out all the things I pointed out to you I think would be a remarkable coincidence for all of those literary devices to be in there just by accident or that the entire structure of these stories just happened to correspond to history for example Barrabas is actually a very unusual name it's an odd name and definitely the fact even if it wasn't an odd name the fact that it's in that story and exactly where it would have that particular meaning of a parallel between two sons of the Father in a story that exactly mimics the atonement ceremony of the temple ceremony of the temple Jews that act exactly fits the Gospel message that Christ is the atoning sacrifice that is dying for the sins of Israel that all of that I mean that that to me seems quite plainly to be myth and all the other examples I gave you're quite plainly myth in most historians when they see things like this they agree and I listed several biblical scholars who agree with me on this I mean he says they don't but in fact there were many who do now he also cites the street sermons in Acts now it was actually tradition in ancient historiography to make up speeches in fact we have historians who actually tell us we don't really know we don't have stenographers we're taking these speeches down so we have to make them up based on what we think the speaker said the author of Acts of course is therefore fabricating these speeches to suit his case and that's actually very common and commonly accepted in ancient history we understand this is the case now he mentions that the empty tomb was implied in 1 Corinthians 15 but the fact is Paul doesn't say the tomb was found empty by anyone he only says that people saw Jesus and we don't really know what evidence they actually had that the tomb was empty or even if they believed they did he also says that women can't serve as witnesses in a Jewish court of law that's actually completely false in my book not the impossible faith I conclusively demonstrated that they were in fact widely accepted as witnesses in Jewish courts and in Roman courts and in Greek courts and that they were even used as sources for historical information I wasn't anything intrinsically embarrassing about having a woman as a witness but in fact the women are not there to provide testimony to the tomb because this is symbolic fiction the women are there to symbolize something there are many things they symbolize in this story I mentioned one that they are the least who are the first it exactly represents that it also fits the fact that mark builds his empty tomb narrative using exact phrase using one exact phrase and other concepts from the Jacob's Well narrative in gospel and Genesis where we also have women involved asking the same question who will move the stone for us using the exact same phrase and also as a woman speaking there's many reasons why he would do this another reason he would do this is that he's creating more irony from the front to the back of his gospel mark has his story end with the implausible remark that the women fled the empty tomb in fear and silence telling no one anything despite having been told to deliver a message but this exactly reverses the beginning of Mark's Gospel which speaks of the good news of the voice crying out of the messenger who will prepare our way who was a man incidentally so mark even framed his entire gospel with irony using the women which means he has to put women here if he's going to create that irony in that story because the men of course saw Jesus and report clinton-era preaching Jesus so they can't have told nothing to no one so to complete the irony Mark had to put women in his empty tomb story women also fit his gospel lesson at the least shall be first and are easily inspired by his analogy with Jacob's Well now he says the empty tomb stories uncoloured by theological motifs I don't think that's relevant it's not necessary that when Mark is constructing this symbolic myth that he would put any particular motifs in there except the ones he wanted to put in there he also refers to early Jewish polemic in Matthew in fact we have no Jewish sources that refer to this polemic this is entirely first appears in Matthew Matthew it's not even an axe which is pretty much to me decisively confirms that the Jews were not accusing Christians of having stolen the body if they were doing that the book of Acts would show this as a fundamental component of the story of the early church that the Christians would actually have been accused of stealing the body they would have been brought in in an inquiry they would have been tried for this crime even if they were let off so we don't have any example of the authorities showing any interest in this accusation of theft or making this accusation of theft even though the Jews brought the Christians in to court many times to try to try them and try to get them convicted of things this accusation never appears so Matthew was making this up and I think he's making it up as I said in order to emulate Daniel on the Lions Den it's all a part of his story and I talk more in empty to him about what the actual motives were in what actual message he was creating with that I won't address the particular arguments that he raised regarding whether Jesus switched bodies if you're actually interested in that argument my empty tomb book actually covers it in great detail and you'll see that some of his arguments don't actually necessarily refute what I'm talking about my actual argument here today is that we don't actually know what happened to the body or what the original Christians believed about that body we don't have any reliable evidence for that the Gospels I don't trust at all and the epistles don't talk about the missing body or who actually went to the tomb or if anyone did all right what else do we have here that it's actually relevant to what I'm talking about I gave many examples in the Gospel of Mark of reversals expectation so I don't think I'm seeing things there you can judge for yourselves whether those things represent what I'm talking about you don't need to take his word for it or any other particular scholars word for it and then he asks that he says that radical transformative experience is needed I'm saying there was one there was a hallucination exactly like you have other cults when they were facing failure they have revelations experiences that tell them how to move on how to reinterpret what has happened to them and I'm arguing that this is what happened in this case and we don't really have any way to disprove that because we don't have any really good evidence as to what was actually going on in your in the original Church and he argues that no naturalistic theory can explain all the facts well it's not necessary for one particular cause to explain all the facts if we have multiple causes that actually happens as well very many many historical events are the result of multiple causes going together but again we don't even know if there were multiple causes in this case because we don't know what happened to the body he also says you can't do psychoanalysis on historical figures I'm not doing a psychoanalysis psychoanalysis is a Freudian thing I'm talking about actual established cognitive science that we know today about schizotypal personalities about the Anthropology of actual religious movements and visionary movements this is something that we know in our background knowledge is common and typical and what I'm saying is we should go with what's common and typical until we have evidence confirming the contrary we don't have adequate evidence to confirm the contrary in this case now I've listed again many scholars then once I named actually agree with me on this idea that the Gospels are myth so this is not a radical or fringe idea that there are many there's a lot of Mythology and they only debate as to what history you can extract from them and I'm saying in this case we can't extract any particular history from them I'll stop with that [Applause] let's review those four facts that I said are established by the majority of New Testament scholars today first Jesus burial in the tomb by Joseph of Arimathea richard has never disputed that tonight and yet that is extremely important because the belief in Jesus resurrection could never have arisen in Jerusalem in the face of an occupied tomb what about the evidence for the empty tomb first of all I mentioned the burial account supports it and Richard doesn't deny it secondly I said that the empty tomb is multiple e attested in early independent sources Richard asserted that the passion story was constructed out of Old Testament text but I showed in fact from Qumran apocalypticism and post biblical historiography that that doesn't happen that there are many events in the passion story for which no parallels exist in the Old Testament and on the other hand there are obvious things in the Old Testament that weren't picked up in the passion story now what richard says here is well in Acts the author simply makes up these speeches well that doesn't work in the case of Acts because Acts is full filled with non Lukens semitism x' traces of early Aramaic speech on the part of the disciples and this is suggested to a good number of scholars that what we have preserved here are independent traditions that Luke had of the early apostolic sermons and they refer to the empty tomb so I don't think we've seen any grounds for thinking that the empty tomb is not in fact multiple-- and independently attested which gives us good grounds for believing in it historically I suggested thirdly that the women witnesses lend credibility to the empty tomb story and here Richard says oh but women did serve as witnesses in Jewish courts of law what he's talking about is a passages from the Mishnah which is two hundred years after the time of the gospel events moreover when you look at these passages what you find out that women can serve as witnesses on is only two things they can only serve to witness in court to two things first they can testify to their virginity when they were married in case their husband accuses them they weren't a virgin secondly a woman can testify that her husband is dead so that she can prove that a widow that's all they can do I think that serves to emphasize the point that I'm making that the testimony of women just wasn't regarded on a par with men's in any case what Josephus said probably represented the general prejudice of his time that women were too lightheaded and brash to serve as credible witnesses now Richard says but look Josephus relied on the testimony of women in two cases in his work yes precisely because no male witnesses were available he's talking about the testimony of women who were the only survivors of the slaughters at Kamala and Masada and this actually goes to prove my point this is the only place in the corpus of Josephus where he uses women witnesses and why does he do so here because there were no male witnesses they were the only survivors of the slaughters the fact that the women are witnesses shows that Josephus isn't making this up but he is relying on what witnesses he had and the Gospel writers find themselves in exactly the same situation he says well then I mentioned that the Gospel accounts of the empty tomb are simple and untouched by legendary or theological embellishment and he says yes they are look at the coincidences of the people's names for example well here I think Richards speculations just go off the rails he says that the two Mary's at the empty tomb are symbols now understand that one out of every four women at that time was named Mary this was a very common name but Richard says that Mary is like Miriam and she was the sister of Moses who was the leader of Israel so Mary is a symbol for Israel the promised land and Mary Magdalene he says was from Magdala which is a variant of the word tower which is transcribed in the Septuagint as Magdalene which designates the town of Migdal which represents the borders of Egypt so she is a symbol of Egypt which is a symbol of death now this is just hermeneutical speculation gone off the rails it's a good hermeneutical principle that before he had tried to read the lines you've got to learn to read the lines before you try to read between the lines you have to learn to read the lines that is to say and I don't think Richard has learned to do that yet he says well it serves as irony it's the reversal of expectations but as I said there is no reversal of expectations in the Gospel of Mark it fulfills Jesus predictions look at Richards examples of reversal of expectations James and John asked to sit at Jesus right and left hand in glory now what's the reversal of expectations supposed to be well it says Jesus was crucified between two thieves how is that any great motif of reversal of expectation this is purely constructed and concocted I think as Robert Gundry says the Gospel of Mark contains no hidden meanings no sleight of hand no Christology of irony that means the reverse of what it says Mark's meaning lies on its surface and when Richard gets into these symbolical speculations well all bets are off what about the the construction of the event from the Psalms he says it's constructed from Psalm 24 well Psalm 24 is a liturgy that mentions the king's triumphal entry into Jerusalem in the temple it has nothing to do with tunes and mark says nothing about Jesus as king the only connection with Psalm 24 is the phrase the first day of the week and even that isn't identical in Greek so again this is just all fanciful in Richards mind I don't think that there's any persuasive grounds here for thinking that this is a literary creation 5 the Jewish polemic presupposes the empty tomb he says disappears only in Matthew right Matthew felt obligated to refute this Jewish rumor he wouldn't refute the rumour unless it was going around and that rumor was that the body had been stolen and that's why it was missing and I think this goes to support the empty tomb so I think we've got five good grounds for affirming the historicity of the empty tomb and that's why in fact most scholars do support it I didn't quote Gary Habermann that's my support for that I quoted Jakob Kramer who is an Austrian specialist and he remember said by far most exegetes support the empty tomb what about my or the the point about Paul's testimony let me have some art some let me have slide 19 if I may here there are three absurd theses that Richard defends that need to be gotten out on the table here with regard to Paul's teaching the first of these is that the Corinthian heir that Paul sought to correct was the belief that because Christ was already a spiritual man he could rise from the dead while leaving his earthly body in the grave why we could not nobody thinks that this was the Corinthian error absurd thesis to that the resurrection body is identical with what Paul called our inner man which is growing inside us and will finally come out at the resurrection in an organized form like Casper the ghost those are Richards words this absurd interpretation has more in common with the movie alien than with Pauline thought Paul nowhere identifies the inner man in Christ with a resurrection body and the third absurd thesis is that the spiritual resurrection body we have is really part of Christ's resurrection body and therefore of God himself this turns Paul into a Buddhist who thinks that we return like a drop to the ocean and denies personal immortality in contradiction to Paul's so I think that Richards exegesis is just fanciful here he's an admirable bibliography but honestly Richards just hopeless is an exegete this is crank exegesis which no Pauline scholar would accept [Applause] well I don't think it's crank exegesis at all and I never used the words Casper the ghost I'm assuming that was his commentary on what I have argued that that actually isn't any argument I've ever made now let's cut to the chase now the main point of contention here this is one thing that he's conceded or at least hasn't argued is that the epistles don't actually mention a missing body they don't actually tell us what happened that the Christians would believe regarding the empty tomb we don't know if anyone went there the epistles don't tell us all they talk about are visions and as I established and the from the epistles the Christians were regularly hallucinating so we know from natural science what that probably means as far as where they're getting their information about the resurrection of Jesus and that they would actually hallucinate Jesus telling them he had been risen from the dead and from that they would actually believe that tomb was empty or they would believe that he exchanged bodies we don't actually know so let's get to the Gospels then he says I'm engaging in cranky exegesis of the Gospels well I think you can judge that for yourself I mean what are the odds of all of the particular coincidences I point out in there this is not that unusual it particularly attacks my theory which I actually didn't present here today that the three women who come to the tomb are actually symbolic I actually the argument is much more elaborate and the basis of it which actually makes it plausible is the implausibility the improbability of the coincidences that are involved he just mentions one and he tries to make it sound more ridiculous than it really is which is that Mary of Magdalene Mary Matt of Magdala represents Mary in association with migdal it's actually Magdalene Magdala is migdal it's it's not a extended argument that I have to get to to make that point it actually is Mary of Magdala which is the MiG dog which is the place where we draw the parallels from but there's also Salome which is the female name of Solomon and the other Mary who's the Mary the mother of Jacob which is the Mary the mother of Israel and so on whether all of this is plausible or not you can judge for yourself I argue it in not the impossible faith or I have a more extended discussion of it than I do in the empty tomb but that's not really the convincing bit to actually that's something that I look for and I think is actually plausible after I've already discovered elements of the thing that I find are highly improbable and look like actual symbolic messages as I've pointed out this is symbolic fiction the Cleopas narrative for example is a clear case of this the BRABUS narrative I think is a clear case of this the in probability of these things as history makes no sense but as deliberate fiction makes complete sense now Mark's use of empty tomb narrative let me get to that in 2 chronicles 16 mark links Jesus with King ASA who also famously performed the Jerusalem cult by linking the burial to spices using the same word and by calling the tombs door stone very great just as the spices burned for ace's funeral were very great and by introducing the tomb with the same phrase and by calling it hewn from the rock just as a system is called Genesis 29 when the women say who will roll away the stone mark copies a phrase from the Genesis narrative of Jacob's fathering of the 12 tribes of Israel also spoken by a woman followed by the opening of Jacob's Well to bring the water of life to the Sheep Psalm 24 begins with the phrase on the first from the Sabbath's a rather strange phrase that we don't find very many times in ancient literature it means on the first day but it's worded very strangely this is the exact same phrase that mark uses to begin his empty tomb narrative and yet Psalm 24 is the only passage in the Greek Old Testament that contains this phrase by choosing this phrase instead of the more familiar phrase on the third day mark is pointing us to Psalm 24 which speaks of a righteous man receiving for celebration from the Lord in the exact same way he calls our attention to Psalm 23 for the crucifixion of Jesus with Jesus's cry on the cross Lord Lord why have you forsaken me quoting the exact same Aramaic that comes from the psalm 23 verbatim mark actually follows a three psalm liturgy in his formation of the death burial and empty tomb narratives he uses Psalm 22 to construct this story of Jesus crucifixion that's Psalm 22 is the one that has the cry on the cross quoted verbatim then Psalm 23 aligns with his burial since it's the well-known funeral psalm the Lord is my shepherd I shall not want even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death etc then Psalm 24 speaks of opening the door and the righteous man is tending to the Lord's house which marks turns which mark turns into an allusion to opening the tomb and ascending to heaven I don't think this is implausible at all I think it's very improbable that you would have all of these conjunctions Ecclesiastes 4 in mark 16 the women journey beneath the Sun to anoint their King Jesus but find a young man in his place and as a result they fail to rejoice that's Mark's story in Ecclesiastes the living walk under the Sun with a young man who stands in the place of the king yet the last people in the story failed to rejoice the elements are almost identical with similar concepts in wording I find this very improbable I'm just telling you how it looks to me now there are many other things I could point out like this let's talk about the naked boy in mark yeah did you know there's a naked boy in mark mark mentions an anonymous young man in Greek and they anishka exactly twice at Jesus's arrest this young boy has his linen garment torn off him and he runs away naked then at the empty tomb by the way that's a weird element of the story to add but it's in there so why is it in there that's a good question at the empty tomb we see a young boy the exact same word nan this Gus appears dressed in white it is almost certainly meant to be the same boy the same word is used twice and only twice only those two places and there's no other reason for those two the first element to be there except to prepare us for the second this person is never named yet twice plays a conspicuous role on the story now linen garments were a common metaphor for the body of flesh nakedness was a common metaphor for dying and being naked without a body garments of white were a common metaphor for angelic and resurrected bodies so the young man is thus a symbol of the Christian who will undergo the same sequence dying losing their body becoming naked and then donning a new superior body at the resurrection now I'm not reading this into the text it's there it seems fairly obvious to me that the probability of this is very low of being at there just by accident and I just am seeing things like some sort of a psycho on my own now the placement of this boy is also significant mark says he stands inside the tomb and thus in the Land of the Dead on the right exactly matching a common salvation narrative in pagan mystery cult in which a white Cyprus stands to the right in the land of the dead as a marker to the initiate that he was not to stop but to go beyond those who go beyond find the water of life which is called the water of remembrance while those who stay drink the water of death so it's not a likely coincidence that this white clad boy stands on the right inside a tomb called in the Greek and memorial and then asks the woman to remember something they were told and tells them what they're looking for is not there just as the initiative stalled the same but they must go beyond to find it it being the very same thing mystery cultists were looking for eternal life hence mark closely mimics this mystery narrative in both details and meaning now I want to really reiterate that had Jesus actually risen from the dead by God that he could appear to everyone and he would have if he actually wanted everyone to be saved it's not enough to say that God has an excuse for not appearing to people the point is if he wanted everyone to be saved the obvious thing for him to do that he could have done is to appear to everyone the fact that he only appeared to a few people is strange on that theory but it makes complete sense on the theory that these are just hallucinations by primed believers and even Paul as an outsider was also primed to come to the same conclusion and he is alone actually there's no other enemies of the church that were converted to join the church now this idea that the Romans would heed crowds wishes not release traders and murderers his evidence doesn't support that the particular case he's talking about is not a traitor and not a murderer there's no evidence that the Romans would ever release such a prisoner much less and this is the important point there's no evidence of this being a custom on the Jewish holiday that is a particular flag what custom on a Jewish holiday is mark talking about well the analogy is clear that he's talking about the yom kippur even though he's not putting this on Yom Kippur he's clearly talking about the actual ceremony that goes takes place every year at Yom Kippur exactly as Mark says it takes place every year on the holiday and I showed the analysis of that now he says that what motivated Matthew to include the the Jewish polemic of the theft were they agree what motivated Matthew to create the guards at the tomb or to create that story was the Jewish accusation of theft oh I can't get to that so I'm out of time thank you [Applause] in my closing speech I'd like to draw together some of the threads of this debate to see if we can come to some conclusions first of all I think it's clear that this general consideration that Richard wants to raise about wouldn't Jesus reveal himself to everyone is a philosophical not a historical consideration that is really out of place in tonight's debate the point is theological II that God will judge people based upon the amount of information they have and the resurrection of Jesus just has no direct implications for whether you believe in universalism or inclusive ism or exclusivism this is not germane to tonight's debate what is germane are those four facts that I said are abundantly attested by the evidence first you notice that the burial account has never been questioned by Richard tonight we have good historical grounds for thinking that Joseph of Arimathea buried Jesus in the tomb with respect to the empty tomb my first argument for the empty tomb was the accuracy of the burial account supports the fact of the empty tomb and Richard has never disputed that secondly I argued that it's multiplied attested in the pre-market passion story in the special sources behind Matthew and Luke in the independent Gospel of John in the sermons and the acts of the Apostle this explodes Richards idea that this is merely a literary creation because when you have multiple independent attestation of the same event it can't be all coincidentally made up by all these people so that that exactly fits together we have good grounds for thinking that this is in fact a historical event third I argued that the women witnesses lent credibility to the narrative and he didn't respond to that fourth the narrative and Mark is simple and lacks signs of theological embellishment here Richard reiterates that the Markin account is based upon Psalm 22 to 24 I think that holds no weight whatsoever remember Psalm 22 it's against literary borrowing because Psalm 22 says they have pierced my and my feet and yet in the Gospels it never says that Jesus was nailed to the cross a rather in marks pre mark and passion story Psalm 23 is not about dying it's about being delivered from death which is the opposite of the crucifixion and as for Psalm 24 as I already said it says nothing about tombs and especially mark says nothing about Jesus being the king if he were copying Psalm 24 he would have said something like that the phrase the first day of the week is not identical contrary to what Richard asserted it is different in the Greek so there's simply no grounds for thinking that this is a literary creation based on Psalms 22 to 24 what about the Orphic mystery religions that he brought up in his last speech all Richard gives away his case when he says and I quote mark deliberately left out of his account everything in the Orphic narrative that he rejected and kept in everything that still had direct parallels with the Gospel message and then he changed the details specifically to convey how his message was different from the or phix this makes the hypothesis unfalsifiable and vacuous the only motif that's left is the angel sitting on the right side but in Judaism the right side was commonly the favored side so that shows no sign of literary dependence forth the Jewish polemic presupposes the empty tomb again here the point is that matthew is responding to a pre mattheum tradition that goes right back to the early church in Jerusalem and the disputes with non-christian Jews what about the origin of the or pardon me what about the appearances Richard doesn't deny those the origin of the Christian faith here he did assert that there was an expectation of a dying Messiah in Daniel but I want to point out that Daniel 9:24 226 was not understood as a messianic prophecy at this time rather the Jews of Jesus time would have understood the prince to be Antiochus Epiphanes and the Anointed One slain by him was the high priest though Nyhus the third in 175 BC as narrated in second Maccabees so according to Jimmy Dunham Jesus scholar the most prominent and widespread expression of Messianic hope was of a warrior king who would destroy the enemies of Israel and yet the disciples came to believe in Jesus resurrection despite those messianic expectations to the opposite finally what about the best explanation here richard says well most bodies that disappear aren't raised and therefore it means the resurrection is improbable look all that shows is that the resurrection is improbable relative to our general background evidence but it doesn't show that it's improbable relative to the evidence of the empty tomb the post-mortem appearances and the origin of the Christian faith relative to that evidence I think the resurrection is highly probable indeed more probable than all of these naturalistic explanations that richard has attempted to offer tonight [Applause] well I'll simply ask what do you consider more improbable all the amazing coincidences that I pointed out in the Gospels and mind you those are only a few what's more probable that all of those coincidence would just happen to be in there as historical facts or that they were made up versus the probability that there would be a miracle as opposed to for example a body going missing for some other reason or not even being missing for example or for example people hallucinating now I've made the case very clearly I think that the Christians were prone to hallucination they did it all the time so the fact that they see Jesus and say that I think supports that even if miracles occur for example they're very unusual by far most missing bodies again throughout history are not the result of resurrections and by far most appearances of dead people are not resurrections either that's a fact that dr. Craig cannot deny and has not denied therefore Craig must prove the evidence for this claim about Jesus is exceptional enough to prove that none of the usual things happen in this case and I don't think he's done this all Craig has are the epistles and the Gospels but the epistles give us no evidence of anything unnatural the only evidence they mentioned for the claims about Jesus again are the visions experienced only by people that the epistles show were hallucinating on a regular basis and the Gospels fabricate stories quite freely I think I've made that case despite all his attempts to throw arguments against it I think you can look and see it the arguments that I've made that it's very clear that these are fabricated stories they're not showing any evident interest in reporting historical fact rather than creating a symbolic mythology which entails they're not reliable sources of historical data and you can't establish a theory on historical down on unreliable data so I don't think Craig has shown the evidence for this claim about Jesus is exceptional as he would have to do therefore we can only conclude there was nothing unnatural about the Christian claims about Jesus if his body went missing it was most likely the way all bodies go missing but the epistles don't even say his body went missing and the Gospels can't be trusted on this point so we can't even say for sure the body went missing now that's the general point for that let's cover some of the general things that he has said about this stuff he says that multiple attestation well what he really means are different versions of the story that actually doesn't increase historicity we have different versions of the myths of Hercules that doesn't make the myths of any more historical obviously each of the gospel authors is changing the story to suit in his own particular interests in needs and ideas and creativity so the fact that there are multiple different versions of the story does not support that there are any sort of sources behind them that they're using other than each other of course and he said earlier that women can only testify to two things in Jewish law that's completely false I mean as I say as I conclusively prove and not the impossible faith that is absolutely false the evidence does not support that at all the evidence actually clearly confirms that the only evidence we have of hostility to women's testimony solely involves a few minor people making arguments about when women's testimony has to be the same as a man's or could be less than a man's but in reality all particular court cases could allow female testa me and I show many examples of that show the actual discussions where they say women testifying in court was regular on all subjects it's not abnormal at all and it's not only only those two subjects he says Daniel was talking about the Book of Daniel is talking about a different particular Messiah well I agree but of course that particular prophecy in Daniel didn't come true ironically Daniel is interpreting a prophecy of Jeremiah that also didn't come true so he was reinterpreting Jeremiah when Daniels prophecy didn't come true people were trying to reinvent what Daniel said and so I think what the Christians were saying when they were looking for scriptural passages to understand what had happened to Jesus and try to understand their their end of the world beliefs in the light of Jesus's death they actually reread Daniel and saw the word Messiah in there the Messiah will be killed it says that so they saw that and that's where they got the idea for this now he says that the fact that mark doesn't mention the piercing is relevant it's not relevant Mark quotes Psalm 23 verbatim when he's talking about the statements of Jesus it's not necessary for mark to use every single element for this to be a marker to his borrowing of certain elements in there he doesn't have to put every detail in and we also we know Jesus as the king in the previous chapter he's explicitly called the king even by the Romans so he doesn't have to repeat it again in his empty tomb narrative and he says that the phrase used from the first of the Sabbath's and Psalm 24 is different from the use in mark it's not relevantly different it's different in the sense that it's in a different grammatical case that's not relevant to what we're but here it's a clear borrowing adapted to the particular grammatical structure that mark has so my I'll reiterate my final point here is that the Gospels are full of obvious symbolic fiction I think I've made the case for that you can decide for yourselves and I'll have a lot more evidence for this in forthcoming books but if we discount the Gospels as unreliable while we have left or the epistles and all the epistles show are a bunch of hallucinating cultists essentially who saw visions of a resurrected Jesus telling them he had risen from the dead that's all the evidence we have and that's not enough to establish that Jesus had actually risen from the dead [Applause]

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Keywords: William, Lane, Craig, Richard, Carrier, Debate, Jesus, Christ, Resurrection, Gospels, History, Historical, Apostle, Paul, Christianity, Gnostic, Gnosticism, Myth, Legend, Atheism, Internet, Infidels, Reasonable, Faith, Northwest, Missouri, State, Unviersity, Biola, Talbot, Apologetics

Id: akd6qzFYzX8

Length: 101min 1sec (6061 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 24 2010