This is a guest post by Michael J. Alter. Michael has published eight books including The Resurrection: A Critical Inquiry (2015), Why the Torah Begins with the Letter Beit (1998), and What Is the Purpose of Creation: A Jewish Anthology (1991). The Resurrection is a scholarly work that refutes Jesus’s purported physical, bodily resurrection and those writings in support of it. Altogether one hundred contradictions and 217 speculations are examined. He has also appeared on Premier Christian Radio’s Unbelievable? show debating the topic of Jesus’s resurrection. Alter is currently working on a researched series dealing with theological controversies between Judaism and Christianity.

This article will be examining two facts claimed about Jesus’s resurrection (just in Matthew) to see what they can tell us about the reliability of the Gospels. The first topic deals with the issue of topography and the temple’s veils. Two veils existed when the temple stood, an inner and outer veil. These veils separated the sanctuary and the Holy of Holies. Nonetheless, it doesn’t matter which one Matthew was referring to.

Problem 1: ripping of the temple veil

When Jesus died, Matthew 27:51 states “At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn from the top to bottom.” The pertinent question is, Could the centurion view the tearing of the temple’s veil? According to the author of Matthew (27:54), after Jesus died on the cross, the centurion made a specific declaration:

When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus, saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!” [NIV]

Matthew’s narrative suggests that the centurion, and perhaps others standing on Golgotha, saw the tearing of the temple’s veil. So could either of the temple’s veils be seen from Golgotha, the site of Jesus’s crucifixion? The answer is a resounding NO! As a matter of fact, numerous Christian commentators acknowledge this contradiction (Brown 1994, 2:1145-46; France 2007, 1083; Hagner 1995, 852).  Gundry (1993, 970), succinctly addresses the problem: “Since the traditional site of Golgotha lies to the west end of the temple whereas only the east end was veiled (not to mention intervening obstacles to view), either tradition has misplaced Golgotha or the centurion’s seeing of the veil-rending lacks historical substance.” In other words, this purported event recorded in Matthew is an alternative fact.

Problem 2: zombies

It must be asked, what were “all that had happened”? Matthew 27:51-53 provides its readers with the information.

At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn from the top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus’ resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people.  [NIV]

Earlier, in verse 45, the author also recorded “Now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land.” Therefore for a period of three hours, the land became dark. Commentators speculate on the meaning of the phrase “over all the land.” I will not address that issue.

The problem that is extensively discussed in the literature deals with the claim that “the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus’ resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people.” My book, The Resurrection: A Critical Inquiry, devotes thirteen pages to that topic (Issue 13, Contradictions #16-17; Speculations #27-29). Rather that go through a detailed analysis, let me quote several well-known and respected Christian commentators:

Dale C. Allison [Pittsburgh Theological Seminary] (2005, 127): “Mt 27:51-53 is a religious yarn spawned by the same source that gave us the legend of the seven sleepers of Ephesus and other transparent fictions—the human imagination. It may communicate theology; it does not preserve history.”

Hugh Anderson  [former Professor of New Testament Language, Literature and Theology, New College, Edinburgh] (1965, 45) “What we have here is surely not a historical note, but a theological reminiscence.”

Craig A. Evans [Houston Baptist University] (2001, 227): “Not only do we have late and obvious fictions, but in the transmission of the texts of the gospels themselves we are able to observe the infiltration of pious legends and embellishment…”

Donald A Hagner [Fuller Theological Seminary] (1995, 851-852) “…this passage is a piece of theology set for as history.”

Ulrich Luz [Swiss theologian and professor emeritus at the University of Bern] (2005, 587): “This is no historical report; it is a polemical legend told by Christians for Christians or, more precisely, a fiction largely created by Matthew for his readers.”

Some conservative Christian apologists rigorously criticized Michael R. Licona, a noted New Testament scholar and apologist.  Why the controversy?  His 2010 book, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, suggests the possibility that his account of the resurrected saints reported in Matthew 27 might be “apocalyptic imagery”. That topic is beyond the scope of this essay, but readers are encouraged to further examine on the Internet the controversy. (More on Mike Licona’s “heresy” and what it means for objective scholarship here.)

Going forward, the important take away message is the necessity to critically examine the Christian Bible and the claims made by commentators and apologists. A substantial body of material exists in the literature written by Christian commentators and apologists (and former Christians) that refute the belief that Jesus experienced a physical, bodily resurrection.  However, in reality, it is beyond the means of lay people to go to a Christian seminary and examine the voluminous writings on this topic.

Recently, the opinion was offered that there exist facts and alternative facts. Almost two thousand years ago, an alternative fact was presented to the people of that day that Jesus rose from the dead three days following his crucifixion.  Alternative facts were also offered that detailed events that preceded his purported resurrection. Today, those alternative facts still exist. Believers may wish to accept those alternative facts. However, alternative facts are not facts. Alternative facts are nothing more than alternative facts.

Knowledge is power. This phrase is often attributed to Francis Bacon, in his Meditations Sacrae (1597). In reality, it is correct knowledge and information that is the key for real power.  With Easter soon approaching, the topic of Jesus’s purported resurrection and the events surrounding that event are current and relevant. The question that must be asked is whether or not the accounts recorded in the Christian Bible can withstand a critical inquiry?

In closing, real knowledge and real facts are power. Do not let those with alternative facts, supposed “knowledge” and with impressive degrees such as a Ph.D. or Th.D. intimidate and mislead those with insufficient knowledge to refute the claim that Jesus experienced a physical, bodily resurrection.

There is not enough love and goodness in the world
to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.
— Friedrich Nietzsche

References

Allison, Dale C. 2005. “Explaining the Resurrection: Conflicting Convictions.” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 3(2): 117-33.

Anderson, Hugh. 1965. “The Easter Witness of the Evangelists.” In The New Testament in Historical and Contemporary Perspective. Essays in Memory of G. H. C. Macgregor, edited by Hugh Anderson and William Barclay, 35-55. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Brown, Raymond E. 1994. The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave. Volume 2. New York: Doubleday.

Evans, Craig A. 2001. Jesus and His Contemporaries: Comparative Studies. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

France, R. T. 2007. The Gospel of Matthew. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Gundry, Robert H. 1993. Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Hagner, Donald. A. 1995. Word Biblical Commentary Volume 33b, Matthew 14-28. Dallas, Texas: Word Book.

Licona, Michael R. 2010. The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach. Downers Grove: IVP Academic.

Luz, Ulrich. 2005. Matthew. 21-28. Translated by Rosemary Selle. Philadelphia: Augsburg Fortress.

Here’s a thought experiment. Say you’re a strong Christian. You’re comfortable arguing for your position. You don’t think much of the atheist arguments that you’ve seen so far, and you’ve seen quite a few.

Now you come across a holy book from some other religion. It’s an English translation from an original written in a long-dead language from a foreign culture.

What could the book possibly say that would convince you that its miracle claims are correct? That it—and not your own Christianity—is correct? It’s just words on paper. What possible combination of words would be compelling?

We’ll make the case for the ancient religion as strong as possible

• Oral history. The earliest New Testament books were Paul’s epistles, written more than two decades after the life of Jesus. The gospel of John was written roughly six decades after, and Revelation and others possibly later still. The books of our imaginary religion were written roughly contemporaneously so that the period of oral history is almost nonexistent.
• Translation. The Christian story came from Jewish culture and the Aramaic language, but the original New Testament documents came from a very different culture (Greek) and language (Greek). Our imaginary religion will not have this extra level of translation.
• Copies far removed from originals. Our oldest copies of the books of the New Testament were written centuries after the originals. We’ll make ours just decades after. No—what the heck—let’s make them the originals themselves, 100% complete.
• Eyewitness testimony? Some of the noncanonical gospels claimed to have been written by eyewitnesses. For example, the Gospel of Peter says, “But I Simon Peter and Andrew my brother took our nets and went to the sea.” The Infancy Gospel of Thomas begins, “I Thomas, an Israelite, write you this account.” The Gospel of Thomas begins, “These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down.” Historians doubt that they are actual eyewitness accounts, but at least they claimed that they were. The four canonical gospels make no such claim—we don’t even know who wrote them—but the books in our imaginary religion will.
• Contradictions. The four gospels tell an inconsistent story. Was Jesus on earth 40 days after the resurrection (Acts) or one day (Luke)? Was there an earthquake followed by the dead rising from their graves? Only Matthew makes this claim. How many women were there? In what ways did Peter deny Jesus three times? And so on. The typical apologist’s response is to harmonize any differing accounts into a clumsy whole, but our imaginary religion will have multiple mutually supporting accounts with no contradictions.

In short, any positive feature of the evidence for the Jesus story will be matched or exceeded by our imaginary religion.

How are we doing so far, my Christian friend? Do you have any remaining objections where you see better evidence in favor of the gospel claims? Apply those features to improve our imaginary religion. How many independent accounts of the miraculous events do you want? Add that to the list. Does an ancient book sound more in touch with cosmic truth, or would you prefer a more recent and verifiable book? Would you prefer the documents to be written in an ancient language or modern English? A living language or a dead one? Do incidental elements in the story make it sound more authentic? Add it to the list. The only rule is that the evidence itself must be natural, as is the case with Christianity. No microfiche or holograms or levitating tablets or anything else outside of the technology of the time. No modern English written on a papyrus dating to 2000 years ago.

Given all this, would you become a believer? After a few days kicking the tires to verify that scholars indeed did agree to these claims, would you switch your allegiance?

If not, then evidence can’t be particularly important to you. If you say that your belief is based primarily on something besides objective evidence—personal experience or the religion you were taught as a child, perhaps—then don’t imagine that this will convince anyone else. If evidence doesn’t underlie your belief, why should I be convinced?

Instead, make clear that you believe because of this personal experience and not from evidence. Don’t raise evidence-based arguments if you believe in spite of the evidence.

The invisible and the non-existent
look very much alike.
— Delos McKown

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 11/6/13.)

Photo credit: Wikimedia

A popular Christian argument declares that historians have roughly 25,000 manuscripts of New Testament books, far more than any other book from ancient history. Compare that with 2000 copies of the Iliad, the second-best represented manuscript from history. Even more poorly represented are the works of Herodotus, Thucydides, Aristotle, Julius Caesar, Pliny, Tacitus, and other great figures from history, for which we have more like a dozen manuscripts each.

Do we conclude that our records of Gallic Wars by Julius Caesar or Histories by Tacitus are so unreliable that they can’t inform our understanding of the past? Of course not. But if that’s the case, we must then accept the far-better attested New Testament manuscripts—or so the popular argument goes.

The first problem is that more manuscripts at best increase our confidence that we have the original version. That doesn’t mean the original copy was history—just like the original copy of The Wizard of Oz or the Arthurian legends wouldn’t be a record of history.

Consider the claim of 25,000 manuscripts. The originals of every New Testament book were written in Greek, but three-quarters of these manuscripts are translations into other languages. We can avoid the extra layer of interpretation imposed by a translation by focusing on just the 5800 Greek manuscripts.

Now consider when these manuscripts were written.

This chart shows the number of Greek manuscript copies by century. (The data is from Wikipedia, with manuscripts categorized on the cusp of two centuries put into the earlier century.) We have zero manuscripts from the first century and eight from the second. The twelfth century has the most, with 1090 manuscripts. The printing press was invented in the middle of the fifteenth century, which explains much of the drop on the right of the chart.

I recently explored the three most famous additions to the New Testament (the Comma Johanneum, the woman caught in adultery, and the long ending of Mark). The scholarly analysis for whether some of these passages are authentic or not turn on just a few manuscripts, and this chart shows why. The vast majority of the manuscripts, from perhaps the sixth century and after, never enter the conversation.

Our 25,000 manuscripts became 5800 Greek manuscripts, but those have now dwindled to just those few in the first few centuries after the crucifixion.

There are one hundred manuscripts in the first four centuries, and many of these are just tiny scraps. Consider papyrus P52 above—yes, that is considered a “manuscript.” It is a tiny fragment of John just 9 cm long. It is our oldest New Testament manuscript and dates to the first half of the second century, or perhaps later. Three more manuscripts (P90, P98, and P104) are also scraps of a similar size and date to the second half of the second century. (Though it’s probably obvious, I’ll emphasize that these dates are all just approximations, and arguments can be made for different dates.)

Another handful of manuscripts date to around 200 CE. Six of them (P4, P32, P64, P66, P77, and P103) are scraps, but in this group we get our first substantial manuscripts. P46 (part of the Chester Beatty collection) has much of nine epistles. P66 contains most of John. P75 (the Bodmer Papyrus) has a substantial fraction of Luke and John.

The record looks fairly good when you look at the dates of our earliest fragments of the various books in the New Testament—John in the second century, Matthew and Luke around 200, Mark around 250, and so on. But, again, the emphasis should be on the word fragment. Only when you get to the oldest complete (or nearly complete) texts—the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus from the fourth century—do you get all the missing pieces. (I’ve written more about this centuries-long dark age here.)

The “best attested by far!” claim for the New Testament is not only irrelevant, it’s not even true. You can find Egyptian hieroglyphics and Mesopotamian clay tablets that are both older and original. A single version, the original, beats enormous numbers of copies.

It’s not all that surprising that a handful of early documents from a popular religion in a dry climate were preserved until today, and let’s acknowledge that that’s impressive and historically important. But that we have 1090 manuscripts in the original Greek from the twelfth century is not much more helpful in recreating the originals than that we have 100 million new copies printed each year. What matters are the earliest copies—perhaps the hundred from first four centuries. And the hundred dwindle down to just a relevant handful of copies that are larger than scraps.

25,000 New Testament manuscripts? Big deal.

It is error alone which needs the support of government.
Truth can stand by itself.
— Thomas Jefferson

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 11/4/13.)

Photo credit: Wikipedia