Ehrman-Licona Debate Prove Jesus Rose from Dead

I'd like to introduce you tonight to our president Dr R Philip Roberts he's going to moderate our event tonight and introduce our speakers and tell us about what we're going to do tonight thank you and welcome to Chapel and to this special event that Western Baptist Theological Seminary seems like an appropriate time right now to invite all of you to Chapel this Tuesday morning at 10:00 and uh maybe it's a good occasion too to take an offering for our new Chapel which we hope will be quite expanded U we apologize to many of you who are having the watch over close circuit link up with the chapel this evening we've done our best to cram a number of people in here like sardines as the old proverb says and uh we uh implore your patience if you're in the library or in in the student center but we think you'll have a quality experience as well that will benefit your understanding and your appreciation for the topic this evening our topic this evening the formal expression of it is can historians prove the resurrection of Jesus and we're especially honored to have two distinguished guests to participate first of all I introduce to my right Mr Michael Iona Mike serves as director of apologetics and Interfaith evangelism at the North American Mission Board of the sou BS convention in Atlanta Georgia he received his master of arts degree in religious studies from Liberty University and is a PhD candidate in New Testament at the University of ptor where his topic of research is the resurrection of Jesus Christ he co-authored the 2005 award-winning book the Case for the resurrection of Jesus his latest book Paul meets Muhammad is the fictional debate between the Apostle Paul and the prophet Muhammad on the topic of the resurrection of Jesus to my left taking the composition and the debate and the discussion this evening is Dr Bert armman Dr armman is the James a gray distinguished professor of uh religious studies at the University of North Carolina he holds the ba degree from Wheaten College the master of divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and the PHD degree from Princeton Theological Seminary he also is the author of numerous articles and books two most notable would be perhaps for you misquoting Jesus as well as his uh most recent release God's problem that has just been released to the public we look forward to a profitable time together let me tell you a little bit about the structure of the the debate and then we'll begin uh with its uh commencement first of all we'll have opening statements from each of The Debaters coming first will be Michael Iona who will have a 20 minute statement as uh will be followed by Dr Erman for 20 minutes as well following those two opening presentations there'll be a first rebal on the behalf of each participant after the first rebal you have on your chair a 3x5 card if you would like to ask a question we would like for you to think about that and at the end of that first set of rebuttals write that question out and I assume Anthony someone will pick them up from the center aisle and then we will select from them obviously we only have a few that we can select we will select from them uh a few to be placed to the presenters tonight at the end end of our experience following the second rebuttal there'll be closing statements by each gentleman and then a question answer time of about 30 minutes uh both of them have advised me give us the tough question so we'll do our best to accommodate them let me encourage you if you have a cell phone this would be as it will be for me the appropriate time to turn it off so if you don't mind doing that in courtesy to all of our uh listeners here tonight as well as everyone who'll be watching uh eventually and subsequently by video we welcome you we hope it'll be a profitable time for everyone uh as well especially if you are having to view the debate from a remote site uh on the reverse side of our 3x5 card if you would like to have a DVD copy of this debate please give us your name and address contact for you simply put remote on that and we will ensure that you get a free copy of the of the DVD not true for all of you here in this room this evening but if you'd like to have a copy put your name and address and express that desire and we'll see that communication happens so that you can acquire one Andrew I'm told it'll take us about a week to get all the copies we need if for some reason you're left out of the loop or you don't have hear anything you're free to contact our office within about a week to 10 days and we'll make sure that that happens for you all right gentlemen thank you for being with us this evening and uh we trust and pray all the best for you on in our time together and I introduce to you Mike Lona thank you thank you it's great to be with you this evening obviously I have a handicap to get started off um and I don't mean my voice I'm going against Bart Man here um but I also have a handicap in my voice so please forgive me for that bear with me as we go through and hopefully I'll make it through this evening um I would like to thank Phil Roberts Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and the Missouri Baptist convention for uh sponsoring this evening's debate and I would also like to thank Professor irman for our collegial email correspondences off to this evening's event well a number of years ago my wife Debbie was involved in a car accident and sustained Serious injury to her back um the other driver's insurance company was stubborn and didn't want to pay uh the medical expenses so had went to trial I was one of the first Witnesses called and at one point I stated that the insurance company didn't even want to provide um didn't even want to pay for a rental car while ours was being repaired well the moment I said that the defense attorney jumped to his feet and yelled objection and just a few moments later the judge dismissed me then he dismissed the jury and then a few moments later I discovered that the judge had declared a mistrial you see I wasn't aware that the term insurance company was forbidden during a trial well something similar often happens in the field of historical Jesus research there's a lot of discussion today over what the real Jesus actually said and did but when the terms Miracle or Resurrection come up it's not uncom for Scholars to jump to their feet and Shout objection you can't go there as a historian well I'm not an attorney but I would bet that there are some good reasons for why Witnesses are forbidden from using certain terms but I am a student of history and I'm convinced that the reasons typically provided for why historians are barred from investigating Miracle claims are quite poor well now you may be wondering why this is important you see if historians are barred from investigating Miracle claims then those those like myself who are interested in investigating the truth claims of particular religions such as Judaism or Christianity are barred from doing so we could investigate say the death of Jesus by crucifixion or that a number of people afterward believed that he had risen and had appeared personally before them but as historians we would be barred from answering the real question of whether Jesus actually rose from the dead now I suspect this will be the main course Professor man takes this evening and I look forward to addressing his objections and my rebuts but for now let me contend that historians can investigate Miracle claims for the past several years I have uh devoted myself to the investigation of matters in the philosophy of history and historiography and I'm convinced that if an event occurred and left traces of its occurrence that it's possible for historians to investigate it even if that event was a miracle so I'd like to take a journey with you down history Highway and show you how this is done we're going to visit four crucial checkpoints along the way uh in order to complete our journey successfully and we must be careful not to uh go off course onto um a different road that may be interesting to go on but if it doesn't relate directly to uh what we're discussing this evening at our first checkpoint we're going to discuss some terminology for example the term history now you may be surprised to learn that historians can't even agree among themselves on the meaning of this term I found 13 definitions of history in the literature but for this evening's debate by history I mean the study of the past miracle I found 23 definitions of this term for tonight's debate by miracle I mean an event in history for which natural explanations are inadequate now that's not to say that there could be a natural explanation coming up in the in the future um for that may work what it is to say is that the nature of the event itself is such that a miracle or I'm sorry that a natural explanation simply won't suffice so here I'm only defining a miracle uh establishing criteria for identifying one as a separate issue can you all understand me okay okay thank you Resurrection the Greek word for Resurrection is anasasis and simply means to stand up it can mean to stand up from cting or it can mean to rise from the dead for tonight's debate when I say Resurrection I'm referring to Jesus bodily Resurrection from the dead prove historians occasionally use the term prove to mean that something has been established with reasonable or adequate certainty as an a courtroom trial to prove someone's guilt means to establish it Beyond Reasonable Doubt not beyond all out so when carefully nuancing their statements historians talk in terms of probability and although they may conclude that a particular hypothesis is an accurate description of the past um they regard their conclusions as subject to Future revision we often simply don't add qualifiers for purposes of economy otherwise historians might sound like a disclaimer at the end of a radio commercial saying giving the available data best explanation indicates we're warned and having a reasonable degree of certainty that this occurred that appears more certain at the moment they hypotheses however our conclusion subject revision or abandonment since new dat service in the future showing things happen differently than presently proposed you don't know how tough that was the bottom line is this when I claim that historians can prove something I mean that it's possible to establish it with reasonable or adequate certainty and that we are warranted in holding our conclusions firmly now as we approach our second checkpoint we need to proce ceed cautiously when we see a sign indicating that there are hazardous road conditions ahead one hazardous condition is our Horizon which is how we see things we see we all um have our biases and we see things through our biases Our World Views um our knowledge education experiences and beliefs Horizons are like sunglasses through which we look and everything we see is colored by the lenses of our Horizons um take baseball for example if there's a close play at second is the runner safe or out well it depends if your son is the guy trying to steal second or the shortstop taging him when we read books about Jesus we find ourselves in agreement or disagreement with certain authors and if we think about it it's usually only it's usually on the basis of whether the Jesus they reconstruct is like the one we prefer so for better and For Worse historians are influenced by their gender race ethics nationality as well as their political philosophical and religious convictions no one is exempt and virtually every historian in the world will tell you that there is no such thing as a neutral unbiased or disinterested historian historians outside of the community of biblical Scholars contend that Horizons are responsible more than anything else for conflicting conu conclusions even in non-religious matters and when a religious matter is the subject of inquiry uh Horizons come even into more play um so many times it boils down to our world view and that's a matter for which there is no neutrality now this doesn't mean that no one's got it right it does mean that many times there's not going to be a consensus on the matter so in response we may lay down a few speed bumps to minimize the Hazardous effects of our Horizons since speed bumps slow us down and cause us to proceed cautiously our first speed bump is Method and hearing to spefic specific methodological procedures keeps a check on less disciplined and poorly supported historical reconstructions the second speed bump involves submitting one's ideas to hostile or unsympathetic experts you see I'm inclined to catch weaknesses and opposing views but I'm not as inclined to catch them in my own what critics are and so uh peer-reviewed articles book reviews papers readit conferences participation in panel discussions and debates such as this evening's event exposes one's methods and conclusions to public scrutiny the third speed bump involves uh requires the historian to account for the relevant historical Bedrock some facts are so strongly eviden that they are virtually indisputable this is referred to as our historical Bedrock since any legitimate hypothesis must be built upon it if a hypothesis fails to account for all the historical Bedrock then that hypothesis needs needs to be uh dragged back to the drawing board or relegated to the trash bin the fourth speed bump requires deliberate and sustained effort of detaching oneself from personal bias historians must primarily be concerned with finding out things really happened and not whether their conclusions confirm their own beliefs whatever they may be temporarily adopting views in conflict with our own and empathizing with those holding them can go a long way and accom in this now these four speed bumps assist us in our journey and just as driving too quickly over actual speed bumps on a real Highway can damage your car uh proceeding too quickly without deliberate a sustained effort to minimize or Horizons and the influence of them can wreck a good historical investigation well we'll now stop at our third checkpoint and gather some tools needed foru for conducting a proper historical investigation when historians employ method they typically use arguments to the best explanation this is where specific criteria are employed in order to compare hypotheses and the hypothesis that best meets that criteria wins let me give you three of the most important criteria for weighing hypothesis explanatory scope according to this Criterion the best explanation includes all of the relevant data so imagine trying to complete a jigsaw puzzle like Winnie the Pooh here and that each puzzle piece represents a historical fact the best solution includes the most pieces explanatory power according to this Criterion the best explanation accounts for All the known facts without having to force any of them to fit and without leaving much ambiguity the hypothesis that does this best is to be preferred and you can see in this case we do have some pieces that do fit but you can tell they've been forced that's what we're trying to avoid Less ad hoc sometimes it appears as though historians are attempting to salvage their failing hypothesis by appealing to an explanation for which there is no independent evidence and when this occurs that hypothesis may be said to be ad hoc so um in this solution to the puzzle not only are some pieces stranded While others are forced but you can see that there's a outside solution here uh that makes the whole thing quite convoluted and toward ous and that's what we're trying to avoid now these three criteria are very important and while none is fail safe they serve as guides for historians the more criteria that are solidly met by hypothesis the greater the probability it has of being accurate so when may a hypothesis be said to be proved well we may think of a staircase and the higher we go the more certainty we can have historians may firmly hold their hypothesis as correct when it is the best explanation and is far superior to its competitors now I place a hypothesis meeting these conditions somewhere between quite probable and very probable and in the literature I've read I find that most historians will place it somewhere around this category um although they may give different terms here and some even place it lower on the on the steps now let's put our method together or our method of practice and see how it works this will be our fourth and final checkpoint there are three facts pertaining to the resurrection of Jesus that are virtually Undisputed and are granted by virtually all Scholars who study the subject including skeptical ones fact number one is jesus' death by crucifixion fact number two Jesus original disciples believe that he rose from the dead and had appeared to them in short we'll call this the appearances to the disciples fact number three Paul the persecutor of the Christian Church converted to Christianity when he too had an experience that he believed was the Risen Jesus is appearing to him in short we'll call this the appearance to Paul now let's apply our method and see how it works given time constraints I can't possibly deal with all of the natural explanations proposed during the past 2,000 years but I can deal one with one that Professor man has defended we'll call it the wishful thinking hypothesis it states that after Jesus death his disciples turned to their scriptures in order to make sense of what had happened they read passages like Psalms 16: 2269 Isaiah 52 and 53 and concluded that Jesus had been resurrected with this knowledge some of jesus' disciples had visions of him now let's see how it holds up this hypothesis accounts for jesus' death by crucifixion nicely since Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 describe situations remarkably similar to a crucifixion so we'll give it a green light however it doesn't do so well in the second fact job in the first century reports that there were a number of proclaimed Messiahs around the time of Jesus within a couple of centuries and that in every instance the movement fell apart after the Romans executed the Messiah figure well this shows that the same would have probably occurred with Jesus followers had he remained dead and even more importantly of these biblical passages only one may be interpreted to suggest bodily Resurrection that's Psalm 16:10 which in Greek says you will not allow your Holy One to undergo Decay or in Hebrew to see the grave psalmist is not referring to postmortem existence but is stating his belief that everyone uh or that God will rescue him in his immediate situation from being killed and buried now since everyone would have known that God had not rescued Jesus from being killed and buried it's a stretch to claim that the early Christians would have used this text that is unless their experiences had convinced them that the bodily race Jesus had appeared before them in other words given jesus' bodily Resurrection we can understand why the early Christians interpreted psalm 16:10 as they did however it's a it's doubtful um that they would have come to this interpretation given a happy hunch or nice feeling that Jesus was alive and still among them in some sense so the second fact gets a red light since it possesses a bit of exegetical string to the biblical texts and a bit of ambiguity in relation to the experiences of the disciples in Paul so um the wishal thinking hypothesis doesn't do well either with the third fact since Paul was not a Christian at the time and would not have been trying make sense of jesus' death and the experiences of the disciples for pre-christian Paul Jesus died the rightful death of a false prophet and the disciples were either Liars or psychotics so it too gets a red light so what the three facts The Wishful Thinking hypothesis can only comfortably account for the first so I would encourage those who think they see the light on this explanation to be careful that light ahead isn't what you [Music] think now let's look at the resurrection hypothesis in comparison it accounts for Jesus death by crucifixion the appearances to the disciples and the appearance to Paul and um so in other words it explains all three facts without a bit of strain and so it easily beats wishful thinking hypothesis in explanatory scope and power ad hoc Criterion The Wishful Thinking hypothesis is left having to postulate the sort of experience that convinced jesus' disciples and Paul that he had been raised bodily and appear to them I'm not going to try to do this for Professor man but I will say this unless he can present a scenario that comfortably accounts for these and for which there is independent evidence and support his hypothesis will lack even greater explanatory power or possess an ad hoc component Resurrection hypothesis doesn't have to do this um and so it easily passes the Less ad hoc Criterion therefore when we weigh both hypotheses The Wishful Thinking hypothesis is very light and loses to the resurrection hypothesis on every Criterion historically speaking the resurrection hypothesis is far superior and I discovered that when we perform this exercise against other hypotheses Resurrection comes out on top every time it's the best explanation of the historical facts and out distances competitors by a significant margin so we've arrived at our destination so let's debrief on our journey we have taken a journey down history Highway and uh we visited four crucial checkpoints along the way in order to complete our journey successfully we clarified some terminology at the first at the second we discovered that Horizons pose a serious challenge that compromise their uh work of historians and that no historian is exempt from this challenge we laid down several speed bumps in order to slow us to a cautious Pace in order that we may achieve um some degree of objectivity at the third checkpoint we discussed method and and identified three tools or criteria for weighting hypothesis when a hypothesis fulfills the three criteria and beats competing hypothesis hands down uh the historian is warranted in holding firmly to that hypothesis as representing what actually occurred at the fourth checkpoint we applied method we discussed three relevant facts that make up the historical Bedrock pertaining to the fate of Jesus we then weighed The Wishful Thinking hypothesis against the resurrection hypothesis and found that the resurrection hypothesis uh wins by a significant margin so can historians prove that Jesus rose from the dead since it's the best explanation of the known facts and uh beats others by a a significant margin as historians we may say that it's quite probable to very probable that Jesus rose from the dead enough confidence to hold our conclusion firmly stated in more popular terms yes his historians can prove that Jesus rose from the dead thank [Applause] you I understand there's a little problem with hearing in the uh cor I don't know if there we can play with this sound at all to help them or not I don't know I just refer these gentlemen back here if you do anything to help pleas please I rigged it thank thank you Mr Lon and now we'll hear from drma well thank you very much for having me and thank you all for coming how many of you believe that Jesus was physically raised from the dead yes right so uh all day I've had these visions of Daniel and the Lion's Den I don't don't know don't know why but uh but uh thank you for coming anyway uh well I'd like to thank uh Mike for that learned and clear uh opening statement uh I had heard uh that Mike was a uh a skilled and uh and thoughtful uh speaker and now I can see why he has that uh reputation in in this uh first speech of mine I'm not going to be dealing directly with what he just said uh because I have a prepared speech uh and I will try and answer his uh his points uh in my in my first rep reputation so I won't be dealing directly with what he'd say I would like to say that um I used to believe uh absolutely everything that Mike is just presented uh about the resurrection of Jesus uh I have my undergraduate degree from Wheaton College and Evangelical school where these things are taught even before that I went to a yet more conservative School The Moody Bible Institute where Bible is our middle name uh and uh these things uh are taught uh quite avidly uh there I took uh several courses on apologetics uh the subject in which Mike is an expert uh I used to believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus my entire heart and soul I used to preach the resurrection of Jesus and I used to try and convince other people that Jesus in fact was physically raised from the dead but then I started studying these matters not simply accepting what my teachers had said but looking into them deeply myself I learned Greek and started studying the New Testament in the original Greek language I learned Hebrew and studied the Old Testament I learned Latin syc and Coptic to be able to study New Testament manuscripts and the non-canonical traditions of Jesus in their original languages I immersed myself in the world of the first century reading non-Christian Jewish and Pagan texts from the Roman Empire and before and I tried to the best of my ability to master everything written by a Christian from the first 300 years of Christianity I became a historian of Christian Antiquity and for 25 years now I've done my research in this area night and day I'm not a a philosopher I am a historian and I'm dedicated to finding out the historical truth in all of my study I have had one objective to learn the truth and to dedicate my life to it after my years of study I finally came to the conclusion that everything I had previously thought about the historical evidence for the resurrection was absolutely wrong let me Begin by explaining in simple terms uh this will be covering similar grounds to what Mike uh has has just covered but in a in a very different way what is it that historians do historians try to establish what probably happened in the past they try to establish what probably happened in the past we can't know what happened in the past we can have levels of probability of what happened in the past what was Bill Clinton doing in the year 1992 we're actually pretty well informed Med about that what Bill Clinton was doing and we have relative High relatively high levels of certainty of what he was doing in 1992 those of us who were awake and alive at the time what about 1972 well that's a little bit more difficult because we don't have as good of documentation what if we go back several hundred years what about Shakespeare do we really know that Shakespeare wrote all of his place well there are debates about this why are there debates about it because it's a long time ago and there isn't very good evidence one way or the other other did Caesar cross the Rubicon well we have some evidence for it in fact something from Caesar's own hand but it was 2,100 years ago and uh it's a little bit harder to establish what Caesar was doing 2100 years ago than what Bill Clinton was doing 15 years ago how about Simon Peter the Apostle of Jesus what do we know about his death in fact what we know are legends that were written hundreds of years later what do we actually know about his death as a historian I would say we know very little about his death there are different levels of probability for different things that happened in history and what historians do is they try to establish what the levels of probability are for certain things having happened what kind of evidence do historians hope for when they're trying to establish what probably happened in the past historians want to have contemporary accounts of the events that they narrate they want these events to be close to the time uh they want these accounts to be close to the time of the events themselves they want to have lots of these accounts multiple sources if possible they want these sources to be independent of one another you don't want sources that had collaborated with one another you want independent multiple sources for different accounts you want these independent multiple sources to be consistent with one another if they contradict one another then you've got a problem because you don't know which source then to rely upon moreover you want sources that are not biased toward their subject you want sources that in fact are not simply promoting their own beliefs you want independent sources that are not biased for their subject if possible this is what you want this is what historians hope for what do historians have when it comes to the gospels of the New Testament are sources for knowing about the life of Jesus and if it happened his Resurrection do the sources that we have coincide with what we hope for first thing to point out is the dates of these sources the gospels of the New Testament are much later than the accounts that they narrate most historians date the First Gospel as the gospel of Mark and indicate that it was written sometime around the year 65 or 70 AD in other words 35 or 40 years after the death of Jesus and it is our first go Gospel Matthew and Luke were written 10 or 15 years later maybe 80 to 85 John was written 10 or 15 years after that maybe 90 to 95 in other words our gospels are separated from the life of Jesus anywhere from 35 to 65 years that's the time gap between the death of Jesus and the first accounts of his life 35 to 65 years they are not contemporary accounts these accounts are not written by eyewitness and they don't claim to be Matthew Mark Luke and John do not claim to be written by people named Matthew Mark Luke and John those are the titles in our Bibles but those titles were added by later editors whoever wrote The Gospel according to Matthew didn't call it the Gospel according to Matthew somebody else is telling you who they think wrote the Gospel and those descriptions aren't found until the 2 Century they're not original to Matthew Mark Luke and John these authors of Matthew Mark Luke and John are writing later and in fact they're not even speaking the language that Jesus spoke Aramaic they write in Greek they are highly literate greek-speaking Christians living decades later jesus' own disciples by the way were Aramaic speakers who were peasants of the lower class and were illiterate they did not write the gospels where did the gospel writers get their stories from if they're writing decades after the fact they got their stories from oral Traditions that were in circulation year after year after the death of of Jesus Jesus died and people started telling stories about him in order to convert people to the faith when somebody converted they told the story to somebody else that person told the stories to somebody else that person told the stories to somebody else and that person told the stories to somebody else this went on for year after year after year decade after decade before the gospel writers were uh were themselves writing what happens when stories are put in circulation orally stories get changed if you ever had your children play the game telephone uh in a birthday party where one kid tells a story to the next kid sitting at their birthday party and then The Story Goes to the next kid to the next kid goes around the circle until it comes back to the first kid it's a different story if it weren't a different story it'd be a pretty dumb birthday party game to play the stories changed what happens if you play this game not in one living room with a bunch of kids from the same socio economic class all speak the same language what if you played the game for 35 45 55 years in different languages in different countries telling stories that the people who are telling stories were not there to witness what happens to the stories the stories get changed do I have evidence that the stories get changed yes indeed there is very solid evidence namely that you have different sources telling the same stories and in almost every instance when different sources tell the same stories in the New Testament the stories are different sometimes in little ways sometimes in big ways somebody was changing the stories you can see this for yourself the reason people don't see this normally is because the way people normally read the Bible the way you normally read the Bible is you're going to read the gospels and so you start reading the gospel of Matthew and you start Matthew chapter 1 verse one uh the first 16 verses are genealogies not very interesting you read them anyway because it's the Bible and then you go on through you get down then to chapter 17 and the action starts picking up and you read Matthew you go through chapter 1 then chapter 2 chap chapter 3 you go all the way through chapter 28 you've read Matthew then you start reading Mark you start at the beginning of Mark you go to the bottom chapters 1-6 then you read Luke and Mark by the way sounds a lot like Matthew then you read Luke and it sounds a lot like Mark you read John it's kind of different but it sounds pretty much like the others they they're all B they're all basically saying the same story the reason it sounds that way is because you're reading them vertically the way to notice differences in the gospels is to read them not vertically but to read them horizontally read a story in Matthew then read the same story in Mark and then read the same story in Luke and compare them in detail in almost every instance you will find differences let me just give you some examples from the death accounts and Resurrection accounts of Jesus the accounts of jesus' death what day did Jesus die on and what time of day did Jesus die on the day before the Passover meal was eaten as John explicitly says John 19:14 or was he was he executed on on the day after the Passover meal was was eaten as Mark explicitly says which was it before or after the meal did he die sometime afternoon as John explicitly says or did he die at n was he crucified at 9:00 in the morning as Mark explicitly says it depends which account you read did Jesus carry his cross the entire way himself or did Simon of sirene carry his cross it depends which gospel you read did both of the robbers crucified with Jesus mock him or did only one of them mock him and the other come to his defense it depends which gospel you read did the curtain in the temple riing half before Jesus died or did it rip in half after he died it depends which gospel you read those are simply examples from Jesus death you can do this with any story found commonly throughout the gospels in more than one gospel you will find that in fact you have different stories now look at the resurrection can we trust these sources to give us a reliable account of what happened at the resurrection well look at the stories themselves in the gospels and ask yourself are they telling the same story or not who went to the tomb on the third day was it Mary Magdalene alone or Mary with other women if it was with other women how many other women were there which ones were they and what were their names it depends which gospel you read was the stone rolled away before they got there or not it depends which gospel you read what did they see when they got to the Tom did they see one man did they see two men or did they see one Angel it depends which gospel you're now by the way people people trying and reconcile all these differences I mean for example with this one here what the people will say is well what they actually saw were two angels so that one gospel says it was two was two men because they mistook the men the angels for men another says it was one Angel because there was one Angel but there was also another one and there was also one man because there was an angel who mistaken for man but there was also another one so the way you saw the problem as you say there were two angels in other words you solve the problem by saying something that none of the gospels say that's how you reconcile it by creating your own Gospel what were the women at the tomb told to tell the disciples were the disciples supposed to stay in Jerusalem to or were they supposed to go to Galilee to see Jesus it depends which gospel uh author you read did the women tell anyone what they saw or not it depends which gospel you read all of these differ depending on which gospel you read did the disciples leave Jerusalem to go to Galilee or did they stay in Jerusalem did they never leave or did they leave right away it depends which gospel you read these gospels are all different from one another in their details are they the kind of sources that historians would rely upon for historical information I would argue that in fact these are not the kinds of sort ources that can be relied upon by historians now let me emphasize something um because I do want to get out of here alive um I am not this might sound weird to you I I actually am not disputing the theological value of the gospels I'm asking about their historical Merit there is a difference between having a book that is theologically useful and a book that is historically accurate Theology and history are not the same thing and what I'm going to be maintaining in this debate is that claims about Jesus resurrection are theological claims they are not historical claims and the gospels are theological documents they're not historically accurate documents by conclusions about the gospel narratives these are not reliable historical accounts the accounts that we have are based on oral Traditions that have been in circulation for decades year after year Christians trying to convert other people they had an intention when they told these stories they told these stories in order to convince other people that Jesus was raised from the dead the authors who wrote down these stories decades later were not eyewitnesses they were greek-speaking Christians living 35 to 65 years after the events that they narrated these authors are telling stories that Christians had been telling during those years there was no one there at the time of jesus' death taking notes the stories many of them were actually invented most of the stories were in fact changed for these reasons the gospel accounts are not as useful as we would like them to be for historical sources they're not contemporary they're not disinterested they're not consistent with one another now as emphatic as I've tried to be about that the reality is what I've just told you over the last 15 minutes is not the big problem the big problem with arguing that the resurrection can be proved by historians is something else it's a major obstacle that no historian can overcome no matter what this is the obstacle historians by their very nature try to establish what probably happened in the past you can't repeat the experiment of the past that's why you have people who can deny that certain things that almost certainly haven't happen University of Tennessee ranked number one in college basketball lost the game three nights ago we in Chapel Hill are glad to know it's almost certain but you can't repeat it how do you know well you have newspaper accounts but you can't repeat the experiment did the Holocaust happen yes but people deny it why because you can't repeat the experiment historians can only establish what probably happened in the past and what are Miracles exactly well Mike has already told us What miracles are miracles in any given instance are the least probable occurrence they violate what we think of as the natural working of the natural order if they weren't spectacularly unusual they wouldn't be Miracles by definition Miracles are the least probable occurrence no human being in this room can walk on water what are the chances that anyone can walk on water well the chances are less than 1 in5 billion because there's nobody on the planet who can walk on water unless the water happens to be frozen can you demonstrate that somebody ever probably walked on water not if it's the least probable occurrence for something having happened the probabilities are infit testly remote so too with the resurrection of Jesus I am not saying and I want to be emphatic about this point I am not saying that Jesus was not raised from the dead that's not my argument my argument is that if Jesus was raised from the dead historians cannot prove it because of the nature of historical evidence a theologian may say that it's true and then you'd have to argue about it on theological grounds but the historian cannot show it the historian's Dilemma is this how can the least probable occurrence a miracle ever be the most probable by definition it's the least probable occurrence historians could never establish the least probable occurrence as being the most probable which means historians can never establish that the resurrection ever happened it cannot be you cannot be proved by historians maybe it happened maybe it didn't happen but you can't use historical evidence to prove it now Mike's going to say well that means that you can't test the truth claims of Christianity using history and that's absolutely right you cannot just as you cannot use mathematics to prove the truth claims of Christianity or chemistry to prove the truth claims of Christianity the reality is historians cannot prove what what is the least probable occurrence as having happened in the past our sources are contradictory and late and not by eyewitnesses and historians simply cannot prove Miracles because of the nature of the case thank you now our sessions of reut first well thank you Bart I appreciate that in our in my opening statement I said that I would be sound a lot worse than Bart does this evening um my opening statement I said that we take it Journey Down history Highway and that we would visit four crucial checkpoints along the way so what I would like to do is to revisit each of those checkpoints in light of what Professor man just said at our first checkpoint we looked at definitions and um here um part defines Miracle is the least probable explanation um I mean I'm going to deal with that but I'd like to reserve that until we get to the third checkpoint at our second checkpoint we disc discussed Horizons and how that these can severely handicap a historian's investigation Bart didn't comment on this in his opening statement and I wouldn't expect him to um we agreed that he would give his negative case and so um and we both probably agree on this equally anyway on our third checkpoint we discussed method and I argue that uh historians use arguments to the best explanation and they do this by applying specific criteria such as explanatory scope explanatory power uh Les at Haw now here's where I think Bart's definition of miracle comes into play he defines Miracle as the least probable explanation and I think this is very problematic and let me explain why um if we're going to say that a miracle um uh if we know ahead of time that God does not exist then certainly it's the the least probable explanation and if we knew ahead of time that God exists and wanted to act in a specific period of History such is the resurrection of Jesus then we would say that that particular Miracle is the most probable explanation the problem is is that historians don't have this knowledge and so they can't say that something is probable or improbable in these cases um what historians need to do is to look at the evidence without prejudice in either direction and form hypotheses based on that evidence and weigh those hypotheses uh using specific criteria such as explanatory scope power Etc this is how probability should be determined and not according to the theological speculations that Bart Imports into his historical investigation prior to an examination of the evidence at our fourth checkpoint we talked about applying method and here we talked about historical Bedrock as well as Wayne hypothesis for the historical Bedrock I mentioned that there are three facts upon which uh for which virtually a consensus of historians including skeptical ones agre age Jesus death by crucifixion the appearances to the disciples and the appearance to Paul now Professor came back and he said well wait a minute the gospels aren't as reliable as we'd like they were written somewhere between 35 to 65 years after the events they purport to describe they are Anonymous written by Greek speaking Christians it's kind of like the telephone thing to one to another to another and so you have all these differences these discrepancies within them and so he says these are not sources historians can rely on they're not contemporary not consistent and not disinterested but these this objection I believe is irrelevant and let me explain why I did not build my case for the resurrection this evening on biblical inherency I didn't build it on the trustworthiness of the gospels a particular dating of them or who wrote them one of the things I did in my investigation to minimize my own bias was to go with the facts and only those facts that were virtually indisputed by historians that's what I built my case on and Professor man agrees with these facts so for example fact number one Jesus death by crucifixion he says one of the most certain facts of history is that Jesus was crucified on orders of the Roman prefect uh of Judea Pontius Pilate fact number two the appearances to the disciples it is a historical fact that some of jesus' followers came to believe that he had been raised from the dead soon after his execution we know some of these Believers by name he goes on and explains Paul and he also says these others uh also claimed to have seen him alive afterward fact number three the appearance to Paul there is no doubt that Paul believed that he saw Jesus real but glorified body raised from the dead Paul taught that Resurrection meant The Total Transformation of his body so we can see that Professor man agrees with these three facts and rightly so virtually every scholar in the world who studied the subject agrees on these including skeptical ones so what I'm saying is the case that I built for the resurrection despite Bart's inen sees about the gospels there's my case has been built upon three facts that are virtually indisputable and just as uh survivors of the Titanic contradicted one another and whether the ship broke into prior sinking or whether she went down on T no one therefore concluded that the Titanic didn't sink they just said that there were peripheral details that we just don't know the answer to and I would I would love to discuss some of these in the Q&A period I just don't think that they're pertinent for tonight's debate um and so what Professor man's going to have to do is attack my um uh the method that I've applied my approach to these three facts rather than the sources U themselves because he still thinks that they're reliable enough to get these three facts now for the second half uh we discussed weighing hypotheses the first hypothesis had to do with the wishful thinking hypothesis and Professor man didn't comment on this in his opening statement again again I understand that that's that's that's fine um perhaps he can address this in his rebuttal that's forthcoming excuse me regarding the resurrection hypothesis he said this is a theological object uh hypothesis not historical and I disagree I think that what he's doing is he's confusing a historical conclusion with its theological implications so I think he's doing history backwards I think what he's saying is listen if Jesus rose from the dead we can do all kinds of logic chopping but I think we all realize that God is the best candidate for the for the task and he's saying well but historians can't get the god at least as historians and so that eliminates and makes this whole practice of analyzing the resurrection is illegitimate I don't think so I think what historians can do is analyze the data weigh hypothesis and come up with a historical conclusion if the resurrection hypothesis is the one that has the greatest explanatory scope power and less at hog then it should be the best explanation the most probable explanation and the one that we can be confident is what occurred in the past but that leads then you say well then but if Jesus rose that means god raised him well that is a theological implication and we can divorce the historical conclusion with the theological implication so we could conclude as historians that Jesus rose from the dead without going on to the second question and saying God raised Jesus from the dead again I think we could all admit that God's probably the best candidate but we're not going to get there as a historian we can get that Jesus rose from the dead without saying God raised him from the dead um and you know historians do similar things like this like in the case of Charlamagne in the 8th Century Charlamagne and his brother co- ruled the Roman Empire um and they hated each other and 3 years into charlamagne's in his brother's Reign his brother died historians conclude uh that Charlemagne's brother died in 717 but they don't have to conclude because it's indeterminant whether he died of natural causes or charlam had him killed so in the same way again I'd say we can conclude that Jesus rose from the dead while leaving a question mark of who raised him all right if the evidence points to that so um let me just uh conclude this first rebuttal by just saying in terms of historians analyzing Miracle claims um I'm not the only one who's saying that historians can do this in the 2006 theme issue of history and Theory it focused on religion and history and numerous historians acknowledge that we are now at a turning point that the interaction between religion and history is not where most historians have thought and that we need to reassess our attitudes toward religious phenomena and either revise or defend our methods many of the contributors noted a philosophical bias against against miracles on the part of many historians this recognition is also taking part place amongst a number of biblical Scholars as well for example Sarah kley a distinguished professor at Harvard writes that new testament scholarship of this generation is often downright repressive about supernatural events in general and bodily Resurrection in particular Ben withington writes even some contemporary Bible scholars assume that miracles must be left out of account if we're going to do scholarly work like the other critical historians this is a carryover from the anti- supernatural bias of many Enlightenment historians but it seems a very odd presupposition today our postmodern world is experiencing a newfound openness to Miracles magic the supernatural the spiritual or whatever you may want to call it so even though there are numerous uh biblical Scholars and historians who believe they're prohibited from investigating Miracle claims a number of professional historians in biblical scholar are calling for a new paradigm so I think the epistem epistemological iceage of modernity is coming to an end spring is in the air the trees are blooming birds are singing and the air is warming to the investigation of Miracle claims and those Scholars who exercise their rights to do so will find themselves amid a growing number of colleagues so in just summarizing I think uh we've seen that the the case that I presented that historians can prove that Jesus rose from the dead still stands and that Professor man's uh arguments to the contrary fail under critical scrutiny thank [Applause] you well so I've got a uh tall task uh Mike wants to insist that there are three Undisputed facts that prove that Jesus was raised from the dead historically the facts are that Jesus died by crucifixion number one number two the disciples afterwards came to believe that he had been raised from the dead on the basis of what they said were appearances to them number two and then number three that the Apostle Paul converted first let me point out that I don't see that he actually has three Rock Solid facts that point to the resurrection take fact number one that Jesus was crucified how exactly does the crucifixion of Jesus provide evidence that he was raised from the dead there were thousands of people who were were crucified in the first century is this evidence that thousands of people were raised from the dead some people have the mistaken idea of course that Jesus alone was crucified uh and when you see artistic representations often of course you'll see Jesus nailed to the cross and the two robbers tied to the Cross have you noticed that why is that it's to show that Jesus suffered more than anyone else in fact lots of people suffered crucifixion in the year 70 when the Roman general uh Titus overthrew Jerusalem after a 2 and 1/2 year Siege of the city of Jerusalem they breached the city walls they went in uh to uh Slaughter the opposition Titus crucified all of the opposition so much so he ran out of lumber crucifixion was a common form of execution in the Roman Empire for the lowest of the low the fact of crucifixion simply shows that Jesus was executed for some kind of crime against the state it has no relevance to whether he was raised from the dead any more than the crucifixion of anyone else is evidence that he was raised from the dead so we no longer have three Rock Solid facts that point to Resurrection we have two the the crucifixion is irrelevant to the question so let's look at these two the disciples believed in Jesus because he allegedly appeared to them and Paul was converted Now by my reasoning those two are actually one because Paul is one of the people who claimed that he saw Jesus alive afterwards and was converted on the basis of that appearance now true some of the people who converted were allegedly were probably Jesus followers and Paul was not a follower but it's the same phenomenon we're looking at the phenomenon is that Jesus allegedly appeared to people after his death so let's take on that as a uh piece of evidence that is the only piece of evidence that Mike has marshal namely that people claim to see Jesus alive after his death so we have one fact that I agree with there were people who claimed they saw Jesus alive after his death the question is can a historian on the basis of that fact establish that Jesus was probably raised from the dead I'd like to look at several considerations first I'm a little puzzled that Mike hasn't looked at parallel phenomenon in the ancient world as it turns out there are numerous instances of ancient people who were dead dead as door Nails who allegedly appeared to their close Companions and followers after their death were all of these people raised from the dead let me give you one example a famous holy man in the first century a pagan holy man was named appollonia he was from the city of of Tiana we know about apalon and the life of apalon because one of his later followers wrote down an account of his life abalonus had a life that was very interesting indeed before he was born an Angelic visitor came to his Woodby mother and told her that she was going to Bear a special son her son would not be a mere mortal her son would be the Son of God he was born supernaturally after his birth as a a young boy he uh impressed the teachers of his people with his religious knowledge that was Superior in every way when he became an adult he left his home and went from one Village in town to the other preaching his message that people shouldn't be concerned about material things in this world people should be concerned with the spiritual things in life he gathered a group of followers around him who were convinced that he was the son of God and he confirmed their belief by doing mirac Miracles he could cast out demons he could heal the sick and he could raise the dead at the end of abalonus his life he got in trouble with the Roman authorities who ended up putting him on trial but he ascended to heaven and afterwards he appeared alive to his followers and his followers talked about it some of them wrote books one of the books has survived now if the Rock solid evidence of Jesus resurrection is that somebody claimed they saw him alive afterwards then I think we have Rock Solid evidence that appolloni of Tiana was raised from the dead how is it any different and it isn't just appolloni as who is a candidate for Resurrection from the dead what about ramulus what about Heracles what about cleomedes what about all the other people from the GRE Roman world who were allegedly seen by their followers after their death are they all people who have been raised from the dead if Mike wants to base his argument solely on this one fact that he says is not based on biblical inherency which by the way I didn't I didn't mention because I didn't think he did hold a Biblical inherency if he wants to hold this not on the basis of biblical reports but on this one idea that people later said they saw him alive afterwards then what about these other people secondly what about modern people who are seen after their death it turns out there's an entire literature of studies done by experts psychologists social historians parapsychologists about people who have visions of loved ones after their death why hasn't Mike investigated this information as it turns out it's a very common phenomenon for people to claim to have seen somebody that they were close to after their death these occurrences are well documented some times the person comes to a person uh through a wall or through a door and disappears as suddenly these people are not seen to be ghosts they're seen to be real physical people who could be touched and held and experienced sometimes these people are seen by multiple people at the same time maybe some of you even have had the experience of a loved one whom you were sure that you had some experience of after their death does that mean that they were raised from the dead Jesus disciples claimed they saw him alive afterwards so have many thousands of people not just in American culture but cross culturally throughout the world this is extremely well documented well were all those people raised from the dead if this is the only piece of evidence you have for a resurrection and other people meet the same Criterion third we have appearances of other religious figures that are well documented in the modern world in 1968 to 69 in zetune Egypt at the Copic Church where both Muslims and Christians were gathered the mother Mary appeared Virgin Mary the Blessed Virgin Mary herself she appeared over a over a number of months between 1968 and 1969 Believers and unbelievers claimed that they saw her the total was over 10,000 people who claimed that they saw her now as a historian am I going to say that the Virgin Mary actually appeared to these 10,000 people well if I follow Mike's Criterion I think I have to say that because we have 10,000 eyewitness accounts of people who claim they saw the Virgin Mary do I personally think she appeared to them no but as a historian can I prove it no here's what I think happened with the historical Jesus Jesus had an avid following among his disciples who were convinced that he was somebody special Jesus proclaimed that God was going to intervene in history and overthrow the forces of evil and bring in a good Kingdom on Earth Jesus believed that there were evil forces in the world demons and sickness and sin and death that this world was controlled by the forces of evil but that God wasn't going to allow it to go on forever that God was going to soon intervene and overthrow the forces of evil to bring in a good Kingdom on Earth this kingdom was going to happen very soon According To Jesus in his first recorded words Mark 1:15 Jesus said the time has been fulfilled the kingdom of God is at hand repent and believe the good news this is what Scholars call an apocalyptic image an apocalyptic image meaning an image of the end time that is soon to come the time has been fulfilled says Jesus in other words there's a certain amount of time allotted for life in this age this evil age run by the forces of evil it's almost over though soon God is going to intervene and overthrow those forces of evil the kingdom of God is at hand says Jesus as he says elsewhere to his disciples truly I tell you some of you standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come in power the disciples would see the kingdom of God come God was going to intervene he was going to vindicate his right righteous ones and who was more righteous than Jesus Jesus went to Jerusalem the last week of his life entered into the temple overturned tables in the temple upset the ruling authorities who decided to have him arrested and taken out of the way they subjected him to crucifixion a form of death that was reserved for the lowest of the low his discip Dees had hoped that he would be the one who would restore the kingdom to Israel and then he was killed they loved him what are they to think God was soon going to intervene on behalf of his righteous people he would vindicate his righteous ones the Disciples of Jesus came to believe that God did vindicate his righteous one Jesus just as so many thousands of people have since his disciples after jesus' death had visions of him they experienced him as still in their lives they remembered his words but they also had some kind of experience of him a real tangible experience of him where they could feel him and touch him and talk to him just as widows today sometimes experience their dead husbands or as children today experienced their dead parents they had experiences of Jesus experiences that happened multiple times throughout history and still till down till today on the basis of their experiences they believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead what would be more natural they saw him they talked to him just as people do today historians cannot prove that Jesus was raised from the dead and I should point out that I think Mike is being a little bit slippery when he says that it's possible to say that Jesus was raised from the dead but that maybe God didn't do it well who else did it if you're not going to say God raised from Jesus from the dead then as a historian I want you to tell me who did raise Jesus from the dead and if you're going to say God did it then you're making a theological statement not a historical statement it's a statement about God and God's activities it's a statement about a miracle the least likely occurrence which is more likely that the followers of Jesus who loved him had Visionary experiences of him after his death Visionary experiences that are documented thousands of times or that God raised him from the dead a unique miracle that would have happened only once which is more his historically probable if you're a historian you can only deal with probabilities you can only deal with what most probably happened not with what least probably happened if you're a Christian you are welcome to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead but that is a theological belief that you have about something that God did it is not based on historical proof because the historical proof cannot be uced thank you [Applause] we'll now give you an opportunity to ask a question and if you take that 3x5 card and you have a question You' like to ask just write it out on one side of it we obviously will not be able to handle but a few of these so they'll be screened for the most pertinent one or remove the ones that are repetitious and if you uh have already written your question out just if you will move them to the center aisles these gentlemen will pick them up and then at the end of our time they will address those and speak to them we'll go from here into a second rebuttal which will be uh first of all uh given to us by Mike Lona and then by Dr Airman following him and then each one will have a closing statement first Michael Iona and then Bart Airman I'll leave you men uninterrupted to finish both the last rebal and the closing statement at the end of the closing statements we'll have the Q&A time and since Dr irman will have had the last closing statement we'll go from one of our participants to the other and we'll give uh Mr Lon the chance to answer the last of those questions to close our evening tonight so for our first rebuttal uh for the second half of the program Mike [Applause] Bona well thank you again I said tonight we would take a journey down history Highway and stop at four checkpoints so I'd like again to review revisit those four checkpoints um in light of what Professor man has just said in terms of the first checkpoint the definition of History nothing further was said here Horizons nothing further at the second on to the third um he did say again at the very end he said that historians can only deal with what most probably occurred and I agree with that so I but I would say that that is just half true um because the point that he's trying to make um well does it's the wrong half doesn't coincide with um let me put it this way I agree with him that historians must choose the most probable explanation but where we disagree is that miracles must be the least probable explanation I agree that they must be least probable by natural causes but no one ever claimed that Jesus rose by natural causes the claim is that God raised Jesus from the dead and God exists and wanted to raise Jesus there's no reason why this shouldn't be the most probable explanation the difficulty for historians is we can't know whether God wanted to raise Jesus and so we have to leave this uh in terms of PRI uh prior probability to be settled by which hypothesis fulfills the criteria best of explanatory scope power Etc this is how we determine probability and not according to these theological specul ulations that Bart has to ort into his uh history prior to assessing any of the evidence when we do look at the explanatory scope power Etc we do find that the resurrection is the most probable explanation if we look at it purely according to how well it fulfills that U those criteria rather than the theological and philosophical ideas that go along with it now at our fourth chapter point we looked at applying method we talked about the historical Bedrock uh those three facts and Bart says that these are not rock solid facts but remember these are things that he admitted to in his opening statement um I'm sorry in his writings he admits that jesus' death by crucifixion is one of the most certain facts of History he admits that it is a historical fact that some of jesus' followers came to believe that he had been raised from the dead and that Paul um he says of Paul there is no doubt that Paul believed that he saw Jesus real but glorified body raised from the dead so it's this transformed physicality of the body that is raised from the dead so he believes with the on these three facts right here and counts them as facts he says well you can't have or um just because you don't have just because you have crucifixion these were common it doesn't mean a Resurrection I never said it did but you can't have a resurrection without a death now can you and so that's why I said Jesus death by crucifixion in terms of the appearances to the disciples and the appearance to Paul the reason I distinguish them is because not only was it his friends who believe that he rose from the dead but also a sworn enemy someone who would be the equivalent of a modern Osama Bin Laden who uh I mean imagine Osama Bin Laden he comes out of the uh appears before his group someday and and you hear all these gunshots and yelling and he comes out he says Brothers I'm here to tell you I was in a cave the other day and I was praying with my colleagues and a loud voice bellowed throughout the cave and a bright light came in the cave and said Osama Osama why are you persecuting me he said well who are you Lord and he said I am Jesus whom you were persecuting and so forth and I'm here to tell you today Muslim brothers and sisters that Jesus is Lord and we need to follow him and they Pelt him with stones that's the big difference between the disciples believing and Paul believing now Professor man makes a issue out of the parallels but I don't think that these are very um effective for example he mentions abalonus of Tiana um what we need to do is we need to compare the sources like are there early sources multiple sources eyewitness sources embarrassing sources are there any plaus naturalistic explanations and when we look at abalonus of Tiana versus Jesus we see that abalonus fails in every single one of these categories whereas Jesus passes the earliest account that we have 125 years after the death of abalonus um we don't have multiple sources we only have the one source yes there were others but we don't have them and we could add more sources about Jesus if we're going to go that way eyewitnesses we don't have that with abalonus embarrassing no cuz philastus his only biographer was very pro- abalonus in fact there are reasons to suspect that this was uh perhaps propaganda meant to um answer the Christian view so there are plausible naturalistic explanations but the thing with uh Jesus resurrection fa uh passes in every one of these categories regarding ramulus he mentioned that well we're not even certain of his death that's not mentioned in the historical records so that's why death is important we do at least have an apparition of the dead and um this is something that Professor man mentioned and he said well Mike uh just hasn't study the literature on this and I have in fact I noticed the book uh resurrecting Jesus by Dale Allison I wrote the review for a review of biblical literature on that book and in fact hosted a panel discussion at uh a and EPS this past fall where Professor Allison gave a paper on his studies about apparitions from the dead and it was responded by Gary habas William Lane Craig and Steven Davis I think apparitions of the Dead actually occur I have no problems with that I have a friend in Virginia Beach named Pat Ferguson who was told me of an amazing corroborated account of an apparition of the Dead just the other day I was talking to my friend Bill Johnson down in Atlanta Georgia who had an apparition of the Dead just last week and he's had them before and some of these are corroborated so I do believe in these but in no case do these people go back and check the person's tomb they don't think that it's it's a bodily resurrected of a transformed corpse so um I do believe that sometimes you have these apparitions of the dead I don't have problems with that in terms of the Virgin Mary in 1968-69 I haven't really looked into this I must confess so I can't really comment on this if there were 10,000 or plus eyewitnesses to this I would just say that if I were to look in it I would have to weigh the hypothesis I'm not Catholic so my bias to begin with would be to say that these there must be a natural IC explanation but as a historian I would have to be open to this I would have to weigh hypothesis and be open to a phenomena going on could I prove that it's the Virgin Mary no could I prove that this was uh perhaps a supernatural event well maybe maybe I'd have to be open to that as a historian if there were no plausible naturalistic explanations and if this happened in a context that was charged with religious significance which I'd be happy to unpack back if Professor would like me to regarding the weigh of hypotheses he brought up the wishful thinking hypothesis and he stated what he thought happened but he didn't defend it and it's easy to just State I could say Jesus rose from the dead but unless I give evidence for it it falls on deaf ears so I'm still waiting to hear Professor man's explanation for that again it lacks explanatory scope power and may possess an ad hoc component um regarding the uh he says if God didn't do it with the resurrection who did well as historians as I mentioned in my first rebuttal we may have to leave that as a question mark but that doesn't justify us saying that Jesus didn't rise from the dead just because we it we can't stomach the possibility that maybe a god did it um I think that's doing history backward and we have to divorce oursel of our theological and philosophical presuppositions for the most part in terms of our beliefs about God when we are doing a historical investigation let me just give a real quick analogy let's say that during his next uh rebuttal Mark drops dead I hope that doesn't happen we'll say he does and a couple Physicians come up and work on him and the paramedicals come in after an hour they declare him dead and at that point Phil Roberts jumps up and says uh Bart uh God did this in order to show you that um uh your journey from Christianity to agnosticism was wrongheaded now in the name of Jesus get up and walk and at that moment he opens his eyes and stands up well maybe he would say whoa whatever happened I don't understand what happened there but it wasn't a miracle because we can't know that and I would say no I think it was a miracle um maybe we can't say anything about the God who did that as historians but we could say that a miracle has happened here um so in conclusion I I think I just to say that I think my case that historians can prove that Jesus rose from the dead still stands and Bart's um contentions to the contrary continue to fail under critical [Applause] scrutiny well thank you Mike for those clarifications and uh I think Mike would agree these debates get increasingly difficult because what your temp to do is to give a point BYO reputation and uh frankly it's kind of boring to do it that way but that's sort of what you're stuck with so uh so it goes so um yeah so let me answer just a few of his points um uh I am insisting that he doesn't have three facts he's got one fact uh that the that there are people who claim to see Jesus alive afterwards he says that his first point that Jesus was crucified is necessary because if he wasn't crucified he wouldn't be raised from the dead that's true yes right okay fine but it's not evidence that he was raised from the dead well we're not talking about just Bedrock facts if you want to talk just about Bedrock facts you could say things like uh Jesus Came From Galilee it's a Bedrock fact does it have anything to do with the resurrection no uh jesus' parents were named Mary and Joseph Bedrock fact does it have anything to do with the resurrection no uh Jesus had Brothers one of whom was named James Bedrock fact anything to do with the resurrection no Jesus was crucified Bedrock fat anything to do with Resurrection no yes he had to die we all have to die uh and to to argue that the difference with ramulus is that we don't have any account of his death I think the alternative is to say that ramulus never died uh and uh none of us thinks that so uh so uh the reality is we do have accounts of Romulus and others being seen or uh or disappearing from this Earth and showing up in heaven after their after their death um it was a very helpful point for him to clarify uh that his second and third facts that Jesus disciples claim to see him alive afterwards and Paul saw him alive afterwards are two different things because one you have his friends and the other you have his enemy absolutely very good point uh it's a great point so uh so let's talk about this for a second uh are we going to say that when somebody converts from being an enemy to being a friend that that is evidence of a miracle let me give you an example uh a well-known example from the Middle Ages of one of the most famous Jews of the Middle Ages shabti s who was thought to be the Messiah by many Jews who in fact thought of himself as the Messiah but near the end of his life converted to Islam he joined his enemies does that show anything about the truth claims of Islam does that show that Muslims are right and that Jews are wrong theologically because somebody convert from being an enemy to being a friend Paul did convert from being an enemy to to being a friend it's not unheard of in fact it happens a lot uh Mike might point to me as an example the other interesting thing in Mike's uh recent uh rebuttal was um that it came out that there are other things lurking behind the scenes when it comes to what he considers to be historical evidence of the Resurrection uh he didn't mention these things in his beginning speech and so I haven't referred to them in my rebuttal uh which is in contrast By the way with with Mike attacking my uh wishful thinking hypothesis that I haven't talked about because I'm not I mean it's not not the position I'm taking so uh uh so his rebuttal of it is somewhat beside the point because it's not not what I'm I'm arguing uh Mike on the other hand appears to have a couple things lurking behind the scenes that are he's seeing as evidence the two things that he's relying on are the reliability of our sources and the fact of an empty tomb this became clear in his rebuttal and I don't want him to deny it because I just heard him talk about them when I talked about abalonus he said the difference is that with appollonia we have late sources they are not eyewitnesses and they are biased that's what he said now that's what I said about our sources for the resurrection of Jesus and he said it was irrelevant now it's either relevant or it's not relevant if it's relevant then you have to Discount the gospels and if it's irrelevant you cannot discount the sources for appolloni with respect to um apparitions he acknowledged that there are apparitions he has friends who have had apparitions in other words we know that apparitions are historical phenomena they are well established that people have visions of people who have already died I'm arguing that jesus' followers had Visions like the Visions his friends have had these are historically documented they can be historically documented because they're events that transpire what about Resurrection are they events that transpire we don't know they would be Miracles he points out though that with these apparitions nobody goes to check to see if the tomb is empty this is my point the empty tomb is lurking behind his apologetic it's the empty tomb that at the end of the day convinces him about the apparitions but you'll notice he hasn't marshaled any evidence for the empty tomb he's simply asserting that if people had apparitions they would have go they would have gone to check the tomb this is where historians have some things to say as it turns out historians know what happened to crucified people in the Roman Empire they generally were not allowed to be buried in family tombs in most inst instances they were thrown in common Graves where their bodies deteriorated and disintegrated within days so if he wants to talk about the empty tomb then uh then we will have some more things to talk about but uh if he doesn't want to talk about the empty tomb then his his statement about apparitions is no longer applicable if you see what I mean Mike has pointed out that historians need to consider their bias let's talk about biases for a minute Mike is a believing conservative Evangelical Christian who believes in his heart of hearts that Jesus was physically raised from the dead he approaches his historical study with that as his firmly held belief I too once believed that and I approached my study of the New Testament with the same belief the results of my scholarship led me to renounce my former beliefs and I have to say I left the Evangelical fold Kicking and Screaming I did not go easily I wanted to hold on to my faith I tried to hold on to my faith I did everything I could to hold on to my faith but I got to a point where I realized that the historical evidence did not support my faith I did did not go with my personal bias quite the contrary I ended up changing my mind despite my bias so it won't do to say that I'm biased against the resurrection because for the majority of my adult life I believed in the resurrection and wanted to believe in the resurrection and tried to believe in the resurrection Mike on the other hand has wanted to believe in the resurrection and he does believe in the resurrection which of us is taking a historical approach I'm not disputing Mike's beliefs or your beliefs the vast majority of you believe that Jesus was raised from the dead what I'm arguing is that that belief of yours is not founded on historical evidence the resurrection of Jesus if it happened trans is uh I'm sorry goes beyond anything like historical evidence historical evidence cannot establish the Resurrection it is a faith claim it is a claim that there is a God who is in control of this world who created this world who sent his son into the world and raised his son from the dead those are theological statements I'm not saying they're true or false I'm saying they're not historical historical statements have to do with what historians can establish as probably having happened in the past historians can be believing Christians they can be Jews they can be Muslims they can be Buddhists they can be heathens they can be apostates they can be atheists they can be agnostics they can be all of the above but the evidence they induce has to be available to everybody that I've named or it's not historical evidence if it's historical evidence it's based on precept positions that everybody I've just named can agree on not people with only one particular theological point of view if the historical conclusion requires a theological point of view then it's not a historical conclusion it's a theological conclusion thank [Applause] [Applause] you okay well excuse me can we can we start over on that one okay now uh Professor man talked about a consensus something we all have to agree on I don't think so uh Mark gilderhus who is a uh history Professor wrote an introductory to history textbook that's used in dozens of universities in North America here's what he says the body of literature on almost any historical subject takes the form of an ongoing debate by the very nature of the subject history tends to divide Scholars and set them at odds we no longer possess a past commonly agreed upon indeed to the contrary we have a multiplicity of virgins uh competing for attention and emphasizing alternatively Elites and non- Elites men and women whites and persons of color and no way of reconciling all the differences Chris Loren a historian who writes for historian Theory says discussions of historical Rec instruction seldom lead to a consensus and that therefore pluralism is a basic characteristic of history as a discipline so this consensus simply isn't required even in non-religious matters such as they're talking about here so of course they're not going to be required with religious matters and if we're talking about what he just said here a Muslim could never agree that Jesus died by crucifixion because their theology won't allow them to just as an atheist philosophy won't allow them to acknowledge a resurrection now in terms of Mike being biased yes I'm biased but that's why I describe four speed bumps that I take along the way checks that I put to manage and minimize the impact of my own Horizon so the question isn't this evening whether Mike lone is biased we all are the question is what arguments Bart and I have used tonight to support our positions and which arguments are the best ones which position supported best um he says you know which he asked which other two of our approaches are historical well I ask which of us has presented their Historical Method and based their case on that method rather than theology um he says the evidence that Jesus was raised there's not evidence just because Jesus died well like anything else with this evidence of the crucifixion and the appearances you have to form hypotheses to explain these this phenomena and the best hypothesis is what you determine what happened sabot no this doesn't prove his claims to be true but the difference is the Muslims said that we would torture you to death unless you did convert and he did that's evidence that he wasn't who he claimed to be if he was the true Messiah and a prophet Paul on the other hand converted and then was tortured and submitted to torture because of his belief uhuh you can do whatever you want I believe he rose and appeared to me personally um according to the apparitions he said the empty tomb lurking behind it well I do believe in the empty tomb but I don't see it lurking behind it what I meant by that de verify is that bodily Resurrection is consistent with an empty tomb of course and both Bart and I agree that Paul did believe that Jesus was raised in his transformed physical corpse so now I just conclude with the story and that is about 20 years ago my wife and I lived in Northern Virginia and my son uh brother-in-law Terry who's here this evening came and visited us and one evening we went up to Washington DC which was close by and we took a ride we try to want to go down Embassy Row because that's where all the embassies to the US are lit up and you remember that Terry they're lit up and they're beautiful I was driving and we got lost and ended up in a bad section of town and contrary to the stereotypical M I pulled into to a gas station asked for directions well it was one of those places where you have a thick bulletproof window that you had to pay the attendant from so I got out of the car and walked up toward the window but before I could get there I was a apprach by five six guys standing there in the parking lot and um they said um can we help you with something and I said yeah I'm looking for embassy wrow the guy was the parent leader of the group uh gave me directions which are almost certainly wrong but I realized we were in danger at that point so I said hey thanks appreciate it started to walk away but before I could get two steps away the guy said hey wait a minute I gave you directions now you give me money and at that point the other five six guys surrounded me I knew I was in danger but I was a second deegree black belt in tech window at the time had my own martial arts studio I was in my 20s thought myself invincible so I took a step toward the guy looked him right in the eye and said not tonight gentlemen while often in the world of scholarship those who investigate jesus' Resurrection gets uh surrounded by other Scholars who say hand over your evidence for the resurrection we don't use that in our Hood well this evening I've shown that we can use it and conclude that Jesus rose from the dead so I'm not handing it over not tonight gentlemen [Applause] God I wish I had a nice story to end with uh Mike has cited uh a number of experts uh on history as uh to support has various uh points of view this is a very uh common common way of proceeding when talking about one's perspective I want to uh just kind of stress a subsidiary point which is that I hope that you all uh as we uh say where I live you all uh I I hope you all um realize that expert opinion is opinion uh Mike's opinions or his opinions my op opinions and my opinions the people who quoted their opinions opinions are not evidence expert opinions are not evidence 2,000 years ago if you would have asked the scientific experts about the solar system you would have gotten a particular point of view the fact that it was an expert opinion has nothing to do with the reality of the case you yourself have intelligence and you should use your intelligence to weigh the pluses and minus of what we've been talking about Mike has stressed rightly so that there are data in history and that you need hypothesis to explain them the reality is you don't need the hypothesis of the Resurrection to explain the three data that he continually has stressed you don't need a resurrection to explain that Jesus was crucified he was crucified whether or not he was raised from the dead the crucifixion is not evident of a resurrection the visions that his disciples had need to have some kind of hypothesis and I've given you one namely that people often have visions of people uh of those who have died that they're close to and that they love and that are dear to them Mike acknowledges that that happens it may have happened in the time of Jesus it may have happened to his disciples that at least is plausible it's a historical hypothesis that I have is it more probable than the uh hypothesis of the Resurrection well historically speaking yes it's more plausible and more probable because we know this sort of thing happens all the time so if you're just talking in terms of probabilities it's the more probable hypothesis does the conversion of Paul require the resurrection of Jesus no it requires that Paul came to think that Jesus got raised from the dead that's historically certain I think that Paul thought that Jesus Jesus got raised from the dead yes that's certain was Paul historically right we have no historical grounds for saying that Jesus was raised he may have been raised he may not have been raised what we're asking is whether history can demonstrate it and the reality is that it can't simply because of the nature of the case the sources for Jesus resurrection are not eyewitness accounts they're accounts that were written decades after the fact by people who were not there to see these things happen the stories they tell about jesus' resurrection and his life were changed year after year decade after decade as they were told or retold these stories are not internally consistent with one another they have discrepancies among them so that they're not the kind of sources that historians look for when they're looking for Reliable historical sources the accounts of the Resurrection embody Faith claims of those who are telling the stories they're not disinterested these kinds of sources have to be used very carefully by historians in trying to figure out what really happened there are some things we can say for certain really happened I think I think we can say for certain that Jesus was crucified on orders of the Roman prefect pontis pilot that he was crucified certainly we can say that can we say that he was resurrected the problem is that historians cannot establish Miracles as having happened because Miracles are not probable events they wouldn't be Miracles if they were probable they're highly improbable that's why we call them Miracles but historians can only deal with what probably happened Jesus may have been raised from the dead and many of you most of you think that he was but the reason you think he was is not because there's historical evidence the reason you think he was is because you've had some experience of Jesus in your life and the way you explain that is on the basis of his having been raised from the dead it's an experiential exper experiential statement rooted in a theological claim it is not based on historical [Applause] proof we have seven questions and three of them are for Dr Erman three of them are for Mikel Lona I'm sure they're questions that they uh have not faced before so uh we'll trust their ability to uh respond to me imediately to the question after a moment of reflection or so then we have a seventh question that simply asks for their opinion uh on this one issue we'll ask both of them to respond to that one this fact they're all addressed to the gentleman uh in each of the question so this one's to Dr Erman according to your definition of miracle as the least Pro as the least probable explanation of the Resurrection how do you explain the birth birth and growth of the church without the resurrection of Jesus that would be the least probable occurrence had Jesus not been raised uh yes thank you this is an excellent question uh it's a very difficult question I teach a PhD seminar at uh UNCC Chapel Hill on this question we spend an entire semester with PhD students trying to answer this question it takes us an entire semester to get to the bottom of the answer so let me give you the 25 second version I sometimes get asked doesn't the fact that Christianity succeeded show that Jesus must have been raised from the dead I think the answer to that is no because if you want to say that the success of religion has to be based on the truth of its truth claims then what do you do about all the other religions in the world is Islam true because has succeeded is Hinduism true because there are so many millions of Hindus or Buddhism or Judaism or Christianity religions are true whether they're true independently on the historical basis uh religions grow I'm told to stop religions grow not because necessarily uh something miraculous happened at the beginning of those religions but for other circumstances and a question for Michael Iona how significant is it that women are called as witnesses to the resurrection yes if if you'd like to um I would uh allow you a 30 second response either response you I agree with Professor man on this one um and you you can't explain the belief or the growth of the church without belief in the resurrection um so that's what we're looking at not the resurrection but belief in the resurrection but tonight's debate is on the best explanation for how they came to that belief in the resurrection and I've argued that the resurrection is the best cause of that belief and any further resp no no that's f um Mike how significant is it that women are called as witnesses to the resurrection how significant for the witnesses yeah how significant is it that women I'm read reading literally are called as witnesses to the resurrection well that has to do with the empty tomb which I haven't argued this evening because it's the empty tomb one of those facts that belongs to historical Bedrock I believe it but I haven't included it because of that so um I do think it's significant however the women because they um uh a woman's testimony in the first century was was not regarded very highly um and in fact most Jews thought that it was men who would be the recipients of divine uh Revelation not women so this double type of embarrassment there plus the fact that it's in a patriarchal society the men are cowering behind closed doors if you were making this up uh in the first century you just would not have made this up if you want them to follow and believe in the the resurrection 30 seconds sure okay yeah so yeah no this is a really interesting argument that a lot of people have made that nobody would have made up the idea of uh women discovering the empty tomb because as as Mike is saying women were not seen as credible Witnesses the problem there are several problems first of all Paul is our first witness to the resurrection he mentions the resurrection appearances and he never mentions any women the First Source that mentions any women is the gospel of Mark but you have to ask is Mark unbiased when he's talking about women Mark has an overarching emphasis that nobody could understand who Jesus was his parents his family doesn't understand who he was the Jewish leaders don't understand he was the disciples don't understand he was the only one who understands who Jesus was in this gospel are the demons and the Centurion who crucified him so who's going to discover the empty tomb it's not going to be his family or the religious leaders it's going to to be people on the outside it's women in other words this fits a particular Mark and Motif so it's somewhat questionable as a historical data thank you uh let's give them how much time are you giving them for this question let's give them at least two to three minutes if you don't mind uh Dr Erman one of the criteria excuse me this thing is acting up on me a little bit one of the criteria given for evaluating evidence were independent accounts doesn't the fact that some of the accounts are difficult to reconcile and assume the gospels are meant here indicate that they were independent aren't these discrepancies similar to what one one would find between Witnesses and a courtroom oh yeah ex excellent question did did everybody hear the question okay yeah so okay so I pointed out you need independent Witnesses for uh for historical evidence and the question is since you have discrepancies between the accounts doesn't that show that they're independent Witnesses and so doesn't that in fact uh doesn't that increase the probability that you've got independent attestation of the resurrection and it's an excellent point but but the way you have to establish whether the gospels are independent of one another is by a detailed analysis of their similarities and their differences Scholars have been doing this for hundreds of years uh and what Scholars have pretty much shown I mean it's pretty standard I I assume Mike's going to agree with this Mark in priority no yes yes okay uh uh I mean what most what most Scholars think is that Mark was the first gospel written and that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source so whenever they change Mark whenever they're different from Mark it's because one of them has changed it for some some reason of their own and this is significant because it can show you that if Matthew is different from Mark in any particular it means Matthew has intentionally changed something in mark Mark that can show you that can show you Matthew's uh overarching uh intentions uh or Luke and so forth and so it's interesting that for example uh in in uh in some of the later gospels uh it's not the women who discover the tomb the women go off and the men discover the tomb uh and the men then serve as the witnesses uh why is that because the point Michael was pointing out that in fact people were uh people were loathed to attribute uh testimony value to to what women had to say so I don't think the the mere fact that they're different shows their independent accounts what it shows is some accounts are being changed in the process of the transmission okay Mike do you have any response um because my I'm having trouble with my voice I I think I'll save it for something in which we're going to have greater disagreement on okay for Mike Lona are there continuing claims of Messi messiahship following Jesus recorded death and Resurrection or does this period of Son of God claim subside following Jesus implying that the true Son of God had indeed come I'm going to have to apologize I really don't understand that question but I would I would like to answer it this is going to be tough maybe if I stand it will help maybe I can um uh more with the son of man ined yeah I think I think what what the question is ask did people stop expecting a messiah Jes if if did anybody expect another Son of God or the fact that Jesus was Son of God show that no more no more sons of gods were expected okay well of course the Christians didn't expect another Messiah but other Jews did in coming years they expected the Messiah so like sabatti uh said he was the Messiah and um and then he was you know he gave that up under Tor under threat of torture so yeah Jews later on believed uh that there would and Jews today still wait for a messiah uh but Christians thought that Jesus was the Messiah they they didn't continue to look for someone else Dr Herman yeah I uh you know I I should let you all know that uh we had dinner together tonight Mike was having trouble I I did volunteer to State his case for okay we'll go to the next question Dr irman how do you explain the disciples and Paul's willingness to suffer and die for Jesus bodily Resurrection if they had the merely ghostly experiences referred to in your rebal uh yeah excellent question you know um another thing I get asked a lot is is a similar question you the way it's usually phrased is uh why would all of the disciples willingly be martyred if they didn't know that Jesus was raised from the dead if they just you know made it up or something would they really be willing to go to their deaths and there's several things I want to respond to with respect to that first of all uh this may come as news to you but the reality is we don't know how most of the Disciples of Jesus died we don't have evidence we have legends from hundreds of years later but the idea that all of the 11 disciples were martyred for their faith is simply a legend we don't know how they died uh now the question is asking would they would people like Paul be willing to die for a mere Apparition as opposed to the real Resurrection my view my view is not that Paul thought he had a mere apparition my view is that Paul had an apparition that he interpreted as Jesus being physically present to him just as people today have an apparition of their their lost husband their Lost Child uh their lost grandmother and they think that the person's actually in the room uh and the person is tangible can be touched can be smelled uh and so Paul interpreted this Vision as Jesus actually being raised from the dead and uh I think Paul Paul probably was killed for his faith and probably Peter we have evidence from the first century for those two but but for no one else any any response yeah um I agree except I would add James to that equation in addition to Paul and Peter um we do have about eight different sources uh relatively early sources relatively some dating from 30 to 200 years after Jesus that the disciples were all will willing to suffer continuously and die for their beliefs so yeah I think while we can only establish those three with with pretty much certainty we can establish with pretty good certainty that they were willing to go to their deaths for their conviction that Jesus had appeared personally to them and um we have to explain that willingness why were they so convinced Jesus appeared to them and I don't think a mere apparation Apparition of the Dead does it um because um if I'm understanding B on this a grief hallucination could qualify as a an apparition and um some of the apparitions I know about in that Allison speaks of in that book are are corroborated and uh so they can't be accounted for as grief hallucinations corroborated in terms of uh that person didn't know that that person was dead and then the next morning they discovered that they had died and yet they'd appeared to them just moments after their death any response yeah that's the same same thing with Jesus yeah I mean we agree on that the thing is about the disciples we we don't even know really if the well I'm not going to go there that would take us all night never mind all right question for Mike and then we'll throw one out for both response uh both participants to respond to Mike is there any historical evidence independent of the Bible for the resurrection well it depends you know I I think we could look at something like tacitus who in um his uh annals uh Book 15 Section 44 talks about how uh after pilate had crucified Jesus that um Christianity was checked for the moment and then it broke out again in Judea where the evil mischievous Superstition started and I think this just shows a consistency with what we find in the new T in the gospels in Acts same thing with Josephus uh in a disputed passage but most Josephus Scholars agree that Josephus mentions Jesus in that passage that he was crucified by pilate and that his disciples continued to follow him so in a strict sense I'd say um no we have to look at the New Testament as ancient documents here and that we can I could look at the Quran and I don't believe it's divinely inspired but I still can uh as a historian look at different things and conclude different things such as there's one Surah that has Jesus and God talking and God says did you tell them you're my son or did you tell them that you Mary and me are gods and Jesus says no far be it from me you know I never said that I've only said I'm your servant I don't believe that that conversation happen but it tells me that um Muslims and Christians were having this debate on who was Jesus is he Divine or just a man and same thing with the New Testament the case I've given this evening wouldn't assume at all divine inspiration we can look at it simply as an ancient do uh compilation of 27 different sources ancient sources and uh make our conclusions based on that Dr Erman yeah uh yeah it is a really good question the um uh people are surprised to know uh how little information we have about Jesus outside of Christian sources from Antiquity you would think you'd have you know birth records or accounts of the trial or his enemy talking about him or Roman official saying something in fact nobody says anything about him during the entire first century except for Josephus the Jewish historian has two references to him uh within within 100 years of jesus' death he's only mentioned uh four times in any non-Christian Source in tacitus the reference Mike was giving in plenty the younger three years earlier and possibly in suetonius the Roman historian and in Josephus uh there Josephus has two ref references so there's five references to Jesus uh these references tell us almost nothing about who Jesus was or what he did or what he said and strikingly none of them says anything about Jesus being raised from the dead I add something there I agree with him on that but I don't think it's it's as bad as uh that might lead us to believe the Roman Emperor at the time of Jesus Ministry for him we have just as many non-Christian sources as many non-Christian sources who mention him within 150 years of his death as we have of Jesus non-Christian sources who mentions him within 150 years of his death and Caesar Augustus the most prominent emperor of Rome we only have four primary sources that mention him and most of these are more than 100 years after his death one last question a response from about both sides I'll read it to each of you your response both John and Mark are correct about the Passover meal because the Messiah honored the Passover of Yahweh as written in Leviticus 23 on the 14th of abib whereas the rabinal Jews celebrate the Passover on the 15th of abib do you agree yeah Mike do you agree I feel like I'm in my PhD exam again I don't know about you okay so let me tell you what the what what that meant um the the the pro the problem is Mark explicitly indicates that Jesus celebrated the Passover meal John explicitly indicates that he was crucified the day before the Passover meal and so the question is saying that there different groups of Jews celebrated the Passover meal on two different days so both Mark and John could be right uh on the surface that sounds plausible but the reality is Jews in Jerusalem in the first century did not celebrate Passover on two different days they celebrated on one day because there was only one day that the Lambs were killed in the temple on the day of preparation for Passover John says that's the day that Jesus was killed on the day of preparation Mark says he was killed the next day and so there's an inconsistency um I do I do oh man maybe I should type it in and you can see it on the screen I I do hold to biblical inherency however I have to admit I don't know the answer to this one okay all right let's give both of these gentlemen the round of applause

Channel: Bart D. Ehrman

Views: 118,704

Keywords: Michael R. Licona (Person Or Entity Appearing In Film), Jesus Christ (Deity), Bart D. Ehrman (Author), New Testament, Apologetics, Agnostic, Mythicist

Id: gi1eWhzxja0

Length: 122min 48sec (7368 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 08 2015