The Case For Christianity | How We Know That Christianity is True

Don't. Virtually everything that we can know about Jesus comes from the four gospels contained in the New Testament. The Gospels are by far our earliest and best historical sources regarding the life, ministry, and teachings of Jesus. Since the Gospels are so central to our understanding of Jesus, it is important that we know where this information is coming from. It is important that we know who authored the Gospels, that the authors were well placed to know what they were talking about, and that what they report is true.

But who exactly wrote the Gospels? Were they in a good position to know what they were talking about? And are their accounts trustworthy? The traditional answer to these questions has been that the gospels were written by Matthew, a tax collector turned disciple of Jesus; Mark, a companion of the Apostle Paul and later of Peter; Luke, typically thought to be a physician and a companion of Paul; and finally John, a fishing partner with Peter and disciple of Jesus. If the traditional account is right, then Matthew and John constitute firsthand eyewitness testimony with respect to much of what they report. Mark and Luke would be secondhand testimony received from eyewitnesses and thus very close to the events which they report.

But this traditional answer has come under heavy fire in the past several decades of biblical scholarship, to the point that it is seldom ever discussed even by ostensibly conservative Christian scholars. Today, the four gospels are typically regarded as late anonymous sources which depict a largely legendary picture of Jesus. Bart Ehrman sums up the current attitude fairly well, saying, "The first thing to emphasize about Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John is that all four are completely anonymous. The authors never indicate who they are. They never name themselves. They never give any direct personal identification of any kind whatsoever."

This is in contrast to the witness of the early church, which regarded these documents as credible sources from the apostles and their immediate followers. Ancient writers were unanimous in their attribution of the gospels to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This video will argue against the popular thesis that the gospels were ever anonymous. I will argue that the ancient witnesses have too quickly been ignored by modern scholars, that the objections to their reliability do not stand up to scrutiny, and that they provide strong testimonial evidence for the traditional authorship of the gospels. I will also argue that various internal considerations strongly support the traditional ascriptions of authorship.

Modern New Testament scholarship overwhelmingly affirms the thesis that the four canonical gospels were written anonymously. But before we can assess this idea, we will need to get clear on the definition of anonymity. According to some, a document is anonymous just in case the author does not identify themself by name in the body of written text. Obviously, the gospels will come up being anonymous by this definition. But then again, so will J.R.R. Tolkien's *The Lord of the Rings*. In fact, it is not all that uncommon for authors to never identify themselves within the body of written text. This is often because it is not necessary, since the author's name is present on the cover or under the title. Yet, no one seriously considers such works to be anonymous.

For this video, I will be using the term anonymity of the gospels to refer to the idea that the original authors of the gospels are unknown either to us or to the original recipients of the gospels. The names which we associate with them were not present when they were originally penned but were added on much later. It is this concept of anonymity which I will be critiquing in this video and not some trivial, harmless sense of anonymity according to which the authors of the gospels do not name themselves in the text.

I will be using three categories of evidence to argue against the idea that the gospels are anonymous. First, I shall argue that the titles of these documents in the manuscript tradition provide strong evidence against their anonymity. Second, I shall argue that there are internal clues within the gospels themselves which comport well with the traditional assignments to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And finally, I shall argue that there is early and weighty testimonial evidence identifying the authors which challenges the anonymity thesis.

Perhaps the most obvious evidence for the traditional authorship comes from the very titles which these documents unanimously have in virtually all extant copies where a title is present. They are always titled as "The Gospels According to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John." While the anonymity thesis holds that these titles were added to these documents late in the second century, there is in fact no manuscript evidence to support this claim. We possess no anonymous copies. The one possible exception is P1, which includes portions of Matthew's Gospel, including the beginning, but no title. However, because titles were sometimes affixed to scrolls of this sort as tags, this identifier could have very easily been lost in the case of P1. If the gospels were originally anonymous, we would expect to find a great many older manuscripts without names. But we don't, and this supports the idea that the names were always affixed to these documents.

Moreover, the idea that the titles were a later addition is implausible, since as soon as more than one gospel was written, the early Christians would have needed some practical way to tell them apart. As Brandt Peterson says, "To suggest that no titles whatsoever were added to the gospels until the late 2nd century AD completely fails to take into account the fact that multiple gospels were already circulating before Luke ever set pen to papyrus and that there would be a practical need to identify these books." Simon Gathercole makes a similar point, saying, "When gospels left their original contexts and were read elsewhere, it is hard to imagine at least some hearers not thinking 'Says who?'" Even before the presence of multiple gospels in one congregation, Christians might well have wanted to know where a gospel came from. Hence, it is not necessarily the case that the names must only have become a concern at the earliest when two or more gospels were gathered together.

Another piece of evidence which is telling against the anonymity thesis is the presence of literary dependence among the synoptic gospels. It seems unlikely that the synoptic gospels would have depended upon one another if their authors were unknown. This is especially so in the case of Luke, who claims to have been very careful in how he selected his sources and claims to have gotten his information from eyewitnesses. Since Luke clearly used other gospels in the composition of his own, it is hard to imagine that the other gospels were anonymous. Again, Gathercole's comments are excellent. "It is one thing to assume that Christians in a first-century congregation would simply have taken on trust what they heard read out without asking the 'says who?' question. It is a considerable step beyond that and beyond what I, at least, can believe to suppose that a professionally conscientious investigator like Luke would, without any accompanying testimony, follow by ancient standards very closely a naked anonymous account."

Skeptics will make much of the fact that the gospel authors never identify themselves in the text or that they sometimes speak about themselves in the third person. Randall Helms says, "Nowhere in their text do any of the four gospels name their writers." Similarly, Michael Kok argues, "Matthew as a character in the text never speaks in the first person. The reader does not get the impression that Matthew was narrating the events in the gospel." But such objections are terribly anachronistic, born out of modern expectations of what eyewitness testimony should look like and a failure to appreciate how ancient people wrote. For example, Julius Caesar writes about himself in the third person in *The Gallic War*. Does anyone seriously doubt that Julius Caesar was the author of this work? Xenophon never names himself as the author of *Anabasis*. Tacitus never names himself as the author of *The Annals*. Nor does Plutarch ever name himself as the author of any of his biographies which he authored. As Mike Licona observes, "It was not unusual for ancient authors to leave their names out of their works." Plutarch was a Greek author who penned more than 50 known biographies during the late 1st to early 2nd centuries. Plutarch's name is absent from all of them. It is the tradition that has been passed down through the centuries that gives us information pertaining to who wrote these biographies. No one questions that Plutarch is the author.

Moving into a consideration of the internal evidence, it is very difficult to see why anyone should want to invent Mark and Luke as the authors of the gospels which bear their names, as neither of them would have been an eyewitness and neither was particularly prominent in the early church. As Craig Blomberg argues, "It is hard to believe that the oldest traditions would uniformly associate the first two gospels with Mark and Luke without some good historical reason, because neither was otherwise viewed as a significant figure in first-century Christianity." Indeed, Mark, in particular, was known for abandoning Paul on one of his missionary journeys. Matthew, whose gospel is the most Jewish in style, would also be an odd choice to invent as being the author. This is because Matthew is identified as a tax collector for the Romans within the gospel, and the Jews were just not fond of these individuals. It would be strange and counterproductive, then, to invent him as being the author of a gospel which is directed towards a largely Jewish audience. This evidence is all easily explained if we posit that the synoptic gospels are attributed to Matthew, Mark, and Luke because these men were really the authors. It's very difficult to imagine why these three names were selected if they did not belong to the authors of these documents.

Several other internal considerations also render anonymity improbable. For example, the author of the Gospel of Matthew has a penchant for money. He goes out of his way to include parables involving money. He includes the story of Peter finding a shekel in a fish's mouth. He takes great pains to mention specific types of coins in his narrative. He stresses that Jesus said that the disciples were not to bring gold, silver, or copper when ministering to the surrounding villages. I don't think that it is a mere coincidence that the one gospel which shows a greater interest in money than the others is also the one gospel which is attributed to a tax collector. As Edgar Goodspeed puts it, "Certainly, if one demands a signature of Matthew the tax collector, this looks very much like it. We are struck with several features of the Gospel of Matthew that decidedly favor tax collector authorship."

Mark's Gospel mentions Peter a lot more than the others. Indeed, in many parallel stories where the other gospels will just mention the disciples, Mark will mention Peter. After the resurrection in Mark, the young man at the tomb tells the women to tell the disciples and Peter that the Lord will meet them soon. This harmonizes nicely with the substantial amount of external testimony that Peter was Mark's mentor and that his preaching formed the basis for Mark's gospel.

The author of Luke's gospel was almost certainly known to the author. He addresses Theophilus by name in the preface. Theophilus was likely the patron for whom the Gospel of Luke was written. It is scarcely conceivable that Theophilus did not know who was writing this gospel for him and to him. As Harold Riley says, "Whatever may be true of Matthew and Mark, Luke was certainly not published anonymously. No one writes to a named person, Theophilus, and says, 'It seemed good to me to write without letting it be known who the writer is.'"

It is also quite unlikely that the author of the Gospel of John was unknown. The author is identified as "the disciple whom Jesus loved" in John 21:24. Skeptics are well aware of this verse but point out that whoever wrote it seems to be distinguishing themselves from the disciple whom Jesus loved. As Bart Ehrman objects, "For some reason, which I have never been able to understand, readers frequently take this verse to mean that the beloved disciple is claiming to have written the Gospel of John, but that's not the case at all. The author cannot be the disciple himself because he clearly differentiates between himself, 'we,' and the beloved disciple, 'his testimony.'"

Richard Bauckham maintains that the beloved disciple did indeed write this verse. He argues at some length that John 21:24 represents an idiom which he calls "the 'we' of authoritative testimony." The idea is that an author refers to themself with a plural pronoun such as "we" rather than the singular pronoun "I" for the sake of emphasizing their authority and therefore increasing their credibility. His conclusion is that John 21:24 employs a particular Johannine idiom that occurs elsewhere in the Johannine writings—the gospel and the three letters of John (in John 3:11, 1 John 1-5, 1 John 4:14, and 3 John 9-10 as well as 12)—and that John uses the first-person plural pronouns and verbs as a substitute for "I."

As it happens, I am inclined to agree with Ehrman over Bauckham that the author of John 21:24 was not the beloved disciple. But I adamantly disagree with Ehrman that this means that the beloved disciple did not write the gospel of John. Ehrman seems to assume that either all of the fourth gospel was written by John or none of it was. But this is just clearly a false dichotomy. It is entirely possible that John wrote the vast majority of the gospel, but that this coda in John 21:24 was not written by John. Such a proposal is eminently plausible from the verse itself, given that it affirms that "the beloved disciple wrote these things," but also differentiates the person speaking in this verse from the disciple. Why should we assume with Ehrman that every last word was penned by a single author, especially when the content of the fourth gospel itself strongly tells against this? As Lydia McGrew notes, "It is difficult to see how much more explicit verse 24 could be that the disciple whom Jesus loved wrote the gospel."

Bauckham's argument concerning what he dubs "the 'we' of authoritative testimony" is fascinating and worth considering. If I am not entirely convinced by Bauckham's argument about 21:24, it is only because he does not present any specific example in which "the 'we' of authoritative testimony" is immediately followed by a switch to the third person. This is not to say that the third person by itself is problematic or unlikely to be written by the author. Only that the combination of "we" and "he" in the same sentence seems to me probably best interpreted as being written by someone other than the author himself. Hence, there may be a short coda to the gospel of two or at most three verses written by another hand. But even if we grant that 21:24 is written by someone other than the author, the verse itself says that "the disciple Jesus loved wrote what comes before."

What I propose is that our canonical Gospel of John is probably a later copy of the Gospel published shortly after the death of the Apostle John, with a few editorial clarifications, including this one in John 21:24. My reason for thinking this is found in the immediately preceding verse where we read, "Therefore, this account went out among the brethren that the disciple would not die. Yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but only 'If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you?'" So it looks like this editor of the Gospel of John is keen to correct a rumor that John the Apostle would live until Jesus returned. This was most likely motivated by John's recent death. This hypothesis can make sense of a number of facts in addition to the distinction which seems to be drawn between the author of John's gospel and the writer of John 21:24. For example, it makes sense of the fact that the Gospel of John appears to describe the sheep gate by the pool of Bethesda as still existing in John 5:2, even though it was destroyed in 70 AD. And also that our canonical gospel of John probably dates to sometime in the '90s AD, around the time that John died.

The upshot of this apparent desire on the part of the editor to clarify that John's gospel never actually said that John was going to live until Jesus returned is that the identity of the author of John's gospel was widely known. If no one knew the identity of this beloved disciple who is said to have written this gospel, the editor of this second edition of John's gospel wouldn't have felt the need to clarify what Jesus had actually said. Moreover, given that this clarification seems to have been added to John's gospel soon after John passed away, this further suggests that the beloved disciple was also widely known to have been John the Apostle. In other words, the gospel of John was never regarded as being anonymous. As Bauckham concludes, "These verses allow no ambiguity for the first readers or hearers of this final form of the gospel as to the identity of the author or of the beloved disciple. They presuppose that the identity of the beloved disciple was well-known."

Compare this evidence which we have just surveyed to the genuinely anonymous book of Hebrews. Hebrews provides an interesting test case because it is uncontroversially anonymous. As such, it can tell us what we should expect our evidence to look like when dealing with an anonymous book. In various ancient manuscripts and ancient sources, we find Hebrews attributed to no one, to Paul, to Timothy, and to Luke. So what should we expect from anonymous texts copied from this period? We should expect to find anonymous copies of the text as well as disagreement in external sources over who authored it. But this is not the case when it comes to the gospels. With just one possible exception in the case of Matthew, whenever the manuscripts for the gospels include titles, they are without exception attributed to the same four authors. And the external witnesses agree that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were the authors of these texts. This is not what we should expect if these documents were originally anonymous. As Peterson concludes, "That's what you get with a truly anonymous book of the New Testament: actual anonymous manuscripts and actual ancient debates over who wrote it. But that's precisely what you don't find when it comes to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John: no anonymous copies and no debate among ancient Christians over who wrote the Gospels."

In short, the theory of the anonymous gospels suffers from not only a lack of manuscript evidence, but also from a lack of logic. The one possible exception here is Gaius of Rome, who allegedly attributed the fourth gospel to Cerinthus. However, this is really far from clear. The evidence here is quite messy. We do not possess any writings from Gaius, and frankly, it's very difficult to know much about him with any confidence. The idea that Gaius claimed that Cerinthus authored the fourth gospel first comes to us in the writings of Dionysius of Alexandria in the 12th century. Barcelibi claimed that Hippolytus had written a work responding to Gaius in which Hippolytus refutes Gaius's claim that the fourth gospel was written by Cerinthus. So right off the bat, there are some real problems here. We are getting this information at least third-hand from a source written almost a thousand years after the fact. Even if Bar Sali is accurately reporting something Hippolytus had really said (as opposed to a fictional work about Hippolytus or a pseudoepigraphical work attributed to him), we don't know that Hippolytus was accurately representing what Gaius said. And in any case, Hippolytus lived more than a century later than Gaius, making his claims about what Gaius said quite dubious. Furthermore, the way Gaius was accepted by others in the early church who clearly did accept John as the author of the fourth gospel suggests that he did not attribute this gospel to Cerinthus. Eusebius, for example, when discussing Gaius, gives no indication that Gaius held that Cerinthus authored the fourth gospel. C.E. Hill bluntly concludes, "The common portrayal of Gaius as a high-profile Roman presbyter and defender of orthodox sensibilities in Rome who wanted to reinforce a long-held mistrust of the Gnostically tainted Johannine gospel is a figment of the modern critical imagination. Consequently, it is quite dubious that Gaius provides a genuine counterexample to the otherwise unanimous attribution of the fourth gospel to John. Moreover, he certainly doesn't provide a counterexample to the unanimous attribution of the synoptics to Matthew, Mark, and Luke."

In a previous video, I surveyed the ancient testimony bearing on the gospels in detail. Thus, in the interest of keeping this video as concise as possible, I will only briefly review the ancient witnesses here. Papias of Hierapolis is the earliest witness to discuss the writing of the gospels, writing sometime between 90 and 130 AD. He said, "The elder used to say, 'Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him. But afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, who adapted his teaching to the needs of his hearers, but with no intention of giving a connected account of the Lord's discourses, so that Mark committed no error while he thus wrote some things as he remembered them. For he was careful of one thing: not to omit any of the things which he had heard, and not to state any of them falsely. So then Matthew wrote the oracles in the Hebrew language, and everyone interpreted them as he was able.'"

A second witness is Irenaeus of Lyons. In the mid-2nd century, Irenaeus wrote, "Matthew also issued a written gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome and laying the foundations of the church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, also handed down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke, also the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the gospel preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon his breast, did himself publish a gospel during his residence at Ephesus."

Clement of Alexandria is our third witness. Writing in the later 2nd century, he said, "The Gospels containing the genealogies were written first, and that the gospel according to Mark was composed in the following circumstances. Peter having preached the word publicly at Rome and by the Spirit proclaimed the gospel, those who were present, who were numerous, entreated Mark on his composing the gospel; he handed it to those who had made the request to him. But John, the last of all, seeing that what was corporeal was set forth in the Gospels, on the entreaty of his intimate friends and inspired by the Spirit, composed a spiritual gospel."

Next, we shall consider the testimony of Tertullian. He wrote at the beginning of the third century, saying, "I lay it down to begin with that the documents of the gospel have the apostles for their authors. In short, from among the apostles, John and Matthew implant in us the faith, while from among the apostolic men, Luke and Mark reaffirm it."

Additionally, Origen tells us that "the first gospel written was that according to Matthew, who was once a tax collector, but afterwards an apostle of Jesus Christ, who published it for those who from Judaism came to believe, composed as it was in the Hebrew language. Secondly, that according to Mark, who composed it in accordance with the instructions of Peter; and thirdly, that according to Luke, for those who from the Gentiles came to believe; after them all, that according to John."

Later still, Augustine of Hippo tells us, "Now, those four evangelists whose names have gained the most remarkable circulation over the whole world, and whose number has been fixed as four, are believed to have written in the order which follows: First Matthew, then Mark, thirdly Luke, lastly John."

Lastly, I want to consider the testimony of Justin Martyr, who is very early. He makes reference to the gospels as "memoirs," which "I say were drawn up by Jesus's apostles and those who followed them." Although he does not name the authors of the gospels, he does seem to acknowledge that there were a minimum of four. Moreover, at least two would have had to be apostles and at least two would have had to be followers of the apostles. This fits perfectly with the idea that the gospels were written by Matthew and John, who were apostles, and Mark and Luke, who were followers of the apostles. As C.E. Hill says, "Justin's use of the plurals here would seem to mean that he acknowledged at least four gospels, at least two written by apostles and at least two by followers of the apostles."

This external testimony is, in my estimation, the most compelling evidence both against the anonymity thesis as well as in favor of the traditional authorship of the gospels. These witnesses were spread over a wide geographical space, making it unlikely that they were all pulling from one another. Their independence is further seen in the fact that there are some apparent contradictions between them with respect to when the gospels were written and possibly the order in which they were written. As Timothy and Lydia McGrew observe, "The widespread agreement of early sources on a number of points is remarkable and cannot be brushed aside, particularly since discrepancies among these sources regarding other points strongly suggests that they are not, for the most part, simply copying one another." Some explanation is needed for the unanimous voice with which the ancient church names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as the authors of their gospels. And I propose that the best explanation is that they were telling the truth.

Proponents of the anonymity hypothesis accept that there is wide agreement on the authorship of the gospels from the time of Irenaeus onwards. But they maintain that there is a serious problem. All of these witnesses are writing much later than the authors of the gospels were writing. This makes them too late to really be in a position to know what they were talking about. They want to claim that the names were attached to the gospels probably sometime between 170 and 200 AD. Irenaeus thus becomes the source of our four-fold gospel tradition, and those who are later than Irenaeus have simply copied what Irenaeus has said. Ehrman explains, "The first certain reference to the four gospels is in the writings of the church father Irenaeus. By the time of Irenaeus, it is not surprising that the church fathers would want to know who wrote these anonymous books. But the gospels that were widely accepted as authoritative in Irenaeus's circles were originally anonymous. The solution to the problem of validating these texts was obvious: they needed to be attributed to real, established authorities."

I will discuss Irenaeus and the evidential importance of his testimony presently. However, let us first turn to our earliest witness, Papias of Hierapolis, whose testimony is significantly earlier than that of Irenaeus, possibly as early as 90 AD. Papias less controversially bears witness to Mark and Matthew as the authors of their respective gospels. And even here, as we shall see momentarily, there is still some disagreement. Yet, even limiting ourselves to the less controversial evidence, Papias's words challenge the anonymity of at least Matthew and Mark. But this, of course, raises the question: what about Luke and John? Bart Ehrman sees this as a potential problem, saying, "It is somewhat curious and certainly interesting that Eusebius chose not to include any quotations from Papias about Luke or John. Why would that be? Were Papias's views about these two books not significant? Were they unusual? Were they contrary to Eusebius's own views? We'll never know."

Nevertheless, I take a somewhat radical position. I maintain that there are good reasons for thinking that Papias bears witness to the authorship of both Luke and John as well. The evidence is stronger in the case of John, but it is also weighty in the case of Luke. Consider this often neglected fragment of Papias from the anti-Marcionite prologue to John. "The gospel of John was made known and given to the church by John while he yet remained in the body, as one Papias by name of Hierapolis, a beloved disciple of John, has related in his exoteric, that is, in his last five books." The prologue cites Papias as saying that John the Apostle authored the fourth gospel. Skeptics will be swift to point out that the prologue contains some dubious historical information. In particular, most historians doubt the truth of the claim that John the Apostle had ever had physical conflict with the heretic Marcion. Importantly, however, the prologue is not the source of this information about John's authorship. For the prologue is merely passing on information obtained from Papias. Therefore, Papias rather than the prologue is the source of the testimony to John's gospel.

Monte Shanks reminds us, "There is some question regarding the credibility of the author of this fragment when handling historical material. It should be noted, however, that he was not inaccurate with respect to everything he wrote concerning Papias. He correctly noted, for example, that Papias was from Hierapolis and that he had written a five-volume work. While certain material contained in this fragment requires critical analysis, this fragment should not be unnecessarily marginalized as having no historical value." I suppose the die-hard skeptic could maintain that the author of the prologue was claiming that Papias said things which he never in fact wrote. After all, since Papias's writings have been lost, we have no way to definitively confirm the accuracy of this citation. But it seems unlikely that the author would have put these words in Papias's mouth in light of the fact that the author of the prologue gives a fairly specific reference to the exact book where Papias allegedly says this. Presumably, the book was still around in his day, and so the reference could have been checked, which would almost certainly deter the author of the prologue from making bogus references to it. Consequently, we have strong reasons to think that Papias told us not just that Matthew and Mark wrote their respective gospels, but also that John wrote his.

But the evidence gets even better. In *Ecclesiastical History* 3.24.5-12, Eusebius mentions a record which recounts the history of the writing of the four gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. "A record preserves that they took to writing out of necessity. Matthew having first preached to Hebrews, and when he was on the point of going to others, supplied to those from whom he was sent, through his writing, the lack of his presence by handing down the gospel according to himself, written in his native tongue. And after Mark and Luke had already made the publication of the gospels according to them, John, it is said, used all the time a proclamation which was not written down, and at last came to writing for the following cause: after the three gospels which had been previously written had already been distributed to all, and even to himself, they say that he welcomed them and testified to their truth, but that there was therefore only lacking to the scripture the account concerning things which had been done by Christ at first and at the beginning of the proclamation."

The record is certainly true. Eusebius does not name the source of this record, but a literary analysis by Charles Hill demonstrates close parallels between what Eusebius's source says about Matthew and Mark and what Papias says about Matthew and Mark. Hill shows that both Eusebius's source here as well as Papias share several words and ideas. The comments Eusebius preserves about the origin of the Gospel of John in 3.24.11 have the same formula as the comments he preserves about the origin of the Gospel of Mark in 2.15.2, where Eusebius explicitly quotes Papias as his source. The similarity in formula suggests a common source for both traditions. And since Papias is known to be the source in book two, it is most likely that he is also the source in book three. There is also a common concern in both quotations of Papias in 3.39.15-16 as well as Eusebius's record here in 3.24.5-13. As Hill argues, "an emphasis on the supplemental nature of John's gospel in our fragment fits with the concern for the proper order of the events in Mark's gospel felt in the report of Papias's elder in 3.39.15. Mark wrote accurately all that he remembered, not indeed in order of the things said or done by the Lord. John, on the other hand, it is implied in our fragment, gave the proper order, even naming the first of the Lord's signs."

In addition to these common themes and concerns, there are also common words. As Hill points out in his very detailed article on the subject, "three times in the short space of 3.39.15, Papias's account of Mark, there recurs a distinctive feature of the elder's paraphrastic use of *pósa* in the middle voice with an accompanying noun. The same feature turns up here in 3.24.7 where Eusebius is paraphrasing his source. The elder quoted by Papias in 3.39.15 also has a distinctive way of speaking about the contents of the gospels. A great deal of attention has been given to his mention of the Lord's *logia*, which he says Matthew and Mark contain. This has sometimes obscured the fact that this presbyter also speaks of Mark as recording the things said or done by the Lord, using here the aorist passive participle. The source used by Eusebius in 3.34 uses the same notation. The passive participle aorist or imperfect of *práxei* for the deeds of Jesus in the gospels occurs no less than four times in Eusebius's paraphrase and summary of his source."

All of this is very suggestive that Eusebius is here relying upon Papias in *Ecclesiastical History* 2.15.1 explains the origin of Mark's gospel, which he refers to as a recollection of Peter's teaching. He cites both Papias and Clement of Alexandria as sources. So our two most promising candidates for Eusebius's source when he revisits the topic in book three are Papias and Clement. Moreover, we know from Clement's own writings that he had read Papias. So Papias emerges as being the true source of this information, and therefore it is more likely that Eusebius is paraphrasing Papias in this passage in book three. Hill says, "It is hard for me to believe that an independent source on the origins of the four gospels would share all of these characteristics with the account of the origins of Matthew and Mark explicitly attributed to Papias."

Michael Kok objects to Hill's thesis, maintaining that Clement of Alexandria is just as likely to be Eusebius's source here as Papias. He argues Papias's agreement with Clement may be restricted to the notice that Mark was Peter's interpreter. If Hill were to be right on a single source, the source may be Clement. But Kok's treatment of Hill's argument utterly fails to do justice to the many literary characteristics noted earlier, which are shared between Papias and this unnamed source in Eusebius, and which are not shared between this source and Clement. This source very clearly mentions that Matthew was written in the Hebrew tongue, similar to what Papias says about Matthew being written in a Hebrew dialect. Clement, by contrast, says nothing about the language or dialect of Matthew. Eusebius's source shows concern over the order in John's gospel just like Papias does with the order of Matthew and Mark. But Clement does not share this concern. And the distinct Greek verbiage shared between Papias and Eusebius's source is likewise absent from Clement. In contrast to Kok's proposal, Papias is just clearly the better candidate source than Clement.

Richard Bauckham also objects to Hill's hypothesis on the grounds that what Eusebius's source says about Matthew is incongruent with what Papias says about Matthew. He argues, "In 3.39.16, Papias is concerned with the issue of order in the Gospels. While 3.24.6 is explaining how it was that Matthew was obligated to write his gospel. The two statements cannot be combined into a single account from the same context." Unfortunately, Bauckham offers no reasons for thinking that these two statements could not occur within the same context. As Hill says in response to Bauckham, "On the contrary, I think that they would fit together quite well. There is no reason why these two concerns might not have been combined in the same account." In 3.24.5-7, Eusebius is only repeating enough of the source's information on Matthew, Mark, and Luke (2) as will provide the necessary background for relaying its tradition on John, which is clearly the subject at hand. It is quite reasonable to suppose that his source in 3.24.5-13, whose aim clearly was to give information about the origins of each of these gospels, did so in order, and that the information Eusebius quotes about Matthew and Mark in 3.39.15-16 would fit well after the information he so briefly summarizes in 3.24.6.

Bauckham further objects that although both sources share a common concern over the order within the gospels, they have radically different solutions to this concern. He writes, "The solution to the difference in order between the gospels that Papias must be inferred to have offered is that John's gospel does follow a correct chronological order, while the other gospels, at least Mark and Matthew, do not. In 3.24.5-15, the solution is quite different: the four gospels are reconciled without an admission that any of them is not in order." However, this objection depends upon a particular interpretation of Papias's words. Bauckham assumes that Mark's order is being compared to John's. But as Hill points out, "This may be so, but we may only think this from inference or speculation. For nowhere in the account which Eusebius relates in 3.39.15-16 is John mentioned. In fact, this section does say that one gospel writer did make an ordered arrangement, and that writer is Matthew, not John." It is, I believe, quite true that in the tradition from the elder quoted by Papias, all the gospels are being considered with respect to the question of literary arrangement. The unnamed source Eusebius uses in 3.24.5-13 definitely focuses on John's preservation of the beginnings of Jesus's ministry omitted from the other gospel accounts and not on the chronological order of events in the rest of the gospel story. The issue of an author's order or the lack of it cannot be restricted to matters of chronology.

Hill argues that no known source upon which Eusebius might have depended shares all of these parallels other than Papias. And since we know that Eusebius had access to Papias, it is most reasonable to infer that Eusebius's source here just is Papias. As Hill concludes, "Both accounts also stress the respective apostles' work of preaching before they wrote. What is more, after introducing the accounts of both gospels, Eusebius follows the first excerpt about John with the words 'and the record is surely true.' The record here naturally referring to the preceding one. Eusebius is definitely presenting this account of the origins of Matthew and John as from a single written source. And though he does not name that source, there is no credible alternative to regarding it as Papias of Hierapolis." These common elements and concerns point to a common source from a comparison with the other Papias fragments on the gospels in Eusebius. Then there is fairly conclusive support for regarding Eusebius's source in 3.24.5-13 as being Papias's tradition about the fourth gospel. If Hill's hypothesis is correct, then Papias names all four gospel authors. The question might be raised as to why Eusebius does not name Papias. But the answer to this is pretty straightforward. Eusebius did not like Papias and elsewhere in his writings he took great pains to distance Papias from John the Apostle. So we know that Eusebius would have had ample motivation not to cite Papias in this particular passage.

I also want to draw our attention to the witness of Irenaeus. While his witness to the four traditional authors of the gospels and *Against Heresies* is commonly dated between 174 and 189 AD, it may well be somewhat earlier. The 174 to 189 date is based upon Irenaeus's claim that Eleutherius was the bishop of Rome while he was writing. According to certain sources, Eleutherius was bishop of Rome between 174 and 189. However, the sources do not all agree here. Eleutherius succeeded Soter as bishop of Rome. And according to some sources, Soter's tenure ended as early as 168 AD, allowing for the possibility that *Against Heresies* was written just before 170 AD. Regardless of when we date *Against Heresies*, it is unlikely that Irenaeus is the first person to have attributed all four gospels to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. He attributes these gospels to these individuals in a very matter-of-fact kind of way, almost as if he takes it for granted that these names are widely accepted as being the names of the authors of the gospels. Furthermore, in the same section where Irenaeus tells us by name who wrote the gospels, he mentions that his gospel tradition had been transmitted to him right down from the apostles themselves and from those who had publicly preached it. This means that he takes himself to be reporting information which is earlier than himself. Where exactly he got this information is not said in the passage, but throughout *Against Heresies*, Irenaeus frequently cites Polycarp and a mysterious presbyter as sources. Charles Hill argues quite convincingly that this presbyter just is Polycarp. If Hill is right, then Irenaeus's tradition concerning the authors of the Gospels most likely comes directly from Polycarp. And this becomes even more plausible when we read Irenaeus's letter to Florinus where he describes going to Polycarp's house as a young man and hearing him recount Jesus's words and teachings as they were reported to him by eyewitnesses. As Hill contends, "Irenaeus claims not only to be passing on something which the presbyter taught, but also that the presbyter himself had attributed this information to an even earlier source, certain unnamed apostles and their disciples." Regardless of how the merits of this claim are judged, the chain of events reported in *Against Heresies* certainly matches Irenaeus's testimony in the letter to Florinus about Polycarp. And he concludes, "Simply stated, in *Against Heresies*, Irenaeus recounts from memory the anti-Marcionite oral teaching of a respected presbyter, a disciple of the apostles. And in the letter to Florinus, a letter devoted to the very same aspects of Marcion's teaching, Irenaeus claims he could remember much of the oral teaching of Polycarp of Smyrna, who he calls 'that blessed and apostolic presbyter.'" I submit that it would be too great of a coincidence if these two apostolic presbyters were not the same individual, namely Polycarp of Smyrna.

Furthermore, there is an interesting parallel in the wording of *Against Heresies* 3.11 where Irenaeus mentions the gospel authors by name and what he says of Polycarp in the letter to Florinus. In the letter, Irenaeus speaks of how Polycarp used to proclaim the gospel in public and passed it on from the eyewitnesses themselves. This looks shockingly close to how he describes his own reception of the gospel and by extension the gospel tradition in *Against Heresies* 3.11. Surely there can be no more plausible source for this tradition which Irenaeus reports than Polycarp. And if the parallels which I have noted between these two passages do indeed indicate that Polycarp is Irenaeus's source, then Polycarp also tells us his own source, namely the eyewitnesses. We thus have a chain of custody from the authors of the Gospels themselves right up through Irenaeus. This ensures beyond all reasonable doubt that our gospels were attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John from the very beginning.

Besides showing that the names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John predate, this analysis showing that Polycarp was very plausibly Irenaeus's source yields a further interesting conclusion. It shows that Irenaeus's testimony is independent of Papias's testimony. This considerably strengthens the case for the traditional authorship, since it is utterly absurd to think that both Papias and Polycarp should have independently attached the exact same four names to the four gospels if those names were not there from the start. The early church speaks with one voice on the authorship of the gospels. Our earliest witnesses unanimously attribute them to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. While some of the sources may have depended upon one another, there is a good case for thinking that Papias and Irenaeus are two earliest sources are independent of one another. Yet, these witnesses have been subject to an unceasing barrage of objections. It is to answering these objections that we now turn.

Papias is our earliest witness to the authorship of the Gospels, and consequently, it is not surprising that skeptics have lobbed the most objections to his testimony. One common objection says that Papias is not referring to the books that we know by Matthew and Mark at all. Bart Ehrman explains, "When Papias talks about a gospel written by Mark and another by Matthew, is he actually talking about the gospels that we know about by these names? In fact, what Papias says about the two books Matthew and Mark suggests he is referring to books different from the ones we have. That is easy to show with Matthew. Papias says only two things about the Matthew he is familiar with: it consists only of sayings of Jesus and it was composed in Hebrew. Neither is true of our Matthew. Elsewhere, Ehrman contends, 'it is worth noting that the two pieces of solid information that Papias gives us about Matthew are not true of our Matthew. Our Matthew is not just a collection of Jesus's sayings. And the gospel was certainly written in Greek, not Hebrew.' Has Papias simply gotten his information wrong? Or is he talking about some other book written by Matthew? For example, a collection of Jesus's sayings that we no longer possess." In a similar vein, Randall Helms objects, "But the Gospel of Matthew is written in Greek, nor is Matthew just *logia*, sayings, whatever Papias means, it is not the Gospel of Matthew." Finally, Richard Carrier objects, "Papias then says that Matthew composed his gospel in Hebrew and then translated various times into Greek. But that also can't be true because Matthew copies extensively from Mark's Greek frequently verbatim and thus can't possibly have been composed in Hebrew. It's clear that Papias had no idea what he was talking about and had no reliable sources of information about the first century of Christianity."

We have then two straightforward objections to the idea that Papias is referring to the canonical gospel of Matthew. In the first place, he says that it was written in Hebrew rather than Greek. And he also refers to it by using the term *logia*, or sayings, which implies that there is

No narrative. But since canonical Matthew is both written in Greek and clearly contains narrative, it follows that Papius must be talking about some other text or must simply be wrong.

We may begin our response to the claim that Papius says that Matthew is written in Hebrew by reviewing something which I brought up in my third video on the synoptic problem. There I pointed out that this term from Papius, commonly translated as "Hebrew language," can just as easily mean "Hebrew dialect." Notably, Papius does not include a definite article before the term. And as scholars such as Robert Gundry and Bernard Orchard have argued, the context plausibly favors this alternative translation. This is all just to point out that things are not as clear-cut as Man and Helms make them out to be. Papius may not, in fact, be saying that Matthew was written in Hebrew after all. Helms at least shows knowledge of Gundry's argument, but makes no attempt to engage with it.

With all that being said, it has to be admitted that this is merely a possible translation of Papius. But what if Papius is saying that Matthew was composed in the Hebrew language? If he was, then clearly he is not referencing the canonical Gospel of Matthew. However, it does not follow from this that Papius's statement is evidentially worthless. For Papius also states that everyone interpreted or translated Matthew as best they could. Plausibly, our canonical Gospel of Matthew would have been one such translation, and some explanation will still need to be given for how our canonical Matthew came to be attributed to Matthew the tax collector. The answer seems all too obvious. The canonical Gospel of Matthew was attributed to Matthew because he himself was the one who translated it or at the very least was responsible for the translation. As Martin Moss contends, the assumption that it was Matthew who revised his own work follows simply from the observation that the early church knew of no other author. Most naturally, and in default of information to the contrary, we would expect a man to revise his own work. To introduce an unknown redactor without evidence and for no good reason when a simpler solution is at hand is to breach Ockham's razor.

And what about Papius's use of the term *logia* or "oracles"? Does this indicate that he thought that Matthew was nothing more than a collection of sayings absent any narrative? The idea that *logia* can only refer to sayings is certainly wrong. For Papius likewise uses the term in reference to Mark's gospel in the very same passage, claiming that Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ. "For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterward adapted his teaching to the needs of his hearers, but with no intention of giving a connected account of the Lord's *logia*." Notice how in this quotation, *logia* is used as a synonym not only for what Jesus had said, but also for what Jesus had done. So, Papius uses the term *logia* to mean more than just sayings. As Richard Balkam argues, the context in these statements about Mark strongly suggests that *logia* means not "sayings of the Lord," but something like "short reports of what the Lord said and did." This is because the *logia* of the Lord must be parallel to the earlier phrase "the things either said or done by the Lord." In addition to this, both Irenaeus and Origen refer to the gospels as oracles in their writings, which makes clear that the term was used as a synonym for gospels by early Christians. And a final point worth noting is that Eusebius himself, who preserves these quotations from Papius for us and had access to the full context of Papius's statements, clearly interpreted Papius as talking about the Gospels of Matthew and Mark when he used the term *logia*. All in all, there are just no good reasons for thinking that Papius is not referring to the Gospel of Matthew just because he uses the term *logia*.

But Man isn't prepared to stop at the Gospel of Matthew. He thinks that Papius is not referencing the canonical Gospel of Mark either. He says one of the points that Papius emphatically makes is certainly wrong. He claims that one of Mark's two primary goals was to tell everything that he had heard from Peter about Jesus. There is simply no way that can be true. The Gospel of Mark takes about two hours to read out loud. After Peter had spent all those months or years with Jesus and Mark listened to Peter preach about Jesus day and night, are we really to imagine that all Mark heard was two hours' worth of information? Man is probably misunderstanding Papius here. It is more likely that Papius is saying that Mark wrote down everything that Peter remembered as opposed to saying that Mark wrote down everything that he himself remembered. As Richard Balkam argues, "I have also suggested that the subject of both of these verbs of remembering, 'recalled from memory' and 'related from memory,' may be Peter, but this is debatable. Many scholars have thought that the person remembering is Mark. Grammatically, either reading is possible. If the subject is not Peter, then this sentence fails actually to convey what Papius clearly intended: that it was Peter's teaching that Mark wrote down. This is much better conveyed by saying that Mark wrote what Peter remembered rather than that Mark wrote what he remembered Peter saying."

Now Man can still reply that this reading just pushes his objection back a step. Are we really to believe that Peter remembered nothing more than is contained in the Gospel of Mark? Here it will be helpful to remind Man that we do not possess the full context of Papius's quotation. Is Papius intending to say that Mark contains everything that Peter ever remembered about Jesus? Or is he saying that Mark wrote down everything that Peter remembered on a particular occasion? The section from Papius preserved by Eusebius cannot tell us one way or another. However, Eusebius also records a statement from Clement of Alexandria which reports more details about the origin of the Gospel of Mark. Clement tells us that Mark was a written version of one of Peter's sermons in Rome. Moreover, many scholars believe that Clement is dependent upon Papius here. If that is right, then this sheds considerable light on what Papius means when he says that Mark wrote down everything that Peter remembered. He means that Mark wrote down everything that Peter remembered in this particular sermon. Thus, by taking into account what both Papius and Clement report about the origin of Mark, we can see that Man's objection is based upon a misunderstanding of Papius.

Richard Carrier makes a different sort of objection to the idea that Mark was writing for Peter, saying, "Papius says that Mark became Peter's secretary and faithfully recorded his teachings." But that can't be true because Peter was a Torah observant Christian and Mark's gospel [clears throat] advocates against that and in favor of Pauline Christianity. That Peter and Paul were at odds on this point is clear throughout Galatians 2. Even if Carrier is right that Peter had been a Torah observant Christian at the time that Paul wrote Galatians sometime in the late 40s or early 50s AD, this leaves open the possibility that Peter changed his perspective at a later point in time and came around to see things from Paul's perspective by the time Mark wrote his gospel sometime in the 60s or 70s AD. But more fundamentally, Carrier seems to have misunderstood the actual conflict between Peter and Paul described in Galatians 2. Paul does not suggest that Peter was observing the Torah. Rather, he says that he had confronted Peter over his inconsistent behavior regarding when he would eat with Gentiles and when he would not. Indeed, in verse 14, Paul pretty much states that Peter was not actually observing the Torah in his own life, but only hypocritically made himself appear to be for fear of the Jews. He writes, "I said to Cephas or Peter in the presence of all, If you being a Jew live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?" So Carrier is not accurately representing the dispute between Peter and Paul. Once it is properly understood, it is clear that it presents no difficulty to the idea that Peter was Mark's source. Consequently, there is no objection to Papius's reliability.

The skeptics are not finished lobbing objections at Papius, however, for they also maintain that Papius's sources are questionable and too far removed to be trusted. For example, Carrier objects that Papius also said he rejected what books said and instead relied only on hearsay because he considered that to be more reliable. He was thus clearly the least reliable sort of source we could possibly want. The statement to which Carrier is referring is from Ecclesiastical History 3.39.4 where he quotes from the introduction of Papius's writings. There Papius is recorded as saying, "For I did not think that information from the books would profit me as much as information from a living and surviving voice." So we can pretty clearly see that Carrier has mischaracterized what Papius actually said. Papius did not say that he rejected written sources. Indeed, we know from other fragments of Papius that he did use written sources since he periodically quotes them. All that Papius claims here is that he has a preference for living voices. Nor does Papius state that he exclusively depended upon hearsay, as Carrier claims. Papius goes on to explain what he means by a "living and surviving voice" in the very same passage, saying, "If then anyone came who had been a follower of the elders, I questioned him in regard to the words of the elders, what Andrew or what Peter said, or what was said by Philip or by Thomas or by James or by John or by Matthew or by any other of the disciples of the Lord. And what things Aristion and the presbyter John, the disciples of the Lord say. For I did not think that what was to be gotten from the books would profit me as much as what came from the living and abiding voice." This is not mere hearsay which Papius describes. It is testimony from those who had heard the words of Jesus's immediate followers.

But what about Papius's source with regard to the authorship of the Gospels? How trustworthy is this Elder John from whom he claims to have obtained this information? Barman is more than a little pessimistic, claiming Papius is not himself an eyewitness to Jesus's life and does not know eyewitnesses. Randall Helms agrees, saying, "Not the third-hand nature of this information." A presbyter believed that Mark wrote down Peter's memories, a notion that Papius recorded and Eusebius copied in his writings. Is this really third-hand though? True, it comes to us through. But we know that Eusebius, despite his biases, still copies his sources accurately. We can independently verify his citations in the case of Irenaeus, for example, and they are accurate. Moreover, as we shall see shortly, Eusebius creates difficulties for himself by preserving these words from Papius when he tries to distance Papius from John the Apostle. If Eusebius felt free to play fast and loose with his citations, he could have easily modified Papius's words here to make his job much less difficult. But he doesn't. As for Papius, his citations of scripture are accurate whenever we can check them. So both Papius and Eusebius seem to have a good track record. When they relay information, they do so accurately. Thus, even if the information is strictly speaking third-hand information, this need not worry us because we can independently verify that the latter two links are reliable transmitters of information.

And what of this Elder John? Do we have any reason to suppose that he knew what he was talking about? Until the time of Eusebius, everyone believed that this elder was in fact John the Apostle. This is clear, for example, in Irenaeus, who says of Papius that he was a hearer of John and a friend of Polycarp. Eusebius was well aware of this statement by Irenaeus. However, Eusebius disagreed with Irenaeus on this point, and his reason for doing so is pretty blatant. Papius believed in a literal millennium, whereas Eusebius did not. If Papius had been a hearer and disciple of John, this would lend considerable apostolic credibility to Papius's views on the millennium. And Eusebius was highly motivated to remove that sort of credibility from Papius. Monte Shanks explains, "12 different fragments from 10 different authors claimed that Papius had to some degree personally known the Apostle John. It is recognized that some of these authors depended upon others for their knowledge of Papius's connection to the Apostle. Nevertheless, some of the more credible witnesses of the Apostle John's mentoring of Papius are Irenaeus, Eusebius, Jerome, and Anastasius of Sinai. The only person that questioned Papius's association with the Apostle was Eusebius, who later in his life unashamedly and unjustifiably displayed gross prejudice towards Papius."

Eusebius sets himself to debunking the idea that Papius had any connection to John the Apostle in Ecclesiastical History 3:39. He does this by attempting to draw a distinction between John the Apostle and John the Elder. His first argument comes from Papius's own words. Eusebius claims that Papius denies having ever heard the apostles himself. He cites the following passage from [clears throat] Papius as proof: "But I shall not hesitate also to put down for you along with my interpretations whatsoever things I have at any time learned carefully from the elders and carefully remembered, guaranteeing their truth. For I did not, like the multitude, take pleasure in those that speak much, but in those that teach the truth, not in those that relate strange commandments, but in those that deliver the commandments given by the Lord to faith and springing from the truth itself. If then anyone came who had been a follower of the elders, I questioned him in regard to the words of the elders, what Andrew or what Peter said, or what was said by Philip or by Thomas or by James or by John or by Matthew or by any other of the disciples of the Lord. And what things Aristion and the presbyter John, the disciples of the Lord say. For I did not think that what was to be gotten from the books would profit me as much as what came from the living and abiding voice."

Unfortunately for Eusebius, nothing which Papius says here precludes him from having been a hearer of the apostles themselves. In this passage, he does indeed state that he had heard from those who had heard the apostles, but this is compatible with Papius also having heard the apostles. Stuart Petri rightly concludes, "Papius says neither that he was a hearer and eyewitness of the apostles nor that he was not. He simply does not in the passage quoted mention the matter." Consequently, there is nothing to justify the careless confidence with which Eusebius contradicts Irenaeus. It is fair to assume that if Eusebius had been able to produce a more positive declaration from Papius, he certainly would have done so.

More interestingly still, the quotation which Eusebius cites plausibly works against his intended point. In this quotation, Papius uses the word *presbyter* or "elder" to refer to Andrew, Peter, Philip, James, John, and Matthew. And in the same sentence, he identifies them all as disciples. Immediately afterwards, in the very next sentence, he uses the same word again, *presbyter* or "elder," to refer to John, who he then also calls a disciple. So, it seems clear that Papius uses the terms interchangeably. Far from proving Eusebius's point, this quotation from Papius supplies strong evidence that Papius does intend to call John an apostle when he calls him an elder. Bernard Orchard sums this up rather well: "Eusebius finds it very significant that Papius lists John in the second instance outside the number of apostles, putting Aristion, who is not one of the 12, before him and clearly calling this John a presbyter. But there is no force in this argument since he has already referred to the other apostles as presbyters. Furthermore, he has just called the other apostles the disciples of the Lord. This second John is therefore doubly identified as both presbyter and disciple of the Lord. That is to say, he is identified by two terms that equally apply to St. John the Apostle."

Eusebius finds it very significant that John is mentioned twice: once with the other apostles and then again next to Aristion. This he thinks implies that there must have been two Johns. But Papius uses the past tense when referring to the other disciples, indicating that they had passed away. He uses the present tense when referring to John and Aristion, indicating that John was still alive in his day. Papius almost certainly mentions John again in the second clause because he wants to emphasize that he was still alive. This makes perfect sense of Papius's statements, and it avoids the gratuitous assumption that there were two Johns. Eusebius's only other argument is that there are two tombs in Ephesus where someone named John is said to be buried, which in his opinion means that there must have been two people named John: John the Apostle and John the Elder. But this pretty clearly does nothing to indicate that Papius was intending to distinguish between an Apostle John and an elder John. At best, it would establish that there was some confusion over where John the Apostle was buried. Orchard concludes that there were two tombs of John at Ephesus. All commentators agree that even if there was any archaeological evidence for two tombs, which there is not, their existence would be no proper argument for there being two Johns.

In conclusion, there is good reason to suppose that the Elder John mentioned by Papius is none other than John the Apostle, and no good reason to think otherwise. Eusebius's skepticism on this point is contrary to all of the earlier evidence and was just clearly ideologically motivated by theological disagreements with Papius. Martin Moss sums the matter up very well, saying, "The presbyter John is called the disciple because he was a disciple. His knowledge of Jesus was so intimate because he was the one whom Jesus loved. The writings were attributed to him because he wrote them. The second John is merely an entity multiplied beyond what is necessary. I conclude that the early church's near unanimous belief that there was one and not two eminent Johns in the period in question is vindicated. It is to the Apostle John, therefore, that we must attribute Papius's dictum about Matthew and the parallel one about Mark reported in Eusebius three sentences before it."

On a related note, skeptics have made much out of Eusebius's own comments about Papius's reliability. Man objects, "Later church fathers who talk about Papius in his book are not overly enthusiastic. The father of church history, the 4th century Eusebius of Caesarea, indicates that in his opinion, Papius was a man of exceedingly small intelligence." Similarly, Carrier says, "From the quotations we have, we can tell that Papius was a very gullible fellow. So much so that even Eusebius called him a man of very little intelligence." But as we have already seen, Eusebius's low estimation of Papius's intelligence had very little to do with the quality of Papius's writing and everything to do with theological disagreements between Papius and himself. As such, the fact that Eusebius regarded Papius as a man of low intelligence tells us more about the bias of Eusebius than it does the credibility of Papius. It is noteworthy that despite his low estimation of Papius's intelligence, Eusebius nevertheless regarded him as credible enough to be a reliable source when it came to the origins of the Gospels, since, by his own admission, Papius was one of his primary sources for this information. Shanks correctly points out Eusebius's statement that Papius influenced many others is a tacit admission concerning Papius's intelligence and literary capacity. Eusebius's admission argues that Papius was not so incompetent that he was incapable of significantly influencing future leaders of the church in the generations that followed.

Perhaps the most serious objection to Papius's witness to the authorship of the Gospels is that he is just known to be incredibly unreliable elsewhere. Barman explains, "There is though still a further and even more compelling reason for doubting that we can trust Papius on the authorship of the Gospels. It is that we really cannot trust him on much of anything." Man goes on to cite the following passage preserved in Apollinaris of Laodicea and allegedly from Papius as evidence for his unreliability: "Judas walked about in this world as a weighty example of impiety. He was so inflamed in the flesh that he could not pass where a wagon could easily pass. In fact, not even the bulk of his head alone could pass. For they say that the lids of his eyes were so swollen that neither could he see any light at all, nor could a doctor, aided by instrument, see his eyes. Such was their depth from the outer surface of his body. His genitals appeared to be more nauseating and enlarged than any other genitalia, and he passed through them pus and even worms that converged from throughout his body, causing an outrage on account of a simple necessity of life. After many tortures and punishments, they say he died in his own land. His land remains until now desolate and uninhabited on account of the stench. Even to this day, no one can travel through that place without holding their nose. So great was the judgment that spread through his flesh upon the earth." Man goes on to drive his point home, saying, "Does anyone think that Judas really bloated up larger than a house, emitting worms from his genitals, and then burst on his own land, creating a stench that lasted a century? No, not really. But it's one of the two gospel traditions that Papius narrates."

Man goes on to cite another example from Papius preserved through Irenaeus to demonstrate Papius's unreliability. "The Lord taught in regard to those times and said, 'The days will come in which a vine shall grow, having each 10,000 branches, and in each branch 10,000 twigs, and in each true twig 10,000 shoots, and in every one of the shoots 10,000 clusters, and on every one of the clusters 10,000 grapes. And every grape when pressed will give five and 20 measures of wine. And when any one of the saints shall lay hold of a cluster, another shall cry out, "I am a better cluster. Take me. Bless the Lord through me." In like manner he said that a grain of wheat should produce 10,000 ears and that every ear would have 10,000 grains and every grain would yield 10 pounds of clear pure fine flour and that apples and seeds and grass would produce in similar proportions and that all animals feeding then only on the productions of the earth would become peaceable and harmonious and be in perfect subjection to man.'" From this passage, Man argues, "Really? Jesus taught that? Does anyone really think so? No one I know. But does Papius think that Jesus said this? Yes, he absolutely does. The only traditions about Jesus we have from his pen are clearly not accurate. Why should we think that what he says about Matthew and Mark are accurate?"

Richard Carrier makes similar points saying, "As expected, the things which Papius tells us are ridiculous. For instance, one excerpt we have tells us this absurd story about Judas. Papius also said that Jesus promised us vast clusters of gigantic grapes and other nonsense. Clearly, the legends and fabricated sayings had gotten out of hand by the time Papius wrote, and he just believed whatever he chanced to hear. Does Papius come anywhere near to telling us anything useful? Not really."

Given that this is probably the most popular as well as the most serious objection to Papius's testimony to the authorship of the Gospels, I will devote a significant amount of space to answering it. I will begin by assessing the remarks about Judas before moving on to assess the teaching about grapes and vines which is attributed to Jesus.

Regarding Judas, the defender of Papius can make several points by way of response. In the first place, this record of the death of Judas attributed to Papius is quoted twice by Apollinaris of Laodicea. But what Man and Carrier fail to mention is that it reads significantly differently in those two places. Skeptics, of course, prefer the lengthier, more exaggerated version because it allows them to more easily discredit Papius. But in another place, Apollinaris quotes the same passage from Papius, but it only reads as saying, "Judas lived his career in this world as an enormous example of impiety. He was so swollen in the flesh that he could not pass where a wagon could easily pass. Having been crushed by a wagon, his entrails poured out." While the similarities between both quotations are unmistakable, there is a pretty clear discrepancy. In the longer quotation, Judas is only compared to a wagon and seemingly killed by worms. But in the shorter quotation, he is killed by a wagon. So the question arises, which version is more true to Papius? It is, after all, much easier to see Apollinaris as substantially exaggerating what Papius said in the longer quotation than it is to see him deliberately toning down what Papius said in the shorter quotation. In short, it's unclear how much of this tradition actually goes back to Papius himself. Things are not quite as neat and clean as skeptics like Man and Carrier make them out to be. As Monte Shanks observes, "The fact that this fragment was assimilated from a collection of quotes from Theophylact as he interacted with Apollinaris's quotes of Papius makes it difficult to regard either of the above conjectures as accurate reflections of what Papius actually wrote."

The second point to raise is that we as modern readers do not have the context of this quotation from Papius. Papius might have been trying to harmonize a local urban legend with the record of Judas's death in the New Testament for all we know. We do not really know that he is reporting this as a historical fact in the way that Man and Carrier assume that he is. Perhaps he is, but then again, perhaps he is not.

As a third point, we must not overlook the possibility that Papius may be engaging in a type of ancient rhetorical exaggeration known as *ekphrasis*, which would have instantly been recognized as such by his original readers. As Christopher B. Zikman argues, "Antonius's lessons on the topic confirm that Papius's death of Judas is an *ekphrasis*. Though writing after Papius, his handbook offers the most comprehensive delineation of the perfect *ekphrasis*. He declares that when making an *ekphrasis* of persons, one should go from first things to last, that is from head to feet, and in describing things, say what preceded them, what is in them, and what is want to result. Papius does precisely this. His description of Judas's body begins at the head and works its way down while simultaneously writing with linear chronology. Papius's central concern in this passage was the description of Judas immediately before his death, but he also narrated events before his disease struck and after his death."

To sum that up, we don't really know what Papius was trying to say in this fragment, nor do we know how much of it is genuine to him. But in any case, it is far from clear that this is a straightforward case of Papius being unreliable. As such, it is very tenuous for skeptics to make this passage the cornerstone of their objection to the reliability of Papius. Shanks reminds us, "There is little agreement on the exact content and meaning of this fragment, let alone its original context. Without further Papian material, certitude is not possible. Consequently, while data found in this fragment is interesting, it is one of the least credible Papian fragments."

Turning now to the words ascribed to Jesus by Papius. It is critical to observe from the outset that Papius is by no means the only person to have attributed this to Jesus. Irenaeus has multiple other sources besides Papius and *Against Heresies* 5.33. As Richard Balkam points out, "We must begin by investigating the sources from which Irenaeus drew this material because as we shall see, Papius was not the only source. Irenaeus introduces his quotation of Jesus's saying by attributing it to the elders. Some scholars have argued that Irenaeus is here identifying Papius as the source from which he has taken the tradition of the elders. But several considerations rule this out. In the first place, Irenaeus says quite clearly that Papius is an additional witness to the saying he has just quoted from the elders. Papius bore witness in writing whereas the elders reported orally what John had said. The distinction need not mean that Irenaeus knew the tradition of the elders only as an oral tradition. Though this is possible. He could have known it in a written source. But the contrast with Papius would be that the elders themselves did not write the tradition down whereas Papius did. So, Irenaeus first quotes from the elders then introduces Papius as an additional witness to the same saying of Jesus."

Balkam goes on to point out that these words are also attributed to Jesus in the writings of Hippolytus. So, the idea that Jesus said this seems to have been quite widespread among early Christians. I am of the somewhat controversial opinion that because this saying seems to be independently attested by so many early witnesses, it may indeed be an authentic saying of Jesus. While Jesus is obviously speaking in metaphors here, there is absolutely nothing theologically objectionable in his words from an Orthodox Christian perspective. And if the Gospels are giving us anything like an accurate picture of Jesus, it would not be at all out of character for Jesus to speak using these kinds of metaphors. There are no real problems which arise for the Christian in accepting that Jesus really said this. Note that I am not saying that Christians necessarily ought to adopt this as an authentic teaching of Jesus. I'm simply pointing out that there is much more evidence for this teaching than Papius's testimony alone and that there are no real theological difficulties involved in doing so once we recognize that Jesus is not speaking literally.

But put everything that I have said about these two problematic passages in Papius aside for a moment. Let us suppose that Man and Carrier are right that Papius is just transmitting outright falsehoods as matters of fact in these passages. Does this undercut the credibility of what he tells us about the authorship of the Gospels? I think that it does not. Whatever else we may make of these problematic passages, it is clear that as is the case with his testimony bearing on the Gospels, Papius is merely passing on an earlier tradition. Papius is the conduit which conveys these pieces of information to us, but he is not the source of any of them. Thus, even if the source of the story about Judas is completely unreliable, this does not automatically make John the Elder, who is Papius's source of information about the authors of the Gospels, unreliable. As well, the trustworthiness of the information from a source is not and cannot be determined by the conduit which brings that information to us. As Charles Hill rightly concludes, "There is no reason to doubt that Papius is a faithful reporter of what he heard and memorized. Though there may be very good reason to doubt the historical factuality of much of what he reported. His reports should not be treated as automatically true, but neither is automatically legendary. They are early testimonies to what was known or believed at that time, no matter how much actual truth they contained."

Moving now from objections to Papius in particular into objections to the reliability of the Petristic tradition as a whole. There is an often repeated objection to the reliability of the Petristics based upon the generally accepted priority of Mark's gospel. There are actually two objections here. The first objects that the witnesses to the traditional authorship of the Gospels are unreliable because they all claim that Matthew was written first, even though most scholars now accept that Mark was first. The defender of the traditional authorship of the Gospels may of course challenge the assumption that Mark really was written first. As Martin Moss points out, "Supposition is not evidence. The presupposition of a certain solution to the synoptic problem cannot be used as evidence for it without circularity." In my four-part series on the synoptic problem, I argued in detail that the arguments for Markan priority are poor and that there is indeed compelling evidence that Matthew was the first gospel to have been written. I thus refer viewers to that series to see my extended answer to this argument.

The second objection concerns why Matthew should have used Mark, as the theory of Markan priority demands that he did, since Matthew was an eyewitness and Mark was not. Why would a firsthand account need to depend upon a secondhand account? Michael Cox contends that "the theory that Matthew was the evangelist is hard to square with the standard solution to the synoptic problem, namely Mark and priority. It seems incredible that Matthew, an apostle and eyewitness of Jesus, would have relied so heavily on a biography of his teacher penned by a non-apostle and non-eyewitness." Dale Allison likewise asks, "Would an apostle who accompanied Jesus have used so little of his own reminiscence, but rather have followed Mark so closely?" Again, I reiterate that there are no sound reasons for thinking that Matthew's gospel is dependent upon Mark's gospel. But let us put this aside and, for the sake of argument and for the sake of making the thesis of traditional authorship acceptable to a wider group of people, let's assume that Markan priority is true. Let's assume that Matthew really did use Mark's gospel as a source. If church tradition is right about Peter being the ultimate source behind Mark's gospel, there is immediately a clear reason for Matthew to have used Mark. Mark was the authoritative account of one of Jesus's closest followers. Peter was privy to information which Matthew was not. So, it is not inconceivable that Matthew should have used Mark. As John Wenham says, "It is conceivable that Matthew the Apostle could have taken Mark as his starting point, adding fresh material and weaving into it his special emphasis. This is the more credible if Matthew had recognized that Mark's gospel had the authority of Peter behind it." Moss makes the same point as Wenham, but with a little more flare, saying, "Matthew's close adherence to the narrative of Mark presents no mystery. Knowing as he did that Mark had been essentially reporting the teaching of Peter, he made it his business to pay homage to the recorded words of the senior apostle whenever he had no good reason to do otherwise. What else would we expect from a man whose whole career had meant deferring to a higher authority?" The problem of Matthew copying Mark only arises when we reject the evidence of the early fathers as to the source of Mark.

This video has critiqued the idea that the Gospels were originally anonymous. We have surveyed three distinct lines of evidence which challenge the anonymity thesis. First, we have seen that the surviving manuscripts of the Gospels always have the same titles, which suggests that they always had had these titles. We have seen that the internal evidence is consonant with the traditional attributions of authorship. And we have seen that there is early and weighty external testimony which unanimously attributes the four Gospels to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Furthermore, we have taken on the challenges to the reliability of this historical testimony from leading skeptics and found them to be wanting. The evidence is clear. The Gospels were attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John because these individuals actually wrote them. And I will close with the eloquent words of Martin Moss: "Discrediting the early fathers simply raises the unanswered and indeed usually unasked question: How did they all come to be so wrong? In an age when martyrdom was an abiding risk, one would surely have expected the fathers to have made very certain of the historical traditions to whose origins they had readier access than we do. And for belief in which they were prepared to offer their own lives, expecting their families and descendants to do the same. There will have been the strongest possible motivation to verify the facts and traditions of their faith from the earliest and most reliable witnesses, rather more so indeed than that which rests upon us from our detached viewpoint today. Hence, the arbitrary dismissal of the Petristic witness raises considerable problems of human psychology and behavior, not to mention historical method, which if ignored, leave the problem seriously open-ended."

I recently debated Kevin, the non-traditional ex-Catholic, on the topic of gospel anonymity. He defended the thesis that the Gospels were anonymous, while I defended the traditional ascriptions of authorship to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Shortly thereafter, I uploaded an extended version of the case I defended in that debate to this channel entitled, "Who Wrote the Gospels? The Case for Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John." Since then, Kevin has uploaded his opening statement to his own channel, presenting his arguments for the conclusion that the Gospels were originally anonymous. Since my own video primarily presented a positive case for the traditional authorship of the Gospels and did not critique the positive arguments for the anonymity of the Gospels, I thought I would use Kevin's video as an opportunity to follow up my video on gospel authorship with a critique of the case for the anonymity of the Gospels.

Kevin's primary argument for the idea that the Gospels were originally anonymous comes from the supposed anonymity of the Gospels in the earliest Christian tradition. The anonymity hypothesis states that the Gospels were written in the second half of the first century, and then the traditional names weren't ascribed to them—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—until around a hundred years later in the second half of the second century. Uh, the general idea is that Matthew was written in like the 70s. I'm sorry, Mark was written in the 70s. Uh, Matthew and Luke in the 80s, John in the 90s. And then by 150 AD, still nobody was calling them by those names. But around like 170 AD, that's when people started using those names. And then definitely by like 180 AD, that's when people were definitely using those names. Um, why those dates? Well, Irenaeus published *Against Heresies* in around 185. Irenaeus is clearly using the Gospels by name. However, Justin Martyr was writing in 155, and he wasn't using the Gospels by name. Data that falls outside of that 170 range will not affect the case for anonymity at all. Dave and I already agree that the Gospels had the traditional names ascribed to them by the end of the second century. Where we disagree is if the names had stuck before then, in the hundredish years between writing and then 170. I will be presenting evidence of anonymity within the late 1st and early 2nd century for my opening statement. And then in my rebuttal, I will be rebutting some of the popular arguments that people use to support traditional authorship. This is how I see the evidence of anonymity. In my opening statement, we'll go over the evidence for anonymity. And then in my rebuttal, we are going to be looking at the evidence for traditional authorship and then attempting to rebut it. I'm going to focus most of my opening statement on the church father attributions, and I'm going to spend no time at all on internal anonymity because Dave and I already agreed before the start of the debate that the Gospels are indeed internally anonymous.

Our first example of an early Christian writing that treats the Gospels as being anonymous is the Didache. The Didache is considered to be part of a second-generation Christian group of writings known collectively as the Apostolic Fathers. The Didache itself is anonymous, but that's kind of besides the point. This treatise shares phrases and content found particularly in the Gospel of Matthew. In chapter 8, the Didache quotes the Lord's Prayer as written in Matthew 6:9-13 and indeed attributes that quote to a written source, but not to the Gospel of Matthew. Instead, the Didache refers to its source as "his gospel," "his" referring to the Lord. So, "the Lord's gospel" without providing attribution to the disciple Matthew. Elsewhere, the Didache refers to its written sources as "the gospel of the Lord" and "the ordinances of the gospel." Again, anonymous attributions. Again, no mention whatsoever of the four traditional authors. This supports the idea that soon after the Gospels were written, they were in circulation anonymously.

Let's go to the next example. First Clement is also one of the first, one of the most ancient non-biblical Christian texts that we have. First Clement may also be older than the Gospel of John. It may be. While the author of First Clement is debated and while the letter is internally anonymous, this letter still provides us with a late first-century quote of the Gospels that does not support the traditional author. 1 Clement 13:2 clearly quotes from either Luke 6 or Matthew 7. "Do not judge lest ye be judged." But again, referring to it only as "the words of the Lord Jesus." Second Clement does the same thing. Second Clement was probably not written by the same guy who wrote First Clement, but it's still a very early work. Tail end of the first century, beginning of the second century, and it likewise quotes from Matthew, Mark, and Luke without citing the author's names as well. Ignatius of Antioch quotes from the synoptics at some point in the first half of the second century in his letter to the Romans, again anonymously. He never says that he is quoting from Mark 8 or Matthew 16 or Luke 9. That this quote in question, "For what shall profit a man if he gain the whole world will lose his soul," is part of the triple tradition. So it's in all three of them. But Ignatius does not mention Matthew, Mark, or Luke. Again, Ignatius is writing in like 100 to 140, so definitely the first half of the second century.

Then there's Polycarp, who does the exact same thing as Clement and Ignatius and the Didache, referring to something that we would recognize as coming from the synoptics, but Polycarp never mentions an author's name, only referring to it as "the words which the Lord spoke." We'll do one more, and I kind of think of this last person as like the tail end of the anonymity era, and that would be Justin Martyr. Justin Martyr makes repeated and unmistakable references to the content found in the Gospels, but does not once reference any of the four evangelists that we attribute with the authors today. Never. Instead, he refers to these writings as a single volume that he just generically dubs "the memoirs of the apostles," treating "the memoirs of the apostles" as some kind of unitary source. In all of Justin's voluminous writings, he never delineates or otherwise distinguishes the memoirs by name. But Justin does typically treat his his other sources quite differently. While Justin always refers to the memoirs anonymously, it is telling that Justin does reference his other sources by name when he's discussing or citing them. For example, from the Old Testament, Justin will cite from Zechariah, Malachi, and the Psalms. He'll also reference non-canonical Christian writings such as Edris and the pseudo-letter of Jeremiah. And he references pagans too, like Plato and Pythagoras, by name, but never the Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John that we know of today, even though he cites from them. At one point, Justin recalls the story that we find at the beginning of Mark where Jesus is baptizing John the Baptist and others in the River Jordan. Uh, and he only refers to it as "a memoir of the apostles," not citing any of the Gospels that we would know by name. And what's funny is that in Justin Martyr's recollection, the River Jordan catches on fire while Jesus is baptizing people. That should paint a picture for you that the Gospels looked really different for Justin Martyr than they did for us. Likely before like 170, the Gospels were kind of floating around in these free-form uh collections of writings. A lot of them may have only been the sayings of the Lord that are found in the Gospels, but they may not have even been in the entire gospel collection like we know of today.

Kevin adduces various examples in the Didache, Clement, and Polycarp where the Gospels are quoted, but the traditional authors are not named as evidence that the Gospels were originally anonymous. Unfortunately, Kevin fails to realize that there is a critical distinction between merely not mentioning an author's name when quoting them and treating a writing as anonymous. But these are just clearly not the same thing. In the examples cited, Kevin only shows that the early church sometimes quoted the Gospels without naming their authors. But the early church never so much as hints that the authors are unknown. And we can see proof that these are not the same thing in the writings of Irenaeus, who uncontroversially believed that the Gospels had been written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And yet sometimes quoted them without citing their names. For example, in *Against Heresies* 4.33, he clearly quotes Matthew 7:1-2, but only attributes it to "the Lord." Irenaeus is not thereby treating Matthew's gospel anonymously. Therefore, Kevin's main argument for gospel anonymity amounts to being a fallacious argument from silence. Simon Gathercole rightly says, "There is never any sense among second-century authors that the Gospels are anonymous. Mentioned by second-century authors of the Gospels *tout simple* does not imply anonymity or lack of knowledge of author."

Kevin is certainly not alone in thinking that the silence of certain Petristic writers concerning the authorship of the Gospels argues for their anonymity. Consequently, it will be worth taking some time to see precisely why arguments from silence are regarded as being fallacious. So, what exactly is an argument from silence? Well, in a helpful article on the subject, Timothy McGrew defines it as follows: "The argument from silence is a pattern of reasoning in which the failure of a known source to mention a particular fact or event is used as the ground of an inference, usually to the conclusion that the supposed fact is untrue or the supposed event did not actually happen. Such arguments are often considered to be a species of arguments from ignorance. That is to say, they argue for some conclusion on the basis of an absence of evidence. It is similar to a god of the gaps type argument for theism where an inference is made to theism on the basis of something that we do."

not know. Kevin is doing essentially the same thing for the anonymity hypothesis. Now, arguments from silence are not always fallacious. It has often been noted that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence unless evidence would be expected. So, to use a non-historical example to illustrate this, consider fossil evidence in evolution. If there was an absence of fossil evidence for evolutionary development, this would be evidence against evolutionary development. Why? Because evolutionary theory predicts the existence of such evidence. Evolutionary theory is confirmed or disconfirmed relative to how much of the predicted fossil evidence is discovered. So, when we are dealing with silence in testimonial evidence, we need to have some reason to predict that the silent sources would mention the information which is absent in order for the argument to avoid being fallacious. That is to say, Kevin needs to supply us with information from these early Christian sources which generates the expectation that they would name the authors of the Gospels. And because of the numerous and highly specific contingent factors involved in the writing and preservation of testimony, as well as the difficulties of ascertaining any given individual's psychology, it's just very difficult to generate these sorts of predictions and expectations when it comes to ancient history.

As Timothy McGrew points out, this lack of symmetry between reasons for mentioning an event and reasons for omitting it brings us close to the heart of the difficulty with arguments from silence. For there are indefinitely many reasons that an honest and well-informed writer might omit to mention some fact that, from our perspective, would have been most natural for him to include. And unless we are justified in ruling out all, we are not in a position to rest significant weight on the omission. We should be all the more cautious when tempering our expectations of what ancient people would and would not mention when we examine the empirical evidence we actually have and see how often ancient people fail to mention important names in major events which uncontroversially occurred. For example, in Bergen, Norway, there is considerable archaeological evidence for an extensive wildfire which occurred sometime between 1225 and 1230. Yet, the local records from that time do not record any major fires during this time period. Similarly, neither Herodotus nor Thucydides, the most significant historians from ancient Greece, mentioned Rome or the Romans, despite the fact that the Roman Republic was a major world power at the time. Thucydides also did not make mention of Socrates. Pliny the Younger, in his letters to Tacitus, recounts the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and yet never mentions the destruction of Pompeii. The upshot of this very brief survey of notable instances of silence in ancient and medieval history is that our intuitions about what historical sources are likely to mention are not all that trustworthy. Any weight which is carried by an argument from historical silence is going to be counterbalanced by these sorts of examples. As McGrew concludes, the examples of the silence regarding Rome and the Romans in Greek sources, the effect of the eruption of Vesuvius, and the Bergen fire should temper our enthusiasm for the argument from silence, even in the most favorable cases. Where significant historical issues hang in the balance, even fairly extensive silence in the existing ancient documents may by itself be insufficient to persuade cautious scholars. And if, in addition, the argument asks us to sweep out of view some positive evidence of comparable antiquity, we may expect reasonable scholarly judgments to reflect, to a very considerable extent, the relevance of other considerations and prior commitments. At the very least, anyone who proposes to advance an argument against such a direct assertion on the sole basis of silence cannot reasonably expect it to pass unchallenged.

So, returning to the issue of the patristics, I think that Kevin has overlooked some pertinent facts within these quotations from the second-century Clement and Polycarp which actually challenge his thesis. For while these sources do not name the authors of the Gospels, they still cite them with authority. An interesting question may therefore be raised as to why these early Christians regarded these Gospels as so authoritative. At least one obvious explanation is that these Gospels were regarded as authoritative because it was widely known that they originated with the apostles and their followers. For example, if I say, "All that glitters is not gold," without citing the source, I am not thereby treating William Shakespeare's writings anonymously. Rather, I am assuming that my audience is familiar with this famous quotation and where it came from. Similar considerations apply to the Apostolic Fathers. They didn't name their sources in these instances because they took it for granted that their audiences already knew where it came from and why it was so authoritative. On the anonymity hypothesis, it's not at all clear why the Apostolic Fathers should have felt licensed to quote these Gospels with such authority in the first place.

As Lydia McGrew points out, "It is true that none of these authors, Clement of Rome, Polycarp, or Justin Martyr, names the authors of the writings from which they are quoting, but it remains a datum requiring explanation that clearly our own four Gospels were known at an extremely early period and were regarded as authoritative sources of the words of Jesus. An actual hypothesis with some explanatory force is that they treated and quoted these texts in this way because they already had reason to believe that they came from the apostles and their followers. In other words, they didn't just inexplicably glom onto a randomly selected set of four documents and decide arbitrarily to treat them as holy books, but rather treated them in this way because they already had reason to believe that they came from authoritative and knowledgeable sources. Hence, even the quotation of the Gospels without a specific, explicit attribution to Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John is external evidence and attestation relevant to the question of their authorship. And it is evidence which tells in favor of their authorship by the followers of Jesus and their companions."

Furthermore, Kevin does not discuss Papias, who was a contemporary of Clement and Polycarp, and who clearly does name the authors of Matthew and Mark, possibly as early as the '90s AD. And as I noted in my extended video, there is a good case to be made for Papias naming Luke and John as the authors of their Gospels as well. Moreover, in this passage, Papias claims to be passing on earlier tradition even than himself, which he received from the elder John. This pushes the names for Matthew and Mark at least well into the first century. Lastly, if Polycarp was Irenaeus's source, as I argued in my own video, then Polycarp certainly knew who wrote the Gospels.

Things get more interesting when we come to Justin Martyr. As previously observed, arguments from silence are not always fallacious. Specifically, they are not fallacious when the silence would be unexpected given what we know about a source. Kevin's argument from Justin Martyr is not as flawed because he pairs it with an inductive argument based upon Justin's other writings, according to which Justin always cites his sources by name. This is a much better example to support the anonymity thesis than Kevin's other examples because Justin's tendency to name his sources does generate this prediction that he would name the Gospel authors if he knew them. Unfortunately for Kevin, however, I think that Justin does betray knowledge of the authorship of the Gospels. He says that the Gospels were written by the apostles and their followers. This means that at least two Gospels were written by apostles, presumably Matthew and John, and at least two by their followers, presumably Mark and Luke. If the identities of the authors were unknown to Justin, it is very difficult to explain how he knew that at least two had been written by apostles and at least two by followers of apostles. Moreover, the fact that this perfectly matches with the four-fold Gospel tradition in Irenaeus and later must be chalked up to being a happy coincidence. But things get even worse for Kevin. In *Dialogue with Trifo*, chapter 106, Justin names the source of one of the memoirs. He refers to the "Memoirs of Peter" and says that it records Jesus changing the names of the sons of Zebedee to Boanerges, or sons of thunder. So, the source of at least one of these memoirs was indeed associated with the name Peter. Interesting also is the fact that this term "Boanerges," or sons of thunder, only occurs in the Gospel of Mark, which just so happens to be associated with the memories of Peter by every single Church Father who spoke on the origin of the Gospel of Mark. Is this another happy coincidence? I think not. As C.E. Hill concludes, "Justin, by referring to Peter's memoirs, subtly lets his Christian reader know he is using Mark as one of the memoirs of the apostles. Justin shows us that he does know something about the sources of the Gospels."

I'm going to agree with Kevin that it is really odd that Justin does not name these sources in light of his tendency to do that elsewhere. But I think his naming of Peter as well as his mentioning of the apostles and their followers as the sources of these memoirs provides too much counter-evidence to conclude that Justin thought that the Gospels were anonymous.

I think that the synoptic problem is a real problem for the traditional authorship view. Perhaps the synoptic problem is better referred to as the synoptic puzzle. I'm fine with using either one, but regardless, the traditional authorship view holds that Mark was writing Peter's testimony. Luke was recording what he had heard of the events from Paul, who had heard from the Twelve, and Matthew was literally an eyewitness. If this is the case, I would not expect a high degree of literary interdependence between the three. Yet, that is exactly what we see. Only 3% of Mark is uniquely Markan. 20% of Matthew is uniquely Matthean, and 35% of Luke is uniquely Lucan. Maybe Luke gets a pass for having heard everything thirdhand, right through Paul, through the Twelve. But it's super strange that Mark is essentially writing down whatever Peter tells him to. I am a Markan priority guy, so I do think that Matthew's copying from Mark, but it doesn't matter what your view of priority is. The fact that they're copying from each other at all is super weird given the traditional authorship view. I don't think that makes a whole lot of sense in light of the traditional authorship view. I think it makes a lot more sense in the anonymity view.

The synoptic problem, or more accurately, the presence of literary dependence among the synoptics, poses no problems for the hypothesis of traditional authorship. If, as I have argued at length in my series on the synoptic problem, Matthew wrote his Gospel first, we would fully expect Luke to utilize it, given Luke's explicit claim that he got his information from eyewitnesses in his prologue. Indeed, I would be surprised if Luke did not use the Gospel of Matthew as a source. I believe that Peter very likely used both Matthew and Luke in his own preaching. Thus, Mark composed his Gospel by stitching together those portions of Matthew and Luke which Peter had utilized. This fits nicely with the internal evidence of conflation present within Mark. It is also completely in accord with what all of the Church Fathers, except for Origen, tell us about the order and authorship of the Gospels. If Matthew really was written by Matthew and was written first, we would expect Luke and Mark to consult his Gospel for information. This is not a challenge for the thesis of traditional authorship at all.

The original language is a small problem as well. Maybe not a huge problem, but it's a small problem for the traditional view. Galilean fishermen would not have been literate. And Acts does specifically call Peter and John illiterate. So, if John was illiterate, that makes the authorship of John kind of funny. But Peter didn't write the Gospel of Mark, right? Mark wrote Mark. And maybe that kind of makes sense, right? Peter was illiterate. So, we had Mark write down his gospel. Well, Acts 12:12 says that after Peter escaped from Herod's jail cell, he went to Mark's mom's house in Galilee. Herod ruled over the area that is colored in on this slide. That's all pretty rural land in the first-century ancient Near East. The chances of somebody being born there being literate is very, very low. Not only that, but literacy in general was just super low. Even for tax collectors, there's a common apologetic technique where people will say, "Oh, Matthew probably knew how to write because he was a tax collector." Not so. Matthew was not like an accountant today where you needed to go to college and get a four-year degree to be an accountant. No. A tax collector in the ancient Near East would have been somebody who went door-to-door, knocking on their doors, asking for their money. Kind of like hired muscle. In fact, we only know of one first-century ancient Near Eastern Jew who was capable of writing. Josephus, obviously. Paul was capable of writing too, but he's not from that area. From that area. The only person that we know of who is able to write at that level is Josephus. Luke may be exempt from this criticism. Luke supposedly was a doctor, and he hung out with Paul, and Paul was like hyper-educated. So, I do exempt Luke from this criticism, but I think that this criticism does lower the chances for traditional authorship for the other three Gospels.

Kevin objects that the first language of Jesus's disciples would have been Aramaic rather than Greek. So, it is somewhat surprising, on the hypothesis of traditional authorship, that our Gospels are written in Greek. Now, just on its face, this doesn't actually support Kevin's case that the Gospels are anonymous. At best, this is an argument for the proposition that the hypothesis of traditional authorship is false. But it's not even really a strike against traditional authorship. Luke was plausibly a Gentile, so Greek may well have been his first language. We don't know much about Mark, but there's no real reason to suppose that he couldn't speak Greek. Matthew, being a tax collector, almost certainly would have had to know some Greek. And there's no real reason to suppose that John couldn't have learned Greek for the sake of furthering the Gospel. Additionally, our Gospels could have been composed with the help of Greek-speaking scribes. So, the fact that our Gospels are in Greek is not a problem.

On a related note, Kevin seems to think that it is unlikely that any of Jesus's disciples could have written, given the widespread illiteracy during that time. But again, Matthew and Luke would have had to be literate. Mark and John could have simply learned to read and write in Greek at a later point in time or been aided by scribes. We know that Paul, for example, sometimes had scribes aid him in the writing of his letters. There is no reason to think that the Gospel authors couldn't have done the same thing. So, this is not a problem for the traditional authorship hypothesis.

Lastly, I want to bring up some dating tensions. The Gospel of Mark was probably written sometime around 70 AD, Matthew and Luke in like 85 AD, and then John in like 90 AD. Average life expectancy in the Roman ancient Near East was 30. But average life expectancy, assuming that you make it to 10, was more like 50. So, um, assuming that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were each like 10 years younger than Jesus, which is probably about right, they would have been pretty darn old at the time that they wrote their Gospels. Anywhere from like 65 years old to like 85 years old. Living to 65 to 85 when the average life expectancy is 50 is not impossible, but it does seem like another chip on the scale in favor of anonymity.

Kevin also believes that the Gospels are quite late, possibly later than the lives of many of those who are supposed to have written them. Now, this is slightly off-topic, but I am more than willing to defend early dates for the synoptics. I believe that Paul betrays dependence upon Matthew and Luke in places, and indeed there is some reason to think that when Paul uses the phrase "according to my Gospel" in his writings, he is actually referencing Luke's Gospel. This would place Matthew and Luke well into the 40s AD. Mark seems to have been a second-generation believer of sorts, so the standard date for his Gospel of around 70 AD isn't really problematic, though I think it actually dates to the early 60s AD. As I explained in my video on the topic of Gospel authorship, I think that our canonical Gospel of John is probably a later copy published after the death of the Apostle John with some editorial clarifications. If this is right, then there is no difficulty with John having authored the Gospel, even if our canonical Gospel of John is a later copy of the original Gospel which John wrote. For those interested in going deeper on the topic of the dates of the Gospels and evidence for the early dates, see John A.T. Robinson's classic treatment, *Redating the New Testament*; John Wenham's more controversial, *Redating Matthew, Mark, and Luke*; Orchard and Riley's criminally underrated, *The Order of the Synoptics*; and more recently, Jonathan Bernier's *Rethinking the Dates of the New Testament: The Evidence for Early Composition*.

So, to sum all of that up, I think that Kevin's primary argument is an argument from silence. His star witness, Justin Martyr, actually does betray his knowledge of who wrote the Gospels. The other issues he raises are not really relevant to the issue of anonymity, but rather challenge whether the traditional attributions of authorship are genuine. And even then, I don't think that they pose a serious challenge to the traditional authorship of the Gospels.

What is the book of Acts? Is it a reliable history of the early church and the life of the Apostle Paul? Or is it rather a late, largely fictional retelling of these events? It is safe to say that modern New Testament scholarship strongly favors this latter option. But what if there is compelling evidence telling in favor of the historical reliability of Acts? And if so, what are the ramifications of this evidence for the Christian faith and for Christian apologetics? This video will explore these questions, arguing that there is excellent evidence for the reliability of the book of Acts and that this fact serves a critical role in making the case for the resurrection of Jesus.

Who wrote the book of Acts? Uncontroversially, the third Gospel and the book of Acts probably share the same author, given the similarities in style and vocabulary between them. Gregory Boyd observes, "It is almost beyond doubt that the author of Acts is the same as the author of the third Gospel. His opening reference to his former book and his renaming of his primary reader as Theophilus is itself almost enough to establish as much. The close similarity in style of both works also points to the same conclusion, and the overall distinctive outlook of the two works are essentially the same. Both works, for example, share a distinctive universal scope, a sympathetic treatment of women, a concern for Gentiles, a similar apologetic tendency, and an identical Christology. A host of other more incidental considerations also indicate that one author wrote the two works as a two-volume set. Both the third Gospel and Acts have traditionally been attributed to Luke, a companion of the Apostle Paul. If this traditional answer is correct, then the book of Acts becomes a highly valuable source of information, since this means that the author is an eyewitness to much of what he reports. But is the traditional answer correct?

In my video, "Who Wrote the Gospels? The Case for Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John," I have already surveyed extensive evidence for the Lucan authorship of the third Gospel based upon early manuscripts, internal clues, and the unanimous voice of the early church. Since the third Gospel and the book of Acts have the same author, the evidence which I put forward for the Lucan authorship of the third Gospel in that video equally supports the Lucan authorship of the book of Acts. As Boyd helpfully summarizes, "As with all the Gospels, the traditional authorship of Acts is unanimously attested to in the early church. Luke, the beloved physician and companion of Paul, composed Acts as the second part of his two-volume work. The first surviving explicit references to Luke as the author of Acts come from the second century. Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Origen all attest to his authorship, and they do so in incidental ways, showing that in their day, the point needed no argumentation. The antiquity and unanimity of this witness must impress us. So must the fact that there is no discernible ulterior motive on the part of the tradition for naming Luke as the author. He certainly plays no prominent authoritative role in the early church. But more than this, there are good reasons to believe that Luke authored the book of Acts from within Acts itself, notably the "we" passages. At three different times within his narrative, the author of Acts seemingly includes himself within these parts of his narrative by employing the second-person plural pronoun "we." At least on its face, this lends considerable credibility to the notion that the author of Acts was an eyewitness to many of the events within his narrative.

As Boyd highlights, "The most impressive indication of his companionship with Paul is the incidental way the author switches from the usual first-person singular to the first-person plural at certain junctures in his narrative. Such switches are too subtle and infrequent to constitute a fictitious apologetic ploy or be seen as mere literary convention. And attempts to postulate an earlier written source to explain them are speculative and create unnecessary theoretical sources, a move, as we have seen, that always weakens any hypothesis. Nor is there a shred of literary evidence to support such a view." And Harold Riley adds, "The 'we' sections are clearly meant to imply the presence of one of Paul's companions. Of the possible companions, some are excluded by the reference to them in Acts. Some because they are known to have joined him too late to qualify. Two persons are possible: Titus and Luke. Neither of them is mentioned by name in Acts, and the suggestion that both names refer to the same person is excluded by 2 Timothy 4:10. Of the two possible companions, there is no reason for preferring Titus to Luke in the face of the unanimous tradition that the author was Luke."

It is also worth pointing out that Luke is traditionally thought to be a physician, and that there is a fair amount of medical terminology used throughout his Gospel. W.K. Hobart popularized this as an argument for Luke's authorship of Acts in 1882. But H.J. Cadbury offered a famous critique showing that many of these same terms also showed up in ancient sources which are unquestionably not authored by physicians. So, while the medical language in Luke cannot be used as a decisive argument for Acts having been authored by a physician, it is at least consistent with this idea. Jefferson White puts it best when he says, "While it can be said that Luke and Acts contain more medical terms than any other book of the New Testament, this does not by itself prove that a doctor wrote Luke and Acts. On the other hand, if a doctor wrote these two books, it would be surprising if these terms were not used." Taken together, the evidence for the Lucan authorship of the third Gospel, the unanimity of church tradition, and the internal evidence from within Acts itself all point very convincingly to Luke, the companion of Paul, as the author of Luke-Acts.

There is, however, one serious objection to the idea that Luke could have been the author of Luke-Acts. Namely, that Luke-Acts is just too late to have been authored by Luke. Many scholars are now maintaining that Luke-Acts wasn't written until the middle of the second century, but Luke the physician would have been dead by then and so he could not have been the author. There are two main reasons for dating Luke-Acts this late. The first is that the two-volume work shows dependence upon the work of the Jewish historian Josephus. And the second is that Luke-Acts is not mentioned or clearly quoted by any Church Father until the middle of the second century. We shall examine both of these arguments in some detail, and I will argue that neither is successful in justifying the late date for Luke-Acts. After this, we shall briefly canvas some evidence suggesting an early date for Luke-Acts prior to 70 AD.

The idea that Luke-Acts is dependent upon the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus was fairly popular in the late 19th and early 20th century. However, the idea waned in popularity throughout the 20th century to the point that it was virtually dead just a few decades ago. However, this idea is making a comeback within scholarship and growing in popularity. And no one has done more to revive this idea's popularity than Josephus scholar Steve Mason in his 1992 book, *Josephus and the New Testament*. Mason's argument is essentially that there are too many points of similarity between Luke, Acts, and Josephus to plausibly be construed as mere coincidence. He argues as follows: "I cannot prove beyond doubt that Luke knew the writings of Josephus. If he did not, however, we have a nearly incredible series of coincidences which require that Luke knew something that closely approximated Josephus's narrative in several distinct ways. This source or these sources spoke of Agrippa's death after his robes shone, the extramarital affairs of both Felix and Agrippa II, the harshness of the Sadducees towards Christianity, the census under Quirinius as a watershed event in Palestine, Judas the Galilean as an arch-rebel at the time of the census, Thaddeus and the unnamed Egyptian as three rebels in the Jerusalem area worthy of special mention among a host of others, Thaddeus and Judas in the same piece of narrative, Judaism as a philosophical system, the Pharisees and Sadducees as philosophical schools, and the Pharisees as the most precise of the schools. We know of no other work that even remotely approximated Josephus's presentation on such a wide range of issues. I find it easier to believe that Luke knew something of Josephus's work than that he independently arrived at these points of agreement."

Nevertheless, further study may provide alternatives. For the most part, these coincidences noted by Mason are fairly non-specific generalities, which are easy to explain given that both Josephus and the author of Luke-Acts were well acquainted with the culture and politics of the mid-first century. There were only two places where the narratives of Luke, Acts, and Josephus connect: the census under Quirinius and the mention of the same three rebel leaders who were active in the years preceding the first Jewish Roman war between 66 and 73 AD. The first of these is an unlikely candidate for establishing Luke-Acts dependence upon Josephus, given that the two accounts are incompatible with one another. In Luke's Gospel, the census occurs fully 10 years before it does in Josephus. This discrepancy tells against the idea that Luke used Josephus as a source. As Jonathan Bernier argues, "We need not determine which of these reports might be accurate and which might be inaccurate. For our purposes, it is sufficient to note that to the extent that Luke's account is fundamentally irreconcilable with Josephus's, we have reason to doubt that either one stands as a source for the other." And Colin Hemer adds, "The theory of Luke's independence on Josephus has had in its day a certain vogue and has been used as a major argument for the late dating of Luke-Acts. But where the two writers touch, they often conflict. This scarcely favors the first hypothesis unless we assume that Luke was singularly careless or prejudiced to contradict his source gratuitously." In other contexts, scholars are widely cautious to posit knowledge or dependence even where verbal resemblances exist.

Regarding both authors mentioning Judas the Galilean, Thaddeus, and the Egyptian, Mason's argument depends wholly upon Luke, Acts, and Josephus naming these individuals in exactly the same way. But such an argument is terribly weak just on its face. Even if we assume a literary explanation for the sake of argument, there is no obvious reason to prefer the idea that Luke is drawing from Josephus than that Josephus is drawing from Luke, or that both are drawing from a common source, which has since been lost. Furthermore, it is more than clear that these three individuals could be identified by the same titles without any appeal to literary dependence whatsoever. It is just as likely that these individuals were known by these names in the oral traditions which were familiar to both Luke and Josephus. Indeed, one might argue that some famous discrepancies between the two favor this hypothesis.

As Bernier points out, "Much as with the case of the Quirinius data, the most obvious barrier to affirming either that Luke is dependent upon Josephus or Josephus upon Luke comes from the famous contradiction between the two authors. In Acts 5:36-37, Luke's Gamaliel I places Theudis's revolt before that of Judas the Galilean. But Josephus reports that Judas's revolt predated Theudis' by about 40 years." Suspicion of independence only increases when one asks a crucial empirical question: Why the Egyptian? For the sake of argument, if we suppose Josephus's independence or priority, why did he single out the Egyptian? Why, if there were innumerable rebel figures, did Josephus choose a figure whose name he did not know? The most intelligible answer is that the Egyptian's operations were remembered as in some way significant. These operations loomed large in the memories of those who lived through the period, even though his name did not. Josephus singled out this figure because his sources, or written works, did so before him. He may have selected Judas and Thaddeus for much the same reason. This raises the possibility that Luke 2 emphasizes these three figures on the basis of his own sources. Indeed, given their precise combination of similarities and differences, it is likely that both Luke and Josephus drew upon different sources from the decades leading up to the Jewish War that nonetheless emphasized Judas, Thaddeus, and the Egyptian. Certainly, the crucial differences between Luke and Josephus in the treatment of these figures should make us wary of positing that either is directly dependent upon the other. Such wariness is likewise well warranted regarding the relationship between Luke-Acts and Josephus more generally. Cumulatively, while we cannot exclude Lucan knowledge of Josephus, neither is such knowledge more than a possibility. The relationship between Luke-Acts and Josephus's writings should be considered non-probative for establishing the compositional date of the former."

I think that this last statement by Bernier is actually too generous. I think that we have citations from the early Patristics which are quoting from Luke's Gospel, thereby placing Luke-Acts well into the first century. It is widely believed that Luke's Gospel is never clearly quoted by the Patristics until the middle of the second century, and that this silence of the early Patristics with respect to Luke warrants a second-century date for the Gospel. This would make both the third Gospel and Acts too late to have been written by Luke the physician. Arthur Bellinzoni sums up the current scholarly opinion when it comes to the Patristic usage of Luke, saying, "In examining the Apostolic Fathers, it was found that there was very little use of the Lukan Gospel. It is only as we approach the later Apostolic Fathers toward the middle of the second century, specifically 2 Clement and the later writing included in Polycarp's Letter to the Philippians, that it appears likely that there was at least some knowledge and use of the Gospel of Luke. There was apparently little or no significant use of the Gospel of Luke before 150 AD."

Popular though this sentiment may be, it is simply not sustainable in light of recent advances in the study of the Patristics. At least two very early Church Fathers quote Luke's Gospel. Ignatius of Antioch, in his letter to the Smyrnaeans 3:2–3, quotes Jesus as saying, "Take hold of me, touch me, and see that I am not a bodyless ghost." This sentence is a verbatim match for Luke 24:39, and it is the only known source for this saying of Christ, making Luke's Gospel the most probable source. And since Ignatius was martyred in 110 AD, Luke-Acts must date to before this time. As Robert McVey explains,

"Does Luke know Josephus? Well, I I I think really the jury is still out on that. In Mark's very good article where he takes on Matthean posteriority, he does mention in a footnote that not only is there evidence that Ignatius knew Matthew, but there's also evidence in two passages that Ignatius knew Luke as well. So, since Ignatius wrote in AD 110, as most people believe, there's not a lot of time for, you know, for Luke to be very far in the first century in the second century. And I don't think there's room in the in for the second century as well. By the way, Luke is also quoted by in 1 Timothy 5:18 where it says, 'The scripture says the laborer deserves his wages.' So, it seems like Luke is being quoted as scripture because we don't know any other besides those two early on that use those exact same words."

But not only does Ignatius quote from Luke, I would argue that Papias of Hierapolis does as well. In my video on Gospel authorship, I argued that Irenaeus's source for his four-fold Gospel tradition preserved in *Ecclesiastical History* 3.24.5–13 is most probably Papias, which would prove that Papias knew about Luke's Gospel. But even if one does not find that case persuasive, there is another reason to believe that Papias knew Luke's Gospel, namely that he directly quotes from it in a little-known fragment preserved in Andrew of Caesarea's fifth or sixth-century commentary on the book of Revelation. At one point, Andrew quotes Papias as quoting Jesus saying, "I saw Satan fallen from heaven like a lightning bolt." This is a match for Luke 10:18, suggesting that Papias was familiar with Luke's Gospel. As Charles Hill argues, "This saying of Christ is recorded only in Luke's Gospel. While it is possible to suggest that there was an unknown source used by Luke still circulating in Asia Minor at this time, the simplest explanation and the one which requires the least dependence on supposition is that Papias here reflects a familiarity with Luke's Gospel." All this points to the conclusion that Papias of Hierapolis, writing probably in the 120s AD, knew all four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This would make him the earliest person we can name who knew them all so far. While Hill dates Papias to the 120s AD, which is still far too early to date Luke-Acts to the mid-second century, there are good reasons to think that Papias was writing even earlier, perhaps as early as the '90s AD. For one thing, Irenaeus discusses Papias in the third book of his *Ecclesiastical History*. But this work seems to be limited to the time prior to the close of Emperor Trajan's reign, meaning that Papias's writings would need to be written within that time period. As Robert Yarborough argues, "Irenaeus classes Papias with the young Polycarp, Ignatius, and even Clement, that is, with those who were the immediate successors to the apostles. Nowhere in book three of Irenaeus's history, in which Papias is treated, does he discuss matters later than Trajan's reign. In fact, book four opens with the twelfth year of Trajan's reign. Without question, Papias is viewed as flourishing before 109 AD." Yarborough further points out that Irenaeus offers a list of early Christians, seemingly in chronological order, which places Papias after the Apostle John, but prior to Polycarp or Ignatius, suggesting that Papias was older than both of them. As he explains, "Irenaeus's chronicle furnishes a second and related clue for dating Papias. Irenaeus places the aged apostle John, Papias, Polycarp, and Ignatius in that order in the same entry. Next to this entry, Irenaeus has as part of his running table of dates the year 100 AD. With this entry, he concludes his treatment of the first century. Unquestionably, Irenaeus here links Papias with the Apostle John as a church leader at the close of the first century and as a contemporary of Ignatius and the young Polycarp." And as a final point, it is noteworthy that neither Irenaeus nor Eusebius ever cite Papias in their criticisms of Gnosticism, despite a strong propensity for both of them to do this when prominent church figures spoke out against it. This suggests that Papias was writing prior to the prominence of Gnosticism during the early and mid-second century, suggesting a first-century date for his writings. Again, Yarborough says, "Another clue in dating Papias is that neither Irenaeus nor Eusebius cite Papias as an anti-Gnostic witness. Now, when Irenaeus is able to cite earlier authorities, especially biblical writers, against his ideological opponents, he gladly does so. Eusebius's penchant for quoting copious portions of earlier works is well known. Yet for all the vehement opposition of these two against the early Gnostics, it appears that neither turns to Papias for support in his arguments. The most obvious explanation for this is that Papias said nothing about the Gnostics whose teachings Irenaeus and Eusebius were trying to refute. That is, Papias wrote far too early for such Gnostics to be of concern." All of these considerations push me towards dating Papias's writings to sometime in the '90s AD. And since Papias appears to know Luke's Gospel, this entails that Luke-Acts was written sometime in the first century AD, early enough for Luke the physician to have been the author.

So much for the case for the late date for the book of Acts. But aside from the evidence we have already canvassed for a first-century date, there are considerations which favor a date prior to AD 70. Specifically, why is there no mention of the death of Paul around 64 AD or of the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 in the book of Acts? Given that the happenings at Jerusalem are of interest to the author of Acts and that the ministry and sufferings of Paul formed the central plot for Acts, had the author of Acts been aware of the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD or of the execution of Paul in 64 AD, it seems unlikely that he would have failed to mention these events. So, one straightforward explanation for why he does not mention them is that these events had not yet happened when he wrote Acts. As Boyd argues, "One fact that strongly impressed a number of scholars is that the narrative of Acts breaks off abruptly with the trial of Paul at Rome. Given the centrality of Paul to this work, this is difficult to explain except on the supposition that Paul had not yet been martyred when Luke wrote his narrative. It is sometimes responded that such a happy ending fits Luke's apologetic purposes, but it is certainly difficult to suppose that Theophilus or any later reader would have been very impressed with Luke's intentional glossing over the obvious truth that Paul, along with a vast multitude of believers, were mercilessly martyred under Nero. Another response has been to argue that while Luke doesn't end his work with Paul's martyrdom, the prediction of Acts 20:25 shows that he is nevertheless aware of it. But it is not at all clear that 20:25 is a prediction of Paul's death or just an indication of Paul's missionary resolution. And even if it were the former, this does nothing to explain why Luke would omit the fulfillment of this prophecy in his own work. The less frequent responses that the original ending of Luke has been lost or that Luke had intended a third volume are even weaker. In reality, they only serve to demonstrate how desperately some explanation for Acts' abrupt ending is called for."

Related to this point is the way that the author of Acts speaks of certain individuals as though they are still alive. For example, he speaks about the emperor Nero by his title Caesar and he speaks about him in a more or less positive way, as though he is afraid to speak ill of someone who is still in authority. This very respectful way of speaking about Nero is all the more surprising when one considers that Nero was the one who ultimately had Paul executed. Given the author's evident respect for the Apostle Paul, it is curious that he should treat the man who executed him with such respect, unless Nero had not yet executed Paul at the time Acts was composed. As Martin Moss observes, "References to Nero in Acts appear to indicate that he is still alive, though he was universally damned after his death and spoken of as Nero by Pliny the Elder, Josephus, Martial, Juvenal, Tacitus, Suetonius, and others rather than as Caesar. Acts had a habit of referring to Nero vividly, politely, hopefully, and deferentially as Caesar. This would have been proper and natural if Nero were still alive and unlikely if he were dead and universally vilified. It would incidentally indicate in the present reign. After his death, we would expect him to be called by name at least once."

As another example, consider the way the author of Acts casually refers to Lucius Annaeus Gallio as just Gallio in Acts 18. He seems to assume that his audience will be familiar with this rather obscure figure, something which is less surprising if Gallio were someone within living memory when Acts was composed. It's much less likely that the author would have felt free to reference Gallio in this way without further explanation to the reader if he was writing a long time after Gallio's tenure. Again, Moss says, "Gallio is referred to as though readily identifiable to Luke's readers. He was in fact a relatively obscure elder brother to Seneca, the eminent Stoic and statesman who fell from favor in 62 AD and committed suicide three years later, apparently followed by Gallio himself in Rome of the early 60s. While Seneca was prominent, Gallio referred to familiarly would have been easily understood. But it is most unlikely that Lucius Annaeus Gallio, proconsul of a quiet province in Greece for a year under Claudius, would have been known to Christians in places like Antioch or Ephesus during the Flavian decades, let alone familiarly as Gallio."

We have then numerous good reasons for thinking that Luke the physician and companion of Paul was indeed the author of the book of Acts. Attempts to date Acts into the middle of the second century are based upon the thinnest of arguments and are simply overwhelmed by the strong evidence which we have surveyed for an early date. All in all, we have every reason to believe that the author of Acts is in a good position to know what he's talking about. As Moss concludes, "To the best of my knowledge, the skeptics have never attempted to do any more than dispute whether the arguments adduced in favor of the Lucan authorship of Acts actually prove what is claimed for them. There are but few, at least since 1914, who have attempted to show that St. Luke could not have been the author, and none at all, that I am aware of, who have argued in favor of any other identifiable individual. The onus of disproof therefore lies with the skeptics. But to the best of my knowledge, this has never been undertaken."

So, having defended the ideas that Luke really did author the book of Acts and that Acts dates to early enough to have been written by Luke, we can now explore the evidence which suggests that Luke was being truthful. There is so much evidence here, and I cannot possibly cover it all. But I will present some of the more interesting examples within the various categories of evidence for the reliability of Acts and refer interested viewers to the sources I cite for more details.

One example of the astonishing accuracy of Acts regards the application of the various official titles to the individuals who appear within or are mentioned within the narrative. It can be easy for modern readers to miss the significance of this accuracy. But in an age where there was no internet, where official titles were constantly changing, and where other historians often botched these details, Luke's consistent accuracy is remarkable. As Boyd states, "The status of provinces along with the titles of their officiaries changed with some regularity. We cannot therefore help but be impressed when Luke drops a host of names and titles within his record and almost without exception indisputably gets them right. In Acts, the governors of senatorial provinces in Cyprus are accurately termed proconsuls, whereas those over imperial provinces such as Syria and Judea are correctly termed hegemon. Relatedly, Herod is not called king of Galilee, but tetrarch, while other members of the Herod family, Agrippa I and II, are properly titled king. Similarly, Luke notes quite incidentally that Philippi is a Roman colony whose magistrates are therefore called praetors and whose officers are called lictors or sergeants. In Thessalonica, however, the chief authorities are called politarchs, a term not found elsewhere in extant literature, but six times confirmed by archaeological findings in Thessalonica."

Similarly, Luke has a strong command of the geography of the places he describes, accurately relaying the amount of time it would take to travel from one location to another, the direction of travel, and the sort of terrain that one was likely to encounter. This suggests both competence and truthfulness on his part. Again, Boyd states, "What has also impressed a good number of scholars is the manner in which Luke accurately portrays the political regions, geography, roadways, and various means of travel of the mid-first century. The frequent and very understandable errors on such matters found in other contemporary historians such as Tacitus, Pliny the Elder, Strabo, and even Josephus are almost wholly absent from Luke. For example, Luke correctly identifies Lystra and Derbe as Lydian cities, though they were actually located within Phrygia and labeled as such by later writers. Annie correctly does not locate Caesarea within Judea, owing presumably to its unique status as a city-state over and against other local regions."

In his masterful book, *The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History*, Colin Hemer canvases dozens upon dozens of examples of small details which the author of Acts gets right. There are simply too many examples of this across too many categories for us to deny that the author of Acts knew what he was talking about.

He was talking about. I cannot cover all of these examples in this video, for to do so would swiftly become tedious. Interested viewers are referred to Hemer's book for a full catalog of these sorts of things.

But Hemer rightly concludes it is revealing that modern scholars have no convincing alternative way of handling the details here. They have to assume that Luke included gratuitously the redactionally irrelevant with no apparent motive beyond a desire for fine writing. This accords ill in itself with the purposive theological Luke we are to seek elsewhere. It is our contention that these inconsequential details are hard to explain except as vivid experiences recalled at no distance in time.

There are also numerous striking correlations between Acts and the letters of Paul the Apostle. For example, Paul is quoted as referring to himself as the chief of sinners, and he uses the same verbiage to refer to himself in his epistles. It might be objected that these sorts of correlations may be explained by the author of Acts having access to Paul's epistles. But in the first place, this response creates tension with one of the most common arguments that the author of Acts cannot have been Luke because of the supposed discrepancies between Acts and the epistles. It cannot both be the case that the author of Acts both carefully copied from the Pauline epistles to make his story believable and also that he blatantly contradicted the Pauline epistles.

Second, this idea fails to explain certain examples of correlations such as undesigned coincidences, which as I observed in my video on undesigned coincidences in the Gospels, are casual and so resist explanation by recourse to deliberate redaction. As He says, it may seem odd even to postulate undesigned coincidences when the contradictions of Acts and the epistles are of the common stuff of conventional criticism. But there is a tendency to compare by over rigid criteria so that many instances of supposed contradiction are as indecisive as the fasile harmonizations of apologetic by special pleading. This category requires neither forced harmonization nor forced contradiction but the natural fitting of independent pieces.

In her book hidden in plain view, Lydia Mcgru details numerous examples of undesigned coincidences between Acts and the epistles of Paul. She concludes that the minute correspondences I have discussed here between Acts and the Pauline epistles make a strong case that Acts is written by someone who knew the Apostle Paul personally. The author appears to have had intimate accurate knowledge independent of the epistles of both Paul's general history and his detailed movements even sometimes of his intentions. Moreover, the author of Acts was careful and precise, what we would call a detail person.

In conclusion, there is an abundance of evidence for the historical reliability of Acts. This video has only scratched the surface. We have seen that there is a good case for Luke, the companion of Paul being the author of Acts, for dating the work prior to 70 AD and for thinking that the author of Acts is truthful in what he reports. As we shall see in a future video, this evidence becomes pertinent to the case for the resurrection of Jesus. As such, it is valuable evidence for the Christian apologist.

There are numerous arguments for the historical reliability of the gospels based upon their contents. These include the accuracy of the gospel authors with respect to geographical locations in names as well as local customs and cultural references. Then there are undesigned coincidences, unnecessary details, unexplained illusions and unified personalities throughout the gospels. All of these arguments have in common the idea that certain details within the gospels are unlikely to have been fabricated because they are difficult to engineer and correspond to the known characteristics of reliable testimony. Together they form a powerful abductive argument for the historical reliability of the gospels.

Most of these arguments have already received attention both in writing and in videos. However, there is a further argument which I would add to this repertoire of arguments which has not hitherto been developed in any detail, at least not to my knowledge. I call this the argument from forced fulfilled prophecy. The basic phenomenon upon which this argument is built is fairly straightforward and uncontroversial. There are instances in the gospels where the authors of the gospels essentially force certain events within Jesus's life to fulfill Old Testament prophecies in such a way that the fulfillment is clunky and awkward. The fulfillment is not obvious and does not arise naturally from the texts. Let me detail a few examples so that viewers can get a feel for what I'm talking about.

A good example of this is found in Matthew 2:15. After describing Joseph and Mary's flight to Egypt to save Jesus from Herod's slaughter of the innocents, we read, "He, Jesus, stayed there in Egypt until the death of Herod. This happened so that what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet would be fulfilled. Out of Egypt, I called my son." An issue arises when we read the corresponding passage in Hosea 11:1. For it seems that the verse is not talking about the Messiah at all, but rather is presenting a personification of Israel. "When Israel was a youth, I loved him, and out of Egypt, I called my son." The author of the Gospel of Matthew seems to have forced a prophetic connection between an event in the life of Jesus and this passage in Hosea. He has forced a fulfillment of prophecy. As Craig Blombberg points out, Matthew then is clearly writing not merely as a historian but as a theologian with apologetic motives to show Jesus as the true fulfillment of Old Testament hopes for a perfect Davidic king.

This has implications for contemporary apologetics too. It is sometimes observed that there are over 200 fulfillments of prophecy in the gospels and that the odds of all deeds coalescing around one individual are microscopically small. The problem is that only a handful of the Old Testament texts fulfilled in the Gospels are of the straightforward predictive variety.

The author of the Gospel of Matthew does this again in Matthew 13:34-35. "Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables. He did not say anything to them without using a parable. So was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet. I will open my mouth in parables. I will utter hidden things since the creation of the world." But again, when we check the reference in Psalm 28:1-7, it appears that this is just God speaking to Israel with no prophetic intent whatsoever. "Listen, my people, to my instruction. Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable. I will tell riddles of old." Again, we see the author of Matthew's gospel forcing connections when one doesn't seem to have been intended by the Old Testament author.

We see this again in Matthew 4:12-17. "When Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, he withdrew to Galilee. Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum, which was by the lake in the area of Zebulun in Naphali to fulfill what was said through the prophet Isaiah. Land of Zebulun and land of Naphali, the way of the sea beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. The people living in darkness have seen a great light. On those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned." Now, while the reference in Isaiah 9:1-12 is somewhat prophetic, it's not really predicting what the author of Matthew's gospel is claiming. "In the past, he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphali, but in the future, he will honor Galilee of the nations by the way of the sea beyond the Jordan. The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. On those living in the land of deep darkness, a light has dawned." So the connection which Matthew is drawing appears unnatural and forced.

We see the same pattern in John 19:28-29. "After this Jesus knowing that all was now finished, he said to fulfill the scripture, 'I thirst.' A jar full of sour wine stood there. So they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hissup branch and held it to his mouth." The puditive prophecy being fulfilled in this case is Psalm 69:21 which says, "They gave me poison for food and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink." But this is really quite a stretch as Psalm 69 is certainly not prophetic and Jesus was never offered poisonous food on the cross. The fulfillment is artificial forced by the author of John's gospel.

This phenomenon, as we have seen, is especially pervasive throughout the Gospel of Matthew. As RT France observes, "Copious quotations of and illusions to the Old Testament is not so much of course peculiar to Matthew. It is found throughout the New Testament, some books of which would match and even exceed the statistics given above. But among the gospels, Matthew stands out for his sustained and creative presentation of this theme of fulfillment in Jesus and it comes to its most characteristic expression in this series of so-called formula quotations which are a distinctive feature of this gospel."

However, the phenomenon is not restricted to Matthew alone. It consistently turns up in John chapter 19 and it can be found to a lesser extent in Mark and Luke as well. Furthermore, it can be found in Acts, which by most accounts has the same author as the Gospel of Luke and has similar purposes. Consequently, whatever implications the phenomenon has for Acts will likewise apply to Luke.

So, having established that there is a genuine phenomenon of forced fulfillment throughout the Gospels and to some extent in Acts, a question arises as to why it exists. For many Christians who, like myself, hold to a high view of scripture, this phenomenon may initially seem embarrassing. After all, at first blush, it looks like the authors of the Gospels are badly misreading the Old Testament, thinking that it is predicting things which it never even purports to talk about or are just blatantly ripping verses out of context. However, it is quite implausible that all of the clearly educated authors of the Gospels could be getting the Old Testament wrong this much. And this should motivate us to push a little deeper.

As Klein Snodgrass reminds us, "We must be careful of imposing contemporary interpretive standards upon the New Testament writers, which liberal scholars tend to do, and imposing unnatural interpretations on a prophecy as fulfillment of prediction when prediction was not in view by the Old Testament or New Testament writer, as conservatives tend to do." Ancient Jewish people often employed a method of biblical interpretation known as midrash which in certain forms sought to find new allegorical meaning in certain texts within the ancient Hebrew Bible. As Moises Silva reminds us, "The process of interpretation that began in Old Testament times grew through oral and sometimes written tradition over many centuries with the New Testament writers right in the middle of the process. Even the wildest talmudic application may be the result of layer upon layer of deduction so that we cannot see the connection between the beginning and the end. It may be that New Testament writers without rejecting such a hermeneutical process in principle avoid its extreme application. It may be indeed that the difference between biblical and rabbitic interpretation in this respect is quantitative rather than qualitative. If so, we need not be surprised at the presence of difficult passages in the New Testament that reveal similarities to rabbitic methods."

Given that we know that this practice was relatively accepted among the ancient Jews, this becomes a likely candidate for explaining what is going on in the passages surveyed above. The gospel writers were seeking new meanings in these ancient texts. But why the awkwardness and clunky attempts to find predictions about the life of Jesus? Well, now we are in a position to erect the argument from fourth fulfilled prophecy. I propose that the forced nature of the fulfillment is best explained by the gospel authors genuinely reporting the actual events of Jesus's life and then actively seeking to find those events within the Old Testament. This hypothesis explains the clunkiness because it posits that the gospel authors essentially had one hand tied by the facts of history. They had to force the text of the Old Testament to conform to the realities which had transpired during Jesus's life.

Consider the alternative. If the gospel authors had not felt constrained by the facts of history and had instead felt free to make things up at will, then they could have easily reduced the awkwardness within their narratives. For example, rather than having Jesus tell parables in Matthew 13:34-35, the author of Matthew's gospel could have had Jesus tell both a riddle and a parable, which would have been much closer to what is actually said in Psalm 78:1-2, which is the text that the author of Matthew claims that Jesus fulfilled. But he doesn't. He awkwardly leaves only half of this supposed prediction fulfilled when he could have easily had it been entirely fulfilled. RT France comments, "Matthew, for good theological reasons, took the historical dimension of his task seriously, that he was interested in recording for his church the events of the life and teaching of Jesus in which he saw fulfillment as having come. To have a theology of fulfillment in Jesus is not incompatible with, but indeed rather demands the careful recording of history."

Similarly, if the author of John's gospel were simply making things up, he could have easily had Jesus be offered actual poison on the cross or at some other point in his narrative, which would have been a clear fulfillment of Psalm 69:21. What this suggests is that the gospel authors were intending to accurately relay what they believe to be the facts of history and were not willing to change them in order to make Jesus more clearly fulfill these supposed prophecies.

CH Dodd argues as follows. "Certainly, there is a close relation between the testimonies and the earliest formulation of Christian theology, but the theology depended upon the testimony and not vice versa. It was not to provide documentation for a previously formulated theology that the early church searched the scriptures. It was to find an explanation for attested facts, many of which appeared to run counter to their inherited beliefs and even counter to the scriptures as they were currently understood. The facts themselves exerted pressure upon their understanding of prophecy and fulfillment and dictated the selection of testimonies. Fundamentally, the framers of the tradition were in bondage to the facts, although here and there they strained at their bonds."

And Gregory Boyd adds, "If the Jesus of the Gospels is created from the Old Testament texts he fulfills, why does he fulfill some of these texts so awkwardly?" To my mind, the very fact that the Jesus portrayed in the four gospels often fulfills Old Testament passages so awkwardly is strong evidence that the authors of these works were not creating a portrait of Jesus on the basis of these passages. To the contrary, this awkwardness rather demonstrates that these authors were striving to find new cristocentric meaning in the Old Testament on the basis of events that actually took place in the life and ministry of Jesus.

Now, to be sure, some of these awkwardly fulfilled prophecies can be explained in other ways. For example, one might think that the claim that Matthew 2:15 is a fulfillment of Hosea 11 when it says, "Out of Egypt I called my son," is such an awkward fit because the author of Matthew is attempting to make Jesus fit a new Moses typology. That is to say, the author of Matthew wants Jesus's life to parallel Moses's life. So, just as Pharaoh had the Israelite children slaughtered when Moses was born, Matthew has Herod slaughter the children of Bethlehem when Jesus is born. Just as Moses left Egypt, the author of Matthew has Jesus leave Egypt and then cites Hosea 11:1 here to make the connection. In this case, the element of clunkiness or awkwardness is being explained by the author having to force fit his story into Moses's story. As WD Davies argues, "This brings us to the second element of fulfillment set forth in Matthew. Jesus is a second Moses. Fortunately, we are spared from speculation because a direct quotation guides us at once to the Exodus. In Matthew 21:13, the flight of Joseph, Mary, and the infant Jesus to Egypt, and their sojourn there is described. And in 2:15 it is asserted that this was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Out of Egypt have I called my son."

Now I actually think that this alternative hypothesis works in this instance and perhaps in a few others. However, it is not going to explain the full range of these sorts of forcefulfilled prophecies. For example, Matthew's claim that Jesus fulfilled Isaiah's prophecy regarding Zebulun and Naphali has nothing to do with the life of Moses. Similarly, John's claim that Jesus being offered sour wine on the cross is a fulfillment of Psalm 69:21 has no connection to the life of Moses. So, the idea that the awkwardness of these alleged prophetic fulfillments is due to the authors attempting to make connections between actual historical events in the Old Testament has greater explanatory power and scope than the idea that it is due to a forced attempt to make Jesus fit some Moses archetype.

As France explains, "In several cases, notably Hosea 11:1 and Jeremiah 31:15, the text would have no reason to be brought into connection with the story of Jesus, apart from the specific content of the incident to which it relates. There is the mutual interaction between story and text, the latter being chosen because of its relevance to the event being narrated, but the story being told in terms which draw attention to the correspondence." I have never yet seen a proposed hypothesis which explains all of the awkward forced fulfillments of prophecy found throughout the gospels in Acts nearly as well as the hypothesis that the gospel authors are simply constraining themselves to the facts of history.

So by inference to the best explanation and until skeptics give us a better hypothesis, we may infer that the phenomenon of forcefulfilled prophecy provides yet another piece of evidence for the historical reliability of the gospels in Acts. While this phenomenon has often been trotted out by skeptics of the faith as an argument against the Bible and has often been a source of embarrassment for believers, if I am right, this phenomenon actually provides important evidence for the substantial historical trustworthiness of the Bible.

This video has explored the thorny issue of the Gospels and Acts apparently taking verses from the Old Testament out of their original context to support their own theological points. I have argued that this is a genuine pattern in the New Testament. However, I have argued that contrary to initial appearances, this pattern is best explained by reference to the gospel authors constraining themselves to the facts of history, preferring to let the awkwardness remain rather than alter the facts for a more seamless fulfillment. If I am right about this, far from being something to feel embarrassment over, this phenomenon of forced fulfilled prophecy should increase the Christians confidence in the historical reliability of the New Testament. And I will close with the words of RT France who said, "It is rather from the gospel itself, from its expressed interests and apparent aims, that we should try to understand how Matthew envisaged his task. We have seen reason above to believe that Matthew had a strong sense of the importance of history. And we have focused throughout this chapter on his conviction that in that history was to be found the fulfillment of God's purposes as set out in the Old Testament and the history of Israel. Fulfillment and history are not in conflict. Rather, the fulfillment takes place in history. Indeed, it is not easy to see quite what fulfillment might mean if there is no actual history in which the pattern is fulfilled. Matthew's undoubted enthusiasm for discovering patterns of fulfillment and the subtlety of the interpretive methods he has employed to draw attention to them which has led to the comparison of his work with some aspects of later Midrash should be seen not as weakening his sense of historical responsibility but rather as demanding a careful record of the facts on which the whole claim to fulfillment depends."

The argument from undesigned coincidences is an argument which is used in tandem with a series of other arguments to present a holistic argument which concludes that the four canonical gospels represent a generally historically accurate picture of the life and deeds of Jesus. This argument was used historically by Christian apologists such as William Paley and JJ Blunt but fell out of use in contemporary Christian apologetics until rather recently. Lydia Mcgru served to revive the argument within contemporary apologetics with the publication of her 2017 book Hidden in Plain View. The argument has, of course, sparked a reaction from many skeptics, most recently relative to the time at which I am making this video. The most significant attempt to refute the argument has come from Dr. Jeff Trip on Derek Lambert's channel, Mythvision. This video has been cited by many in the online skeptic community as being some sort of decisive reputation of the argument.

Now, I would have liked to make a video defending the argument from undesigned coincidences from Dr. Trip's criticisms. However, after seeing how badly Trip has misunderstood the argument and by extension, how widespread the misunderstandings of the argument have circulated online, I thought I would try doing something a bit different. For those who want to see a direct reputation of Trip by Lydia Mcgru herself, I will link to a video which she did on exploring reality in the comments below. But in this video, I'm going to take a bit of a different path. Rather than defend the argument from the extremely misguided criticisms which it is faced here to for, I will instead sketch a strategy for what a successful reputation of this argument would actually look like. I must admit that the title of this video is somewhat misleading. I am personally persuaded that the argument from undesigned coincidences is a good argument for the historical reliability of the gospels. As such, I do not think that the response to the argument which I will sketch here can actually be successfully completed. But I am offering it to skeptics in the hopes that by seeing what it would take to successfully invalidate the argument from undesigned coincidences, they will better understand the argument from undesigned coincidences.

Before sketching what a successful response to the argument from undesigned coincidences might look like, I first need to give a brief overview of how the argument works. By seeing the structure of the reasoning which underlies the argument, we will be better positioned to see how the conclusion is being drawn and what it will take to invalidate that conclusion. As I see it, the argument from undesigned coincidences consists in basically three steps. The first is empirical and the latter two are explanatory. The first step is to establish that undesigned coincidences actually exist within the gospels. The term undesigned often causes confusion, but once it is properly understood within the context of the argument, this should be the least controversial step in the argument. I will expand upon this point more in a moment. The second step is to explain the phenomenon of undesigned coincidences. The presence of this phenomenon points us to a larger hole lying beyond what can be seen from what is said within any given gospel. Each gospel, in other words, shows us one part of a fuller picture. The analogy of a puzzle has often been given here. Just as interlocking puzzle pieces yield a fuller picture than any particular puzzle piece conveys, so too do undesigned coincidences reveal a fuller understanding of the underlying story. This too should be uncontroversial given the specific character of the undesigned coincidences which we discover in the gospels. Again, I will explain this more shortly. Finally, the last step is to explain what that fuller picture lying behind the gospels might be. This is where the real controversy should lie. The proponent of the argument from undesigned coincidences wants to argue that the best explanation for that underlying story which is being conveyed only in part through each individual gospel is that the gospels are describing real historical events. The skeptic of the argument if they accept the first two steps needs to offer a better explanation than historicity for what the big picture is. Ultimately, this video will offer a rough sketch of what I think that such an explanation would look like. But again, I hasten to add that I do not think that such an explanation can actually be given, which is consistent with the full range of undesigned coincidences which we actually encounter in the gospels. That is why I ultimately take the argument to be successful. Nevertheless, understanding what a successful reputation of the argument would look like, if indeed one could be given, will, I hope, yield a stronger understanding of this argument than its critics seem to currently possess.

Okay. So, now that we have a fairly good understanding of the logic which undergirds the argument from undesigned coincidences, let's take a closer look at why the first and second step should be granted. But first, what is an undesigned coincidence? Well, very broadly, an undesigned coincidence refers to a casual relation between two or more statements which yields a greater understanding of both or all. Lydia Mcgru explains, "An undesigned coincidence is a notable connection between two or more accounts of texts which doesn't seem to have been planned by the person or people giving the accounts." Two things about this understanding deserve immediate emphasis. Illumination and casualness. Illumination is important because that is the bigger picture behind what is revealed in a single text. This illumination often occurs by way of explanation. For example, one gospel might puzzle a reader leading them to ask certain questions which are never answered by that gospel. However, those very questions might indirectly be answered in the narrative of another gospel. This is the sort of phenomenon which I am calling illumination. It must be emphasized that these sorts of connections between the texts is casual. This casualness is what is being referenced as undesigned. I highlight this point because skeptics of this argument are swift to point out that the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke are literarily dependent upon one another. And an increasing number of scholars are even beginning to think that the author of the Gospel of John also knew the synoptics. So they ask how can we say that anything in the gospels is undesigned. This is why the coincidences must be casual. They must be incidental details. The sorts of things which are easily glossed over or missed altogether. This point is important because if a later gospel writer were trying to expand upon the story of an earlier gospel or to answer some looming questions raised by an earlier gospel, then these are deliberate choices on the part of the later author. If the author of say Luke were attempting to answer a question raised by the narrative in say Matthew then he is going to be very clear about that. He will have made the answer obvious in the text and made some effort to ensure that his readers do not miss it. He is not going to bury it within the text so as to be easily missed. This is why the presence of literary dependence among the gospels is not by itself a problem for the argument from undesigned coincidences. It is precisely because these connections between the texts don't appear to be deliberate and don't appear to be consciously concerned with the relevant portion of the other text which they are illuminating that they are deemed to be undesigned. The connection is very casual and easy to miss. They do not look like the authors were aware that any illumination of a previous text was taking place.

As Peter Williams explains, "In an undesigned coincidence, writers show agreement of a kind that is hard to imagine as deliberately contrived by either author to make the story look authentic. Often, the agreement is so subtle and indirect that all but the most careful reader are likely to miss it."

So, now that we understand what an undesigned coincidence is supposed to be, we can ask the question, are there any undesigned coincidences within the gospels? The answer seems to be a resounding yes. I will only offer a brief sample here, but interested viewers are referred to Lydia Mcgru's book for a more thorough discussion, showcasing the full range of undesigned coincidences.

One example of an undesigned coincidence occurs between the stories of the feeding of the 5000 in Mark 6:30 and 31 and John 6:1-4. In Mark 6, we read, "The apostles gathered together with Jesus, and they reported to him all that they had done and taught. And he said to them, 'Come away by yourselves to a secluded place, and rest a little while, for there were many people coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat.'" Of interest to us is the short remark at the end where we read that many were coming and going. It's the sort of thing which the casual reader might easily gloss over and not even think about. Nevertheless, we can ask why is it that many were coming and going? The answer is found in John 6:4 where when discussing the same event, John says, "Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews was near." The statement that the Passover was near in John serves to explain why it was that many were coming and going in Mark. By reading the two texts together, we get a fuller picture of what was going on than we would by reading only Mark or John. Moreover, the explanation is very casual. John does not appear to be attempting to explain why many were coming and going since he does not even mention that detail. As such, this is a good example of an undesigned coincidence. As Mcgru observes, "The correspondence here is so indirect that there can be no question that it is undesigned. Mark does not mention the Passover and John does not mention the general bustle on the western side of the Sea of Galilee."

This detail in John 6:4 creates a further undesigned coincidence with another detail later on in Mark 6, namely Mark's casual statement that the grass was green. Now, that grass should be green is hardly surprising to most of us, but that's because most of us are not familiar with the flora of Palestine. The grass in this region is typically not green, which is why Mark's mentioning this detail is not an instance of him stating the obvious. In fact, the grass in this region is only green immediately after winter in the spring, which just so happens to be when the Jews celebrate the Passover. So, the statement in John 6:4 that the Passover was near indirectly confirms the statement in Mark 6:39 that the grass was green. The two texts thus yield a fuller picture of the event than one would have by reading either gospel in isolation. Moreover, this occurs in a casual way such that John does not appear to be attempting to explain why the grass was green.

As a final example, consider an undesigned coincidence which occurs between Matthew 14:1-2 and Luke 8:1-3. The text in Matthew occurs after Herod has executed John the Baptist. The verses read, "At that time, Herod the tetrarch heard the news about Jesus and said to his servants, 'This is John the Baptist. He himself has been raised from the dead.'" Matthew makes the odd comment that Herod said this to his servants. A question arises as to why Matthew would specify that this remark was spoken to the servants. He doesn't expand upon this, nor is it necessary for the story. It's not as though Matthew is trying to introduce a dialogue between Herod and his servants or trying to introduce the servants as characters within the gospel. The servants are never mentioned again. And if we accept that Matthew the tax collector really was the author of the gospel, a further question arises as to how Matthew could have possibly known what Herod privately said to his servants. After all, Matthew did not live in Herod's house. So he certainly could not have witnessed this event. In an entirely different context in Luke, however, we get a plausible answer to both of these questions. In Luke 8:1-3, Luke makes the very casual remark that Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, was a follower of Jesus. If someone that closely affiliated with Herod's servants really was a follower of Jesus, then there is a ready explanation for how Matthew obtained this information as well as for why it is that Matthew specifies that Herod made this statement to his servants. We see a larger picture emerging from the two gospels. Moreover, it emerges so casually that the authors of the gospels appear to be unaware that they are even drawing that larger picture. Neither of them draws the reader's attention to this larger picture. As McGru concludes, "The indirectness of this coincidence is particularly lovely. Only one part of the puzzle is found in each gospel, and the connection cannot possibly be the result of design. It is beyond belief that Luke would have inserted this casual reference to Chuza in a list unconnected in any other way with Herod or with the beheading of John in order to provide a convenient explanation for the detail about Herod's servants mentioned only in Matthew."

Having established that there are examples of undesigned coincidences, we can ask why these sorts of explanatory relations exist. Now, if there were just a few examples, say only five or six, then they could be brushed aside as being genuine coincidences. After all, if enough people write about the same topic, even if it's fiction, given enough opportunities, there will eventually be some unintentionally interesting connections between and among their writings just by sheer chance. This is not all that surprising and it's not all that difficult to explain as being purely accidental. However, in the case of the Gospels, we are dealing with dozens upon dozens of these connections. It does not seem likely that this number of connections between the texts is going to occur by chance if the authors are just making things up as they go along.

But perhaps the explanation lies in the fact that the gospel authors know one another's writings. After all, they aren't making these stories up out of nothing. They are working with and integrating each other's stories. If the gospels were all independent of one another, then all of these connections would be very surprising and would suggest that something more is going on. But we know that they are not completely independent. So perhaps the questions which are raised in certain gospels also suggested themselves to later gospel writers and so they decided to answer some of them in their versions of the stories. Now this might work in some instances when there is a discernable chronological trajectory of explanation running in the direction in which the gospels were written. So let's assume for the sake of argument that the gospels were written in the following order. Mark, Matthew, Luke, John. Now suppose that Matthew only added illumination into stories told by Mark and Luke only provided illumination into stories told by Mark and Matthew and John only supplied illumination into stories told by the synoptics. There is a clear one-way direction to the undesigned coincidences in this case running in the same direction as the chronology of the gospels. And this could suggest that the coincidences have arisen as a direct result of a later gospel writer redacting earlier gospels. Those familiar with this channel will know that I don't personally accept that this is the correct chronological order of the gospels. But that doesn't matter here. The point is just that if a discernable one-way order can be discovered among the undesigned coincidences and if that order is consistent with the chronological order in which the gospels were written such that exclusively later gospels are illuminating earlier gospels then this may suggest a purely literary explanation for the phenomenon.

But this is just not the case. What we actually find is that John explains things in the synoptics and the synoptics explain things in John. Mark explains things in Matthew and Luke and Matthew and Luke explain things in Mark. Matthew explains things in Mark and Luke and Mark and Luke explain things in Matthew. Luke explains things in Mark and Matthew and Mark and Matthew explain things in Luke. The pattern of undesigned coincidences which emerges is not a one-way trajectory consistent with the chronological order of the writing of the gospels, but rather a crisscross pattern with undesigned coincidences running in all directions. This rules out editorial redaction as being the sole explanation for undesigned coincidences because in fact there are earlier gospels which are likewise illuminating later gospels. Clearly, earlier gospels could not have been redacting later gospels since the later gospels had not yet been written at the time at which the earlier gospels were composed. And it seems extraordinarily unlikely that later gospels were deliberately leaving certain issues hanging because they were aware that the earlier gospels already dealt with them. In all likelihood, each gospel writer expected that their singular gospel would be the only gospel which most of their readers would ever see. They were probably not anticipating the canonization of all four gospels together for easy cross referencing.

As McGru points out, "Acknowledging some degree of literary dependence among the synoptic gospels is by no means the same thing as granting that the later ones tack on non-factual material as they go. nor does it mean that the differences among them are due to redactive manipulation of earlier material as opposed to differences in eyewitness perspective. In short, it doesn't matter to the historicity of the gospels whether for example Mark was written first and Matthew and Luke got some of their material from Mark. Even if that is true, it doesn't mean that Matthew and Luke developed from Mark in an evolutionary fashion or that Matthew and Luke did not have reliable independent information of their own."

So if blind luck and literary dependence are insufficient to explain the amount of and pattern of undesigned coincidences which we find in the gospels, we are forced to consider another option, namely that there is a singular source lying behind the parts of the story which we are glimpsing in the text of the gospels. I leave open at this stage in the argument what that singular source might be. The only conclusion that I am drawing right now is that there is in fact a fuller story lying behind the stories which are contained in the gospels. This is a significant conclusion but it is one which we seemed forced by the data to accept.

So having argued that there are actually undesigned coincidences in the gospels and having argued that the sheer number of them as well as the crisscross pattern which they form force us to accept a greater hole behind the gospels. We are now in a position to take the final step in the argument and infer that the best explanation of the evidence is that the gospels are historically trustworthy. We have concluded that there is a fuller source behind the gospels. We may now ask what is that source? Well, one possibility is that there is some lost gospel which was substantially more detailed than our four gospels and from which all four drew their information. Certainly, this would be an adequate explanation for the evidence. It would explain why there are so many undesigned coincidences, and it would explain why they crisscross across the four gospels in all directions. Since on this hypothesis, there is a singular source from which we only get portions in our canonical gospels. But while logically possible, this is not a very good explanation of the evidence. In the first place, we lack completely any independent evidence for such a gospel. Certainly, such a detailed gospel would have been highly regarded by the early Christians. Yet, we find neither manuscript evidence for such a gospel, nor even a mention of it in early Christian writings. We are expected to believe that the early Christians meticulously preserved Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John despite the fact that they all only contained part of the story. but then they left the full story to be lost without so much as a passing reference. I find that extremely implausible.

A much better explanation is that the fuller story just is the actual events of history. The ultimate source of the information is the events themselves. The gospels on this hypothesis are simply reporting what really happened. This hypothesis explains why there are so many undesigned coincidences throughout the gospels as well as the crisscross pattern which they form. Moreover, it does not suffer from the same shortcomings as the previous hypothesis because it does not require us to accept the existence of some other hypothetical gospel. And so the idea that the gospels represent accurate historical reportage emerges as being the best explanation of the phenomenon known as undesigned coincidences. That in essence is a condensed version of the argument. There are undesigned coincidences. This phenomenon points us to a fuller reality behind the gospels and real historical events function as the best explanation of that fuller reality.

So now that I have given a broad overview of the basic argument, let me explain how I think that the skeptic can in principle get around it. I call this the divide and conquer approach. The basic idea is that by reducing the number of undesigned coincidences to be explained via compartmentalization, one greatly lessens the overall evidential impact of the argument. As McGru herself admits, this is a cumulative argument. The idea behind cumulative arguments is that by adding together several small pieces of evidence which don't carry a lot of force on their own, they collectively pack a bigger punch. By the same logic, then to the extent that one can lessen the number of pieces of evidence which need to be explained, one will be able to reduce the cumulative force of the argument. I suspect that most skeptics of the argument from undesigned coincidences don't want to take this approach because it requires them to do a lot of work. Nevertheless, I am persuaded that it is the only strategy which could in principle succeed. If I were a skeptic, I would begin by sorting through the various examples of undesigned coincidences to categorize them. To build a robust alternative theory, one is going to have to be able to account for the full range of undesigned coincidences. I think that the skeptic can categorize undesigned coincidences into basically five categories. First, undesigned coincidences which are easy to reject. Second, undesigned coincidences which appear in clearly literarily dependent paricopies. Third, undesigned coincidences which appear within the commonly accepted chronological trajectory of the writing of the gospels. Fourth, undesigned coincidences which betray knowledge of the times but yield no greater insight into any particular event. And then finally, leftover undesigned coincidences. Let's take a closer look at each of these categories.

The first category tries to trim the fat as it were. It tries to remove as many puditive examples of undesigned coincidences as possible right from the start. There are many ways to do this. One might try to show that a puditive undesigned coincidence depends upon a dubious reading of one of the gospels. For example, one might reject the first example which Mcgru gives in her book since it depends upon John the Baptist statement in John 1:30 that Jesus was before him as being a witicism on the part of John the Baptist knowing as he did that he himself had actually been born before Jesus as per Luke 1:36. So according to Mcgru, we can make sense of John the Baptist's witicism in John 1:30 if Luke 1:36 is actually historical. However, it seems to me that one might just as easily interpret this statement in light of John's prologue as merely being a reference to Jesus's eternal pre-existence and nothing else. Nothing in the context of John's gospel really suggests that John the Baptist was intending to be witty here. And indeed, unless we suppose that John the Baptist audience was aware that John was six months older than Jesus, there is no real reason to think that they would have caught the pun, which mitigates against the idea that John was intending to make one. Minimally, there is room for reasonable disagreement here. Similarly, one might reject Mcgre's ninth example since it depends upon the antecedent of the demonstrative pronoun these in John 21:15 referring to the disciples as opposed to say the 153 fish which symbolically represent the life to which Peter had returned after denying Jesus. Either understanding of the pronoun is possible given the context. This first category is an important one for the skeptic because it allows them to reduce the evidential force of undesigned coincidences right from the start. So let's say that there are 50 puditive undesigned coincidences. If the skeptic can reject or at least cast doubt on 10 of them right from the start, then they will have reduced the evidential impact of the argument proportionately. Now the argument only stands on 40 examples of undesigned coincidences instead of 50. the argument becomes weaker. Now again, I am not saying that the skeptic actually will be able to legitimately reject 20% of the puditive examples of undesigned coincidences. I'm merely giving a hypothetical illustration to show viewers the sort of work which this first category would be doing in undercutting the overall argument.

The second category attempts to remove undesigned coincidences which can be easily explained by one gospel author copying from another. For example, one might think that Mcgru's 19th example fits into this category. In this example, John and Luke both say that Joseph of Arya buried Jesus in a new tomb, but they don't mention that the tomb belongs to him, raising the question as to why Joseph felt free to bury Jesus in the new tomb. Only Matthew supplies the detail that Joseph himself owns the tomb. But the curious point here is that Mark also does not mention that Joseph owns the tomb. So on the assumption of Mark in priority, the skeptic could maintain that this question also suggested itself to Matthew's mind when he came across this story in Mark. Matthew then supplied the detail that Joseph owned the tomb so that the story would make sense. Conversely, the question just didn't arise for the authors of Luke and John. And so, both authors following Mark left that detail out. Now, the skeptic has to be careful here. Remember, the casualness of these undesigned coincidences is what is mitigating against deliberate illumination or explanation. So, the skeptic cannot just toss out any undesigned coincidence which appears in a later gospel. He can only toss out the ones for which there is

an evident motive for the later redactor to add the illuminating information. In cases of undesigned coincidences where such an explanation is not readily available, it seems to me that the skeptic is best served by saying that the illumination is caused unconsciously by the later writer having some idea in his own mind of what was going on in the narrative based upon his reading of the earlier gospel.

Since the later gospel writer is subconsciously aware of the events in earlier gospels as he imagines them, he might insert details into his own narrative which reflect or betray that understanding. In this scenario, there is indeed a fuller story behind the writing of a later gospel which has been informed by earlier gospels just as the proponent of the argument from undesigned coincidences maintains. But this fuller story is contained not in the events of history but in the imagination of the later gospel writer. Such an explanation could also possibly take a set of undesigned coincidences off the table, particularly those which occur in the same stories in various gospels where literary dependence is known to exist.

The third category is I think going to be the most important for the skeptic. This category identifies directionality in undesigned coincidences. The idea here is that the skeptic outlines a basic synoptic theory to see how many undesigned coincidences can be explained via editorial redaction with later gospels illuminating stories or explaining details in earlier gospels. As already noted, these sorts of undesired coincidences which run in a single direction could in principle be explained by recourse to redaction. The skeptic can toss out any examples which can plausibly be explained by recourse to deliberate redaction by the author of a later gospel. This will actually probably get a decent number of undesigned coincidences off the table.

So an illustration here might be McGre's 15th example. In this case, she argues that Jesus's use of the phrase drink of the cup in John 18:11 is corroborated by Jesus's use of the same phrase at an earlier point in the narratives of the synoptics, suggesting that this was a phrase which Jesus commonly used. However, if one thinks that John knows the synoptics, then one might just as easily think that the author of John's gospel has co-opted the phrase from the synoptics and inserted it here rather than bearing independent testimony to Jesus's use of it.

The fourth category admits that an undesigned coincidence does betray the historicity of certain generic customs discussed within the gospels, but denies that it is specific enough to confirm the historicity of the particular events being described. A potential illustration here is Mcgru's third example. In this instance, the empty water pots described in John 2 1-7, which had presumably been emptied for washing prior to a meal, are confirmed as a realistic cultural feature of the time by Mark 7 1-5. This certainly shows that the author of John inadvertently demonstrates familiarity with ancient Jewish culture, but it doesn't really confirm any particular historical details surrounding the wedding in Kaa.

Hopefully at this point you are starting to see why I refer to this as the divide and conquer strategy. By finding various ways to discount various specific examples of undesigned coincidences, the skeptic is able to proportionally lessen the overall force of the argument. There is however a fifth category, namely the leftovers, the undesigned coincidences which don't fit into any of the previous four categories. In theory, the skeptic will be able to place enough of the undesigned coincidences into one of the previous four categories to end up with only a few leftovers at the end. And then he can just admit that while this may be some slight evidence for the historicity of the gospels, it ultimately isn't enough to override the evidence against their reliability or something like that.

One shortcoming in this approach should also be noted. Namely that many of these categories for explaining away undesigned coincidences will not work for undesigned coincidences between the book of acts and the epistles of Paul. This is because there is no literary dependence at play here. At least not of the same type as is present among the synoptic gospels. So to the extent that the divide and conquer approach works at all, it will only work to explain away undesigned coincidences within the gospels. The problem with this approach, at least for me, is that when I try to categorize the puditive examples of undesigned coincidences under these five headings, I end up with way too many leftovers to say that undesired coincidences have a negligible evidential value. And that is why I ultimately think that the argument from undesired coincidences is a good argument for the historical reliability of the gospels. But I think that skeptics of this argument would do better to pursue the general sort of divide and conquer strategy which I have set forward in this video than to attempt to find a handful of undesigned coincidences and other fictional texts or claim that the argument is guilty of circular reasoning and such. So perhaps this video will give them a launching pad. The purpose of this video has merely been to outline the form that a successful response to the argument from undesigned coincidences would have to take. My hope has been that this will help skeptics of the argument to better understand the argument.

In the context of defending the reality of Jesus's resurrection, Christian apologists will often attempt to vindicate the honesty of the disciples witness to the resurrection by pointing out that all or most of them died as martyrs for this witness. The reasoning generally goes something like this. The early Christians faced intense persecution at the hands of the Romans. Generally speaking, one of the strongest human instincts is self-preservation. If the disciples really believed that Jesus was resurrected and that this assured them of eternal life, then their willingness to die for this belief is easy to explain. On the other hand, if they were deliberately lying, it's very hard to explain their willingness to die. Their willingness to die thus provides strong evidence against the idea that the witnesses to the resurrection were liars.

However, this line of argumentation has come under heavy criticism in recent years, and unfortunately, there is a der of apologetic material that substantially addresses these modern criticisms. This video is intended to fill that gap. I have selected Candida Moss, Chris Hansen, Richard Carrier, and Brent Shaw as my interlocators. Moss and Carrier have been selected due to their popularity among counter apologists. Shaw has been selected because of his influence in the scholarly world and Hansen has been selected because Hansen tends to offer the most detailed interaction with Christian apologetics and scholarship on this subject. My hope is that by undercutting these skeptical arguments, the original argument from martyrdom will appear even stronger. It's important to emphasize that this line of argumentation about the disciples dying as martyrs is only intended to exclude the idea that the disciples were deliberately spreading falsehoods. The defender of the resurrection will need further argumentation to rule out the possibility of the disciples being honestly mistaken. The martyrdom of the apostles is just one plank in the overall case for the resurrection.

But did the early Christians actually face persecution? Christian apologists often appeal to this as though it is historically certain. While this idea is constantly reinforced in the popular imagination by, for example, depictions of martyrs being eaten by lions in classical art and in films. We live in an age where Christian apologists cannot simply take this point for granted. It has faced increasing skepticism from contemporary scholarship. This is largely due to the fact that most of the sources for the martyrdoms of the apostles are rather late and appear to contain legendary material. For example, in a recent article on the subject, Chris Hansen objects that none of these sources can be taken at face value and in fact are likely all faulty. Notably, we cannot even be sure that they all refer to the same events or traditions because these myths we know about Peter's death only truly occur in the late 2nd century. In fact, at some point the traditions are contradictory enough that we cannot be sure that these texts have the same ideas in mind, even at most generously assuming these reference Peter's death or presence in Rome. As a result, we cannot make much if anything from them. And Richard Carrier adds, "It is important not to forget that in actual fact, we have no reliable record of any eyewitness dying for their belief. All real martyrdom accounts are of converts, not witnesses, except for that of Peter. But the account of his death is first found in the Gnostic Acts of Peter, a tale which includes, among other things, a talking dog, a flying wizard, and the resurrection of a tuna fish. All accounts of martyed apostles, all of them are full of the ridiculous and thoroughly biased towards glorifying the subject and persuading the reader to have confidence and believe. and at least a century late and by unknown authors using unknown sources. In fact, we cannot even establish that they were using sources at all. Not one eyewitness or even contemporary source exists for any of them."

Perhaps the most significant recent scholarly attack on the idea that early Christians demonstrated a willingness to die for the truth of their beliefs comes from the New Testament scholar Candida Moss in her book, The Myth of Persecution. She argues that contrary to what is commonly believed, there was not actually any widespread persecution of early Christians. Moreover, the sources that say otherwise are late and unreliable. As she explains, "As we will see, the traditional history of Christian martyrdom is mistaken. Christians were not constantly persecuted, or targeted by the Romans. Very few Christians died. And when they did, they were often executed for what we in the modern world would call political reasons."

There are the stories about early Christian martyrs commonly known as martyr acts or martyrdom stories. Most of these stories have been handed down from generation to generation and accepted as authentic on the basis of tradition. The vast majority of these stories, however, were written long after the events they purport to describe. Now, it must be said straight off that a good many Christian apologists have grossly overstated the case when it comes to this topic. It's not uncommon to hear popular apologists carelessly say things such as that all of Jesus's disciples died for their belief in his resurrection. For example, in his best-selling book, More Than a Carpenter, we find Josh McDowell confidently asserting, "I can trust the apostles testimonies because 11 of those men died martyrs deaths because they stood solid for two truths, Christ's deity and his resurrection. These men were tortured and flogged and most finally suffered death by some of the crulest methods then known." Similarly, the popular Christian author Tim Lehei claims that all of the disciples died as martyrs rather than recant of their faith in that resurrection. These claims from the likes of McDow and Leah are of course massive overstatements of the case. Many of the sources are indeed late and legendary and scholars like Moss are right to correct these oversimplifications and overstatements of the evidence.

With that being said, it doesn't follow from this that there is nothing that can be said in defense of the idea that early Christians were indeed persecuted for their belief in the resurrection of Jesus. Moss goes on to argue that the fact of the matter is that we simply don't know how any of the apostles died, much less whether they were martyed. There are 15 different versions of the deaths of the apostles Peter and Paul that were written before the end of the sixth century. While there is some overlap between the stories, they cannot possibly all be correct. We cannot be sure of either the fact or the circumstances of the arrests of the apostles, much less the character or nature of their deaths. For all we know, they were executed as revolutionaries or for disturbing the peace. We also do not know whether at any point they were given the opportunity to deny Christ and live. This is the key element that's missing if we're to argue that they died for Christ. The result of this is that the fact of the apostles death cannot be used as evidence for the truth of Christianity, the resurrection, or any other detail of Jesus's ministry. We know that the apostles died, but how they died, on what charges, and in what manner are far beyond our grasp. Without that information, it is impossible to state that their deaths prove anything.

There are two ways for apologists to respond to arguments like the one Moss is making here. First, one can make the point that it isn't actually necessary that all or even some of the apostles actually died for their belief in the resurrection. All that is needed is to establish a general context of persecution as well as a willingness on the part of the apostles to hold to their belief in the face of it. As long as the persecution was specifically targeted against Christians who were absolutely defined at least in part by their belief in the resurrection, it certainly would have been possible for the apostles to evade the danger of persecution by abandoning this belief. And it's something which they would have very likely done if they did not genuinely believe in the resurrection. As Andrew Lok observes, "It should be noted that it is not required for the apologists to show that the disciples did die for their faith, but that they were willing to suffer and die for their faith."

Second, one can respond by arguing that martyrdoms are plausible in the case of at least some of the apostles. In particular, the evidence for the martyrdom of Peter and the martyrdom of Paul is of considerable strength. If either of these points can be established, then we have good evidence for the sincerity of the apostles. These two observations working in tandem are particularly worth emphasizing in response to a point which is frequently raised in this context by online counterpists such as Paul Gia. For Paul Gia, it's very important that we have reason to believe that any of the apostles who were killed were given a chance to save their lives by recanting their faith. Otherwise, he doesn't think that there is any value to be found in the fact that they died for their faith. To be clear upfront, here are the basic criteria that I would need to say that anyone qualifies for the description of eyewitness defending martyrdom: that the person in question one said they saw a resurrected Jesus. Two, they had a chance to save their lives by recanting and three rather than recant, they chose to die. That seems like the bare minimum someone would need to establish and a very reasonable standard and should be easy to meet given the veracity with which Christians boldly claim this dogmatic truth.

>> In one sense, I think that he is correct. But he seems to think that the opportunity to recant had to be specifically offered on the site of execution or in the prior imprisonment. And of course, Paulia knows full well that our best sources don't go into sufficient detail to tell us whether or not Paul, for example, was given this sort of opportunity. But I would suggest that while it is important that the apostles had an opportunity to recant, this opportunity need not necessarily have been present in the events immediately prior to their execution. Rather, the opportunity to recant is present in the time between the inception of the persecution and their eventual deaths. It's not as though the apostles would not have known that they were being targeted because of their Christian faith once persecution broke out. This would have provided them with ample opportunity to recant had they wished to deny Jesus and the threat of death targeted against Jesus followers disappears.

As Timothy and Lydia Mcgru remind us, "Some martyrdom accounts come from traditions whose historical reliability is difficult to assess and from documents that include obvious oddities and embellishments. And by all accounts, John the Apostle was not martyed but died at an old age of natural causes. This is why we are focusing here on the willingness of multiple witnesses to suffer death. a fact of great evidential importance in itself. The point rather is simply and starkly that they knew from the beginning that they were likely to die and did not change their story in the face of this probable outcome. For whether they were eventually killed or not, they had their moment of truth at Jerusalem very early on."

While we're on the subject of Paul Gia, I also want to preemptively answer one of his objections to the relevance of Paul's martyrdom. Unlike some skeptics, Paulia acknowledges that there is good evidence for the martyrdom of the Apostle Paul. However, he maintains that Paul's sincerity doesn't help to make the case for the resurrection because Paul's witness in the New Testament is consistent with something like a vision or a hallucination. He doesn't supply the sorts of details which say the gospel authors do which would indicate a physical bodily resurrection. I think that there is some merit to Paul Gia's criticism here when directed against arguments such as the minimal facts approach as spearheaded by Gary Hobbermas in Mike Lacona. This is because Hobmas and Lacona privilege the witness of Paul. And as I will make clear in my own video defending the resurrection of Jesus, I think the absence of details in Paul's writings is a significant problem for arguments which primarily rely upon the witness of Paul. However, my own resurrection argument privileges the witness of the gospels. The argument from persecution and martyrdom is primarily being used to support the sincerity of the apostolic testimony contained within the gospel accounts. However, if Paul really was martyed for his faith, then this demonstrates that the early Christians, including the gospel authors, lived under a genuine threat of death and their willingness to stick to their belief in the resurrection of Christ despite the threat of death demonstrates that they were not lying. That is why the martyrdom of Paul still supports the sort of resurrection argument which I wish to build my concession to Paul Aia on this point notwithstanding.

But all of this of course turns on the thesis that we actually have good evidence for either the proposition that there was a substantial persecution of the early Christians or that any of the apostles were martyed. So without further introduction, we may now ask what is the evidence for the targeted persecution of early Christians. The evidence for the persecution of the early Christians comes to us in four primary ways. Deeds are one the book of acts and other parts of the new testament two the testimony of the apostle Paul three the testimony of the early petristic fathers and four the testimony from ancient Roman historians we'll explore each of these sources in turn.

I take it to be uncontroversial that the book of acts clearly describes that there was relatively severe persecution of Christians s from fairly early on. Examples here abound, ranging from the stoning of Steven to the execution of James, the son of Zebedee by Herod, to the beatings and imprisonments of the Apostle Paul. While the fact that the book of Acts attests to the persecution of the early Christians is uncontroversial, the reliability of Acts as a historical source is certainly in question for most skeptics. Fortunately, I have already defended the historical reliability of Acts in a previous video, so I will be taking for granted the trustworthiness of Acts as a source for the persecution of early Christians as well as the martyrdom of some of them. Skeptics of acts are referred to my video on the subject. But for now, we will be moving on to a consideration of Candid Amos's objections to the use of the book of Acts in making the case for the persecution of early Christians.

Regarding the evidence from the book of Acts, Moss objects to the use of it on the grounds that the martyrdom stories in Acts allegedly contain extensive parallels with the passion narrative in the Gospels. This, in Moss' opinion, apparently means that the author of Acts made these stories up. For example, when discussing the death of Stephen, she says, "There are indications in the story that Luke wants us to think of the death of Steven as being just like that of Jesus. There are a number of parallels between their two deaths. The attack on Steven is precipitated by the same accusation made against Jesus. Steven is accused of saying that Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses handed on to us. This refers back to Jesus's prediction about the destruction of the temple in the Gospel of Luke. Also like Jesus, Steven appears before and is interrogated by the high priest. It is during this appearance that both Jesus and Steven refer to the son of man standing at the right hand of God. They both cry out at the moment of death. And finally, at the point of death, Steven commends his spirit to Jesus just as Jesus commended his to his father. And in the same spirit of what will become Christian forgiveness, both Stephen and Jesus ask God not to remember the crimes of those who were executing them."

It's highly unlikely that the similarities between the deaths of Jesus and Steven are just coincidences. But how remarkable are these similarities? It seems a stretch to see any significance in, for example, the fact that both Jesus and Steven were brought before the high priest. As an important part of the Jewish Sanhedrin, the high priest would fairly regularly preside over judicial matters. As such, the fact that both Steven and Jesus were tried before him is both expected and unremarkable. Even less surprising is the fact that both Jesus and Steven cried out prior to their deaths. This is a completely normal thing for a person to do when dying by execution. It seems that Moss is infected by what is sometimes called parallelmania, the tendency of certain biblical scholars to exaggerate the degree of similarity between two sources for the sake of claiming that one is an imitation of the other. The key difficulty is that absent certain indicators such as extensive verbatim agreement or a direct statement that such imitation is present, it's very hard to come up with any credible way of determining that the similarities are due to deliberate imitation.

Consider Moss' parallel between Stephen and Jesus where both die by commending their spirit either to Jesus or to the father and by forgiving those who are executing them. I agree with Moss that this is not due to coincidence. I think that it is due to Steven deliberately following in the footsteps of Jesus who he clearly treated as a role model. This similarity is explained equally well by this hypothesis as it is by the idea that this is a literary imitation of the execution of Jesus. Moss does consider this possibility, but she rejects it. Her reasoning goes as follows. The historical Steven would have no way to know what Jesus had said at his trial or his execution because he was at neither event and died before any of the gospels had been written. Although it's theoretically possible that one of the 12 told Steven what Jesus had said on the cross, he would not have known what Jesus had said during his trial. Moss' entire objection here hinges on the assumption that the only ways in which Steven could have known what Jesus said at his trial and on the cross would be from either one of the 12 or from a written gospel. I must confess that I find this assumption rather baffling. Obviously, if we are not going to assume that the resurrection did not occur, then we cannot rule out the possibility that Jesus himself was Steven's source for this information. But we need not even assume that. Are we really to imagine that no one who was present at Jesus's trial or crucifixion went on to tell other people about what had occurred? Are we to believe that no one was curious about what had transpired at the trial and execution of a relatively popular person like Jesus? I see no reason whatsoever to grant Moss's assumption that Steven could have only known about the details of these events either from an apostle or from a gospel. Consequently, I see no reason at all to think that fictional literary imitation is a better explanation of certain similarities than that Steven was just consciously following Jesus's example. And this leads to a further point, namely that parallels, even deliberate parallels, do not necessarily indicate that a story is fictional. An author may deliberately draw parallels between two historical events for the simple reason that those two events were similar in certain respects. And as we have seen, there are ways for this to happen without the result being a mere coincident. So Moss has given us very little reason to disregard the historical reliability of the book of Acts.

There is evidence for the martyrdom of Peter and Paul within the New Testament. The most striking evidence for Peter's martyrdom comes to us from the last chapter of the Gospel of John. Here Jesus is described as predicting Peter's martyrdom. The passage says, "Truly, truly I tell you, when you were younger, you used to put on your belt and walk wherever [clears throat] you wanted. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will put your belt on you and bring you where you do not want to go."

Now, the skeptic might object to the use of the Gospel of John in making the case for Peter's martyrdom. After all, I am using the persecution of the Christians as evidence for the sincerity of the apostolic testimony within the Gospels. The skeptic might claim that I am assuming the trustworthiness of the apostolic witness to prove the trustworthiness of the apostolic witness. Therefore, to try to use the Gospel of John to prove that Peter was martyed is circular reasoning, and the skeptic would be right if I were depending upon the apostolic authorship of the Gospel of John to make my case for the martyrdom of Peter. However, that is not what I am doing. I don't need the Gospel of John to be authored by an apostle. Nor do I even need it to be generally historically reliable with respect to what it says about Jesus in order to use it as evidence for the martyrdom of Peter. I only need that as part of my argument for the resurrection. Even if John is not an accurate source with respect to the life of Jesus and Jesus never actually predicted the martyrdom of Peter, I maintain that John 21:18 nevertheless represents a very early tradition according to which Peter died as a martyr. This is further supported by 2 Peter 1:12-15 which is allegedly authored by Peter and has him anticipating his imminent death. And the author further has Peter say that he was prepared for the death which the Lord Jesus Christ had told him that he would face. Even if this was not authored by Peter himself as most skeptics believe, it provides another voice supporting this idea among early Christians that Jesus had told Peter that he would die. And if second Peter and John 21 owe to the same tradition, then the implication of martyrdom in John 21 applies equally to second Peter.

As Jonathan Mlache puts it, "If there were no such early persecution to speak of, it is unlikely that the evangelists would have attributed these words to Jesus, regardless of whether the historical Jesus actually uttered those sayings." Whereas many skeptics claim that all of the traditions about the martyrdoms of the apostles are late and contain legendary details, the Gospel of John provides evidence to the contrary. It represents an early source for the idea that Peter died as a martyr and it lacks any fantastic elements. As Shawn McDow concludes, "Even though the passage itself provides no details of when or where, Peter's coming death in this passage is undoubtedly the earliest reference to the martyrdom of Peter, given that John's gospel was most likely written in the last decade of the first century. It seems unlikely that this section would have been included had there not been a strong tradition that Peter died in the way that Jesus predicted."

It is not all that controversial even among skeptics that John 21:18 is talking about the martyrdom of Peter. As even Barman says, "It is clear that Peter is being told that he will be executed, he won't die of natural causes, and that this will be the death of a martyr." Nevertheless, this is not granted across the board. While the phrase stretch out your hands has typically been interpreted as a reference to crucifixion, there are a few scholars who dispute this interpretation. For example, Ramsay Michaels argues that this merely refers to the helplessness Peter would experience prior to his death. And Timothy D. Barnes argues that this language is just as consistent with being burned at the stake as with being crucified. Nothing significant turns on how we interpret that phrase since both Michaelels and Barnes agree that this is a reference to Peter's martyrdom. Rudolph Bolman on the other hand does try to argue that John 21:18 is not a reference to Peter's death at all, but rather merely refers to the feebleness of old age. However, this interpretation sits poorly with the interpretation which the author offers in the very next verse. John 21:19 explicitly says, "Now he said this, indicating by what kind of death he would glorify God." Furthermore, the verse parallels a similar statement in John 13:36, where it is said that although Peter cannot follow Jesus now, he will follow Jesus after his glorification. This is presumably a reference to Peter following Jesus into death. As Richard Balkam explains in the context of 218-19, "It is clear that the following of Jesus to which Peter is called in 2119 will culminate in his martyrdom. This means that the author of 2119 certainly understood 1336 to be a prediction of Peter's martyrdom. Most commentators see 1336 in this way. Thus, whoever wrote this text clearly intended for this to be understood as a reference to Peter's death."

Chris Hansen acknowledges that John 21:18 is a reference to the death of Peter, but tries to deny that there is any implication of a violent execution. Hansen explains, "Peter will outstretch his arms at death in emulation of Christ, but this does not mean it will be a violent or horrid death like Jesus's own was." And as I will note below, even if it does involve a violent death or even crucifixion, we need not necessarily think that this means that the Romans are the culprits, for no blame is placed on any outside authorities in this passage. In fact, in response, it's difficult to see why the comparison to Christ's death would be made at all if Peter's death were not going to be violent in nature. There would hardly be any significance to be found in Peter's death if he were to merely voluntarily stretch out his arms as he died comfortably in his deathbed. This leads to a second observation, namely that the author of John's gospel goes on to claim that Peter's death would glorify God. But how exactly would a death which is not a martyrdom or minimally a sacrifice of some sort serve to glorify God? As a third observation, we should again note that the language of stretching out one's arms is commonly used in association with execution. In deference to Barnes's argument, it must be admitted that this language is not determinative between the possibilities of crucifixion and burning alive. But in either case, we are dealing with a violent execution. Lastly, Hans's proposal fails to do justice to the violence implied in the statement that someone else will bring Peter where he does not want to go. It's difficult to see what else that might mean in the context of Peter's death beyond him forcibly being brought to the site of execution. As to Hansen's claim that no blame is placed upon the Roman authorities, while true, this seems rather insignificant. In fact, no blame is placed on anyone. But if the considerations which I have laid out are right, then public execution surely implicates the Romans above anyone else. Who else besides the Romans would have been most associated with public executions.

Regarding Paul, we can see clearly that Paul is depicted as anticipating his own martyrdom in 2 Timothy 4 6-7. There we read, "For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the course. I have kept the faith." Now, I am aware that virtually all skeptics reject the Pauline authorship of the pastoral epistles, including second Timothy. As Richard Carrier puts it, "Pretty much all non-fundamentalist experts agree, the pastoral epistles are forgeries. Their style, vocabulary, and theology differ substantially from the authentic seven Pauline letters." As it happens, I believe that the Pauline authorship of the pastoral epistles is defensible, but I won't belabor the point here. Even if we reject the authenticity of second Timothy for the sake of argument, the latest possible date of composition is between 90 and 140 AD. As such, it still represents a fairly early understanding from an early Christian that Paul was martyed. And it is also free from the fantastical elements which so many skeptical scholars find objectionable in many martyrdom stories. As Wolf Ramkinig says, "Paul's martyrdom is already implied in second Timothy, a letter that was ostensibly authored in Rome and whose unknown author has Paul addressing his impending martyrdom."

Chris Hansen in a recent interview with Paul Aia argues that 2 Timothy 4:6-7 doesn't supply evidence for the martyrdom of Paul. Rather, given that Paul actually was the author, it only supplies evidence that Paul felt very helpless about his situation. The letter does not tell us his life will absolutely be ended, but only that Paul thinks it will, assuming generously he wrote the letter. But if we believe Christian tradition, such as in Acts 14, where Paul is stoned and nearly died, he had plenty of reasons to think he might be killed in various scenarios. So, is this evidence of his final execution by the Romans? Does Paul say who his captives are, where he is held captive, what the circumstances of his captivity are? No. He says nothing except that he expresses hopelessness for his material life. It demonstrates nothing. >>

So, ironically enough, Hansen is willing to grant the same point which I am claiming that I can make my argument without, namely, the Pauline authorship of second Timothy. Hansen makes an interesting move by granting Pauline authorship and then capitalizing on the fact that Paul merely expects to lose his life, but does not and cannot tell us that he has actually been executed. My argument has assumed that the skeptic will reject this idea and so will be forced to read this as a later Christian writing this about Paul thereby betraying early knowledge of his martyrdom. Second Timothy then may be one of those paradoxical cases where granting traditional authorship actually helps the skeptic more than the apologist. Nevertheless, while I agree with Hansen that assuming Pauline authorship, second Timothy does not provide direct evidence for Paul's martyrdom, Hansen goes too far by claiming that this demonstrates nothing. It does provide evidence that Paul was persecuted and that he demonstrated a willingness to die for his belief in the resurrection. This is all that I need to support the idea that his belief in the resurrection was genuine.

Turning now from the New Testament as a whole to the uncontested writings of the Apostle Paul, we can see that Paul himself claims not only to have suffered persecution, but also to have perpetrated it prior to his conversion. Galatians 1:13 contains a particularly direct admission, saying, "For you have heard of my former way of life in Judaism, how I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it." And again in 1 Corinthians 15:9 we find Paul saying, "For I am the least of the apostles and not fit to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God." And in the context of defending his own apostilhip in 2 Corinthians 11:23-28, Paul details his own persecution, saying, "Are they servants of Christ? I am speaking as if insane. I more so in far more labors, in far more imprisonments, beaten times without number, often in danger of death. Five times I received from the Jews 39 lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day I have spent a drift at sea. I have been on frequent journeys in dangers from rivers, danger from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers at sea, dangers among false brothers. I have been in labor and hardship, through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. Apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches."

It's hard to think how much clearer the evidence for persecution could be than an admission from an eyewitness himself, claiming that he had perpetrated persecution upon Christians and then after his conversion offered a detailed list of the sorts of sufferings he endured as the result of persecution. Andrew Lok sums up the evidential force of these sorts of statements well, saying, "Such an admittance to being a persecutor and an appeal to public knowledge of persecution are reasons to think that the early Christian references to persecution cannot be explained away as merely rhetorically motivated claims. Rather, these references have a basis in history."

Regarding the evidence from the writings of the Apostle Paul, Mos objects to the use of it on the grounds that there was not a distinct group of people known as Christians prior to the conversion of the Apostle Paul. As she explains that "Paul himself would admit that he had participated in this practice lends credibility to the narrative of Acts, but it does not prove that Jews persecuted Christians. The primary reason for this is that there were no Christians. Not only did the name Christian not yet exist, but the idea of Christians as a group distinct from the rest of Judaism did not exist in the lifetime of the apostles. The followers of Jesus were like Jesus himself, Jews. There was no question of their founding a separate sect. At the time when Paul was writing, he like Peter, Andrew, James, and all of the original apostles was a Jew."

I really must protest that this reply from Moss is woefully inadequate. Certainly, the term Christian may not have existed prior to Paul's conversion, but the idea that there was not even a concept of these followers of Jesus as a distinct group is frankly ludicrous. What else would Paul have had in mind when he referred to the individuals he was persecuting in Galatians 1:13 and 1 Corinthians 15:9 by the term the church of God? Does Moss think that this is a general reference to all Jews? I would think that she surely does not. But then who else might the church of God refer to if not early Christians? And if this term refers exclusively to Christians, then it straightforwardly follows that there was indeed a concept of Christians. Even if Moss is right that these people initially considered themselves a distinct sect within Judaism, surely Paul's statements give strong evidence that this particular sect of people was persecuted. And since this sect eventually became the Christians, it is perfectly acceptable to say that these early Christians were persecuted despite the fact that they may not have been called Christians. I think Trent Horn said it best. "This is just a bunch of semantic nonsense. Jews who follow Jesus, whether or not you call them Christians, were violently persecuted by Jews who did not follow Jesus. That's all we need to prove when it comes to demonstrating that the apostles willingly faced persecution for their belief in Jesus."

Moss also has to downplay non-Christian sources to maintain her argument that Christ followers were not known as Christians until the end of the first century. If you want to read an excellent defense of the historicity of Nero's persecution of Christians, see Vanderlands and Bremer's article Tacitus and the persecution of the Christians, an invention of tradition. But we can make the case that the earliest Christians faced persecution even apart from appealing to the Bible. Many of the non-biblical writings of the early church likewise bear witness to the persecution of the church and the martyrdoms of some of the apostles. While it is true that the church fathers are not right about everything, it would be a mistake to discount what they have to say entirely. As Brian Litfin reminds us, "Though they did not always demonstrate a critical and discerning eye and sometimes repeated tall tales they had heard, they can still serve as valuable historical witnesses about the apostles, especially when a claim is attested by more than one church father."

The earliest and perhaps the most significant of the Petristic witnesses is Clement of Rome. In chapter 5 of his letter to the Corinthians, we read, "But not to dwell upon ancient examples, let us come to the most recent spiritual heroes. Let us take the noble examples furnished in our own generation. Through envy and jealousy, the greatest and most righteous pillars of the church have been persecuted and put to death. Let us set before our eyes the illustrious apostles. Peter through unrighteous envy endured not one or two but numerous labors and when he had at length suffered martyrdom departed to the place of glory due to him. Owing to envy, Paul also obtained the reward of patient endurance after being seven times thrown into captivity, compelled to flee and stoned. After preaching both in the east and west, he gained the illustrious reputation due to his faith, having taught righteousness to the whole world and come to the extreme limit of the west and suffered martyrdom under the prefects. Thus was he removed from the world and went into the holy place, having proved himself a striking example of patience."

There is some disagreement over whether Clement's statements here are best translated as saying that Peter and Paul suffered martyrdom or simply that they bore witness. The Greek word here is marto and it is the etmological ancestor of the English word martyr. However, the word is commonly used in ancient literature of this time to just mean that someone bore witness. It's unclear if the word had a special miological usage in Christian literature by the time of Clement's writing. Still, due to context, most scholars believe that this is a reference to Peter and Paul's martyrdom. As Litin says, "Here we see Clement, a first century bishop in Rome, stating his belief that Peter suffered death locally. Although the Greek participle translated as suffered martyrdom could simply refer to bearing witness, the context indicates that Clement had persecution and judicial execution in mind." The significance of Clement's remarks to the debate over whether or not the apostles were willing to suffer and die for their faith cannot be overstated. According to Erynaeus in Against Heresies 333, Clement was a close associate of the apostles themselves and so would be ideally positioned to know about the circumstances surrounding their lives and deaths. The Apostle Paul himself may even reference Clement of Rome by name in Philippians 4:3. While some have argued that his letter dates to as late as 140 AD, most scholars date it within the first century to around 96 AD. If this is correct, then Clement appears to be an early straightforward witness to the martyrdom of Peter and Paul. As Harry Todra puts it, "The great value of Clement's text lies in the fact that it is a very early, almost contemporary witness to the historic reality of Paul's violent death. Even though for its own reasons, it supplies no details as to the circumstances surrounding that death. Clement's epistle shows that from the ancient most time, Roman tradition held that Paul had been legally tried and executed in Rome during Nero's reign." And Marcus Bachmule adds, "Peter and Paul are cited individually but jointly and in that order. Since their memory survives in the present, they belong emphatically to our own times. And so the call to set their memory before our eyes entails for the first century Roman context particularly vivid connotations. At least for Christians in Rome and Corenth, it seems Peter and Paul are at this stage easily the two most obvious unquestioned recent examples of faithful endurance in the face of jealousy and persecution. The rhetorical emphasis on Peter and Paul as examples nearest to us and in our own generation is a clear appeal to living memory, linking the apostles with the host of other Roman Christians who were joined to them in being subjected to jealous persecution and to a violent death."

Unfortunately, this debate cannot be settled quite so easily since skeptics have lobbed numerous objections to Clement's witness. Ironically, of our skeptical interlocutors, only Richard Carrier of all people is willing to grant the legitimate use of Clement, saying "Clement is therefore our only remotely credible source for the death of Paul." Moss, for her part, objects that Clement does not specifically claim that Peter or Paul were killed on account of being Christian, saying "Around the turn of the second century, Clement of Rome writes that Peter was killed on account of jealousy, not because he was a Christian." Clement puts this interpretation to good work in his letter, but it goes without saying that this is just an interpretation. Not only does Clement not mention crucifixion, but he does not provide us with historical data about Peter's death or even confirm that Peter was executed upside down. But Moss is overstating her case. Clement's claim that Peter and Paul died as witnesses, his characterization of Peter's death as glorification, his description of Paul's death as having proved himself, and his comment that they died at the hands of the prefects are all very suggestive that Peter and Paul died as martyrs. Indeed, were it not for their Christian faith, it's difficult to see why anyone would have been envious of them in the first place.

Perhaps the most ingenious recent attempt to explain away the evidence from Clement comes to us from Chris Hansen. Hansen has recently published an article titled Murder Among Brothers which argues that other Christians rather than the Romans were responsible for the deaths of Peter and Paul. This would straightforwardly imply that they did not die as martyrs. Hansen's argument is primarily based upon a consideration of the previous examples before Peter and Paul which Clement uses in the

letter. As Hansen explains, I wish to recontextualize First Clement 53-7, not as has traditionally been done with the backdrop of the supposed Neonian persecution and the martyrdoms of the apostles, but with the apparent intracommunal conflict that we find in First Clement.

In First Clement 4, Clement specifically begins to elucidate with examples the problems he sees with jealousy. It is not a problem stemming from outsiders but from insiders in Clement's view. His first cited example is the murder of Abel by his brother Cain. Following this, he mentions Joseph being sold by his brothers, Jacob having to flee because of Esau, his brother, Moses having to flee his fellow countrymen in Egypt, Aaron and Miriam being shunned by their fellow Israelites, the strife caused by the two Israelites, Dayan in Abram, and finally David being persecuted by his lord and friend King Saul. The consistent through line in every cited example is that jealousy is something coming from within one's own community or people.

In this light and the context of how First Clement conceptualizes jealousy as an internal affair, I believe that the following hypothesis is more than warranted. Peter and Paul were not killed by the Romans, for which there is startlingly little evidence to corroborate this until the late 2nd century CE. Instead, First Clement 53-7 indicates a much more horrific vision of early Christianity as being in an intense intracommunal struggle that led to violent and lethal situations. So essentially, since all of the earlier examples within Clement's letter are examples of people being killed or persecuted by family or countrymen, Hansen concludes that the same applies to Peter and Paul. They were killed by other Christians because these other Christians were jealous of them.

While Hansen's aberrant interpretation of Clement may be possible, there are several reasons why it is not very plausible, in the first place. Let me begin by stealing some of Hansen's thunder. Throughout the paper, "Murder Among Brothers," Hansen very strongly gives off the impression that this is a bold new reading of First Clement. In fact, Hansen is simply regurgitating a reading of First Clement, which, as far as I know, first goes back to Oscar Coleman in 1930 and has more recently been revived by David Eastman. To be sure, Hansen has supplemented some unique facets. For example, while Coleman and, to a lesser extent, Eastman still thought that Roman authorities were responsible for the actual execution of Peter and Paul, Hansen has rejected even this. But in very broad strokes, Hansen is simply offering a warmed-over version of Coleman's thesis.

Moreover, Coleman's thesis received an absolutely devastating critique from Richard Balkam in 1992 and then again from Harry Todra in 1994. Curiously, Hansen makes no mention of Todra's work in the paper. Balkam's paper is cited in a footnote, but there is no interaction at all with Balkam's criticisms of Coleman's thesis. Since most of Balkam's and Todra's criticisms of Hansen's thesis are relevant here, I am simply left to apply Balkam's and Todra's arguments against Coleman to Hansen. I shall also add a few other objections overlooked by Bockam and Todra along the way.

In the first place, it is simply not true that all of Clement's previous examples involve persecution by one's family or fellow countrymen. While Hansen speaks of Moses having to flee from his own countrymen, Clement is clear that he is fleeing from and being persecuted by the Egyptian Pharaoh. This surely cannot be an example of the dangers of envy among one's own family or community. This is an example of persecution by a governing authority. Similarly, while David's being persecuted by King Saul is an example of persecution by one's own countrymen, it is also an example of persecution by a governing authority. Furthermore, in chapter 4:13, Clement goes out of his way to explicitly mention that foreigners, not fellow countrymen, also targeted David out of envy. So, some of Clement's examples of the dangers of envy seem to fit far better within the traditional interpretation according to which the persecution of Peter and Paul was carried out by Nero in the Roman Empire. I think that Hansen is right that strife from within the Corinthian church provides a major catalyst for Clement's writing. But to think that all of his examples are exclusively about the disastrous results of envy from within is simply not true. Moses, at least, stands as a clear counterexample.

As Todra points out, it should be noted that from the linguistic point of view, these words do not necessarily denote envy, jealousy, or discord as springing exclusively from a compatriot or co-religionist. Nor do they have an intrinsic implication of internal conflict. They are general terms for the vices they signify. In this particular case, their perpetrators could be equally from without the community as from within.

In the second place, even if all the preceding examples genuinely did involve persecution arising from within one's own family or community, Hansen fails to grapple with the fact that there is a clear difference in the trajectory of Clement's argumentation when he switches from past examples to present examples. As Richard Bockam argues, Coleman failed to notice how much the second part of the catalog, the contemporary examples, diverges from the precise aims of the first part. It is significant that, as we have noticed, the contemporary examples do not specify those whose jealousy brought about the martyrs' deaths, as the Old Testament examples consistently do. Moreover, as we have observed, it is unlikely that Clement intends the relevance of 52 through 62 to his readers to be a warning that the jealousy of some of their number is likely to lead to the martyrdom of others. The mythological material of 52 through 62 has a specific theme of its own, and the connection to the overall lesson of the catalog that jealousy leads to death could be rather loose. Indeed, the seventh of the contemporary examples, which could easily have been specified as a civil strife between fellow countrymen, but is not so specified, rather suggests that the theme of brotherhood has dropped out of Clement's concern by the time he reaches the end of the catalog.

In the third place, if Hansen were to be right about Christians viciously killing each other during this period and especially killing individuals as influential as Peter and Paul, this would be quite scandalous. If Hansen were to be right about this level of vicious infighting within the early Christian community, one might expect that we would have some wider attestation to these acts of violence among Christians, either within Christian sources or within secular sources. As Bacham says, if Clement's main point in giving these examples is to show that the Christian martyrs suffered as the result of the jealousy of fellow Christians, one wonders why he omits to say so while saying a great deal that is irrelevant to this point. But we really don't have any clear references to this. On the other hand, we do have clear references both in secular and Christian sources for the persecution of Christians by the Jews and Romans during this period. Indeed, there are interesting connections between what Clement says and what the Roman historian Tacitus says. Again, Backom observes, "Strikingly, Tacitus' account of the Neonian persecution of Christians refers to a multitude exactly paralleling Clement's wording in 61." I understand that Hansen rejects the reliability of these sources. But if, as I shall argue momentarily, Hansen's arguments on this front fail, then this drastically reduces the plausibility of his reading of Clement. It asks us to imagine very noteworthy violent infighting among Christians which is just absent from the historical record. By contrast, interpreting this as a reference to Jewish persecution or to the Neonian persecution simply better fits with what we independently know about the climate of the time.

Again, Tadra observes the early Christian writers thought of official Judaism as being responsible for the persecutions which the early church had to endure. The book of Acts is replete with accounts of Jewish hostility towards the nascent Christian communities in the Hellenistic east. Paul himself arrived at Rome as an appellant prisoner. His appeal having been lodged precisely to escape the iniquitous justice which the Sanhedrin would have met out to him had he been transferred to its jurisdiction. Later on, Tertullian wrote that all the persecution suffered hitherto by the Christians was prepared in the synagogue. Writing in the mid-3rd century, the Christian Latin poet Commodian directly accused the Jewish leadership of having fermented the Neonian persecution.

Fourth, Clement's specific language may hark back to biblical references which further support the interpretation that he is referencing public execution. For example, when he references Peter departing to the place of glory, this seems to be a potential reference to John 21:19, where the author suggests that Jesus's description of Peter's arms being stretched out and his being carried where he does not want to go signify the sort of death by which he would glorify God. It strikes me as too much of a coincidence that both Clement and the author of John should independently associate Peter's death with glory. We have already seen how the language of outstretched arms, whether indicative of burning or crucifixion, indicates a public execution. This in turn is indicative of Roman involvement or at the very least the involvement of local magistrates. Either way, Christians were certainly in no position of legal authority at the time, which would have permitted them to publicly execute anyone, let alone fellow Christians.

Now, Hansen could object here that Clement dates prior to the Gospel of John and so cannot be drawing upon John's Gospel. This is, of course, debatable. I will concede that Clement does not display any direct knowledge of the Gospel of John, though some scholars have argued that there is clear Johannine influence throughout the letter. But even if Clement is prior to John, the fact that both sources connect Peter's death to glory in some way plausibly indicates that both are drawing from a common source or tradition. And if that is true, then John's gospel should be taken to reveal a fuller picture of what the original source said. And this in turn would support the traditional reading of First Clement 5 over against Hansen's reading.

Fifth, and finally, Clement continues his thought into chapter 6, which further supports the idea that he is referencing martyrdom. Clement goes on to say, "To these men who spent their lives in the practice of holiness, there is to be added a great multitude of the elect, who having through envy endured many indignities and tortures, furnished us with a most excellent example." Through envy, those women, the daads and deary, being persecuted after they had suffered terrible and unspeakable torments, finished the course of their faith with steadfastness, and though weak in body, received a noble reward. So here, Clement shifts his attention from contemporary male victims of envy to contemporary female victims. The labeling of these persecuted women as daads and deary alludes back to Greek mythology. These are figures in Greek mythology who were often used as examples of women who were punished for their actions in Hellenistic literature. The Daads were the daughters of Danaus who were given as brides to the victors of a foot race. Deary was a woman who was tied to the horns of a bull and dragged to death. Clement's comparison of these female victims of envy with these figures in Greek mythology further supports the idea that he is talking about public punishments and executions, since that is what happened to the daads, and as Mike Lacona observes, while the meaning of the term also leaves us without a firm answer in First Clement, the context leads me to conclude that Clement was referring to the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul in First Clement 6. Clement continues his thoughts in 5:1-2, saying that in addition to Peter, Paul, and possibly all of the apostles, there was a vast number of other believers who became examples for us because they had been through horrible persecutions. He adds that Christian women suffered horrible torture, but that they reached and achieved the suitable honorable prize. In ancient mythology, the daughters of Danaus were given as prizes to the winners of a race. Thus, it is likely that daads is a reference to Christian women being raped prior to being martyred. Deary died by being tied to the horns of a bull and then dragged to death. So, it seems that Clement is reporting that Christian women were martyred, and the language used was euphemistic. Thus, there is good reason to hold the similar words used for Peter and Paul meant that they died a martyr's death, especially since this is attested elsewhere and no conflicting accounts exist.

But Hansen has a supplemental argument for this interpretation of First Clement based upon Clement's claim that Paul died before the prefects were rulers. The Greek word translated here as prefects or rulers is *heguminon*. And Hansen claims this term is primarily used to refer to Christian religious leaders both in Clement and in contemporary Christian literature. If this is correct, then Clement all but directly claims that it was the Christian leadership who killed Peter and Paul. Hansen's statement of this argument is brief and indirect in the article, but in the interview with Paulia, we find a much more detailed expression of the argument.

Now, I'm going to get into my new theory. My paper is pretty radical as a reinterpretation of 1 Clement 5, but I think it is a good one. Firstly, notice back when Shawn says that Paul is killed by the rulers of the world. Well, the word is not *archon* or similar, which we would definitely be more akin to human rulers like what we find in the Pauline letters like in 1 Corinthians chapter 2 or in Romans chapter 13. Instead, the Greek word used here is *hegemon*, conjugated in the masculine plural, which is actually much vaguer, especially in Christian usage. In fact, Clement himself uses it multiple times. The first time is in 1 Clement 1:3 where he refers to Christian leaders. The third time he uses it after our topic right here in chapter 5 is in chapter 21 where it again refers to Christian leadership. Even to this day, Greek Orthodox leaders are called this.

But Hansen's claim that the word *hegemon* is primarily used of Christian religious leadership in Clement is simply false. There are at least three instances where Clement uses the term in reference to non-Christian world leaders. As Todra points out, Clement used the term on a number of occasions in the Epistle to the Corinthians. In chapter 51, he distinguished between Pharaoh and the rulers of Egypt. In chapter 55, he wrote, "Many kings and rulers have followed the council of oracles." Again in chapter 32 he noted kings and rulers and governors in succession of Judah. Clement used the term in its true sense to designate those who were subordinate to the chief ruler in the above examples—Pharaoh or kings—but never to designate the chief ruler himself. In the passage at hand, Clement is referring to those high, though anonymous, officials at Rome who conducted Paul's trial and who had the power to hand down a sentence of death in his case, that is, the case of a Roman citizen accused of a crime of majesty.

And in addition to this, Richard Balkam argues persuasively that there are various literary parallels between 1 Clement 5 and a traditional eulogy for the Apostle Paul in the Epistle of the Apostles, verse 31. Here it is made quite clear that the rulers before whom Paul testified were the secular powers of his day, not fellow Christians. As Balkam explains, the idiom of this account contrasts with the Hellenistic language of 1 Clement 5-7. But there is one element that is stated in virtually the same words in both: "He bears witness before rulers." In both, this statement refers to the circumstances of Paul's death. It points to some common tradition. If Balkam is right about First Clement and the Epistle of the Apostles drawing from a common tradition, then there can be no question that First Clement is implicating the Roman authorities for Paul's death rather than fellow Christians.

Hansen does offer one final argument in support of this reading of Clement. Hansen thinks that it is supported by Clement's statements about the Romans in chapter 61, where he supposedly expresses a desire that the Romans would intervene, which would obviously be surprising if Clement regarded the Romans as being responsible for the persecution. As Hansen puts it, "If Clement has any idea of Roman intervention, it is specifically not the idea that Romans have already intervened in Christian affairs, but that he wishes they would and prays that God would give them the authority to do so without offense." Evidently then, Clement has no knowledge of outsider interventions and to the contrary hopes for some force of God from outside to aid in putting an end to the conflicts and establishing peace.

I must confess that I fail to see any support for this idea in chapter 61 of Clement. The chapter is part of Clement's closing prayer where he includes a prayer for the rulers. It reads, "To our rulers and governors on the earth, to them you, Lord, gave the power of the kingdom by your glorious and ineffable might to the end that we may know the glory and honor given to them by you and be subject to them in not resisting your will. To them, Lord, give health, peace, concord, stability, that they may exercise the authority given to them without offense." I'll let viewers decide for themselves whether or not they think that this constitutes the expression of a desire for the Romans to get involved. To my mind, Clement's qualification that the Romans should exercise their authority without offense subtly implies that their prior exercise of authority had included various offenses. But however this statement is judged, it is far from clear that Clement expresses any desire for Roman involvement to resolve the squabbles among Christians. Consequently, I conclude that none of the skeptical objections to Clement's witness are very persuasive. The traditional interpretation of First Clement 5 as a reference to the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul stands as being the best. Clement's witness is significant, but there is much more.

The second Petristic witness which we shall consider is Ignatius of Antioch. Ignatius, contrary to what a popular reformed apologist has recently suggested, most certainly did exist. If we have what Ignatius wrote there, since I was in seminary, and I'm not sure if you're aware of this, over the past 25 years, there has been a tremendous amount of skepticism as to whether Ignatius even existed and which letters are actually because there's a Latin and there's a shorter and there's >> I was not taught that, but I'm sort of catching up with that. So if so, so that I hope Ignatius >> Moss and people like that are taking a view, but it is a fringe view in Scott. >> I hope it's becoming the central view. I hope Ignatius existed and >> you're saying scholarship that Ignatius didn't exist. >> I'm saying I'm saying that the expression of that that that there are people going did these letters actually have an original form. There are so many forms of it. Why? That's not relevant to our debate right now. I'm simply saying, >> okay, >> he he may have written in 107 or 108. I hope he did, but but maybe not. >> We know that he existed because he left us several of his writings. Obviously, some letters which are attributed to Ignatius may be forgeries, but the whole idea behind a forgery is that one is forging a letter in the name of someone who actually does exist. The idea of a forgery is to make people think that someone else has authored the work. It does little to further this goal if the person to whom a forgery is attributed does not exist. How obvious does it have to be? It's so clear.

Ignatius provides further evidence for the martyrdom of Peter. At the beginning of chapter 3 of his letter to the Smyrnians, which he probably authored around 107 AD, Ignatius says that Peter and the other disciples despised death and that they were found to be beyond death. Whatever else the phrase "despised death" might mean, it seems clear that it minimally refers to being unafraid of death. It's unclear how Ignatius could have known that Peter and the other disciples were unafraid of death if some of them did not willingly go to their deaths. As McDow observes, the fact that the apostles despised death indicates that Ignatius believed they were willing to suffer and even die for the belief that they had physically seen the risen Jesus. Ignatius mentions the apostles' willingness to suffer and face death as evidence for the reality of the resurrection. While we cannot be certain where Ignatius got his information, his letter does presuppose the martyrdom of many of the apostles, including Peter. The statement that they were found to be "beyond death" is somewhat difficult to interpret, but minimally it seems to mean that the disciples' willingness to die was tested at some point. Perhaps Ignatius means that the disciples' message of the gospel could not be stopped by their deaths and in that way their message survived beyond their deaths. If something like this is the correct reading of the statement that they were "beyond death," then this certainly implies that they died as a result of their Christian beliefs.

Richard Balkam argues that a study of how this phrase is used in other Christian and Hebrew literature demands the understanding that this refers to martyrdom. As he says, "The final sentence of verse two must refer to martyrdom. The expression was a standard one. It was commonly used of the heroism of soldiers in battle. But in Jewish and Christian literature, it was used of the attitude of the martyr. In the context, Ignatius's usage must be mythological. He must have been able to assume as common knowledge that at least some of the 12 had died as martyrs. It would be odd if Peter, the one apostle who has been named, were not among these. The context demands that at least Peter was a well-known example of a martyr."

Ignatius also makes mention of the martyrdom of Paul in chapter 12 of his epistle to the Ephesians. There he writes, "You are the persons through whom those pass that are cut off for the sake of God. You are initiated into the mysteries of the gospel with Paul, the holy, the martyred, the deservedly most happy, at whose feet may I be found when I shall attain to God, who in all his epistles makes mention of you in Christ Jesus." As with Clement of Rome, there is some question pertaining to the translation of the Greek word *marturo* as "martyred" here. As already noted, the word could simply refer to Paul bearing witness. Either way, there is no question that Ignatius is including Paul as the foremost example of those he has already described as being "cut off for God" or as some translations say, "slain for God." Hence, no matter how the Greek is translated, Ignatius is definitely saying that Paul died as a martyr. And while he is not quite as close to the events as Clement of Rome, he nevertheless represents a very early witness to the martyrdom of Paul. As S. Ross Hickling comments, "Ignatius views himself to be following the same pathway as Paul and sees the Ephesians as a conduit of those slain on behalf of God. Therefore, through discussing his own plight and route to get to Rome, Ignatius informs that Paul traveled a similar route and that Ignatius will have a similar fate as Paul."

Regarding this passage from Ignatius, Chris Hansen says, "The context is saying that Ignatius is where he is about to be executed while the Ephesians are free. They are therefore a passageway of those slain for Christ. Does he say that Paul was killed by the Romans? No. Does he say that he died in Rome? No. And in fact, he's pretty vague about the entire notion of Paul's death here. So, this is not evidence of a Roman execution of Paul." So, Hansen's objection amounts to Ignatius not explicitly saying that Paul died as a martyr. But, it seems to me that Ignatius is more than clear that Paul is the foremost example of someone who has been slain for God. There doesn't really seem to be any other reason to bring up Paul in this context, if not to lift him up as an example of one who is slain for God. Hansen's reading would seem to imply that Ignatius is bringing up Paul for no reason at all. By contrast, my reading easily explains the relevance of Paul to the preceding context.

Another Petristic source of evidence for the martyrdom of Paul and other apostles is Polycarp. In chapter nine of his letter to the Philippians, we read, "I exhort you all therefore to yield obedience to the word of righteousness and to exercise all patience such as you have seen set before your eyes, not only in the case of blessed Ignatius and Zosamus and Rufus, but also in others among yourselves and in Paul himself and the rest of the apostles. This do in the assurance that all deeds have not run in vain, but in faith in righteousness, and that they are now in their due place in the presence of the Lord, with whom also they suffered." It is widely held that Polycarp wrote this letter in the wake of Ignatius's death, probably around 108 AD. This would explain the emphasis placed upon Ignatius throughout the letter. This would also make Polycarp an incredibly early witness to the martyrdoms of Paul and the other apostles. Moreover, Ignatius himself had died as a martyr. This forms the context for the list of people culminating with Paul and the other apostles. Since Ignatius had died as a martyr and his martyrdom formed the catalyst for Polycarp's writing, it is reasonable to suppose that the other names listed by Polycarp are also intended to be understood as martyrs. This interpretation gains further support from Polycarp's statement at the end according to which these individuals had "suffered with Christ." Given the context, this statement likely refers to all of the listed individuals as dying the death of a martyr. But even if this interpretation is wrong, Polycarp certainly testifies to the willingness of all the apostles to suffer for their faith, which is enough to support the idea that they were sincere in their belief.

Regarding Polycarp, Chris Hansen again objects that Polycarp doesn't explicitly state that Paul died as a martyr, saying, "Does that say that Paul was murdered? No, it says that he suffered for the Lord. But this could just as easily refer to his imprisonments, the stoning and Acts with that he survived or any number of other things. Yes, it says that he was granted his place with the Lord, but never says he died as a result of execution by the Romans or similar." This is of no real consequence. So already the next two sources which Shawn cites are bunk. Strictly speaking, Hansen is correct. I think that martyrdom is implied here based on the comparison with Ignatius, whose own martyrdom was likely the catalyst for Polycarp's letter. Also, the statement that these individuals "suffered with Christ" seems to mean something like that they suffered as Christ suffered. And since Christ died as the result of public execution, it's certainly not implausible that Polycarp means that Paul died as the result of public execution like Christ did. But even if Hansen is right, that this merely refers to undergoing sufferings in the form of imprisonment, Polycarp unquestionably testifies to the willingness of Paul and the other apostles to suffer for their faith in Christ. This is all that the defender of Jesus's resurrection really needs to establish in order to rule out the idea that the disciples were deliberately lying about the resurrection.

As a final witness, let us consider the testimony of Tertullian. Tertullian's testimony to the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul and the attempted martyrdom of John has curiously been relatively untouched by skeptics of the persecution of the early Christians. Since Tertullian was writing right at the start of the 3rd century, I take it that most skeptics think that he is just too late to be trusted. Nevertheless, I think that something can be said in defense of Tertullian's testimony. While it's true that Tertullian is writing at the dawn of the 3rd century, he was born in the middle of the 2nd century, so he would have had access to plenty of sources which date to well before the time at which he was writing. And Tertullian plausibly identifies his sources for us. At the very least, he points us to other sources which corroborate his testimony. And what he tells us is striking. Tertullian tells us in no uncertain terms that official Roman records preserve the deaths of Peter and Paul. Indeed, so confident is Tertullian in the truth of this that he invites anyone who is skeptical of his testimony to consult those official Roman records. As Tadra remarks, "Tertullian carefully buttressed his argument by an appeal to history and to the imperial documents should his heretical adversaries refused to believe the witness of the Acts of the Apostles." The historical sources to which Tertullian referred his foes were likely to have encompassed Tacitus and Suetonius, both of whom had mentioned Nero's persecution of the Christians in their histories of the early emperors. The *instrumenta* designated the totality of the legislation which had been passed and the imperial edicts or rescripts which had been promulgated against the Christians from the time of the first persecution of the church under Nero till Tertullian's own time. And McDow adds, "Tertullian is so confident of his claims that he tells his doubters to examine the archives of the empire. If there were no such public records, Tertullian would have automatically undermined his credibility." His appeal to them indicates his confidence that they existed and if examined would corroborate his testimony. Therefore, Tertullian was likely relying upon even earlier public records about the Neronian persecution and the fate of Peter and Paul. This is really quite an astounding statement from Tertullian. It seems unlikely that he would invent this idea and then invite skeptics to fact-check him on it. But the alternative is that the Romans really did keep the executions of Peter and Paul on record. It is truly amazing to me that Christian apologists have not made more out of this statement from Tertullian. It is equally amazing to me that skeptics have said almost nothing to address it.

Hansen briefly addresses Tertullian but tries to discredit him on the grounds that he allegedly contradicts Irenaeus and is therefore unreliable. Hansen explains, "The first clear references to Peter being in Rome come from Irenaeus, Tertullian, and the Acts of Peter, all occurring in the late 2nd century from highly fictive accounts and well past the time when recent scholars have hypothesized that an Ironian mythos had developed among early Christians. Notably, however, these very same texts contradict their own traditions on several counts, including Peter's presence in Rome and the supposed bishop's succession. For instance, Tertullian claims that Clement was directly ordained by Peter to succeed him, while Irenaeus claims that Clement was the third after Peter. As such, it is apparent that none of these sources has any direct knowledge or documentation on what occurred there."

Now, even if Hansen were to be right that there was a genuine contradiction between Irenaeus and Tertullian here, it would not follow that neither of them is correct. The law of non-contradiction states that two contradictory statements cannot both be true, not that neither can be true. This is a common tactic among skeptics against, for example, the Gospels. Skeptics will claim that because the Gospels contradict, none of them can be getting the story right. But even if such contradictions are present, it remains possible that at least one of them is getting it right. Hansen is just following in this long line of fallacious argumentation by suggesting that if one source has to be wrong, then they all have to be wrong. More to the point, Hansen is just factually wrong about a contradiction existing between Irenaeus and Tertullian. The relevant quotation from Tertullian says, "Whom, as having been appointed to their episcopal places by apostles, they regard as transmitters of the apostolic seed." Here, Tertullian is just saying that both Clement and Polycarp continued the apostolic tradition in writing. So contrary to Hansen's assumption, Tertullian is not attempting to give a chronology of the bishops.

But what if, despite everything I have said, the witnesses to persecution are just inventing the idea that the apostles died as martyrs as an apologetic? In other words, surely the Petristics would know that inventing the idea that the apostles died for their beliefs would have increased the credibility of their testimony. So we can think of an easy motivation for them to just make up the idea that the apostles were willing to die as martyrs. It is interesting to note that with the exception of Tertullian, the Petristics simply never use these traditions in the same way in which modern apologists do. Whereas contemporary apologists make much of the martyrdoms of the apostles as evidence for their sincerity, ancient apologists really don't. These stories aren't presented as part of a cumulative case for the truth of the resurrection. Instead, the resurrection tends to be defended in other ways, chiefly by the claim that it fulfills Old Testament prophecy. As Brandt Petri observes, "Nowadays writers often like to point out how many of Jesus's disciples were willing to suffer and die for their faith in the resurrection. Peter and Paul, for example, were both executed by the Roman authorities. One by being crucified upside down and the other by being decapitated as witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus. Intriguingly, however, that's not the kind of proof we find in the New Testament. The writers of the New Testament do not go to great lengths to explain why it's reasonable to trust the claims of Peter or James or John or Matthew or Paul or Mary Magdalene or more than 500 disciples to whom Jesus reportedly appeared alive. Instead, the writers of the New Testament point repeatedly to the fact that Jesus's resurrection was the fulfillment of scripture."

Now I have highlighted what I regard as the best sources in support of the persecution of early Christians from within early Christian literature. There are many, many other sources, including the Ascension of Isaiah, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Acts of Peter, the Acts of Paul, the Apocrypha of James, Dionysius of Corinth, and the Muratorian Canon. I regard the value of these sources as being somewhat less than that of the others I have cited. This is mostly because these sources are anonymous or demonstrate legendary development and fantastic elements such as, for example, milk rather than blood pouring out of Paul when he was beheaded according to the Acts of Paul. While the historical value of these sources is limited, if they do represent legendary development, then presumably they had to develop from a historical core, which at a minimum would likely have included the martyrdoms of the apostles. Without at least that, it remains unclear what the legends would have developed from. As Brian Litfin says, "Before these apostolic adventures were collected and set down as unified narratives, they circulated widely in the churches and also among the Gnostics as individual stories in both oral and written forms. Because of this, scholars believe that they might preserve some actual historical information. Though Christian memories and traditions from the first century were expanded by later legends, a historical core often remains. Therefore, these texts cannot be considered pure fiction."

But the evidence for the persecution of the early Christians is hardly limited to Christian sources alone, for it is also well attested within the writings of the ancient Roman historians. The clearest examples here are Tacitus and Suetonius, both of whom describe an extensive persecution and slaughter of Christians under the emperor Nero. As Tacitus put it, "Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations called Christians by the populace. Christ, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate. And a most mischievous superstition thus checked for the moment again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths: covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt to serve as the nightly illumination when daylight had expired."

On its face, this looks like case closed. One of Rome's most important historians appears to clearly describe persecution against Christians by the emperor Nero. And since Tacitus, as well as Suetonius, were not Christians, we can be confident that they didn't make this up in order to serve some sort of Christian apologetic agenda. As Wolf Ram Kinszig observes, "Emperor Nero is in Christian tradition regarded as the first pagan persecutor of the new religion. Two texts are of particular importance here. The Roman historian Tacitus describes a persecution of Christians that followed the devastating fire of Rome in the year 64. His account is perhaps based on a lost history of Nero's reign from the pen of the emperor's confidant Marcus Cluvius Rufus. Christians were condemned to death and subjected to elaborate modes of execution of which Tacitus explicitly disapproves even though he harbored no other sympathies for the Christians. Executions of Christians because of a new-fangled and nefarious superstition are also mentioned by the historian Suetonius, a younger contemporary of Tacitus, although he does not insert a link with the fire of Rome. Even if we cannot therefore say with certainty to what extent the anti-Christian measures in Rome related to the fire that laid waste to large parts of the capital. Nevertheless, there is little doubt about the program that was conducted in the city under Nero's watch and resulted in fatal casualties." Despite their complete lack of sympathy for the Christians, it is noticeable that neither of these two historians appear to have any concrete allegations against them. They take for granted that the superstition of the Christ followers is as such inherently punishable because the Romans had executed the founder of this sect as a criminal. In other words, those who refused to renounce Christianity under torture, but instead confessed, "I am Christian," made themselves culpable of a unique crime that was punishable by death.

But as with the other examples we have explored, some skeptics are not willing to allow this evidence either. Brent Shaw has recently spearheaded skepticism regarding the historicity of the Neronian persecution. Shaw doesn't believe that there is any reason to believe that Nero ever persecuted Christians at all. As he explains, "A conventional certainty is that the first state-driven persecution of Christians happened in the reign of Nero and that it involved the deaths of Peter and Paul and the mass execution of Christians in the aftermath of the great fire of July 64 CE. The simple argument of this essay, deliberately framed as a provocative hypothesis, is that this event never happened and that there are compelling reasons to doubt that it should have any place either in the history of Christian martyrdom or in the history of the early church." And obviously Moss and Hansen are fully on board with Shaw's thesis here. As such, I must take some space to critique how these individuals have responded to the evidence of Tacitus.

Moss gives us the most brief explanation of the general objection. Her basic argument turns on the idea that the term "Christian" would not have existed in AD 64. As she explains, "According to the Roman historian Tacitus, the people of Rome blamed Nero for the fire, and Nero in turn deflected responsibility onto the Christians. In Roman biographies of the emperors, Nero is well known for his temper and cruelty. But this does not mean that this story is completely believable. We need to exercise some caution when it comes to dealing with Tacitus. Tacitus's Annals dates to 115 to 120, at least 50 years after the event he describes. His use of the term Christian is somewhat anachronistic. It's highly unlikely that at the time the great fire occurred anyone recognized Jesus followers as a distinct and separate group. Jesus followers themselves do not appear to have begun using the name Christian until at the earliest, the very end of the first century. If followers of Jesus weren't even identified as Christians, it's highly improbable that Christians were well-known and disliked enough that Nero could single them out as scapegoats. It seems more likely that Tacitus's discussion of the events in Rome around the time of the fire reflect his own situation around 115. Tacitus is evidence for a growing popular animosity towards Christians in the second century. But he does not provide evidence for their persecution in the first."

But this is really quite inadequate. In the first place, her point about the Annals dating to 50 years after the event is hardly significant given the paucity of evidence which has survived from the ancient world until today. 50 years is actually relatively close to the events. Our earliest sources for ancient events often date to centuries after the events. 50 years is still within living memory of the great fire and the events which followed from it. Her point about the term "Christian" not existing yet is spurious, as is her inference from the term not existing to the conclusion that therefore there was no concept of Jesus followers as a distinct group of people. It is questionable that the term "Christian" did not yet exist. If one favors an early date for the book of Acts, as I do, then Acts would supply evidence that the term "Christian" was in use around the time of the great fire. Even if Acts is dated somewhat later, Christopher Jones argues that it still may supply evidence for earlier usage of the term "Christian." As he explains, "It can certainly be conceded that Luke-Acts was composed in the later first century, whether or not by someone who was a companion of Paul in his later voyages. But the difficulty of characterizing and dating the author is not a reason to suppose him ill-informed about the circumstances of early Christianity. Other arguments have to be adduced if his testimony is to be impugned." Also, if one accepts the authenticity of First Peter as I do, then this supplies further evidence for the early use of the term "Christian." And finally, one might even use Tacitus himself to argue for this. Why think that Tacitus' use of the term "Christian" is anachronistic rather than that it simply supplies evidence that the term was used far earlier than Moss seems to think. Regardless, it is not even necessary for the term "Christian" to be in use in order for followers of Jesus to have been recognized as a distinct group of people. Tacitus clearly believes that they were recognized as such at the time of Nero, and Moss has not supplied us with any reason to believe otherwise. Certainly, they were recognizable enough for Paul to address the book of Romans to the Christian community in Rome.

In reply to this point, Hansen has written, "While people internal to the Jesus movement may have been able to identify each other, having intimate knowledge of their small group, this does not mean that external persons would be able to do so." But this appears to be classic burden-shifting on Hansen's part. The context of the dialectic is that Shaw, Moss, and Hansen are arguing for the fairly radical thesis that the Neronian persecution never occurred at all. Tacitus provides the most compelling evidence against their position. Their response to this evidence has been to claim that there wouldn't have been a distinctly recognized group of Christians to persecute since the term "Christian" wouldn't have existed yet. The rejoinder here has been that even if this is true, it doesn't mean that they could not have been recognized as a distinct group, as Tacitus says. For Hansen to reply at this point by saying that they might not have been recognizable from the outside is just to appeal to a bare possibility. Remember, this is the skeptic's argument. Hansen is the one claiming that Christians wouldn't have been recognized as a distinct group. That is the very reason why Moss called Tacitus' testimony into question in the first place. Hansen, by defending Moss, seems to have forgotten that it is the skeptics who have the burden of proof here. They need to show why Tacitus should be dismissed on the grounds that Christians would not have been recognized as a distinct religious group. To just say that it's possible that they might not have been recognized appears to be a blatant attempt to shift the burden of proof onto the defender of historicity.

Speaking of Chris Hansen, Hansen has authored two articles addressing this passage from Tacitus. These are "The Problem of Annals 15.44 on the Pliny Origin of Tacitus's Information on Christians" and "The Number of the Myth: A Defense of the A-historicity of the Neronian Persecution." Both address the evidence of Tacitus at some length. The former article is more or less an extended attempt to determine where Tacitus got his information about Christians. An unfortunate feature of Hansen's article is the assumption present throughout that Tacitus must have had only one source. I think Hansen presents compelling reasons to think that Pliny may well have been one of Tacitus's sources for certain statements such as that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate. But this is surely compatible with Tacitus having other sources. And whatever may be true of his knowledge of Jesus and his crucifixion, Pliny is surely not the source for Tacitus's information regarding the Neronian persecution of Christians. And since that is what presently interests us, nothing much follows from simply granting the basic thesis of Hansen's first paper.

Hansen goes on to speculate in the second paper that Tacitus embellished what he gleaned from Pliny, saying, "I contend that Tacitus is in fact inventing the narrative by utilizing an unconnected mythos of persecution which Pliny had recorded during his interrogations of Christians and merging it with the great fire accounts, as doing so allows Tacitus a keen rhetorical advantage in both satirizing Nero, which he frequently does throughout his work, and then also in taking aim at a disliked superstition. The event portrays Nero effectively as cowardly and dastardly, choosing to try and deflect rumors of his involvement in the conflagration."

onto a disliked antisocial group. As a result, the event as described by Tacitus is entirely invented by merging independent stories. This accounts for why no other Roman historian knows of this event and why Christians also do not refer to it for the next two and a half centuries.

This is an entertaining story which Hansen has spun. But we need some indication that it is true if it is to rise to the level of a serious historical hypothesis. The primary evidence which Hansen presents for it is its absence of mention in other sources. As Hansen argues, Shaw's suggestion does still remain the better alternative since there are no Roman historians aside from Tacitus who clearly know of such a connection and no Christian text refers to such a connection until century later as well. A silence most conspicuous.

Only Tacitus attests to any fatalities directly and this in connection to the great fire of Rome which no other sources attest until centuries after Tacitus was writing and probably on the basis of him as well. This is of course a lousy argument from silence on the problems with such arguments. See my video were the gospels originally anonymous? But leaving this aside, why is the better explanation for a historical report that it is fabricated rather than historical just because it is uncorroborated?

Certainly corroboration increases the likelihood that an event actually occurred. But this does not imply that the inverse is true. A single mention is not necessarily indicative of fabrication as Hansen would have us believe. It might be that most historians who mention the great fire don't mention the persecution of Christians because they don't want to allow a possible scapegoat for Nero. John Pini suggests as much saying, "I do not agree with Shaw's major premise that it is most unlikely that Christians were specifically targeted as arsonists, but that they instead suffered punishment or rather persecution for their faith."

Tacitus notes that Christians were punished for arson, but carefully and skillfully leads us to deduce that the real culprit was indeed Nero. In my opinion, the reason that the other elite post-Neerian authors omit reference to early Christianized Jews in connection with the confflration is that they were intent upon laying the blame for it at the feet of the tyrannical Nero rather than the new heretical Jewish sect. But while we're making arguments from silence, it seems to me that there is a far more potent argument from silence against Hansen's story. Namely, that no sources are critical of Tacitus for fabricating this great persecution against Christians. This seems to me far more surprising than that other historians should fail to mention the persecution of Christians in connection with the great fire. And then there is just a more general inductive argument against the idea that Tacitus invented the Neonian persecution, namely his general track record of accuracy. While he writes with a heavy bias, Tacitus is generally considered among the most reliable Roman historians.

John F. Drinkwater is widely regarded as one of the world's leading authorities on the emperor Nero. In his scholarly book on Nero, he expresses skepticism regarding the plausibility of Tacitus being this careless with his information, saying, "A more recent alternative is that Tacitus retrojected growing concern at the spread of Christianity around 100 into events of the 60s. This is however to underestimate Tacitus' capacity for personal research evidenced in both the histories and the annals. Though his culture and education encouraged him to treat his material rhetorically and morally, he was no dispassionate historian. This never drew him into outright invention. If we accept Tacitus's rediscovery of a forgotten historical fact that the Neonian administration had accused a group of residents in Rome of setting the great fire and punished them accordingly, we should also accept his identification of these as Christians.

As for the other half of Hansen's claim that no Christian sources mention the Neonian persecution until quite late, this argument can only stand if one assumes that none of the references in Christian literature to persecution are referring to the Neonian persecution. But that's precisely what Hansen is supposed to be establishing. Hence, this argument looks rather circular. True, Nero is not directly mentioned by name in sources like Clement and Ignatius, but this is because there would have been no need to mention him. They are not trying to give a narrative about how Peter and Paul died. It's assumed that their readers are close enough to the events to know the details. But it does not follow from this that their statements about Peter and Paul's death do not take the backdrop of the Neonian persecution for granted.

And I would like to further draw our attention to a fact which I have never yet seen any skeptic of the Neonian persecution address in any detail. This comes from the observation that the book of Revelation indirectly identifies Emperor Nero as a persecutor of the Christian church. It does so in a thinly veiled manner by labeling Nero as the beast. For example, Revelation 13:7 says that the beast made war with the saints and overcame them, a clear reference to violent persecution. How do we know that the beast is to be identified with Emperor Nero? Well, the answer is to be found in the study of numerology. The book of Revelation tells us that the number of the beast is 666. Now, ancient numbering systems used an alpha numeric method. This is true of the Latin system, for example, that is still used today. Greek and Hebrew follow a similar method where each letter of each alphabet also represents a number. The first nine letters represent 1-9 and the 10th letter represents 10 with the 19th letter representing 100 and so on and so forth. Because the book of Revelation is written in a Hebrew context by a Jew, we can determine who is being identified as the beast by deciphering the meaning of 666 using the Hebrew alpha numeric method. Here is where things become interesting. When the name Nero Caesar is transliterated from Latin into Hebrew, it is seen that a Hebrew spelling of Nero's name provides us with precisely the value of 666. What does this mean? It means that the author of Revelation is subtly telling his readers that Nero is the beast.

As Eric Varnner puts it in early Christian authors, the tradition of Nero's persecution of Christians as perpetrators of the great fire of 64 is also directly linked with the emerging notion of the emperor as an antichrist. The book of Revelation, whose author identifies himself as John was likely composed toward the end of the first century CE and so within a generation of Nero's death. The work assigned to Nero a prophetic and apocalyptic role as a multi-headed beast identified by the number 666 who has been healed from a deadly wound and will take over the world. John asks the reader who has intelligence to calculate the number of the beast and the number of his name and using well-known tenets of numerology Nero Caesar equals 666. That this is so also accounts for a rather famous textual variant in the book of revelation. Revelation is notorious for the fact that certain ancient Greek manuscripts of revelation give the number of the beast as being 616 instead of 666. Why might this be? Well, it turns out that given the Latin alpha numeric system, the name Nero Caesar is equivalent to 616. Apparently, certain copists of Revelation didn't want Latin speakers to miss the point that Nero was the beast. The upshot here is that Revelation provides us with another early source affirming that Nero persecuted Christians. How much earlier is Revelation than Tacitus? I find myself sympathetic to the arguments of Kenneth Gentry in his book before Jerusalem fell which suggests that revelation was written prior to 70 AD. If Gentry is right then revelation provides a contemporary or near contemporary source. But even if we accept more mainstream dating for revelation sometime in the mid90s AD, this still places it around 20 years prior to Tacitus. The main point here is just that Tacitus does not stand alone in affirming that Nero persecuted Christians.

Whatever may be said about the quality of the New Testament evidence, the Pauline evidence or the petristic evidence for the persecution of the early Christians, the attack on Tacitus must be judged to be most pitiful. Indeed, the evidence would appear overwhelmingly clear that Nero did indeed persecute Christians. So to wrap this section up, the evidence for the early persecution of the church is strong and the evidence for the martyrdoms of some of the apostles, notably Peter and Paul, is considerable. Skeptics are right to correct many of the overstatements which have been made by careless Christian apologists over the years. But I have emphasized the fact that one does not need the apostles to have actually been killed for their belief in the resurrection in order to acquire evidence for their sincerity. For this, one only needs a general context of persecution against Christians. Furthermore, I have argued that Peter and Paul at least did indeed die as martyrs. Herbert Workman concludes the matter rather well, saying, "The truth, as is generally the case, lies between the two extremes. We may dismiss at once the incredible legends in which the medieval church delighted. accuracy in figures is but a modern foil. But with equal justice may we claim as an exaggeration the idea that the penal laws against the Christians were not put into force save at certain rare and infrequent intervals. The Christians were always liable to persecution and death. The smoldering fires of popular hatred or official zeal might break out against them at any moment."

Now, it's not uncommon for counterapps to respond to the case I have been making by objecting that people can indeed die for lies. A favorite example here is radical Islamic suicide bombers who likewise demonstrate a willingness to die for their faith. But clearly that doesn't make Islam true. As Candid Amos puts it, this argument is more persuasive to Christians than to non-Christians. After all, people will die for a lot of things, and in the ancient world, this included country, city, virginity, religion, and relatives. This does not automatically make their actions correct or their causes just.

Now, I think that this is a good response to the careless, but unfortunately often repeated claim by Christian apologists that no one would ever die for a lie. Plainly, that is not true. But I would make two points by way of response. In the first place, while it is easy to find examples of people who unwittingly die for a lie, it is considerably more difficult to find examples of people who both willingly and knowingly die for a lie. In the case of the apostles, we are talking about people who are in a position to know whether or not what they are saying is a lie. Since they are the source with which belief in Jesus's resurrection originated, they would surely know whether or not they were lying. And in this respect, they are different than suicide bombers who are not in a comparable position to know the truth or falsity of their religious beliefs. As Timothy and Lydia Mcgru observe, it is sometimes urged that kamicazi pilots, suicide bombers, and Nazis were willing to give their lives for what they believed was true. The objection may be put more broadly. Virtually every religion has its ceous adherence who have been willing to die for what they believe. Why then should the willingness of the apostles to die as martyrs be of special epistemic interest? The answer is that this description blurs the distinction between the willingness to die for an ideology and the willingness to die in attestation of an empirical fact. It is clear that neither kamicazis, Nazis, nor suicide bombers died to affirm the reality of something that they had seen with their eyes and their hands had handled. Thus, their deaths and the falsehood of some of their beliefs tell us nothing about the probability that a man will die to make an affirmation like that of the apostles when it is in fact false.

Second, my argument for the resurrection does not conclude that the resurrection really happened just because the apostles wouldn't die for a lie. I explicitly leave open the possibility of the apostles being honestly mistaken even if they weren't lying. I am utilizing the persecution and martyrdom of the early church to rule out the notion that the apostles were lying about the resurrection. They were sincere and cases like that of suicide bombers which are supposed to be a counterex example to this claim actually support it. Suicide bombers presumably are willing to die for their causes because they sincerely believe in them. It's just that they are honestly mistaken. And the same point applies to the apostles. It could be that they were honestly mistaken about the resurrection, but their willingness to die for this belief is absolutely evidence for the sincerity of that belief. Mike Lacona makes this point quite well saying the disciples willingness to suffer and die for their beliefs indicates that they certainly regarded those beliefs as true. The case is strong that they did not willfully lie about the appearances of the risen Jesus. Liars make poor martyrs. No one questions the sincerity of the Muslim terrorist who blows himself up in a public place or the Buddhist monk who burns himself alive as a political protest. Extreme acts do not validate the truth of their beliefs, but their willingness to die indicates that they are sincerely convinced of the truth of their beliefs. Moreover, there is an important difference between the martyed apostles and those who die for their beliefs today. Modern martyrs act solely out of their trust in beliefs passed along to them by others. The apostles died for holding to their own testimony that they had personally seen the risen Jesus. Contemporary martyrs die for what they believed to be true. The disciples of Jesus suffered and were willing to die for what they knew to be either true or false.

But perhaps all of this misses the point. Perhaps the skeptic can grant that some of the apostles, like Peter and Paul, sincerely believed in the resurrection and were willing to die for it. But what about the others? True, persistence in the face of a general context of persecution might indicate sincerity, but how can we know that the vast majority of the apostles really did persist in the faith? Do we really know that they did after the closing of the book of Acts? Dale Allison expresses skepticism on this front, saying, "The apologetical literature again and again a vows that since the twel apostles and Paul gave their lives for their religious cause, or at least endured public scorn, persecution, and physical hardships, they must have been absolutely sincere in their beliefs. That is, they must have truly believed that God raised Jesus from the dead." I concur, as would most, that at least four of the witnesses in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, Peter, Paul, James the brother of Jesus, and James of Zebedee, one of the 12 were martyed. I disagree, however, that we have much if any knowledge about the rest. Even were we to suppose, as I do not, that Matthew authored the Gospel of Matthew, that John the son of Zebedee gave us the fourth Gospel, and that Simon Peter uttered every word Acts attributes to him, and furthermore wrote first and second Peter, we still have nothing firsthand from three4s of the 12. Where do these people speak for themselves? And how can anyone know that all of them would have wholeheartedly agreed without qualification with everything others wrote about them under the rubric the 12. We in truth know next to nothing about most of these characters who are little more than names. Even we're one recklessly to imagine that Acts gives us nothing save unmbellished history. The 12 disappear after Acts 6. So, we know no more about most of their pos lives than we know about their deaths.

Two points can be raised in response to Allison's criticism. First, we may be content to rest the case for the resurrection on just those witnesses whose testimony we do possess. The sincerity of Bartholomew or of Simon the Zealot need not be doing any work in making the case for the resurrection. So it is irrelevant that we know almost nothing about these individuals. One can argue that the witnesses which we do have Peter, Paul, Matthew, and John are of sufficient number and quality to sustain a rational belief in the resurrection given their sincerity and given that they're being honestly mistaken can be ruled out. Four credible eyewitnesses to the resurrected Jesus is actually quite good.

Second, one may challenge Allison's claim that we know next to nothing about the continued faithfulness of the other disciples. While it must be admitted that we know little to nothing about some of the apostles after the book of Acts closes, I think we can know quite a bit more about some of them than Allison indicates. Contrary to Allison's claim, the 12 do not simply disappear from history after Act 6. There is evidence that they remained active within the Christian community. Papius of Heropoulos writing possibly as early as the 90s AD and who was himself a disciple of the apostle John tells us if then anyone came who had been a follower of the elders. I questioned him in regard to the words of the elders. what Andrew or what Peter said or what was said by Philillip or by Thomas or by James or by John or by Matthew or by any other of the disciples of the Lord and what things arison and the presporter John the disciples of the Lord say. What can we learn from Papius's words here? Well, we can learn that in addition to Peter, John, and Matthew, who Allison seems willing to grant, Andrew, Philip, and Thomas remained active within the Christian community. At a minimum, they were active enough to have followers of their own who were willing to share the teachings of these disciples with Papius. And in context, Papius is describing his methodology by which he learned of Jesus's teachings. So minimally we know from Papius that Andrew, Philip and Thomas were teaching about Jesus and were active enough in doing so to acrue followers of their own. This indicates that they held positions of some notoriety within the church which of course would have made them targets for Roman persecution. Hence their faithfulness in the face of the threat of persecution supplies evidence for the sincerity of their belief. This alone boosts our percentage from Allison's one quarter of the 12 who are known to have remained faithful to half who are known to have remained faithful. If, as I have argued, Axe is to be trusted, then James the son of Zebedee remained faithful until his execution by Herod. The evidence is somewhat more sparse in the case of Bartholomew and Thaddius. But even here, we are not left completely in the dark. According to Hippolitus on the twel apostles, both Bartholomew and Thaddius accompanied Thomas in spreading the gospel to India. India in the Roman world was just a vague term used for the lands east of the Roman Empire. As Litin explains, the strongest line of tradition connects Bartholomew like doubting Thomas and Judas Thaddius with missionary work in India. The ancient Romans were vague in their description of eastern geography. The term India could cover a lot of territory. It sometimes referred to the Parthion or Persian Empire which included regions that are today in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran. In other words, Bartholomew tends to be associated with the Syrian and Persian peoples east of the Roman Empire. These lands are not far from Armenia where other legends soon developed around the person of Bartholomew. However, as with Thomas, we cannot be certain that Bartholomew's evangelistic work reached as far as the modern nation of India. Granted, the historical value of Hippolitus is questionable since he was writing well into the 3 century and some scholars dispute the authenticity of this work in any case. But still, Allison's statement that these apostles simply disappear from the historical record is misleading. It's not as though we have no information about them, and the information which we do have indicates that they remained faithful. This would raise the number of apostles who remained faithful despite the threat of death to nine of the 11. It is unfortunately nearly impossible to know anything with confidence about James, the son of Alfa. This is not because the early church didn't talk about him, but rather because they clearly confuse and conflate him with James, the brother of Jesus, and James, the son of Zebedee. This makes parsing out which references actually refer to him virtually impossible. Simon the Zealot truly does seem to disappear after Acts 6. Passing references to him place him in every corner of the Roman Empire, making it difficult to say which, if any, of them is correct. But even conceding that we really can't say anything with confidence about these last two disciples, the evidence is strong that at least seven of the 11 disciples remained faithful in spite of persecution. And if we choose to give Hippolitus the benefit of the doubt, then this number swells to nine of the 11 disciples remaining faithful in spite of persecution.

Despite his pessimism, Allison does admit to feeling some force in this argument from martyrdom. However, he insists that this gets the apologist very little mileage. As he explains, "Despite my caution in the previous paragraphs, it still seems that the argument from sincerity carries some force for at least Peter, James the son of Zebedee, Paul, and James the brother of Jesus." At the same time, this popular argument from character has scamp payoff. The argument from sincere belief only negates the long discarded theory of RmIrez, who envisaged Jesus's inner circle clandestinely stealing his body and inventing a religion for their own gain. It takes us no further than that. And yet, this is all the argument from persecution and martyrdom is intended to accomplish, at least when it is deployed by thoughtful apologists. No serious defender of the resurrection thinks that one can automatically infer the reality of Jesus's resurrection from the bare fact that the disciples sincerely believed it. The possibility of there being honestly mistaken must also be addressed. This argument is intended to clear away one avenue by which the skeptic might try to explain away the testimony for Jesus's resurrection. And despite his labeling the argument for martyrdom as tenuous, Allison ends up admitting that it is successful in accomplishing exactly what it is intended to do.

This video has surveyed the evidence for the persecution of the early church and for the historicity of the martyrdoms of at least Peter and Paul. And I have explained how this fits into an overarching case for the resurrection of Jesus. I have stressed that apologists need to be careful about overstating the case. Much of the evidence for the martyrdoms of the apostles is late in legendary. I have emphasized that establishing persecution in martyrdom does not by itself establish the resurrection of Jesus. It merely supplies evidence for the sincerity of the principal witnesses. And I have further made clear that one does not actually need to establish the historicity of the martyrdoms of any of the apostles in order to acquire evidence for their sincerity. The willingness of the apostles to hold fast to their belief in Jesus's resurrection in the face of the reality of Roman persecution is sufficient to establish this. I have also argued that martyrdoms are historically probable for at least some of the apostles. Lastly, I have fairly extensively engaged modern skeptics who are critical of the case for the persecution of early Christians and attempted to show that their objections do not succeed.

In previous videos, I have argued against the thesis that the four canonical gospels were anonymous, and I have argued in favor of the traditional ascriptions of authorship to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I have argued that there are good reasons to believe that these documents and the book of Acts are historically reliable. I have also established the historicity of the persecution of the earliest Christians. Furthermore, I have dispelled philosophical objections to the rationality of belief in miracles. All of the parts are now in place to construct a case for the pivotal event upon which the whole of the Christian faith stands or falls, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In this video, I will explain the structure of my case for Jesus's resurrection and how it differs from the currently more popular minimal facts argument for Jesus's resurrection. I will then formalize the argument and defend those points that have not been defended in previous videos. I will then proceed to examine the case against the resurrection of Jesus as profered by several modern skeptics. I will show why these objections either fail against my case or else fail on their own terms. The conclusion will be that the historical evidence strongly supports the reality of the resurrection of Jesus. I apologize in advance if the early portions of this video feel like I am just connecting the dots, glossing over controversial issues, and then referring viewers to my other videos for details. My preceding videos have been deliberately crafted to preemptively support the most critical and controversial premises of my argument for the resurrection so that I would not have to get bogged down thoroughly defending every point in this video. I promise viewers that once I begin engaging skeptics in the latter three quarters of this video, I will return to my usual painstakingly thorough routine. My earlier videos exist so that I can streamline my basic argument for the resurrection here without getting hung up defending each premise.

In contemporary Christian apologetics, there are broadly two different ways of defending the resurrection of Jesus which reflect two different ways in which Christian apologists approach the gospels. We can refer to these different approaches as minimalism and maximalism. If you are at all familiar with contemporary Christian apologetics, then you are probably more familiar with minimalism. This basic approach is utilized by resurrection apologists such as William Lane Craig, Gary Hobbermas, and Michael Lacona. I realize that Craig has rejected the minimalist label elsewhere, but as I will be using the term throughout this video, Craig definitely qualifies. I will explain where Craig differs from the traditional minimal facts approach where appropriate, but in broad strokes, Craig's resurrection argument depends upon the same basic methodology. Minimalism is characterized by two key commitments. The first is a desire to avoid controversial assumptions or premises within an argument for the resurrection. The second is an attitude of differentialism to experts in the field of New Testament studies. The resulting defenses of the resurrection begin by attempting to locate a small number of facts that are or are supposed to be uncontroversial among New Testament scholars and then attempt to show that the resurrection of Jesus is the best explanation of those facts. Perhaps the most familiar example of this is Gary Hobbermaz's minimal facts argument for the resurrection. As he explains in his recent tome on the subject, for five decades, my contention has been that at the end of Jesus's life, there is a significant body of evidence data that specialist scholars of almost every religious and philosophical persuasion who publish on these areas recognize as being historical. The chief reason for this widespread agreement among scholars on the historicity of each of these facts is the excellent attesting support that each has in its favor, usually from a variety of historical and other considerations. What are the prerequisites for an occurrence to be designated as a minimal fact? From the outset of my studies on the death and resurrection of Jesus, my thesis has been that there are at least two major requirements for an occurrence to be designated in this manner. Each of these events must be established by an abundance of strong evidences, usually by multiple critically ascertained independent lines of historical argumentation. In addition, the vast majority of published contemporary scholars with credentials in relevant fields of study have to acknowledge the historicity of the event.

As I noted before, minimalism reflects a particular approach to the gospels. Since minimalism is committed to only using facts which are uncontroversial, it cannot directly utilize the stories recounted in the gospels as trustworthy historical reportage because this is simply not accepted by the overwhelming majority of New Testament scholars. For the most part, contemporary New Testament scholarship views the Gospels as late anonymous and largely legendary stories about Jesus. However, scholars do for the most part believe that there are historical nuggets contained within the gospels which can be mined out by using what are called the criteria of authenticity. As William Lane Craig explains, now if we do adopt a position of neutrality when approaching the gospels, how do we move beyond neutrality to the affirmation that some event is actually historical? scholars have developed a number of so-called criteria of authenticity to enable us to do that. The criteria are really signs of historical credibility. A story in the gospels exhibiting one of the signs is all things being equal more likely to be historical than it would have been without them. Andrew Lok adds, "Nevertheless, the process of sifting through the four gospels to determine which events attributed to Jesus can be traced back to the Jesus of history faces various difficulties. To address these difficulties, historians have devised various criteria for determining authenticity such as the criterion of multiple attestation, the criterion of embarrassment, and the criterion of dissimilarity. And Habermas further says, "Recent critical scholars tend to apply various analytical principles to the New Testament text to ascertain which individual portions have the highest likelihood of providing legitimate historical insights. Implementing the standards can isolate portions of the text providing the separate insights. The textual criteria of authenticity are the rules that support the likelihood of particular sayings or events in history. In this case, from the life of Jesus.

To be clear, not all minimalists agree that the gospels actually are a mixture of truth and embellishment. Michael Lacona seems to accept this general thesis saying like everyone who has ever lived the evangelists and their sources had imperfect memories. The evangelists were biased. Their agenda was to provide us with a literary portrait of Jesus. The gospels are not entirely portraits. Neither are they entirely photographs. They contain elements of both photograph and portrait. Perhaps it would be more accurate to think of them as hybrids. And elsewhere, the historical accuracy of ancient literature may be viewed in a manner similar to what we observe in movie theaters today. Some movies claim at the beginning to be based on true events, while others claim to be inspired by true events. The latter will involve more dramatic license than the former. Even in the former, however, we expect reenacted conversations to be redacted to varying degrees for clarity, dramatic impact, and artistic improvement. Other minimalists like Hob and Craig seem to personally believe in doctrines like biblical inherency for theological reasons but are just granting the mainstream position for the sake of argument. Either way, minimalist apologists begin by agreeing to abide by the mainstream playbook, even if they themselves do not necessarily agree that the gospels are late, anonymous, or contain fabrications. And so by applying the criteria of authenticity, they try to argue that we can show that enough of the details in the gospels and in Paul are historically factual to make an inference to the resurrection as the best explanation. Which exact facts can be shown to be historical varies depending on who you ask. For example, a minimalist like William Lane Craig thinks that Jesus's empty tomb is critical to the case for the resurrection of Jesus and can be shown to be authentic using the criteria of authenticity, even though it does not have sufficient scholarly support to qualify as one of Gary Hobbermas's minimal facts. On the other hand, minimalists like Mike Lacona, at least in some contexts, try to make the case for the resurrection without making any reference to the empty tomb. Because again, the empty tomb doesn't enjoy the wide scholarly support that other facts might have. As Lacona explains, the empty tomb doesn't enjoy the nearly unanimous majority agreement of others, nor is the majority who grants the empty tomb composed of a significant number of scholars from numerous theological persuasions. I do not believe we have enough here to warrant including the empty tomb as part of our historical bedrock since it does not qualify as historical bedrock. I will refrain from employing it in a resurrection hypothesis.

Despite these sorts of disagreements among minimalists, they all share the same basic approach. Assume, at least for the sake of argument, that the gospels are not trustworthy. Try to dig out what facts you can, either by reference to the criteria of authenticity or by reference to broad scholarly agreement, and then try to show that Jesus's resurrection is the best explanation of those facts. As Hobmas puts it, the minimal facts approach has the advantage of potentially indicating that Jesus's resurrection occurred even if the New Testament texts are thought to be unreliable. Lacona adds, "We will approach the Gospels with methodological neutrality, that is with neither approval nor skepticism. Claims made of a particular text bear the burden of proof. Accordingly, neither claims of divine inspiration nor general trustworthiness will play any part in our investigation.

Maximalism, by contrast, rejects this whole peacemeal approach to the gospels and to history in general. It asks why we should care what the majority of scholars agree upon so long as we have good evidence to support what we believe. Rather than attempting to dig out a few facts from the gospels which scholars are willing to accept, it takes as a premise the thesis that the gospels present a faithful account of what the original followers of Jesus actually said. It's important to see that maximalism is not saying that everything which the gospels say is necessarily true. It's just saying that the gospels are at least accurate statements of what Jesus's earliest followers actually claimed. As Lydia Mcgru puts it, it is my firm contention that it is not possible to provide a strong argument for the bodily resurrection of Jesus without being prepared to defend the proposition that the gospel accounts of Jesus's resurrection are unmbellished, reliable accounts of at least what the initial puditive witnesses claimed. This distinction is important since certain critics of maximalism such as Paulia are prone to claiming that maximalism is a simple appeal to for the Bible tells me so as though the reasoning were as simple as this. One, whatever the gospels say is true. Two, the Gospels say that Jesus rose from the dead. Three, therefore, Jesus rose from the dead. Habermas too has been guilty of misunderstanding maximalism in this way saying the chief concern regards how these arguments are commonly employed. Some authors might proceed from the conclusion of general textual reliability to particular often major theological conclusions. Thus, after the initial conclusion is reached concerning particular indications that certain authors or texts are trustworthy writings, the researcher may move immediately to several central Christian beliefs. The chief problem is that a generally reliable book does not even necessarily or automatically ensure every report between its covers. On the contrary, though, maximalism is more subtle. The argument only asserts the premise that the gospels are accurate reflections of what Jesus's earliest followers were claiming. It leaves the truth of those claims an open question to be settled by consideration of additional premises. Nor is it the case that this premise is unjustified. for maximalists are prepared to offer strong arguments to support the authenticity of the gospels. As Jake O'Connell explains, first we begin by looking at the Bible just as we would any other historical document by using the same criteria we would use for any other historical document. Considering issues of authorship, date, and confirmation from other sources, we establish that certain portions of the Bible are historical. In some cases, perhaps the whole book, in some cases, perhaps only specific passages within the book. And Lydia Mcgru adds, "Multiple lines of evidence, including undesigned coincidences, external confirmations, and the lesserk known arguments from unexplained illusions, unnecessary details, reconcilable variation, and unique personalities show us the historical intention of the authors as well as their success in getting the facts right. External confirmations also support these conclusions. There is a hefty empirical case that the gospels are mirrors of Jesus rather than literary masks. Given that the gospels are authentic reflections of the testimony of the disciples, a trillemma emerges. Either the testimony reporting the resurrection of Jesus is deliberately false, honestly mistaken or it is true. The maximalist then attempts to show that these first two possibilities are not credible, thereby leaving us with the third possibility that the testimony is true. And if the testimony bearing on the resurrection of Jesus is true, then the resurrection really happened. And if the resurrection really happened, then we have excellent reason to believe in the truth of Christianity.

While this survey of minimalism and maximalism has been overly brief, I hope that by now viewers have a reasonably clear grasp of these two different ways of defending the resurrection of Jesus. But why is all of this relevant? Well, the reason is that my case for the resurrection falls solidly within the maximalist camp. And when I consider objections to the resurrection in the latter portion of this video, the distinction between these two methods of defending the resurrection of Jesus will become important. This is because maximalism is simply not subject to many of these objections in the first place and because it can handle the other objections far better than minimalism. As such, I think that it is important for viewers to have a firm understanding of how minimalism differs from maximalism from the start. Hence, I implore viewers not to disregard this portion of the video. It will turn out to be highly relevant later on. While it is not the purpose of this video to bash minimalism, it is also a simple fact that minimalism is currently the far more popular method of defending Jesus's resurrection among contemporary Christian apologists. As such, it is likely to be the only defense of Jesus's resurrection which many of my viewers have ever encountered. This video thus functions not just as a defense of Jesus's resurrection, but also to some viewers a wholly new way of doing so. So for that reason, I believe it is worth spending a little time motivating the maximalist case over against the minimalist case.

The label maximalism has unfortunately led to some confusion. It is sometimes thought that the maximalist must utilize all of the available evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. But the term simply denotes a refusal to introduce any sort of arbitrary restriction such as wide scholarly agreement on the facts which may be used to make the case. In other words, maximalists are not willing to exclusively tie themselves to a certain body of facts. any fact, regardless of how widely acknowledged it may be, is allowed. There are several advantages to maximalism over minimalism. Maximalism does not concede valuable ground to the skeptic by allowing the skeptic to assume that the gospels are unreliable and it is not vulnerable to the possibility that the tides of contemporary scholarly opinion may change thereby changing the facts to which one can appeal. Habermas himself, oddly enough, seems to think that his argument could still be made even if the tides of scholarly consensus were to turn against him, saying, "If the case for historicity already has been resolved, this is an independent conclusion that stands regardless of whether any particular headcount of scholars agrees. It is well known that scholarly acclamation frequently changes and even irudite opinions may be mistaken. In such a case, the minimal facts argument would miss the nearly unanimous agreement on the data by scholars, but it would still have the more crucial factual portion of the argument on its side, assuming the plethora of evidence remains the same. But as a basic definitional matter, Havmas is plainly wrong that in this situation, the argument would remain the minimal facts argument. By his own lights, wide scholarly agreement is a necessary condition for a fact to qualify as a minimal fact. He has said over and over again in our minimal facts approach we only consider content that is considered historical by virtually all who study the subject. What are the prerequisites for an occurrence to be designated as a minimal fact? The vast majority of published contemporary scholars with credentials in relevant fields of study have to acknowledge the historicity of the event and almost all critical scholars who explore this subject agree that these are a minimal amount of knowable historical facts. Hence, if scholarly opinion were to turn against him, while he could still argue that the resurrection is the best explanation for this same set of facts, by definition, it would no longer be the minimal facts argument.

Leaving terminological considerations aside, this move also makes very pressing the question of why Habermas feels that it is important to tie himself to the whims of contemporary scholarship in the first place. If he is going to appeal to the same facts regardless of whether or not most scholars agree upon them, then why only appeal to these facts at all? Why not appeal to any facts which are well evidenced regardless of how widely acknowledged they may be? The answer surely seems to be that Hobbermas places evidential weight in scholarly consensus. To be sure, he doesn't think that this is the only source of evidence, but in certain passages, he definitely appears to think that scholarly consensus increases the likelihood that a proposition is true or that a fact is real. He will deny this when directly asked, yet other statements of his on the matter seem conclusive. For example, later within the very same chapter where he claims the scholarly consensus isn't evidential in and of itself, we find Habermas asking, "How can these moves be made with many cases being affirmed strongly by researchers who usually distrust the gospels along with many other New Testament books, especially when many additional instances in scholars could be provided something similar similar to man's statements must be the case that well-ec data often reside in texts still thought to be biased elsewhere he says critical scholars agree with these data precisely because they are well supported on factual grounds often for multiple reasons these statements are clear-cut is absolutely placing epistemic weight in scholarly consensus this. The assumption is that if most scholars accept it, then they must have good reasons for doing so. This is of course a terrible assumption. Most scholars in general and biblical scholars in particular are not immune from social influences like social contagion, peer pressure, conformity, and compliance. that most scholars accept a fact is not an independent reason to believe that they are correct. As Mike Lacona himself admits, historians are prone neither to give much attention to epistemology nor to justifying their methods. And Robert Stewart adds, "The minimal facts method requires that we exclude many propositions that are very well justified simply because only a clear majority as opposed to the vast majority of scholars affirm them. But justification is not something that is dependent upon being believed by anyone. Propositions are justified or unjustified even if nobody believes them." Responsible belief is based on justification, not vice versa. This is an apparent problem for the minimal facts method.

Consider these statements from Mike Lacona. A consensus opinion can be valuable for recognizing objectivity when the group is composed of scholars from all interested camps. And these scholars span a very wide range of theological and philosophical convictions and include atheists, agnostics, Jews, and Christians who made their abode at both ends of the theological spectrum and everywhere in between. We therefore have the heterogeneity we desire in a consensus. And this gives us confidence that our horizons will not lead us completely astray. Commenting on this passage in a review of Lacona's book, we find Hobbermas saying, "Lacona makes an insightful comment here regarding guarding against our own horizons. We must beware of our own imported biases as well. When discussing the minimal facts, I have always purposely included notes at each juncture that list representative numbers of skeptics of various stripes who still affirm the data in question. This is a significant methodological procedure that serves more than one purpose among others. It assures the readers that they are not being asked to accept something that only conservatives believe or that is only recognized by those who believe in the veracity of the New Testament text and so on. After all, this sort of widespread recognition and approval is the very thing that our stated method requires. Again, we see both Habermas and Lacona placing epistemic weight in scholarly consensus here. The stated reason for this requirement mentioned by Lacona and reinforced by Habmas is that scholarly consensus is needed to guard us against our own biases. In other words, if we didn't have scholarly consensus, then we couldn't be sure that our biases aren't clouding our judgment. Despite Habermas's and to a lesser extent Lacona's protests that it is really just the evidence that matters, these quotations show us that this is not really true. They do think that scholarly consensus provides further epistemic support because they think that it guards against personal bias. Lydia Mcgru correctly counters this position of difference to modern scholarship by saying, "Apparently the answer to the question of why we don't bestow such terms on the basis of the strength of the evidence alone is this. Doing so isn't guarding enough against our own biases. If that is a correct way to approach things, shouldn't you then be afraid that if you think the arguments for something are very strong, but the heterogenous consensus doesn't support it, you are being too moved by your own biases and should therefore correct your too high confidence in the proposition. This is one of the things I mean by conflating sociology and epistemology. I am referring to giving what I consider to be gravely undue weight to purely sociological considerations. The bestowal of a term of apparent epistemic appribation such as known historical facts or historical bedrock is being held hostage to a purely contingent sociological factor. whether or not a certain varied consensus obtains concerning that fact. And that's being done on the grounds that otherwise we'd be too likely to be personally biased.

Minimal facts apologists also prioritize the proximity of a source to an event far more than the credibility of the source. This is one reason why they are so fixated upon 1 Corinthians 15 and more dubious about using the gospels. As Gary Hobbermas explains, in general, early sources and other evidences are strongly preferred over later data. While greater intervening differences are allowed, especially in ancient history, even the difference of a decade or two can be decisive with application to the historical Jesus. Any material written between AD30 and 50 would be regarded as being especially exemplary. reports from such an early time frame would actually predate the written form of

The four canonical gospels, or any other such writings for that matter. A celebrated instance is the early pre-Pauline list of Jesus's resurrection appearances that the Apostle Paul delivers to his readers in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8. The consensus critical position is that Paul very probably received at least the material on which this early tradition is based, and more likely the creed itself, in the early to mid-30s. Mike Lacona adds Paul could have received the traditions encapsulated in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 in Damascus after his conversion experience. He could have received it three years later when he spent time with Peter in Jerusalem, or 14 years later when he visited again with the Jerusalem leadership.

Although it is impossible to know when Paul received it and from whom, what can be said is that the traditions about Jesus's resurrection embedded in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 predate Paul's founding of the church in Corinth in AD 51, and could go back to the very earliest period of the post-Easter church. And elsewhere he writes, "Virtually all who study first-century Christianity admit that Paul is the earliest known author to comment on the resurrection of Jesus. Accordingly, his views on what happened to Jesus after his crucifixion carry a great amount of weight." And again, "Paul is very important because he is our earliest written source that mentions the resurrection of Jesus. Since the writings of Paul are almost universally agreed to predate the gospels, proponents of the minimal facts approach assume that they are automatically more valuable. I think that this is a mistake. While I will suggest later in this video that at least some of the gospels were written far earlier than is commonly supposed, even predating some of Paul's writings, I ultimately care a lot more about who the information is coming from than I do how close it is to the events. Specifically, I care about how well-positioned the source is to know the truth of what they are reporting. For that reason, I would prefer a firsthand account written 30 years after an event to an eleventh-hand account from the very next day. For the same reason, because I affirm the traditional authorship of the Gospels, I prefer the Gospels, even if they were written decades later, over the creed in 1 Corinthians 15, even though it might date to within months of the resurrection, because I am not at all sure where it comes from. Obviously, these issues are not completely unrelated. The sources need to have been written early enough to have been written by people who were close to the events. But this nevertheless marks a significant difference between my maximalist case for the resurrection and the minimal facts approach. I prioritize the position and knowledgeability of my sources over the date at which they were written."

Maximalism is immune to the newer developments in historical Jesus studies which call into question the usefulness of the criteria of authenticity. As Anthony Leiddon puts it in the introduction to an important book criticizing the traditional criteria of authenticity, "almost all contemporary Jesus historians who employ the traditional authenticity criteria do so with repeated reservations and qualifications." One can hardly blame historians for establishing rules for the road or aiming towards historiographical rigor. But as the reservations about these traditional criteria become greater, and as the qualifications offered by their adherents become more pronounced, it must be asked whether these traditional methods are poorly founded or perhaps should be abandoned altogether. In this way, the authors of this book think it is time to rethink the traditional quest for authenticity from the ground up.

Minimalist resurrection arguments, especially that of William Lane Craig, are critically dependent upon the utility of the traditional criteria of authenticity. As Craig has clearly said, "if an apologetic based on the claims of Christ is to work, we must do the requisite spade work of sorting out those claims of Jesus that can be established as authentic and then drawing out their implications. This will involve not only mastering Greek but also the methods of modern criticism and the criteria of authenticity." But as these criteria become more obsolete, so too do arguments which depend upon them, such is the risk of tethering one's resurrection argument too closely to the ever-shifting winds of popular opinion within New Testament studies. By contrast, such developments can never challenge a maximalist case for the resurrection since maximalism does not insist upon a self-imposed limitation according to which the only acceptable facts are the ones which enjoy broad scholarly support.

Still more concerning is the fact that the criteria of authenticity work on the assumption that the gospels are largely mythical. That is why they exist. To use them to make one's case for the resurrection implicitly allows the skeptic to continue understanding the gospels as mostly untrustworthy sources. As Raphael Lannister points out, "Craig relies on the criteria of authenticity, tools used by Jesus researchers to discover the nuggets of truth buried within the legendary material of the biblical texts in order to determine what it is that Jesus really said and did. This is already something of a counterintuitive development as these are tools constructed and used by critical scholars who already reject the Christ of faith that Craig believes in, which work on the premise that the New Testament is filled with mythical embellishments." Even if the resurrection could be established by using the criteria of authenticity, it remains unclear how the minimalist apologist will be able to move from the resurrection happening to the truth of robust Christian theism. All that has been established is that a bunch of likely unreliable documents contain enough nuggets of historical information to infer that Jesus rose from the dead. As McGrew puts it, "the criteriological approach is designed to support only specific passages rather than a document as a whole. If one uses these criteria as an aid to establishing minimal facts while explicitly issuing any intention to argue that the whole documents are reliable and represent authentic apostolic testimony, then something like a question will understandably remain about any segments that have not been individually authenticated."

Even more importantly, maximalism allows the apologist the necessary background information to be able to make sense of the resurrection and its meaning. Suppose for the moment that the bodily resurrection of Jesus genuinely was the best explanation of the minimal facts, a conclusion which I will call into question presently. Taken with the idea that the gospels are not generally trustworthy, something which minimalists seem willing to grant, at least for the sake of argument, it's very difficult to see what we should make of the fact that Jesus rose from the dead. Suppose that King Ferdinand II of Aragon were to return to life tomorrow. This fact might be interesting, but we should hardly be able to conclude that he was God or that there were any important religious implications flowing from this. We would be utterly unable to know what to make of this event. Miracles in isolation are ambiguous. One needs access to the context of the miracle in order to make sense of it. But by granting the skeptic the basic unreliability of the gospels, the proponent of minimalism also cuts off their ability to make any sort of sense out of what the resurrection means, even if they can establish that it happened. Without the context of Jesus's divine claims and his prediction of his resurrection as a divine vindication of those claims, the resurrection of Jesus is as ambiguous as the hypothetical resurrection of King Ferdinand tomorrow. By using the gospels as holistic sources of information, maximalism avoids this problem. It makes it very easy to see the theological significance of the resurrection because it allows the gospels to contextualize this event.

Lydia McGrew rightly says, "I do not wish to say that the minimal facts approach is valueless by any means, and its widespread use may be in part a result of the fact that it provides a straightforward template for a debate format. However, I do want to say that it is incomplete, and that its heavy promotion and near exclusive use in Christian apologetic circles can perhaps unintentionally give an unfortunate misimpression. That misimpression is that we cannot establish the high reliability of the gospels and or Acts by neutral historical means, and therefore we ought to issue any argument that involves relying on a premise of reliability. A corollary error is that we cannot neutrally establish that the resurrection accounts in the gospels and in Acts came from the apostles themselves rather than being in whole or in part later additions by those who are not in a position to know what really happened or what the apostles claimed. But most significantly of all, it is much clearer that a maximalist argument supports the bodily resurrection of Jesus as having actually occurred. Minimalism is vulnerable to the charge that the bodily resurrection of Jesus is not in fact the best explanation of the minimal facts once it is clear how little is truly granted by the vast majority of scholars. In other words, the minimal facts are probably too minimal to get you to the bodily resurrection of Jesus. This becomes especially clear when one grasps how thin a conception of a resurrection appearance most scholars are willing to acknowledge that the disciples experienced. Unfortunately, when apologists like Gary Habermas and Mike Lacona state that most scholars believe that there were post-mortem appearances of Jesus, the average churchgoer tends to assume that most scholars are granting that there were appearances of Jesus like those described in the Gospels. This is simply not true and it is misleading to state this without significant qualifications."

Stephen T. Davis asks the right question, saying, "Suppose that the witnesses to the resurrection did as claimed, see the risen Jesus. What kind of seeing was this? Was it a normal or abnormal seeing? Was the thing that they saw, that is Jesus's risen body, a material object like a tree or a house or another human body? Were the perceptual processes that were at work in seeing Jesus normal?" I don't think that most enthusiasts about the minimal facts argument realize that most scholars do not in fact think that this was a normal visual perception of a physical object. As Gerald O'Collins points out, "most New Testament scholars would be reluctant to assert that the risen Christ became present in such a way that neutral or even hostile spectators could have observed him in an ordinary physical fashion." For the most part, when New Testament scholars are saying there were appearances of Jesus, they are talking about something like visions or grief hallucinations. For example, Bart Ehrman says, "By vision, I simply mean something that is seen whether it is really there or not." And so if one is truly going to restrict the resurrection argument to just those facts which are granted by the overwhelming consensus of critical scholars, then one is only entitled to argue from these visionary or hallucinatory appearances of Jesus. But once this point has been firmly grasped, it becomes unclear why the bodily resurrection of Jesus is the best explanation. There is no reason to think that the disciples' belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus was rational if it was formed in response to these vague sorts of visionary experiences. Recall that the empty tomb is not a minimal fact according to Habermas and Lacona. Habermas and Lacona will pile on evidence to show that the disciples were sincere in their belief. But notice that the issue which I am raising regards the rationality of the disciples' belief in the resurrection, not the sincerity of it. All of the evidence in the world for the sincerity of the disciples' belief will do nothing to demonstrate the rationality of their belief. This is the essence of what has been called the bottleneck problem for the minimal facts argument. As McGrew explains, "I am saying here that even if the skeptic fully grants that the disciples firmly believed this, that has fairly limited force to support the conclusion that it really happened, absent more information about why they believed it. You cannot make up the deficiency there simply by providing more and more and more evidence that they believed it."

Maximalism on the other hand faces no such problem. This is because maximalism is allowed to make use of the details of the resurrection appearances provided in the gospels. And if these details accurately describe the experiences which the disciples had, then it is easy to see the rationality of their belief in the resurrection. Since the phenomenological character of these experiences of the risen Jesus would be just like that of any other veridical experience of a human being. There is no looming possibility that the experiences might have actually been like dreams or visions with respect to their phenomenological texture. As Timothy and Lydia McGrew say, "the accounts of the 11's encounters with Jesus are striking in a number of respects. And while in the context of this argument, we are not entitled on pain of circularity to assume that these accounts are true, we need to get clear in our minds what sort of claim is being made. First, the accounts of Jesus's appearances to the disciples are neither vague nor spiritualized, but rather circumstantial, empirical, and detailed. Not only do they purport to give a number of his statements, they also state expressly that he deliberately displayed empirical evidence that he was not a spirit, but rather a physical being. It was therefore a physical resurrection claim that the disciples made." William Lane Craig agrees that "every resurrection appearance narrated in the Gospels is a physical bodily appearance. All their separate sources of information agree that Jesus appeared physically and bodily to the disciples and other witnesses. There is no trace of non-physical appearances in the sources." A remarkable fact if all the appearances were really visionary as some critics would have us believe. But it remains unclear why Craig thinks that he can appeal to the resurrection appearances within the gospels since he has not shown that these stories or the details present within them meet any of the criteria of authenticity. The maximalist need not worry about this because the maximalist explicitly utilizes the gospels as holistic sources. However, the limitations which minimalists like Craig place upon themselves preclude them from making these sorts of appeals to the details within the resurrection accounts in the gospels. It is not just important to establish that the apostles genuinely believed in the resurrection but also that they were rational in doing so. If we are to be able to base our belief in the resurrection of Jesus on the apostles' belief in the resurrection, then it is absolutely critical that the apostles' belief in the resurrection was rational. In order for their belief to have been rational, their experiences of the risen Jesus would need to correspond to their belief in Jesus's bodily resurrection. And in order to establish this, we need to have details about what the resurrection appearances were like. In order to get those, we need the witness of the gospels.

As Lydia McGrew observes, "one particular concern is the nature of the appearances to the disciples treated as one of the minimal facts and the relationship between the details of the appearances in Jesus's bodily resurrection. Generally, this minimal fact is stated in minimal terms, such as that in some sense, the early followers of Jesus thought that they had seen the risen Jesus or that the disciples had experiences that led them to believe and proclaim that Jesus had been resurrected and had appeared to them. The limited wording and absence of detail are part and parcel of the method presumably in order to be able to claim widespread support across the scholarly spectrum. But if we cannot be at all sure that the accounts as given in the gospels and in the first chapter of Acts represent at least what the disciples claimed, the argument for the bodily resurrection of Jesus is considerably weakened. It is these details that give such tremendous force to the apostles' testimony and to their willingness to die for it. For it is from these details that we can conclude with confidence that they were not hallucinating, experiencing some sort of non-physical paranormal event, having visions, or merely mistaken. Yet, by no means will the vast majority of New Testament scholars admit that Jesus's close friends had these sorts of experiences. You can't get these sorts of details out of the creed in 1 Corinthians 15. You simply can't. And that's why you need the Gospels to establish not just that the disciples believed in the resurrection, but that they did so for good reasons."

As Eric Manning summarizes, "I'm not saying that the creed has no value whatsoever, but here's the big problem. What does the creed tell us about the nature of the appearances? Not much. The Gospels give us a walking, talking Jesus who eats with people and invites them to touch him, especially in Luke and John. The majority of scholars do not acknowledge those kinds of appearances. Rather, they explicitly deny them and label these stories as late embellishments. Vague and fleeting appearances aren't all that evidentially convincing. And a floating Jesus would not make us think Jesus rose from the dead rather than that they saw some kind of apparition. And that's the Achilles heel of the minimal facts argument. It is very difficult to evaluate the rationality of the disciples' beliefs when we aren't able to describe in detail their experiences. There's a lot we'd like to know that this simple creed doesn't give us. It wasn't meant to."

I can appreciate that proponents of the minimal facts approach are trying to appeal to premises which are uncontroversial in making their argument for the resurrection. After all, as a general rule, arguments which employ more widely accepted premises are more likely to persuade. But if the problems which I have raised for the minimal facts approach are decisive, then the resurrection apologist will simply have to accept that the case for the resurrection cannot be made by exclusively using uncontroversial premises. More foundational issues and disagreements will need to be addressed. And that is why I spent so much time laying the groundwork for this video in prior videos. A strong case can indeed be made for the resurrection, but most of the controversy will regard issues which are not directly related to the resurrection.

I understand that this section may have been upsetting for some viewers. After all, in a video dedicated to defending Jesus's resurrection, why am I starting off by attacking the most popular argument for this event? Perhaps some viewers share Gary Habermas's concern when he says, "In my opinion, raising objections on behalf of the unbeliever to the historicity of Jesus's resurrection, Jesus's view of God, his deity, or the truthfulness of Jesus's message is definitely not the way to argue against a fellow evangelical, even if we object to their methods. The response almost seems to me to be one of burning the message along with the messenger." But I want to be clear that I am not here raising any objections to the historicity of Jesus's resurrection. Rather, I am trying to draw our attention to some very important distinctions which will be absolutely critical when we turn to addressing objections to the case for the resurrection. It is crucial that viewers clearly understand how and why my resurrection argument differs from the minimal facts so that they understand why it is able to better handle the objections.

We are at long last in a position to erect the argument for the resurrection of Jesus. I would formulate the argument as follows:

1. There is testimony saying that Jesus was resurrected.

2. This testimony comes from credible sources.

3. There are only three logical possibilities with respect to credible testimony: It is true, it is deliberately false, or it is honestly mistaken.

4. The credible testimony for the resurrection of Jesus is not deliberately false.

5. The credible testimony for the resurrection of Jesus is not honestly mistaken.

6. Therefore, the credible testimony for the resurrection of Jesus is true.

7. If the credible testimony for the resurrection of Jesus is true, then Jesus was resurrected.

8. Therefore, Jesus was resurrected.

Premise 1 is, or at least should be, the least controversial premise within this argument. Surely, no one doubts that the four gospels do claim that Jesus rose from the dead, regardless of how they judge the truth of that claim. Premise 3 should also be fairly uncontroversial. After all, there are only two possibilities when it comes to the truth of any proposition: It is either true or false. And if it is false, then it can only be either intentionally false or unintentionally false. Hence, the third premise expresses a true trichotomy. Premise 7 is a tautology and is therefore true by definition. And premises 6 and 8 follow deductively from the preceding premises. Hence, the controversial premises are going to be premises 2, 4, and 5.

Arguably, premise 2 is the most controversial premise within the entire argument. It asserts that the testimony pertaining to the resurrection of Jesus in the four gospels is credible. By credible here, I mean that the sources of information originate with someone who is in a good position to know if some event happened, such as an eyewitness. The importance of this premise is that it disallows the skeptic from positing that the gospels represent the end of a long, evolving, legendary oral tradition. If the gospels come directly from eyewitnesses or their immediate followers, then this forces the skeptic into the trilemma stated in the third premise. As Brandt Peterson puts it, "Contrary to what some claim, two of the Gospels that report Jesus's appearances after the resurrection claim to be firsthand eyewitness testimony. The Gospel of Matthew records Jesus's appearance to the 11 disciples, which would of course include Matthew himself. And the Gospel of John records the appearance of Jesus to John the beloved disciple along with several other apostles while fishing in the Sea of Galilee. And that is to say nothing of the accounts contained in the Gospel of Luke, who describes the material in his gospel as also being based on the testimony of eyewitnesses from the beginning, though he does not name them." Of course, none of this means that you have to accept the truth of the accounts of Jesus's appearances. What it does mean is that there is no historical basis for claiming that there are no eyewitness accounts of the appearances of the risen Jesus. You can reject those accounts if you'd like, but you can't say that they don't exist. And Lydia McGrew adds, "The Gospels undeniably present themselves as true accounts of the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Without any need for a highly specific genre identification, one can say that the immediate impression one gets is that the evangelists intend to tell what really happened." I say that this is probably the most controversial premise within the argument because the overwhelming majority of New Testament scholars believe that the Gospels are late and anonymous and certainly were not authored by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Now, strictly speaking, the defender of this argument does not have to defend the traditional authorship of the four gospels if he can come up with another way to show that the gospels go back to credible witnesses. And various defenders of this general line of argument have thought of various ways to do this. However, the most straightforward approach to defending the second premise, and the approach that I prefer, is to simply show that premise 2 is true by demonstrating that the gospels were actually written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. As Timothy and Lydia McGrew explain, "If we take the account indicated by the external evidence at face value, we shall be essentially forced to concede two points. One, the first two gospels were written very early, well before AD 70. And two, they came either directly from Matthew or, one removed, Mark reporting what Peter had said, from independent eyewitnesses who had been Christ's own disciples." Fortunately, I have already made the case for traditional authorship at length in a previous video, so we need not dig into the details here. For those who are skeptical of the second premise of this argument, I invite them to consider the detailed case I offered in that video. But for the purposes of this video, I will take premise 2 to be defended. The next portion of this video then will primarily be concerned with defending premises four and five.

There is perhaps a different sort of objection which might be raised against the second premise which it will be worth briefly addressing. The skeptic could object that wholly aside from the issue of who wrote the gospels, we could not have credible testimony pertaining to the resurrection of Jesus for the simple reason that no one would have been in a position to know that it happened even if it did. In other words, the resurrection, if it actually occurred, was not directly witnessed by anyone. Now, this observation that no one witnessed the resurrection event is certainly true as far as it goes. Surely no one other than Jesus himself was inside the tomb for the actual event. Nevertheless, it does not follow from this that no one was in a position to know that Jesus rose from the dead. A person could perfectly well be in a position to know that Jesus rose from the dead simply by one, knowing that Jesus was dead at one time, and then two, knowing that Jesus was alive at a later time. These two items of knowledge together allow one to know that Jesus rose from the dead. So if one can know these two things, then they can be in a position to know that Jesus rose from the dead, even if they didn't directly witness the event of the resurrection. As Steven T. Davis puts it, "It is frequently pointed out that there were no witnesses in the tomb at the crucial moment and that therefore the resurrection itself was not observed. This is surely correct. Some go on to argue, however, that the resurrection was accordingly unobservable, that in principle it could not be observed by human beings, and that this is what rules out the possibility of Jesus's resurrection being an event in history. I only wish to point out two logical fallacies that are sometimes committed here: One, the inference from the fact that the moment of the resurrection inside the tomb was not humanly observed to the conclusion that it could not have been humanly observed, and two, the inference from the claim that the resurrection could not have been observed, if this is granted, to the conclusion that it is therefore not history." So given that this objection does not succeed, and given that I have already defended premise 2 in excruciating detail in a previous video, I am going to take premise 2 for granted. If premise 2 is true, then the skeptic is forced into the trilemma stated in premise 3. All I need to do for the remainder of this video then is to show that the testimony pertaining to Jesus's resurrection is neither deliberately false nor honestly mistaken. If those possibilities can be ruled out or shown to be sufficiently unlikely, then this will allow us to conclude that the testimony is true. And this in turn will entail that the resurrection actually occurred.

Against the idea that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were deliberately lying, two points can be made. First, it seems that they had nothing to gain by lying about this. There is no obvious benefit to be gained by deliberately misleading people into believing that Jesus had been resurrected. As Timothy and Lydia McGrew put it, "The prior probability of such a conspiracy in the specific context is not very high. It is hard to see what motive the disciples could have had for planning a conspiracy to convince others that Jesus had risen from the dead. Even before their own warnings from the Sanhedrin, after they began teaching that Jesus was risen and spreading the message of forgiveness through his name, they knew full well that such preaching was unlikely to gain them societal power, not counting the possibility of influence in a small and well-hated new sect, sexual gratification, wealth, or anything else of value to unscrupulous men, but rather persecution and death." Second, there appears to be every reason not to lie about something like this. The early Christians faced intense persecution at the hands of the Romans. Generally speaking, one of the strongest human instincts is self-preservation. If the disciples really believed that Jesus was resurrected and that this ensured them eternal life, then their willingness to die for this belief is easy to explain. On the other hand, if they were deliberately lying, it is very hard to explain their willingness to die. On balance, the evidence is strongly opposed to the idea that the witnesses to the resurrection were liars. Again, the McGrews observe, "Beginning on the day of Pentecost, the now 12 apostles engaged in behavior that virtually invited martyrdom, persisting in asserting that Jesus was risen in the face of known danger and explicit and escalating threats."

Now, there has been a recent series of criticisms objecting to the idea that any of the apostles actually did die as martyrs or that early Christians faced significant persecution. The most well-known critic here is Candida Moss in her book, *The Myth of Persecution*. However, we need not get bogged down here since I have already addressed Moss and other skeptics in considerable detail on this point in a previous video. Hence, skeptics of this premise are referred to that video for an extensive defense of the persecution and martyrdom of the apostles against the leading critics. Suffice it for now to say that the persecution of the early Christians is well-attested in Acts, the Gospels, the writings of Paul, the writings of the early church, and even in Roman sources like Tacitus and Suetonius.

Now, it is common for counter-apologists to respond to this point about persecution and martyrdom by insisting that people can indeed die for lies. A favorite example here is radical Islamic suicide bombers who likewise demonstrate a willingness to die for their faith. But clearly, that doesn't make Islam true. Now, I think that this is a good response to the careless but unfortunately often repeated claim by Christian apologists that no one would ever die for a lie. Plainly, that is not true. But I would make two points by way of response. In the first place, while it is easy to find examples of people who unwittingly die for a lie, it is considerably more difficult to find examples of people who willingly and knowingly die for a lie. In the case of the apostles, we are talking about people who are in a position to know whether or not what they are saying is a lie. Since they were the source with which the belief in Jesus's resurrection originated, they would surely know whether or not they were lying. And in this respect, they are different than suicide bombers who are not in a comparable position to know the truth or falsity of their religious beliefs. Second, notice that my argument for the resurrection does not conclude that the resurrection really happened just because the apostles wouldn't die for a lie. Premise 3 explicitly leaves open the possibility of the apostles being honestly mistaken even if they weren't lying. I am using persecution and martyrdom in support of the fourth premise, which merely rules out the apostles lying about the resurrection. They were sincere. In cases like that of suicide bombers, which are supposed to be a counterexample to this claim, actually support it. Suicide bombers presumably are willing to die for their causes because they sincerely believe in them. It's just that they are honestly mistaken. And the same point applies to the apostles. It could be that they were honestly mistaken about the resurrection. Premise 4 does not deny this. Premise 4 merely asserts that they were not lying, and their willingness to die for this belief is absolutely evidence for the truth of this premise. Mike Lacona makes this point quite well, saying, "The disciples' willingness to suffer and die for their beliefs indicates that they certainly regarded those beliefs as true. The case is strong that they did not willfully lie about the appearances of the risen Jesus. Liars make poor martyrs. No one questions the sincerity of the Muslim terrorist who blows himself up in a public place or the Buddhist monk who burns himself alive as a political protest. Extreme acts do not validate the truth of their beliefs, but their willingness to die indicates that they are sincerely convinced of the truth of their beliefs. Moreover, there is an important difference between the martyred apostles and those who die for their beliefs today. Modern martyrs act solely out of their trust in beliefs passed along to them by others. The apostles died for holding to their own testimony that they had personally seen the risen Jesus. Contemporary martyrs die for what they believe to be true. The disciples of Jesus suffered and were willing to die for what they knew to be either true or false."

The fifth premise in my argument says that the apostles' testimony attesting to the resurrection is not honestly mistaken. Unlike premise 4, defending this premise is a more complicated matter. This is because there are so many different ways in which a skeptic might suggest that the apostles were honestly mistaken. If they were not lying, then perhaps they were honestly mistaken as a result of purely psychological factors such as expectation, hallucination, groupthink, cognitive dissonance, or grief.

Against the thesis that the disciples were honestly mistaken on purely psychological grounds, there is already an immediate difficulty, namely the empty tomb. To the extent that we are going to posit that the disciples were honestly mistaken, then we must accept that they at least genuinely believed their own reports contained in the gospels. This means that we would have to accept their witness to the fact that Jesus's tomb was really empty. This physical evidence cannot be explained by a purely psychological hypothesis. As Jake O'Connell says, "If the tomb was not empty, the Christians could not have believed Jesus was raised from the dead." Now, there are several ways in which the apostles might have been honestly mistaken about the empty tomb. These would include the ideas that the apostles went to the wrong tomb, or that Jesus's body had been stolen or reburied by a third party. These hypotheses are insufficient in and of themselves to explain the resurrection appearances and subsequent belief in the resurrection, but they can be paired with psychological explanations to account for all of the relevant evidence. The difficulty is that neither of these explanations is independently particularly plausible. That absolutely everyone should have been mistaken about the location of the tomb is strange, credul. And that some third party would want to steal the body doesn't appear particularly likely, especially if we believe Matthew's account that guards were present at the tomb. I understand that most skeptics will wish to reject the guards as a later apologetic, but this becomes a challenge to premise 2, which asserts the credibility of the testimony pertaining to Jesus's resurrection. And I have already defended this premise. In the present context, we are assessing challenges to the apostolic witness on the assumption that it is honestly mistaken. So if Matthew is honestly mistaken about the resurrection and he is attempting to tell us the truth, then the presence of guards at the tomb cannot be explained away as being an apologetic invention. The main point here is just that the two major ways in which a skeptic might account for the empty tomb are already highly unlikely. And this unlikelihood will be compounded when paired with a psychological explanation to account for the apostles' experiences of the risen Jesus and their subsequent belief in his bodily resurrection.

So now we turn to the major ways in which one might account for the appearances of the risen Jesus in the gospels without thereby invoking the resurrection itself. While skeptics have appealed to various factors such as cognitive dissonance and groupthink, it's important to realize that these are only explanations for how the apostles might have come to believe in the resurrection. They do not account for the apostles' experiences of the risen Jesus as contained in the gospels. One can believe in something without an experience of it, and one can experience something without believing in it. Experience and belief, therefore, are different, and alternative explanations for how the disciples may have come to believe in the resurrection will not automatically explain how they could have come to experience the resurrected Jesus. Far and away the best option open to the skeptic here is to suggest that these experiences of the risen Jesus were grief hallucinations. But there are numerous well-known difficulties here. Probably the most important is that Jesus appears to groups of people within the gospels. Hallucinations, much like dreams, are private to the individuals who have them and cannot be shared between or among different people. Andrew Lok puts the basic worry this way: "A hallucination is understood in the present context as involving a sensory experience which occurs in the absence of corresponding external stimulation of the relevant sensory organ. It is unreasonable to think that a group of people perceived the same thing together at the same time when there is nothing there externally corresponding to their experiences. For without a corresponding external stimulation of the relevant sensory organ, the mental states internal to each person within the group would not agree on various details concerning their experience of the external world." Skeptics will sometimes suggest that there have been such things as group hallucinations, but it's important to realize that in these cases, we are not literally dealing with different people seeing the exact same thing or having the exact same visual experience. What we are dealing with is groups of people who are all having individual but similar hallucinations. As Jake O'Connell explains, "The hypothesis which we mean to designate by the term collective hallucinations is the hypothesis that people may, while in each other's presence, have very similar individual hallucinations, and that the hallucinations may be so similar that the precipitants may afterward believe they have seen the same thing. The hallucination is not transferred from one person's mind to another's. Each has his own hallucination in his own mind." Of course, the odds of two people just happening to have very similar hallucinations at the same time are astronomical. Can this account for the resurrection appearances in the Gospels? It seems unlikely since they involved Jesus doing very specific things like helping the disciples fish, eating with them, or inviting Thomas to touch him. Even if the apostles had group hallucinations of Jesus, it seems unlikely that they would all see him doing these exact things. Furthermore, most actual examples of so-called group hallucinations are actually cases of visual illusions rather than hallucinations. Again, Lok says, "cases which have been labeled as group hallucinations may have been cases of illusions, which is a case of misidentification." A recent study by Bergerson and Habermas concludes that collective hallucinations are not found in peer-reviewed medical literature. Moreover, the experiences of the risen Jesus were multi-sensory. They didn't just involve seeing Jesus. They also involved hearing him, talking to him, eating with him, and touching him. While it is possible to have auditory hallucinations, and probably even some sort of tactile or gustatory hallucinations, that is hallucinations involving feeling or tasting what isn't there, these sorts of hallucinations are much rarer than visual hallucinations. And the odds against them all coalescing around all of these individuals in exactly the same way are just astronomical. As Andrew Lo and Nick Meter observe, "one of the difficulties for the hallucination hypothesis is that multiple gospels attest that the disciples touched Jesus. If these were hallucinations, they would be exceptions to the rule. For example, Ree found that 2.7% of widows claimed that their dead spouse had touched them. Similarly, Grimby found 6% of spouses experience tactile hallucinations. Although some studies report slightly higher rates, such as Olen at 13%, median estimates across studies show tactile hallucinations are far less likely than other sensory modalities." Timothy [snorts] and Lydia McGrew add, "A third factor exasperates this problem. The hallucinations would have to be not only parallel but also integrated. According to the gospels, the risen Jesus interacted with his disciples in numerous ways, including eating food they gave him and cooking fish for them. In such contexts, the disciples were interacting not only with Jesus but with one another physically and verbally. The suggestion that their parallel polyodal hallucinations were seamlessly integrated is simply a non-starter, an event so improbable in natural terms that it would itself very nearly demand a supernatural explanation." What's more, group hallucinations typically occur among individuals who have some level of expectation or have been primed to have them. While one could argue that Jesus's predictions of his own resurrection caused such an expectation, in fact, the evidence within the Gospels suggests that the apostles expected nothing of the sort. The depictions of them there show them to be despondent and afraid that they will be killed next. What's more, even after Jesus appears to them, many are still said to doubt in Matthew 28:17. And then there is doubting Thomas, someone who most surely was not expecting Jesus to rise from the dead and who refused to do so until he could physically touch Jesus's wounds. The depictions of the apostles within the gospels don't portray them as being particularly susceptible to group hallucinations at the time at which their experiences of the risen Jesus occurred. As Lok says, "Given that hallucinations are caused incrementally, expectation is evidently a relevant factor. One issue is whether all the eyewitnesses already had prior belief that Jesus would rise from the dead. The historical evidence indicates otherwise. The resurrection appearances occurred to Paul and James, both of whom were unbelievers. Moreover, even among the 12, there were those who were initially doubtful." And then we might ask why these group hallucinations occurred abruptly 3 days after the crucifixion, conveniently coinciding with the discovery of the empty tomb, and then ended abruptly 40 days later. This is not typical of bereavement hallucinations, nor of group hallucinations. As Gary Habermas asks, "Why did the hallucination stop after just 40 days?" I understand that skeptics will want to say that these depictions of the apostles may be later and legendary or that the idea that the appearances ended abruptly after 40 days is legendary. But that returns us to a discussion of objections to premise 2. In the context of defending premise 5, we are assessing the plausibility of the idea that the testimony which the gospels relay about the resurrection appearances can be honestly mistaken. And from what we know about the nature of hallucinations, even group hallucinations, the resurrection appearances of Jesus in the Gospels do not appear to fit the bill.

A further difficulty with the appeal to hallucinations, which has not been appreciated by most skeptics or even by most apologists, is that the writers of the New Testament demonstrate a clear ability to delineate between veridical experiences and visions. The biblical authors have no problem saying that God spoke to people through visions, yet they don't include the resurrection appearances in this category. Were the disciples to have had hallucinations, they would have much more likely been like visions and interpreted as such. But their experiences of the risen Jesus don't appear to have been like that. As Lok points out, "the New Testament authors consistently refer to resurrection appearances as involving an external appearing in the real objective world. They distinguish this understanding of resurrection appearance from that of a vision, a term which they refer for subjective mental phenomenon." Now recall that the implausibility of hallucinations as an explanation is going to be exacerbated by the implausibility of the explanations for the empty tomb with which the hallucination theory must be conjoined in order to adequately explain all of the evidence. The result is that the most promising way to say that the apostles were honestly mistaken is highly improbable right out of the gate. As Craig reminds us, "the hallucination hypothesis seeks to account only for part of the evidence, namely the appearances, but it does nothing to account for the empty tomb. In order to explain the empty tomb, one must come up with another theory and join it with the hallucination hypothesis." And Habermas and Lacona add, "combinations of theories generally lead to higher improbability, not a more probable solution. If a combination theory is to be true, all of its sub-theories must be true. If one is not, then the theory fails to account adequately for all of the data. If one sub-theory fails, the combination fails."

Of course, there are other means of trying to explain how the disciples might have had a sincere but mistaken belief in Jesus's resurrection. These range from mass hysteria to cognitive dissonance. Steven H. Smith and Herman Phipe are examples of recent champions of these sorts of explanations. However, like the hallucination hypothesis itself, these psychological explanations are typically employed merely to explain the origin of the disciples' belief in the resurrection. Skeptics rarely if ever think that these sorts of explanations for the disciples' belief can also explain how the resurrection appearances as described in the gospels could be honestly mistaken reports from the eyewitnesses themselves. As Aaron Lucas, a skeptic himself, puts it, "If the disciples really did have extended, detailed, integrated, polyodal sightings of Jesus in which they all ate and lived together, then of course these appearances cannot be explained by something like a hallucination. But as far as I know, no advocate of the hallucination theory has ever seriously suggested that the appearances as described in the gospels are explained by hallucinations. Though to advocate a hallucination hypothesis, are using hallucinations to explain the minimal facts version of the appearances, not the maximal facts version." Since my resurrection argument is unapologetically a maximalist argument, it has the virtue of being able to bypass most of these psychological explanations for how sincere but false belief in the resurrection might have originated. Hallucinations are deeply implausible, and factors like mass hysteria, mass delusion, and cognitive dissonance lack the explanatory adequacy to explain the sorts of experiences which the gospel resurrection narratives describe.

There is one further hypothesis by which the skeptic could try to explain both the empty tomb and the resurrection appearances without combining hypotheses, without appealing to any psychological phenomenon, and without affirming the reality of the resurrection. This idea, commonly known as the swoon theory, asserts that Jesus never actually died on the cross. He only fainted or swooned on the cross and was then buried alive. Later, the coolness of the tomb revived him, and when his disciples saw him alive, they mistakenly believed that Jesus had risen from the dead. This hypothesis has few defenders these days due to the sheer number of implausible things which it implies. However, some Muslim apologists do defend it since the Quran plausibly commits them to it. So, for the sake of completeness, it will be worth briefly reviewing the problems with this idea. Right off the bat, it's incredibly difficult to take

Seriously, the suggestion that Jesus did not really die on the cross. Crucifixion was an absolutely brutal form of execution, and there is only one individual known to have survived. The Jewish historian Josephus tells us that after the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in AD 70, the Roman commander Titus had numerous Jews crucified. Three of these were friends of Josephus. Upon his request, Titus had these three individuals removed from their crosses, and they were immediately given medical attention. Even having undergone only a partial crucifixion and having been given immediate medical attention, two of these men died anyway. Thus, it is unthinkable that Jesus, who had undergone a full crucifixion and then was given no medical attention whatsoever for three days, should have survived.

As Gary Habermas explains, in spite of being given Rome's very best medical care available, only one of Josephus's friends survived even their shortened crucifixion; the other two died under the physician's hands. The point here is that besides this single case of a rescued crucifixion victim, we know of no other survivors of crucifixion in antiquity.

But if general considerations aren't enough, recall that John tells us that a spear was used to make sure that Jesus was dead prior to his removal from the cross. What exactly should be made of John's statement that both blood and water poured from his side is unclear, but this at least potentially indicates a ruptured heart, which would remove all doubt about Jesus's death. And as Habermas points out, ancient sources report that occasionally a final stroke to crucifixion victims guaranteed their deaths. The spear wound to Jesus's side is an example, with medical opinion concluding that the weapon punctured his heart, ensuring his death. Also, if Jesus had been alive and the spear had pierced his plural cavity, an obvious sucking sound would have alerted his executioners. And if it is difficult to believe that Jesus didn't really die on the cross, it is even more difficult to believe that if he hadn't, those who buried him wouldn't have noticed.

But by far, the biggest weakness in the swoon theory pertains to how Jesus, even if he had survived, should have been able to unwrap himself from the inside, push aside the stone in front of the tomb all by himself with nail-pierced hands, get past the guards unnoticed, walk to wherever his disciples were hiding on nail-pierced feet, and then somehow managed to convince them that he was the risen Lord of Life. That this story is utterly unbelievable is the chief reason why almost no one takes this theory seriously. The only exception here would be a handful of Muslim apologists, and their reason for doing so derives from their other religious commitments rather than the independent plausibility of the swoon theory.

While David Strauss's comments on this theory have probably been overused by apologists, they remain effective nonetheless. "It is impossible that a being who had stolen half dead out of the sepulchre, who crept about weak and ill and wanting medical treatment, could have given the disciples the impression that he was a conqueror over death and the grave, the prince of life." An impression that lay at the bottom of their future ministry.

Perhaps the skeptic will agree that none of the explanations for how the apostles might have been honestly mistaken is very probable. However, the improbability of these scenarios is simply dwarfed by the improbability of a miraculous event. So no matter how unlikely or contrived these explanations may seem, they remain better than positing a miracle.

As Larry Shapiro says, "Although what we learn through testimony might suffice to justify some beliefs, when the belief is about something as improbable as a miracle, it faces an especially hard burden. Not an impossible burden, but a burden that in the case of the miracles reported so far has not been met. If testimony is to justify your belief in an extremely improbable event, you need very good evidence that there's no better explanation for the testimony."

I have addressed arguments of this sort at length in my video defending the rationality of belief in miracles. There I showed why David Hume's version of this objection fails, and so do modern iterations thereof. Skeptics wishing to object on these grounds are referred to that video. But for the time being, suffice it to say that there is no good argument for assigning an infinite decimally small prior probability to the occurrence of a miracle. If a miracle explains a body of evidence far more easily than the most promising naturalistic hypothesis, then there is no reason whatsoever to refrain from inferring a miracle as the best explanation.

Some skeptics might suggest more extravagant naturalistic explanations to account for Jesus rising from the dead. Perhaps aliens did it with unknown technology. Or perhaps people do very rarely come back to life naturalistically. Or perhaps there is some other unknown but naturalistic explanation. In this way, we can account for Jesus rising from the dead without thereby inferring that a miracle has occurred.

Again, Larry Shapiro suggests such a move, saying, "I'm simply granting for now that Jesus really did die and then rose to life again." Into the hypothesis box goes God. But why stop with just this one hypothesis? Perhaps 17 gods work together to bring Jesus back to life. Or maybe a nearly omnipotent being, not quite as powerful as the Christian God, but darn close, brought Jesus back from the dead. Could aliens have restored Jesus's life? That's no worse a hypothesis than God. We might also consider the possibility that on very rare occasions, very, very rare, dead people simply come back to life as the result of natural causes. Why is God the best candidate and not 17 gods or aliens or unknown natural causes?

Similarly, Raphael Lataster suggests Jesus could have risen naturally by some unknown biological mechanism. After all, we do not yet have a complete understanding of the laws of nature. Jesus may have risen naturally through the intervention of some sympathetic and non-divine alien. Jesus might have possessed a rare or even unique mutated gene which gives rise to resurrections or apparent resurrections. In other words, the hypothesis that Jesus was resurrected fails to answer the "so what?" question concerning God's existence.

For the purposes of this video, I am actually willing to grant Shapiro's and Lataster's point. This video is not necessarily arguing that Jesus rising from the dead was a miraculous event. It is more narrowly focused on justifying the proposition that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead. Whether or not this event qualifies as a miracle requires further argumentation. I think that this case can be made rather easily, and it is significant that there is not, so far as I know, any non-Christian who actually believes that Jesus rose from the dead naturalistically.

As Timothy and Lydia McGrew observe, "The resurrection is also positively relevant to Christianity. On any construal of Christianity worth the name, the assertion that Jesus rose bodily and miraculously from the dead is one of its core assertions. It is fairly easy to see that the probability that Christianity is true is greater given that the resurrection of Jesus occurred than it is otherwise on our present background evidence."

And Andrew Loke adds, "Jesus predicted that his violent and imminent death would be followed shortly afterward by God's vindication of him via resurrection. The occurrence of Jesus's coming back to life 3 days after his death by crucifixion, together with this context, demands an explanation. It is contrived to think that this event, out of billions of deaths which have occurred, happened as a scientific anomaly and is associated by chance with a person's claim to be divine and/or with the person's prediction of it."

But since in this video I am solely trying to show that Jesus did rise from the dead, and these sorts of appeals to unknown naturalistic explanations tacitly assume that Jesus did rise, these sorts of explanations from Shapiro and Lataster are not actually in conflict with the basic thesis of this video. They are simply offering an alternative explanation for how Jesus rose from the dead rather than a rival theory which would suggest that Jesus did not rise from the dead.

We can now confidently say that there is abundant reason to believe that the testimony bearing on the resurrection of Jesus is neither deliberately false nor honestly mistaken. As noted in premise three, there are only three logical possibilities when it comes to credible testimony. It is either deliberately false, honestly mistaken, or it is true. And if those first two options have been eliminated, then that leaves us with the third, namely that the testimony declaring the reality of Jesus's resurrection is true. And this means that the resurrection really occurred.

This concludes the positive portion of my case for the resurrection of Jesus. Throughout the remainder of this video, I will examine what several skeptics and critics of the case for the resurrection have to say in reply by showing where their criticisms fall short. I hope that this will foster greater confidence in the positive case I have made for the resurrection.

Perhaps the most influential contemporary critic of the case for the resurrection of Jesus is the New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman. While once an evangelical himself, he has since abandoned the faith and become one of Christianity's more notable critics over the past couple of decades. As such, no discussion of contemporary objections to the case for the resurrection would be complete without a discussion of Ehrman's objections. Ehrman has debated on the subject of Jesus's resurrection many times, and he has also written much on the subject as well. While a thorough examination would doubtless interact with the full range of material which Ehrman has written on the subject, for our purposes in this video, it will suffice to examine the most lengthy and developed treatment of Ehrman's case against the resurrection as presented in his book, *How Jesus Became God*.

We can break Ehrman's case against believing in the resurrection into three basic objections. The first is that the resurrection, even if it occurred, cannot be known to have occurred via the historical method. The second is that the resurrection accounts in the gospels are too contradictory to be depended upon. And the third is that the resurrection requires an empty tomb, but there was almost certainly no empty tomb because Jesus was almost certainly never buried in a tomb.

Regarding my argument for the resurrection, Ehrman, like most of the other skeptics we will address, rejects the second premise, asserting the credibility of the gospels as sources. I have already addressed Ehrman's general objections on this front in considerable detail in my video on gospel authorship. Consequently, we need not rehash all of that here. Instead, we will focus upon Ehrman's three-part case specifically against the resurrection.

We turn first to Ehrman's claims that miracles like the resurrection lie outside of the range of what history can establish. As he says, "As a historian, I do not think we can show historically that Jesus was in fact raised from the dead. To be clear, I am not saying the opposite either, that historians can use the historical disciplines in order to demonstrate that Jesus was not raised from the dead. I argue that when it comes to miracles such as the resurrection, historical sciences simply are of no help in establishing exactly what happened."

This is a remarkable statement. We might wonder why Ehrman feels that the resurrection cannot be established by historical investigation. His answer is that historians are not allowed to make reference to miracles to explain things. As he says, "The first thing to stress is that everyone has presuppositions. So, let me stress that historians working as historians do indeed have presuppositions. On the other hand, some presuppositions are decidedly not at all appropriate for historians who want to establish what happened in the past, for presuppositions that the vast majority of us do not share. Historical reconstruction cannot be based on them. Anyone who has these presuppositions has to silence them, sit on them, or otherwise squelch them when engaging in their historical investigations. The belief that a Christian miracle happened in the past is rooted in a particular set of theological beliefs. Without such beliefs, miracles cannot be established as having happened. Since historians cannot assume these beliefs, they cannot demonstrate historically that such miracles happen."

So the reason why historians can't conclude that miracles have occurred according to Ehrman seems to be due to two considerations. The first is that historians are not allowed to adopt presuppositions which are not widely shared. And second, belief in miracles can only be accepted if one has presuppositions which are not widely shared.

The first point seems a bit odd. If all other historians suddenly came to believe in Jesus's resurrection tomorrow, would this somehow obligate Ehrman to accept the resurrection of Jesus? It seems odd that Ehrman should be forced to change his mind if he wants to continue being a historian based solely on the fact that everyone disagrees with him. Indeed, how is any progress to be made in history if everyone must simply constrain themselves to the presuppositions of most other historians? Ehrman's criterion here seems to make progress in historical investigation impossible.

But the real difficulty for Ehrman lies in his second consideration. Why think that one can only conclude that a miracle has occurred by presupposing religious beliefs? This is precisely the point which resurrection apologists are challenging. The whole argument is that the resurrection is the best explanation of the historical evidence which can be established strictly using the tools of history. It would seem that Ehrman is placing the cart before the horse here. He would need to first show that the historical argument for the resurrection fails before he could conclude that one can't infer that the resurrection happened without depending upon a theological presupposition.

It's possible that Ehrman is here expressing in a very inept way an objection to evidential apologetics popularized by Norman Geisler, according to which trying to establish a miracle without first establishing the existence of God is question-begging. As Geisler put it, "The historical method alone is inadequate to establish the truth of Christianity or any other worldview purely on the basis of history. For example, one cannot justifiably argue that the resuscitation of the corpse of Jesus of Nazareth, even if it could be established by historical evidence, is sufficient a ground on which to build the entire Christian worldview. It must be interpreted as a miracle, a supernatural event in order to accomplish this task. But it cannot be a supernatural event unless there is a supernatural being, God. And to assume the existence of such a being is the question, or to put it another way, one could not know that such an event was a special act of God without already knowing there was a God who could so act." So Geisler's thought was that God has to exist in order for miracles to be possible, and thus one has to establish that God exists before one can establish that a miracle has occurred.

If Ehrman has adopted this perspective, then it's easy to see why he would think that one has to hold a theological presupposition in order to infer that a miracle has occurred. Unfortunately for Ehrman, if this is his intended point, Geisler was simply wrong about one having to establish God's existence in order to establish a miracle. Geisler confused the order of being with the order of knowing. It is surely true that God has to exist in order for miracles to be possible. But this does not imply that we have to know that God exists in order to know that miracles are possible. Rather, as long as we know that God's existence is possible, it follows that miracles are also possible. The epistemic possibility of miracles must be considered so long as God's existence has not been conclusively disproven. If God might exist, then he might perform miracles. And if he did, then there is absolutely no reason whatsoever why we couldn't infer God as having been the cause of an event if that's the best explanation for it. Moreover, we can do so without presupposing that God exists. So Ehrman is just clearly and obviously wrong about this.

As Robert Moreland argues, "While it is true that once an event is described as a miracle, one commits oneself to the existence of God, this in no way prevents the event from functioning as evidence for God, since it is on the basis that theism provides the best explanation of the event that one is prepared to call it a miracle. To claim otherwise, is analogous to claiming that a corpse, the existence of which is best explained on the hypothesis of a murderer, cannot function as evidence for the existence of a murderer. True, once the corpse is described as a homicide victim, one commits to the existence of a murderer. But this scarcely implies that the corpse cannot function as evidence of a murderer. Analogously, the fact that an event is described as a miracle scarcely implies that it cannot function as evidence for God. There is, therefore, no logical reason why events best understood as acts of supernatural intervention by God cannot be taken as providing evidence for God."

And Mike Licona adds, "Ehrman confuses historical conclusions with their theological implications. Most would admit that if Jesus rose from the dead, God is probably the best candidate for the cause. Thus, for Ehrman, since God is a subject for theologians rather than historians, the entire exercise of investigating the historicity of Jesus's resurrection is illegitimate. But this is to do history backwards. Historians should approach their data neither presupposing nor a priori excluding the possibility of God's acting in raising Jesus."

But suppose that we allow Ehrman to stipulate that historians by definition cannot make reference to the miraculous, at least not in so far as they are doing historical investigation. Even if we arbitrarily restrict the scope of history to exclude investigations of the miraculous, that doesn't mean that we can't make a philosophical argument for the resurrection, which utilizes historical evidence to support the premises. So even granting Ehrman that miracles lie outside of the purview of the historian, this doesn't actually tell us anything about the knowability, justifiability, or probability that the resurrection occurred. The whole debate over whether or not historians are allowed to investigate miracles is kind of a red herring. For whether such examinations constitute the practice of studying history is merely a semantic question. However one decides to draw those lines, we can still investigate the miraculous whether or not we choose to stipulate that this investigation lies within the purview of doing history.

Philip Goff made this point quite nicely in his review of one of Bart Ehrman's debates with Mike Licona. "Rather than disputing the history, a lot of time was taken up arguing about whether it is possible for a historian, as a historian, to argue for a miracle. This seems to me a very silly thing to argue about. We could define the word historian however we wish. Surely the interesting question is what we have reason to believe."

Lastly, we can leave aside the question of whether or not the resurrection was a miracle entirely. We can surely establish that Jesus came back to life using the tools of historical inquiry. And this holds regardless of whether or not historians can identify the event as a miracle. As Licona puts it, "Historians must often leave the cause of an event unanswered. But this does not prohibit them from drawing historical conclusions. Historians are certain that Carloman died in AD 771, although they are uncertain whether his brother Charlemagne had him murdered or he died of natural causes. In a similar way, historians could conclude that Jesus rose from the dead without deciding on a cause for this event. They can answer the 'what' (what happened) without answering the 'how' (how it happened) or 'why' (why it happened)."

Ehrman himself actually even admits this, saying, "It is in theory possible even to say that Jesus was crucified and buried and then he was seen alive bodily afterward. A historian could in theory argue this point without appealing to divine causality. That is, without saying that God raised Jesus from the dead."

Turning now to Ehrman's second objection to believing in the resurrection. He contends that the resurrection narratives in the gospels are hopelessly contradictory, which for Ehrman casts doubt upon all of them. As he says, "We have already seen why the gospels are so problematic for historians who want to know what really happened. This is especially true for the gospel accounts of Jesus's resurrection. Are these the sorts of sources that historians would look for when examining a past event? Even apart from the fact that they were written 40 to 65 years after the facts by people who were not there to see these things happen, who are living in different parts of the world at different times and speaking different languages. Apart from all this, they are filled with discrepancies, some of which cannot be reconciled. In fact, the gospels disagree on nearly every detail in their resurrection narratives."

Now, before we critically examine Ehrman's putative examples of contradictions between the narratives, I must make a preliminary methodological point. That being that contradictions between accounts in peripheral details support their independence, which actually should increase our confidence in the truth of the events upon which they demonstrate agreement. As Mark Pearson reminds us, "Before we see if attempts at harmonization require as much fudging as Ehrman imagines, an important point regarding historiography needs to be made. The veracity of the core events in historical reports is not jeopardized when inconsistencies exist involving peripheral details that are of little significance."

In other words, to think that apparent conflicts regarding relatively minor points of a narrative disprove the central facts is bad historiography. This is especially the case when the sources have been shown to contain generally reliable data. Four brief examples from history help illustrate this point. First, the ancient Greek historian Thucydides was bothered by the fact that not all written accounts of the Peloponnesian War were in agreement since he had served as a general during the war. However, these incongruities should not dissuade him from knowing whether the war occurred or who won. Second, the great fire of Rome in the first century was recounted by three primary sources which differ on some intriguing details. Despite the varied answers found in our sources, no serious historian would doubt that Rome actually burned. Third, survivors of the Titanic contradicted each other about whether the ship broke in two or remained intact. This may seem like a strange point of contention for eyewitnesses, but that the Titanic sunk was not disputed by anyone. Lastly, there is perhaps no recent historical event about which more disagreement exists than the death of President John F. Kennedy. And yet the chief event of Kennedy's assassination in Dallas via gunfire remains an accepted fact.

The same principle of historiography should be applied to the gospels. Virtually every question Ehrman raises about discrepancies in the Easter narratives pertains to peripheral details. Yet, the core of each account lines up remarkably well with the others, thus strengthening their credibility on the central event of Jesus's resurrection.

But what of Ehrman's specific examples? Is it even true that the resurrection narratives are as contradictory as he claims? Ehrman gives us a list of his best examples as follows: "Read through the accounts and ask yourself some basic questions. Who was the first person to go to the tomb? Was it Mary Magdalene by herself, John, or Mary along with another Mary, Matthew, or Mary along with another Mary and Salome, Mark? Or Mary, Mary, Joanna, and a number of other women, Luke? Was the stone already rolled away when they arrived at the tomb, Mark, Luke, and John, or explicitly not? Whom did they see there? An angel, Matthew, a man, Mark, or two men, Luke? Did they immediately go and tell some of the disciples what they had seen, John, or not? Matthew, Mark, and Luke? What did the person or people at the tomb tell the women to do? To tell the disciples that Jesus would meet them in Galilee, Matthew, and Mark. Or to remember what Jesus had told them earlier when they had been in Galilee. Did the women then go tell the disciples what they were told to tell them, Matthew, Luke, and John, or not, Mark? Where did they see him? Only in Galilee, Matthew, or in Jerusalem, Luke? There are other discrepancies, but this is enough to get the point across."

This is a stock list of contradictions which are supposed to exist among the resurrection narratives of the gospels. However, let us remind ourselves that a contradiction requires two mutually incompatible propositions to be asserted as true at the same time and in the same sense. For Ehrman's list of contradictions to be genuine, these examples must be asserting genuine incompatibilities. In this next section, I argue that they are not necessarily incompatible. This territory has been fairly well trodden by other apologists, so I will endeavor to be as brief as I can.

First, how many women went to the tomb? The answer is that we don't know exactly how many because none of the gospels purports to be giving a full list. This fact also means that there isn't any contradiction here. A contradiction would only emerge if one of the gospels claimed to be giving the entire list and this list didn't contain some of the names on another list. Since this is not so, there is no contradiction. As Jake O'Connell puts it, "No gospel writer claims to give a complete list of the women who accompanied Mary Magdalene to the tomb. When, for example, Matthew says the other Mary accompanied her, that does not mean that the other Mary was the only other person who accompanied her. And so he does not exclude Salome or the unspecified other women mentioned by Luke, and the same is true for the other gospel writers."

Second, did the women witness the stone being rolled away from the tomb? Matthew would be the only gospel which might indicate that the women witnessed an angel rolling the stone away. In Matthew 28:1-2 we read, "In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre. And behold, there was a great earthquake. For the angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone from the door and sat upon it." So given this translation, it definitely looks like the rolling away of the stone took place as the women were arriving at the tomb. However, the main verb of the sentence, "there was a great earthquake," is in the aorist indicative. The aorist can be used in a pluperfect sense to describe background events. The pluperfect rendering would imply that the stone had already been rolled away by the time the women arrived. In fact, the NASB translates the verse in this way as a pluperfect, saying, "Now after the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to look at the tomb, and behold, a severe earthquake had occurred, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled away the stone and sat upon it." And this translation finds support in Matthew 14:3 where the same verb must be rendered in the pluperfect. Given that this translation is at least as plausible as the translation Ehrman prefers, we cannot say that there has to be a contradiction here.

As John Wenham argues, "On a superficial reading, it would seem that the great earthquake took place after the women had arrived and that the guards lay prostrate on the ground while the angel delivered his message. But on deeper reflection, it becomes clear that it is unlikely that Matthew intended his readers to understand this. The suggested picture is an incongruous one: the guards lying about like dead men while the women approach the dazzling angel while the angel delivers his message outside the tomb while he brings the women into the tomb and instructs them there and while the women rush out of the garden. It is better to suppose that without spelling out the details he intends his readers to understand that the soldiers left shortly before the women arrived. Often in the New Testament, the aorist tense needs to be rendered by an English pluperfect. So, Matthew 28:2-4 could be inserted in brackets and translated with no impropriety, and behold, there had been a great earthquake. We may thus conclude that the earthquake took place before the arrival of any women, and that the terrified guards had already left by the time they arrived."

Third, how many men or angels did the women see at the tomb? Once again, none of the gospels purports to give an entire list. Presumably, the angels are described as men in Mark and in Luke because that is how they appeared. As Wenham says, "Although the figure is described simply as a young man, the whole scene is depicted as one of awe and fear, partly evoked by the nature of his white robe. He was a supernatural young man. In other words, he was an angel depicted as all biblical angels are, not as a winged creature, but as a man. Moreover, it was not uncommon for ancient Jews to describe angels in this way."

As O'Connell points out, "That it is plausible Mark thinks the young man was an angel is clear from the fact that the ancient Jewish sources often conceived of angels as young men and from the fact that the young man wore a white robe, which is the traditional garb of angels. Luke's mention of there being two of them entails that there was at least one. And this is all that Matthew and Mark's narratives require. Again, Wenham rightly says, 'It should be said once and for all that the mention by one evangelist of two angels and by another of one does not constitute a contradiction or discrepancy. If there were two, then there was one.' When learned critics make heavy weather about the accuracy of such accounts, they lack common sense." And O'Connell further summarizes, "Mark and Matthew do not say that there was only one angel. The fact that they only mention one angel does not mean that there were not two. Consequently, we are dealing with a difference here rather than a contradiction."

Fourth, what did the angels tell the women? Did they tell them that Jesus would meet them in Galilee or did they ask them to remember what Jesus had said to them in Galilee? I frankly don't see any reason why the angels couldn't have said both of these things. Again, this seems to be an example of a difference rather than a contradiction. And as Andrew Loke reminds us, "Differences are not the same as contradictions. Differences can be understood as complementary rather than contradictory."

Fifth, did the women tell the disciples what they had seen or not? I think the answer is clearly that they did. Mark's reference to them saying nothing to anyone can perfectly sensibly be interpreted as Mark saying that they told no one on their way to tell the disciples. Such an interpretation is more than justified by context. As O'Connell observes, "It is certainly plausible that when Mark says that the women said nothing to anyone, he means that they said nothing to anyone as they were on their way back from the tomb, but that they did say something to the disciples once they reached them. This is suggested by two facts. First, it is not likely that the women would disobey a command of an angel, and the angel had commanded them to tell the disciples. Second, earlier in Mark, there is a very similar verse in which Jesus tells the leper he has just healed, 'Say nothing to anyone,' but then says, 'Go show yourself to the priest.' Clearly, the leper was only to say nothing to anyone on his way back. But once he reached the priest, he would have to say something."

Sixth, did Jesus only appear to the disciples in Galilee or in Jerusalem? The answer seems to me that he appeared to them in both locations. According to Luke, the disciples did not believe the women until Jesus appeared to them at Jerusalem. Matthew doesn't tell us anything about what transpired between when the women told the disciples what they had seen and when they left to meet Jesus in Galilee. So, a plausible reconstruction of these events would be that the women told the disciples what they had seen. The disciples did not believe the women until Jesus appeared to them at Jerusalem, after which they obeyed his command to go to Galilee and saw him there. Again, this can easily be seen as a case of Luke filling in some details which Matthew had left out. There is no necessary contradiction here.

Moreover, it fits the known travel patterns for ancient Jewish pilgrims to Jerusalem. As O'Connell notes, "Appearances in Galilee, then Jerusalem, and then again in Galilee are exactly what we should expect. If the disciples did what pilgrims to Jerusalem often did, go up to Jerusalem for Passover, then return to their hometowns, in the case of the disciples, Galilee, for about 40 days, and then return to Jerusalem for Pentecost. We would thus have no trouble postulating that there were appearances in both Galilee and Jerusalem and that Matthew and Mark chose to relate only the appearances in Galilee while Luke chose to relate only the appearances in Jerusalem. Indeed, given how elegantly my reconstruction of events has the movements of the disciples fit the known patterns for pilgrims to Jerusalem at this time, and given that this correspondence is not directly suggested by any of the gospels themselves, but rather is demanded by a consistent reading of them, I think we are more than licensed in saying that my reconstruction is historically plausible. The correspondence confirms that this sort of movement on the part of the apostles would have actually happened. It is not just a case of finding a way to make the biblical texts consistent with each other."

Ehrman does anticipate this move but says that it is impossible because in Luke Jesus commands the disciples to stay in Jerusalem until they receive the Holy Spirit, which they don't receive until Acts 2. This would straightforwardly preclude them from leaving Jerusalem to meet him in Galilee. However, that command is issued in the context of Jesus telling his disciples to preach the gospel to all nations. The command to tarry in Jerusalem until they receive the Holy Spirit means that they are not to begin spreading the gospel to all of the nations from Jerusalem until they receive the Holy Spirit. The command doesn't mean that they couldn't briefly leave Jerusalem for any reason. And this can be clearly seen in Luke's own narrative since in the very next verse, we see that Jesus did indeed take his disciples out of Jerusalem and into Bethany for his ascension. If we adopted Ehrman's wooden literalism to interpret Jesus's command to tarry in Jerusalem in verse 49, then we would have to conclude that Jesus was forcing his disciples to break his own command just one verse later. By contrast, my reading of this command makes perfect sense of Luke's narrative in context while also rendering it consistent with Matthew's narrative.

And even if we adopted Ehrman's hyperliteral interpretation, O'Connell suggests another possibility, saying, "It is not clear that the words of Jesus were uttered in 24:49 were said on Easter day. For it is plausible that these words are actually said 40 days after Easter and thus after the Galilean appearance had already taken place. It becomes clear that this is a possibility once we realize that there is a time gap somewhere in between Luke 24:36-53. Luke seems to say in his gospel that the ascension took place on Easter. Jesus ascends in 24:50-53. And this event appears to happen right after Jesus's words in 24:44-49. And those words appear to have been said at the time of Jesus's appearance to the 12 on Easter day. But though all this seems to take place on one day, this cannot actually be the case. For in Acts 1, Luke tells us the ascension took place 40 days after Jesus's resurrection. Thus, unless Luke blatantly contradicted himself, the events of 24:36-53 could not all have taken place on Easter day since that would require that the ascension took place on Easter day instead of 40 days later. Therefore, there must be a time gap somewhere in these verses."

I have had to be brief in my discussion of these supposed contradictions. I hope that I have at least shown that the narratives do not have to be in conflict with one another. There is a reasonable way to read them such that they complement one another. As Pearson concludes, "While not everyone will be satisfied with these proposed solutions, they are enough to show that the apparent conflicts are nowhere near as impossible to reconcile as Ehrman makes them seem. They are merely differences, not contradictions, each of which involves minor points of secondary importance."

Ehrman's theory is that the disciples had visionary experiences of the risen Jesus, which convinced them that Jesus had risen from the dead. He denies that there was an empty tomb because he doesn't believe that Jesus was ever buried in a tomb. As he explains, "I should stress that it was visions and nothing else that led the first disciples to believe in the resurrection. Frequently, it is stated that a combination of things led to this faith: the discovery of the empty tomb and the appearances of Jesus. My view is that an empty tomb had nothing to do with it."

Ehrman objects to the reality of the empty tomb on the basis of this not being the norm for victims of crucifixion. Typically, victims of crucifixion were either left on their crosses to be eaten by animals or else thrown into a mass grave. And so the same thing probably happened to Jesus. For this reason, Ehrman deems the empty tomb to be improbable. As he explains, "My view is now that we do not know and cannot know what actually happened to Jesus's body, but it is absolutely true that as far as we can tell from all the surviving evidence, what normally happened to a criminal's body is that it was left to decompose and serve as food for scavenging animals. Crucifixion was meant to be a public disincentive to engage in politically subversive activities, and the disincentive did not end with the pain and death. It continued on in the ravages worked on the corpse afterward. My second reason for doubting that Jesus received a decent burial is that at the time, criminals of all sorts were as a rule tossed into common graves. It's possible that Jesus was an exception, but our evidence that this might have been the case must be judged to be rather thin. People who are crucified were usually left on their crosses as food for scavengers, and part of the punishment for ignominious crimes was being tossed into a common grave where very soon one decomposed body could not be distinguished from another. My third reason for doubting the burial tradition has to do with the Roman rule of Judea at the time. Pilate was not a beneficent prefect who kindly listened to the protests of the people he governed. Was Pilate the sort of ruler who would break with tradition and policy when kindly asked by a member of the Jewish council to provide a decent burial for a crucified victim? Not from what we can tell."

I suppose that the most that can be said in favor of Ehrman's argument is that if he is correct, then this does provide some level of inductive evidence against the empty tomb. Some scholars have responded that Ehrman is overstating his case here. For example, Craig Evans suggests that we don't actually know what typically happened to the corpses of crucifixion victims, saying, "In fact, we are not sure how normal leaving the corpse on the cross unburied was in the Roman Empire. That it often happened is not in dispute, but the evidence is more variegated than Ehrman and others have assumed."

Ehrman also overlooks the fact that there is actually no evidence whatsoever that the throwing of people into mass graves was ever practiced in Israel. As O'Connell points out, "The evidence indicates that mass graves were a Roman phenomenon. Jews did not bury their dead in this way. There is no archaeological evidence for such graves in Israel, and no one has ever found any literary references to them. It is not surprising that this form of burial was not practiced in Israel given the importance which Jews ascribed to burial."

Evans presents some examples of known crucifixion victims who were allowed a decent burial. This serves to show that Ehrman's general inductive argument against the burial of Jesus in a tomb is already pretty weak, since we independently know that what the gospels say happened to Jesus is not without precedent.

Evans gives an example from the writings of the Jewish historian Philo, saying, "An interesting passage that bears on this question is found in Philo in his account of the malevolence and demise of Flaccus the governor of Egypt. Philo complains of the insults visited on the recently appointed Agrippa I when he visited Alexandria: the desecration of synagogues, the looting of Jewish homes, and the flogging and crucifixion of some of the Jewish counselors on the day of the emperor's birthday, no less. The fact that these poor men were crucified and then denied burial on a day when normally mercy is shown only underscores the brutality and callousness of the governor's behavior."

Ehrman thinks this passage offers no support for the New Testament Gospels' report that Pilate permitted the body of Jesus to be taken down from the cross and be properly buried. Had Jesus been crucified in Alexandria, Ehrman's point would be well taken. But Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem in the land of Israel, where very different political and religious factors were in play. What is important in the Philo passage for the matter at hand is that this sorry incident demonstrates that it was in fact Roman practice under various circumstances to permit bodies of the crucified to be taken down and be buried. If there was no such Roman practice, this part of Philo's complaint loses all force.

Evans also gives an example from Josephus, saying, "It is simply erroneous to assert that the Romans did not permit the burial of the executed, including the crucified. Bodies were in fact released to those who requested them. Josephus himself makes this request of Titus, son of Vespasian, and Titus granted it. Of course, Roman authorities often did not permit burial, request or no request, especially in cases of high treason. But crucifixion, especially during peace time, just outside the walls of Jerusalem, was another matter. Given Jewish sensitivities and customs, burial would have been expected, even demanded."

Evans argues that Josephus indicates that crucifixion victims were regularly buried in Judea prior to the Jewish uprising in 66 AD, based upon a passage in *The Jewish War* 3:3:317. As Evans explains, "In his account of the Jewish rebellion against Rome, Josephus vents against the Idomenean rebels who murdered some of the ruling priests and then did not see to the proper burial of their bodies. The actions of the rebels is not of interest in the present discussion. Rather, it is what Josephus says about the expectations of burial: the statement that 'the Jews are so careful about funeral rights that even malefactors who have been sentenced to crucifixion are taken down and buried before sunset' is in reference to peace time before the Jewish rebellion erupted in AD 66. However people died, whether by execution, misadventure or natural causes, the Jewish people buried the dead, Jewish or Gentile, saint or sinner. Even if crucified by the authority of Rome, the dead were buried."

And from these observations, he concludes, "In short, there is nothing irregular about the Gospels' report that a member of the Sanhedrin requested permission to take down the body of Jesus and give it proper burial in keeping with Jewish burial practices as they related to the executed. It is entirely in keeping with all that we know from the literature and from archaeology."

But the evidence is not restricted to testimonial evidence. There is also archaeological evidence that victims of crucifixion were sometimes allowed respectful burials in tombs. The most striking example of this would be an ossuary containing the bones of one Jehohanan son of Hagkol, discovered in 1968 by the archaeologist Vasilio Zaperis. This discovery was notable because the heelbone was pierced by an iron nail, showing that Jehohanan had both been a victim of crucifixion and also that he had been allowed a proper burial. So the idea that this would have been allowed for Jesus as well is not without precedent. Furthermore, the bones were dated to the time of Pilate's governorship, which calls into question Ehrman's claim that this is something which Pilate never would have allowed.

Mark Pearson puts this point sharply but accurately when he says, "In 1968, the bones of an ancient Jewish male were found inside of an ossuary, a container for skeletal remains, with an iron spike still protruding from his right heelbone and a piece of wood adhering to the spike. Clearly, he had died on a cross. Since ossuaries were used to gather up the bones of someone whose flesh had decayed after being buried, this specimen provides tangible evidence that burial was permitted at times for victims of crucifixion. Furthermore, the ossuary and its contents date to the late AD 20s, which is when Pilate himself was governor. Pilate then, having condemned this individual to a cross like he did Jesus, must also have granted permission for the interment."

Ehrman is aware of this archaeological evidence but conveniently omits it when arguing that Jesus would not have been interred. Based on this and other glaring oversights, his conjecture about the early creed, and his unconvincing case against the Gospels as reliable sources, Ehrman's dismissal of Jesus's burial flies in the face of the historical record.

But even granting Ehrman's claim that victims of crucifixion were typically left on the cross or tossed into a mass grave, very general inductive arguments like this one are pretty easy to override when there is specific evidence supporting the reality of something unusual or atypical. And when it comes to the burial of Jesus, this is absolutely the situation we are in. Since Jesus was far from typical, even by Ehrman's skeptical lights, it shouldn't be terribly surprising that his burial was not typical. The specific testimonial evidence that Jesus was buried in a tomb is just overwhelmingly clear. All of the gospels agree on this much. And given that Ehrman takes the supposed disagreements among the resurrection narratives to be such strong evidence against their trustworthiness when it comes to the resurrection of Jesus, he should presumably take their complete agreement on Jesus's burial by Joseph of Arimathea to indicate their trustworthiness. On this point,

Jake O'Connell observes, "The empty tomb is attested by all four gospels, which means we have four sources attesting to the event. It might be objected that the four sources are not independent of each other. However, Matthew, Luke, and John all have information concerning the empty tomb, which is not found in Mark, and thus they must have had other sources for the empty tomb. Hence, we do have four different sources. Even Paul directly says that Jesus was buried in 1 Corinthians 15. Hence, even granting some weight to man's broad inductive argument against the burial of Jesus, all of the specific evidence points in the other direction and simply overrides the inductive case against Jesus's burial.

Much has been made of the fact that women are reported as being the first to discover the empty tomb in the Gospels. William Lane Craig, for example, has argued that the testimony of women was not considered trustworthy by ancient Jews. And so, it is unlikely that women would be invented as the first witnesses to the empty tomb. As he says, the women are used as witnesses of the crucifixion, burial, and empty tomb. Unless they actually were the witnesses, it seems inexplicable why they should be used and not the disciples themselves. Given the low status of women in Jewish society and their lack of qualification to serve as legal witnesses, the most plausible explanation in light of the gospel's conviction that the disciples were in Jerusalem over the weekend why women and not the male disciples were made discoverers of the empty tomb is that the women were in fact the ones who made this discovery. This conclusion receives confirmation from the fact that there seems to be no reason why the later Christian church should wish to humiliate its leaders by having them hiding in cowardice in Jerusalem while the women boldly carry out their last devotions to Jesus's body unless this were in fact the truth.

I myself tend to think that Craig and most other apologists have made far too much of this fact chiefly because the gospels are not presenting the testimony of these women as evidence for the reality of the empty tomb. There is nothing in the text to suggest that we the readers are supposed to believe in the empty tomb based upon the witness of these women. They are simply included as part of the narrative. As man replies, the first thing to point out is that we are not talking about a Jewish court of law in which witnesses are being called to testify. We're talking about oral traditions about the man Jesus. Still, even if some apologists overplay their hand on this front, it doesn't follow that there is no evidential significance in this fact. While we can't say that it is absolutely unthinkable that anyone should have ever invented women as the first to discover the empty tomb, they are also not the sort of people we would have expected to be invented for this role. So the presence of women does provide some evidence favoring the historicity of the empty tomb, even if their inclusion is not a slam dunk. As Timothy and Lydia Mcgru conclude, the point should not be overstated, for there are disagreements reported in the Talmud regarding the degree of credibility to be granted to the testimony of women. Nevertheless, it would plainly be better from the standpoint of enhancing the credibility of a contrived story to put a group of respectable males at the tomb and as the first to see the risen Christ than a group of women.

So to sum all of that up then, since the idea that victims of crucifixion were allowed to be buried is not without precedent, and all of the sources which specifically discuss this claim that this happened to Jesus's body, I conclude that whatever force man's general inductive argument against this may have is simply overcome by countereidence in favor of Jesus's burial in a tomb. In conclusion, this section has examined Bart Airman's three-point case against believing in the resurrection on the basis of historical evidence. We have seen that man's claim that historians cannot make appeals to miracles is both unmotivated and for the purposes of this video irrelevant. I have endeavored to show that man has grossly overstated the degree to which the resurrection narratives conflict with one another. In each case, it has been seen that there is a plausible harmonization. And finally, we have seen that man's case against the historicity of the empty tomb is not very strong and overlook several pertinent pieces of evidence.

One of the most popular critics of resurrection apologetics, at least within the online sphere, is Richard Carrier. I feel compelled here to mention that Carrier has a PhD since his fans will whine and complain about it in the comments if I don't. Carrier's approach to arguing against the resurrection is in some respects similar to Barman's and is in other respects quite different. Carrier's article, The Spiritual Body of Christ and the Legend of the Empty Tomb, is well over 100 pages long and represents his basic approach to dismissing the significance of the New Testament evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. In short, Carrier's hypothesis involves the idea that Paul is our earliest source for the resurrection of Jesus. for carrier. Paul had some type of hallucination which in conjunction with his own questionable readings of the Hebrew scriptures convinced him that Jesus had risen from the dead. As he explains, I believe the best explanation consistent with both scientific findings and the surviving evidence is that the first Christians experienced hallucinations of the risen Christ of one form or another. However, Carrier does not believe that Paul thought of this as a resurrection of the same body which Jesus inhabited on earth. The body remained in the tomb and decomposed there. Rather, for carrier, Paul thought of Jesus's soul as receiving a spiritual or non-physical body in heaven. The gospels then represent an evolving legend where certain Christians began interpreting the resurrection body as a physical body and the empty tomb was an idea which naturally grew out of this general trend of development. As he explains, the evidence suggests that the first Christians, at least up to and including Paul, thought Christ's soul was taken up to heaven and clothed in a new body after leaving his old body in the grave forever. The subsequent story that Jesus actually walked out of the grave with the same body that went into it, leaving an empty tomb to astonish all was probably a legend that developed over the course of the first century, beginning with a metaphorical empty tomb in the Gospel of Mark, most likely written after Paul's death.

Most of the discussion surrounding Carrier's hypothesis has centered on the idea that Paul thought of Jesus's resurrected body as being non-physical. In particular, there is much debate regarding the merits of his reading of Paul's statement that the resurrection body is a spiritual body in 1 Corinthians 15:44. The question regards whether or not Paul means to say that the resurrected body is not physical when he describes it as spiritual. Does his contrast between a natural body and a spiritual body contrast the metaphysical composition of these bodies? The answer is probably negative. James Pear summarizes the basic difficulties with this reading as follows. One, there is no evidence in Paul's letters that the notion of spirit matter had any place in his thought and such a notion has no connections to Paul's thought elsewhere. Two, the notion that verse 44 introduces the concept of a new body distinct in substance from the body sown in death misunderstands the structure of Paul's syntax in this verse. The implied grammatical subject of the verbs in verse 44 is the mortal fleshly body that is sown in decay but thereafter raised to immortal life and thus describes two contrasting modes of existence of this same body. One prior to the resurrection and the other following the resurrection. Three, the understanding of this body as involving a body composed of spirit, distinct in substance from the fleshly body, entirely ignores the actual lexical meaning and usage within Paul and within the wider ancient world of the key terms in question. This view is thus routinely bedeled by the gratuitous assumption that the contrast Paul draws in 15:44 is that of flesh and spirit.

Additionally, earlier in 1 Corinthians 2:14-15, Paul contrasted the natural man with the spiritual man by which he seems to be referencing unbelievers and believers. Presumably, Paul is not intending to convey that believers have immaterial bodies simply because he describes them as being spiritual. As Mike Lacona puts it, it is clear here that Paul is not contrasting physical beings with ethereal ones. Rather, he is contrasting those governed or animated by their fleshly and sinful desires and who think in accordance with the world's wisdom with those governed by holy desires and heavenly wisdom centered on God. In other words, when employing the terms natural and spiritual, Paul is not referring to the substance of the old and new bodies, but rather their mode of existence.

While I appreciate scholars like Wear and Lacona who have criticized Carrier's idea that Paul did not believe the resurrected body was physical and I think that they are right that Carrier is misreading Paul. There is a serious risk involved in letting the debate focus on this point. That risk is that it lets Carrier choose the battlefield by giving off the impression that the case for the resurrection must be primarily based on 1 Corinthians 15. Since my preferred argument for the resurrection privileges the testimony of the gospels, this affords me an opportunity to present another way of responding to Carrier's arguments, which is constantly overlooked and in my view much more robust.

In addition to the heavy focus on Carrier's spiritual resurrection hypothesis, many objections to Carrier have focused on the adequacy of hallucinations to explain the resurrection appearances. For example, in his nearly 400page critique of Carrier, S. Ross Hickling devotes more than 100 pages to objecting to the adequacy of hallucinations to account for the multi-ensory appearances of Jesus to multiple people at a time and even to skeptical individuals like Thomas according to the gospels as Hickling explains in regard to the way in which Jesus Christ was experienced after his resurrection in line with other religious traditions. If Jesus was experienced as a hallucination by the disciples, then he would have appeared in a glorious form. However, the risen Jesus Christ is nowhere depicted as having a glowing or grand appearance that those viewing him would be in awe of. Instead of this, it is observed that the appearance of Jesus in bodily form is altogether ordinary. The disciple Thomas who did not believe that Jesus Christ had arisen from the dead was convinced that it was Jesus after he encountered him. This is relevant to Carrier's discussion regarding hallucinating disciples as Thomas did not even believe that Jesus Christ had arisen from the dead. So if Thomas did not believe that the other disciples had seen the risen Jesus Christ already, then how would he be predisposed in a group setting to hallucinate the risen Jesus Christ?

But for all the good points which Hickling makes, they are simply misplaced against Carrier. For Carrier does not grant that the resurrection appearances, as they are described in the Gospels, ever actually occurred. Those are not the sorts of appearances which his hallucination hypothesis is intended to explain. Rather, Carrier intends for hallucinations to partially account for the initial belief of Paul. Paul's resurrection experience is insulated from the sort of defense Hickling is offering since Paul doesn't provide us with any details about what his experience was like. The gospel accounts in Carrier's view are later legendary developments rather than the testimony of eyewitnesses. As he says, it is also possible that Matthew relates an actual hallucinatory experience, but we need not assume this. Either way, the passage offers no proof that Matthew's appearance tradition derives from any real encounter with a flesh and bone Jesus. The appearance tradition in Matthew is highly stylized. If Matthew is drawing on or reworking any actual appearance tradition, then the tradition contained no real support for a resurrection of the flesh.

So, having clarified what exactly Carrier's hypothesis says, we are better positioned to see which premise of my argument for the resurrection is targeted. carrier like man objects to the second premise. He contests that the gospel accounts cannot be relied upon as evidence for the resurrection because they do not come from people who were in a position to know whether or not Jesus was physically raised from the dead. Carrier's objection to the use of the gospels depends critically on the assumption that they are late and legendary. without that he cannot legitimately limit the scope of the discussion to the writings of Paul. So rather than following in the long line of scholars who have critiqued Carrier on the grounds that Paul did not believe in a spiritual resurrection, I will instead focus on Carrier's case for the gospels being late and unreliable. While I do think that Carrier is wrong in how he interprets Paul, this territory has been well trodden by others. By instead focusing on Carrier's attempts to remove the Gospels from the discussion, I will be able to pioneer a different sort of response to Carrier and thereby contribute something original to the discussion.

Carrier begins his discussion of why we should discount the Gospels from serious consideration by offering a scattershot of common skeptical objections pertaining to the sources of the Gospels. He writes, "In the generation after Paul, someone wrote what was probably the first ever account of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Tradition has assigned that book to an unknown author named Mark. According to legend, Peter's scribe. It is not known when the book was written. Most scholars believe it was sometime around 70 CE, give or take a decade. But it is clear that Paul knew nothing of the work. So, we can be fairly certain it was not circulating when he was alive. Yet, this gospel contains the first known appearance of an empty tomb story. All other accounts rely on it and basically just embellish it or modify it to suit each author's own narrative and ideological agenda. As nearly all scholars agree, Matthew and Luke clearly used Mark as their source, repeating the same elements in the same order and often using identical vocabulary and word order, not only for this story but for the whole gospel. And though John does not directly use Mark as a source, it is probable his account ultimately derives from it. Beyond mere conjecture, there is no indication any of them had any other source of information for the changes and additions they make. So I count four distinct objections here. First, the gospel authors are unknown. Second, the gospels must be late because Paul never cites any of them. Third, Matthew, Luke, and John are just embellishments of Mark. And fourth, the gospel authors had no sources of information beyond Mark. Let's consider each one.

First, in my video, who wrote the Gospels? The case for Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I offered a detailed case against Carrier's claim that the authors of the Gospels are unknown. All Carrier has to say in defense of this is that the attribution of Mark as being Peter's scribe is legendary. But the earliest source for this is Papius of Heropoulos who was writing as I argued in my video on the historical reliability of Acts as early as the '90s AD. Since Carrier dates Mark to around 70 AD, we are dealing with a period of only 20 to 30 years. Moreover, I have argued that Papius knew the apostles themselves. Hence, we have no reason whatsoever to conclude that the attribution of the second gospel to Mark is legendary. And the same is true of the other gospels.

Second, Carrier suggests that the gospels must be late because Paul never cites Mark and he assumes that the other gospels are later than Mark. So if Mark was written after the writings of the Apostle Paul, then so are the other gospels. But even if we granted this point in its entirety, nothing particularly significant follows from it. Recall that Paul would have likely died sometime in between 64 and 68 AD. So even if all of the gospels are written after this, that doesn't automatically place them outside of the lives of their purported authors. In other words, it doesn't automatically make them too late to be trusted as sources. Furthermore, it can be disputed that Paul does not cite any of the gospels. For example, in 1 Corinthians 11:23-2, Paul says, "For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way, he also took the cup after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me." These words closely match Jesus's words as recorded in Luke 22:18-20. It is not impossible to suppose that Paul is directly quoting from Luke's gospel. He does claim after all to have received this information from somewhere prior to teaching it to the Corinthian church. As Greg Boyd and Paul Eddie observe, no one disputes that Paul's words here strongly parallel the account of the last supper found in all four gospels, especially Luke's. The text itself suggests Paul is relying on traditional material. He introduces his material with standard Jewish terminology for receiving and handing over sacred tradition. This suggests that Paul was passing on material that had been passed on to him by others. In this light, when Paul says he received from the Lord this teaching, it seems most natural to take him to be referring to his conviction that this traditional material goes back to the Lord's own words and actions. Through the tradition now being mediated through Paul, the Corinthians were receiving from the Lord the teaching about the last supper. This conclusion is confirmed by the fact that Paul's words betray a wholly fixed verbal form as is seen when compared with Luke 22 19-20. This is all the more plausible if, as some scholars have suggested, Paul is referring to the Gospel of Luke when he uses the phrase according to my gospel throughout his epistles. Since Luke is traditionally thought to have been a companion of Paul and since I take the evidence to be strong that Luke authored the third gospel, there is a compelling alternative to viewing this connection between 1 Corinthians 11 and Luke 22 as a mere coincidence.

Additionally, some scholars have thought that Paul's esqueological statements in 1 and 2 Thessalonians may show dependence upon Matthew 24. Similarities in themes as well as the phenomenon of distinctively Mathean vocabulary turning up in Paul here are highly suggestive. As Bernard Orchard argues, precending from attaching any specific dates to any of the gospels, but being open to the possibility of early dating, the evidence will be outlined here for Paul's use of the literary tradition as found in our Greek Matthew. The case of first and second Thessalonians offer the best and clearest example of Paul's adaptation of the esqueological teaching found chiefly in Matthew. In Matthew 23-2 and in the esqueological section of both letters, we find the same teaching, the same metaphors and simileies, and the same key words, some exceedingly rare. Paul is seen to utilize the same key words and the same illustrations that Matthew uniquely uses with regard to the suddenness of the coming of the Lord. Like a thief in the night, like the sudden birth pangs, like the sudden arrival of the bridegroom, like the sudden coming of the flood while life was going on normally, a coming in power and glory with the angels and with the sound of a great trumpet. Other powerful supporting reminiscences of Matthew are found in Galatians and First Corinthians. Of course, it is certain that Paul made full use of Old Testament esqueological imagery, but some extra details that he himself adds are found together only in Matthew and argue strongly for his firsthand knowledge of it. And in his excellent book, the sayings of Jesus in the churches of Paul, David Dunan argues extensively that methan and Luke and themes can be found throughout the Pauline Corpus. He suggests that the evidence here is just as strong as for supposing that various New Testament books influenced many of the Petristic writers. As he explains, although a Tertullian and an Araneaeus may have succeeded most of the time in keeping their citations explicit and unscrambled, the same thing cannot be said for Justin Martyr or second Clement or First Clement. In them, however, the degree of explicitness is clearly on the rise. But if we go back farther to someone like Polycarp or Ignatius or the Apostolic Fathers, we can see much less explicit citation of traditional material. The argument that Paul knew only a few sayings because he only mentions a few openly falls to the ground. and the numerous verbal correspondences between his text and those of the synoptic gospels as well as other more distantly related parallels in ethical exhortation show that Paul actually used or cited a considerable number of Jesus's teachings.

Now, of course, Carrier can try to argue that the dependence goes in the other direction. He might try to suggest that Matthew and Luke are drawing this information from Paul rather than the other way around. I'm not interested in pursuing that question right now. The point is just that Carrier cannot be too confident that Paul does not demonstrate knowledge of the gospels. This is far from a foregone conclusion.

Moving on to Carrier's third objection. He suggests that when we look at the resurrection narratives side by side in chronological order, we can actually see the story evolving by getting more fantastic with each new entry. As he says, it cannot reasonably be doubted that the gospels exhibit legendary embellishments upon the basic story of Mark. However much you might quibble about which elements were invented, it is clear at least some were. Mark tells a simple story about a Sanhedrinist burying Jesus, women going to the tomb and finding it open, meeting a single boy in white, then running off. But by the time we get to Matthew, Joseph has become a disciple of Jesus who buried Jesus in his own new tomb. The boy has become an angel descending from heaven. The women experience a massive earthquake and watch the angel descend and open the tomb and guards have been added to the story. There can be no doubt that we are looking at extensive legendary embellishment. We can see the same trend in the other two gospels. Luke unaware of Matthew and less prone to the fabulous also embellished the story received from Mark though less excitingly. John borrowed some of the embellishments of Luke but makes the story entirely his own.

Now quite obviously Carrier's objection here is entirely dependent upon his preferred synoptic theory. In particular, it depends upon the thesis of Mark and priority. Regular viewers of this channel will know that I am quite skeptical of Mark and priority. I have dedicated several videos to arguing for the thesis that Matthew was in fact the first gospel written and that Mark was actually the last of the synoptics to have been written. Clearly, if this sort of synoptic theory is correct, then there is not a clear evolution of the resurrection narrative. Instead, the level of detail in each narrative simply varies without any discernable evolutionary trajectory. This would increase the plausibility of the idea that the level of detail in each resurrection narrative is simply reflecting the preferences of the respective authors rather than a growing legend.

But even granting Markin priority, we still don't have as clear a case of an evolving legend as Carrier would have you believe. Of all the gospels, it is Matthew who has the most elaborate resurrection narrative, complete with an angel descending from heaven and an earthquake. Yet, even by Carrier's own reckoning, Matthew is only the second gospel to have been written. This already begins to shake up the smooth progression from less fantastic to more fantastic which Carrier would like you to believe exists among the resurrection narratives. As David Wood points out in John, we find an impressive amount of fish in the net and Jesus appears in a locked room. Luke is more stunning with Jesus vanishing instantly and later ascending into heaven. Matthew is the most spectacular, however. He records a violent earthquake, an angel grabbing the stone and rolling it back, and several dead people coming back to life and roaming the streets of Jerusalem. Notice that the pattern of evolution proceeds in exactly the opposite direction required by this theory. and Carrier's analysis ignores independent reasons to believe that the gospel authors are at least attempting to be historically accurate. If these reasons are taken seriously, then this further increases the likelihood that we are dealing with different preferences of the respective authors rather than a growing legend.

Turning now to Carrier's fourth objection. How can he possibly claim to know that the gospel authors had no sources of information beyond Mark? This certainly assumes that Matthew and John were not written by apostles of Jesus who would have had their own experiences from which to draw. But Carrier has done nothing to argue against this. John in particular has a verse directly saying that it was authored by an apostle of Jesus in John 21:24. Carrier briefly addresses this by saying, "John claims to derive from an unnamed eyewitness, but only in a section of his gospel that looks like it was added by a different author." Now, I actually agree with Carrier that John 21:24 probably was added by another author, likely Papius, shortly after John's own death. And I defended such a hypothesis in my video on gospel authorship. But that does not change the fact that the verse directly says that the gospel was written by an eyewitness. Carrier's implication seems to be that this statement cannot be trusted if it did not come from the author's own hand. I frankly find it doubtful that Carrier would believe John was authored by an eyewitness even if John 21:24 were written by the same author as the rest of the gospel. In any case, this is at the very least evidence that the author of the fourth gospel did have access to information besides Mark. Minimally, this verse shows that the gospel was believed to have been written by an eyewitness from very early on. Carrier has not done anything to refute this.

And then what about the Gospel of Luke? Luke is explicit in his prologue that he has used other sources. Carrier is well aware of this, saying, "Luke does claim to have many sources, but does not say who or for what material, so this can be of no help here." But for Carrier to complain about the fact that Luke doesn't name his sources is to miss the point. Carrier's claim is that Luke has no access to sources beyond Mark for his resurrection narratives. This statement in Luke's prologue gives us at least some reason to believe that this is not true. Furthermore, Luke actually does tell us who his sources are, at least in a very broad way. He identifies his sources as being eyewitnesses. I would suggest that at least one of those eyewitness accounts is certainly the Gospel of Matthew.

Later in the article, Carrier asserts his conviction that Matthew and Luke are independent of one another, saying, "We can see the same trend in the other two gospels. Luke unaware of Matthew and less prone to the fabulous also embellished the story received from Mark, though less excitingly. It seems that in 2005 when the empty tomb was published, Carrier still affirmed something like the two source hypothesis where Matthew and Luke both independently used Mark and a lost source called Q. However, Carrier himself has not been able to sustain this. For as of at least 2017, Carrier has defended the Farer hypothesis, which explicitly asserts that Luke knew Matthew's gospel. As Carrier says, what is simpler? That Matthew and Luke used two sources, one of whom we can only hypothesize the existence of, or that Matthew used one source and made the rest up, and Luke only used Mark and Matthew and made the rest up. The latter theory requires no ad hoc hypothetical sources. It relies solely on evidence and texts we actually have. It is therefore the much simpler hypothesis. And on top of that, it turns out unlike evidence for Q, there actually is concrete evidence Luke copied Matthew. Carrier seems unaware of how this flies in the face of his explanation for how the resurrection narratives in the gospels emerged. His acceptance of the Farer hypothesis undercuts his evolutionary hypothesis in at least two ways. First, it refutes his claim that Luke was not working from any sources besides Mark. It entails that Luke was using Matthew as well. And if, as I have argued, Matthew was authored by an eyewitness, then this should increase our confidence in Luke's assertion in his prologue that he obtained his information from eyewitnesses. For in the one case where we can confirm his source, we can confirm that it was an eyewitness. Second, the Faraher hypothesis challenges Carrier's story about how the resurrection narratives grew with each subsequent installment. The earlier quotation, where Carrier expressed his prior belief that Luke was independent of Matthew, was intended to explain why Luke's narrative looked less fantastic than Matthews. The explanation was that Luke just didn't know about Matthew's embellishments, but he was still embellishing Mark. However, now that Carrier has acknowledged Luke's dependence upon Matthew, this excuse is no longer open to him. He has to come to terms with the fact that on his hypothesis, Luke had Matthew's greatly embellished version of Mark and yet chose to tell a less embellished version of the story. Needless to say, this doesn't square well with his idea that the resurrection story just kept growing as time went on.

To conclude, this section has reviewed Richard Carrier's case against the historicity of the resurrection. We have seen reason to doubt both his interpretation of Paul's doctrine of the resurrection as well as his story for how the resurrection narratives within the gospels came to fruition. Carrier does not justify his claim that we don't know who wrote the gospels. There are reasons to suspect that he is wrong about Paul being wholly ignorant about the gospel resurrection predictions. There are reasons to suspect that he is wrong about Paul being wholly ignorant about the gospel resurrection traditions. His claim that the resurrection narratives can be seen as an evolving legend do not actually fit the pattern which we find among them and his claim that the gospel authors had no reliable sources of information is simply unsustainable.

Michael Alter is a Jewish author who despite having no formal degrees in relevant fields so far as I can tell has made contributions to the resurrection debate that have been considered by many to be noteworthy. Alter is interesting because given his Jewish beliefs, he does not harbor any sort of bias against theistic explanations or against miracles, which makes him very different from a lot of other skeptics. As he explains, this text will accept as a premise several basic ideas or tenants. One, God exists. Two, the Hebrew Bible is God's revealed word. Three, miracles or supernatural events can and definitely do occur. Alter has written a few books responding to Christian apologetics. Two of these offer direct interaction with arguments for the resurrection. By far, his most significant contribution to the debate is a 1,000page tome titled the resurrection, a critical inquiry. This volume has been hailed by many counterapps as a devastating bombshell on Christian apologetics. I have to confess that my opinion of Alter's work is considerably more negative. It is my opinion that Alter's book is sort of the counterapologist equivalent to Gary Hobrammaz's 4,000page 4 volume work on the resurrection. Despite having a lot of pages, both also have very little valuable information per page. Despite online apologists acting as though Hobbermaz's volume is some sort of serious challenge for skeptics simply because of how long it is, there's nothing new or innovative in Hobbermaz's overly long books. And similarly, despite online counter apologists acting as though Alter's book is the death nail for the resurrection simply because of how long it is, there's nothing particularly challenging to be found here. In both cases, I strongly suspect that those who are most vocally championing these works by both Hopper and Alter have not actually read most of them. I on the other hand have read the three volumes of Hobmma's book which have been released as of the time I am releasing this video. I have also read Alter's book on the resurrection and I can confidently say that neither of them justify being this lengthy.

Like the other skeptics we have engaged thus far, Alter rejects the second premise of my argument for the resurrection. He does not accept the credibility of the gospels. As he explains, it is the position of this text that the gospels are not a biography and that they are not written to record history in the modern sense. These works were written approximately 30 to 70 years after Jesus's death and many of the witnesses were dying off or dead. Therefore, the Gospels tell the story of Jesus for a generation who did not know any eyewitnesses or have access to firstirhand accounts of the Jesus tradition. And why should we accept that the Gospels were written by people with no access to the real events? Alter's answer is less than satisfactory. Here's what he has to say. How do we know that the authors of the Gospels are anonymous? Because the topic of the gospels authorship is important, this text will cite numerous excerpts of relatively recent publications in the category of introduction to the New Testament and the origin of New Testament manuscripts that challenges the position that the names penned to the four gospels are authentic. Alter then goes on for the next four pages offering quotations from several New Testament scholars expressing their belief that the gospels could not have been authored by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Were Alter merely trying to establish the uncontroversial thesis that most New Testament scholars do not affirm the traditional ascriptions of authorship, then this would be fine. But he is explicitly offering these quotations in answer to the question of how we supposedly know that the gospels are anonymous. And here it simply will not do to appeal to what most scholars believe without defending the adequacy of their reasons for holding this belief. This is a simple appeal to popularity fallacy. In my own videos on gospel authorship and gospel anonymity, I dealt with these scholarly arguments against traditional authorship in detail and showed why they fail. Alter's comments here do nothing to move the conversation forward. For a book of this length, it is disappointing how briefly Alter discusses this issue.

Alter's book might have more appropriately been titled the big book of Bible contradictions for the vast majority of his book is merely dedicated to detailing supposed contradictions in the New Testament. Alter seems hyperfixated on the task of disproving biblical inherency. His book takes great pains to detail 120 Bible contradictions. I give him credit for engaging evangelical attempts to resolve these contradictions, but it seems to me that his extensive critique of biblical inherency is out of place in a book dedicated to examining the resurrection of Jesus. One can, after all, reject biblical inherency and still affirm the resurrection of Jesus. Furthermore, Alter seems to misunderstand the doctrine of inherency as typically understood by Christians. He argues for three full pages that the many variations among the New Testament manuscripts refutes the doctrine of biblical inherency. But the doctrine of inherency has never maintained that all copies of scripture are or always will be inherent. Rather, it claims that the original autographs were inherent and that Bibles today are only inherent in so far as they reflect those original autographs. In my previous response to Bartman, I already addressed the most popular examples of puditive contradictions between the resurrection narratives. Alter's book is largely a more comprehensive attempt at developing this general line of argument. Alter offers 120 purported contradictions within the New Testament. Obviously, I cannot delve into each and every one of them in this video, but more importantly, I don't really need to. Many of his examples, even if legitimate, seem irrelevant to the resurrection. For example, his 86th and 87th contradictions allegedly occur between Matthew and Acts. And his 120th contradiction allegedly occurs between the book of Galatians and Acts. But what exactly have these examples got to do with the resurrection? I would submit that the answer is precisely nothing.

More importantly, Alter doesn't even seem to know what a contradiction is. To illustrate, consider his first example of a contradiction. Theologians, New Testament scholars, historians, standard reference sources, evangelicals, and even evangelical organizations are divided regarding the exact year Jesus was crucified and resurrected. It must be remembered that Christian apologists maintain that the year Jesus died and was resurrected is the most important and significant event in the history of mankind. Yet historians, scholars, and theologians alike cannot pinpoint when these two momentous events occurred. Apparently, our not being able to pinpoint the exact year of an event qualifies as a contradiction for Alter. Alter himself notes that the New Testament doesn't actually tell us the year of the crucifixion other than that it took place within the tenure of Pontius Pilate. So how can there be a contradiction with respect to the year of Christ's death, something which entails two mutually exclusive affirmations when there is no scriptural affirmation whatsoever regarding the specific year? Alter spends numerous pages explaining and critiquing different proposed years which Christian apologists and scholars have proposed as being the year of Christ's death. Perhaps what he means is that there are contradictory theories regarding the year of Christ's death. But if so, then so what? That's not a contradiction in scripture, and it's certainly not an objection to the resurrection of Jesus. At best, all that follows from Alter's observations is that we can't say for sure which exact year Jesus died. But so what? Who has said that we can have certainty on that matter? Why would we need to know the exact year in order to know that the resurrection occurred? Alter's reasoning seems to be that since the death and resurrection of Jesus would be the most important events to have ever occurred, we ought to be able to know the year in which they happened. But it's simply not clear to me that we should be able to know that and even less clear why knowing the year would be relevant to assessing the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. Should we also expect to know what the exact world population was at the moment of the resurrection just because it was the most significant event to have ever occurred? Should we expect to be able to determine the exact number of seashells on the face of the earth at the moment of the resurrection just because it was the most important event of all time? No. Then why should we expect to know the exact year? The significance of an event does not necessarily correlate with the amount of information which we can expect to have about it. One would have thought that this was obvious.

Taking his cue from Bart Airman, Alter also consistently blunders into the same mistake of assuming that differences are the same as contradictions. His second example of a contradiction regards the garments which the synoptic gospels claim that people were laying down in front of Jesus and the donkey he was riding to welcome him into Jerusalem. as he explains prior to Jesus's entry into Jerusalem, Mark 11 7-8, Matthew 217-8, and Luke 19:35-36 report that an unknown number of people laid down their heat in Greek outer garments or clothing on both the colt and on the ground for Jesus's donkey to walk on as it carried Jesus. In contrast, John omitted any reference to people laying down their clothing on the ground for Jesus. So, what's the contradiction? Well, as best I can tell, it's supposed to be that the synoptic gospels mention the laying down of the garments, whereas the Gospel of John does not. I trust that it is obvious that this is not actually a contradiction. Contradictions take the form of an affirmation that P and not P are true at the same time and in the same sense. But John merely does not mention the garments. He doesn't deny that this happened. So where is the contradiction? Alter sort of anticipated this type of response earlier in part one of the book. But his preemptive response amounts to saying that if we would expect a gospel writer to include some details which are absent, then it still counts as a contradiction. As he explains, omissions can at times be considered contradictions when the missing material is highly relevant and significant. Numerous times this text will present contradictions which fall under the Christian apologist's rubric of omission. But this is no response at all. Again, the necessary and sufficient condition for a contradiction is an affirmation of both P and not P. This is not present indeed can't possibly be present in a situation where certain details are simply not mentioned. Alter's response amounts to an admission that he has no idea what a contradiction actually is.

Alter proceeds to argue against the plausibility of this event having ever happened, given that we can hardly imagine that these Jews were stripping down buck naked in public and that they surely were not carrying extra clothing just for this event since clothing was so expensive and hard to come by back then. As he says, the description of people laying down their clothing is dubious. First, either the 12 disciples or these nondisciples were literally stripping down to their undergarments and placing their clothing on the colt and on the road or they were carrying an extra set of outwear for this specific purpose. Second, it must be remembered that in those days, people did not have numerous sets of clothes. Alter just doesn't consider the possibility that this is most likely a reference to people taking off their coats or outer tunics as opposed to everyone stripping nude or down to their underwear. But more fundamentally, even if he's right that this event never happened, this doesn't establish a contradiction as he claims. Fictional events are not the same thing as contradictions. Timothy and Lydia Mcgru rightly say, "The number of alleged discrepancies in the gospels is greatly exaggerated by a free use of the argumentum x silencio. If an author does not mention some piece of information, it is too often assumed that he was unaware of it or even that he positively believed the contrary. Such arguments from silence are pervasive in New Testament scholarship, but they are tenuous at best. By such reasoning, we can easily find contradictions even in the writings of one in the same historian as when Josephus mentions facts in his antiquities that we might have expected him to repeat in his Jewish wars. When we extend it to the comparison of multiple authors who treat of the same subject, the results are ridiculous. The moral to be drawn is that it is a risky business to speculate upon the motives of authors for including or omitting various facts. It's also unclear what bearing Alter's second example of a contradiction has on the resurrection of Jesus since Alter isn't all that clear on what the significance of his list of 120 contradictions is in the first place. Is he targeting the minimal facts argument where gospel reliability doesn't factor into the argument anyway? If so, why bring up contradictions at all? Is he targeting the maximalist approach? If so, then why has he completely ignored the positive arguments for gospel reliability? And why aren't the most prominent contemporary proponents of this approach so much as cited or mentioned? The book often reads more like a 1,000page stream of consciousness rather than a well-thoughtout case against the historicity of the resurrection. The vast majority of the supposed contradictions which alter sites can be explained by recourse to the differing perspectives of the eyewitnesses or the differing preferences and emphases of the different gospel authors. As NT Wright says, the stories exhibit exactly that surface tension which we associate not with tales artfully told by people eager to sustain a fiction and therefore anxious to make everything look right, but with the hurried, puzzled accounts of those who have seen with their own eyes something which took them horribly by surprise and with which they have not yet fully come to terms.

Alter replies to remarks like writes by saying, "The shortfall with this Christian apologetic is that one, not all the writers were eyewitnesses to the account. Two, the narratives were written approximately 30 to 70 years after the events. Three, at least Luke admitted in his preface that he was reporting hearsay. Four, the writings are believed to be the result of an evolving oral tradition. And five, the writings are biased, written to evangelize and spread their theological propaganda. But to the extent that these are problems at all, they are problems of Alter's own making. I don't agree with him that none of the gospels were written by eyewitnesses. I don't date the Gospels as late as he does. And even if I did, it remains unclear what that has to do with the plausibility that the gospels often reflect different perspectives. Luke says that he got his information from eyewitnesses. He does not claim that it is hearsay. I do not believe that the gospels are the result of an evolving oral tradition. And I don't think the evangelistic purposes of the authors does anything to undercut the idea that they sometimes reflect different perspectives. These are only problems if one accepts Alter's views on what the gospels are. But the defender of the resurrection has been given no reason to think that Alter is right about these points. As I said, I simply cannot go through each and every example of a purported contradiction which Alter puts forward in this video. But I think that what I have said here is sufficient to show that his list is artificially bloated to the point that skeptics cannot unproatically appeal to Alter's book as some sort of definitive knockout punch to the case for Jesus's resurrection. So to summarize, Alter's book is high in terms of page count and low in terms of substance. It really is just the skeptical equivalent of Gary Hobbermaus's four 1,000page volumes on the resurrection. Despite its inordinate length, critical matters like the authorship of the Gospels are treated only briefly. Furthermore, most of it is dedicated to detailing contradictions within the Gospels and other parts of the New Testament. Alter demonstrates from very early on that he has no idea what

A contradiction is, and fails to account for the fact that most of the differences which he highlights can be explained as variations of eyewitness testimony. I conclude that it doesn't pose anything in the way of a serious challenge to resurrection apologetics.

One of the significant recent contributions to the debate over Jesus's resurrection comes to us from the acclaimed New Testament scholar Dale Allison through his book, "The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, and History." My inclusion of Allison in a discussion of skeptics may seem anomalous, inasmuch as Allison describes himself as a Protestant Christian. Allison's orthodoxy has been the subject of considerable disagreement among other Christians, with some accepting him as such and others denying this. But my purpose in this video is not to weigh in on that debate. I have included a discussion of his work on the subject since, despite describing himself as a Christian, his book is very skeptical of apologetic efforts to show that Jesus was raised beyond all reasonable doubt. And while he also criticizes skeptics who think that the resurrection can be shown to have not occurred, his book has been hailed by many of them as one of the best reputations of apologetic arguments for the resurrection. Thus, because of the significance which Allison's work is deemed to have for the resurrection debate, it merits some discussion in this video.

Frankly, it's a bit odd reading Allison's book as someone who defends a maximalist argument for the resurrection of Jesus. I noted near the beginning of this video how there are broadly two approaches to defending the resurrection: minimalism and maximalism, which correspond to two different ways of approaching the Gospels. The maximalist approach considers the Gospels as holistic sources of information and tries to assess the credibility of these sources by attempting to link them to the original apostles.

Allison has drunk deeply of the cup of bad habits which permeate modern New Testament studies. Among those bad habits is the rejection of approaching sources as unified wholes, the overall reliability of which can be assessed as such. Instead, he buys into the assumption that the Gospels are mixtures of both history and legend. So the task of the New Testament scholar is to try to determine which parts of the narrative can be relied upon and which parts cannot. This way of treating the Gospels is completely different than how they are treated in my argument.

In many ways, Allison's book is a great catalog which demonstrates the many problems which plague contemporary New Testament studies, as the plethora of logical fallacies which are so deeply entrenched within this discipline are on full display. For example, when discussing the appearance of the resurrected Jesus to Mary Magdalene, Allison suggests that John's account may be dependent upon Matthew's account. And if this is so, Allison claims, then Matthew must be the only source for this appearance, and John can be discounted as being an independent source. As he says, "The issue is John, which a few take to be dependent exclusively on Matthew. If John does nothing but rewrite Matthew, then the latter would be our sole source for Mary's christophany." The problem is that it simply does not follow that literary dependence precludes the having of independent sources of information. It is entirely possible that the author of the Fourth Gospel should have depended upon Matthew's Gospel literarily and still also had independent access to additional sources of information.

Allison likewise concludes that the presence of apologetic glosses within the Gospels licenses the inference that the apologetically significant material is fictional. But obviously, a detail can be included in a narrative both because it is apologetically useful and also because it is historical. Arguably, the former depends upon the latter.

Similarly, Allison concludes that Matthew's story of the saints rising in Jerusalem is certainly not historical. He refers to it in other writings as a fiction and as a tall tale. How does he know this? According to him, this is because no other sources report it. As he says, "Wright's half-hearted argument arrives at no firm conclusion. In historical terms, there is no way of finding out whether Matthew's little story mirrors an event of the past."

My verdict is different. We can be almost pontifical here. Matthew 27:51-53 recounts a miracle unsurpassed anywhere else in the Gospels or other books of the Christian scriptures. Indeed, if it happened, it is the most amazing event of all time. But it did not happen. The astounding series of prodigies has left no trace in the other Gospels, Acts, Paul, Josephus, or for that matter, any other pre-Man source. It stands alone, half a century or more after the incredible events it reports. The key problem here is that this is a blatant argument from silence. And as I explained in my video, "Were the Gospels Originally Anonymous?", arguments from silence are seriously problematic. We simply have far too many examples of ancient sources remaining silent with respect to significant events which we independently know to have occurred. At the very least, this should cause us to be wary about concluding with any confidence that an event did not occur simply because there is silence about it.

Allison is aware that he is making an argument from silence, but he protests that some arguments from silence are nevertheless valid. He asserts, "While this is to be sure an argument from silence, some arguments from silence have force." Allison is correct that not all arguments from silence are equal. Some carry more force than others. However, they only carry force when some fact or facts about the silent source generates the expectation that the silent source would have mentioned the event if it had occurred.

Unfortunately for Allison, it's fairly easy to think of a reason why Mark, Luke, and John wouldn't have included the story of the saints rising. It's not directly relevant to Jesus's story. It's not a miracle which Jesus performed. And since the Gospels are primarily focused upon telling Jesus's story, it's not at all surprising that they wouldn't have included it.

Furthermore, it's not even necessarily true that Matthew is the only source which mentions the resurrection of the saints. The Odes of Solomon certainly appears to describe such an event. This work shows no signs of dependence upon the synoptic Gospels and it does not connect the resurrection of the saints with any of the other events to which Matthew relates it, such as an earthquake and the tearing of the temple veil. The work is also typically dated to the later 1st or early 2nd century, which makes it a possible candidate for an early and independent source testifying to the resurrection of the saints, as Jake O'Connell observes. Hence, although the Odes do not actually mention appearances of the resurrected saints, they do at least attest to the fact that people were raised from the dead around the time of Jesus's death.

But in any case, it's not clear why Allison thinks that we would have so much additional evidence for the resurrection of the saints. He seems to think that this event involved hundreds of individuals returning to life and publicly presenting themselves to the whole of Jerusalem. But nothing within Matthew's Gospel suggests that it was anything like this. He leaves the entire matter quite vague. For all we know, it only involved half a dozen saints appearing to people who were already believers. Indeed, the number of saints would have had to have been relatively small. Matthew says that they emerged from their tombs. But we must remember that when a Jewish person died, they were not laid in a tomb permanently. They were only left in the tomb until their flesh decomposed, at which time they were moved to an ossuary. So the total number of saints in tombs at this time would have had to have been fairly small. Again, O'Connell is correct when he says, "This objection loses its force once we realize that the event was not as spectacular as it initially seems."

There is no evidence that the appearances were public appearances. The assumption of scholars such as Allison seems to be that the resurrected saints appeared to huge crowds which included neutral and hostile witnesses such as Pilate and Caiaphas. If this was the case, one would certainly expect the event to be widely attested. But in fact, there is nothing in the text which indicates the appearances were like this. We are only told that the resurrected saints appeared to many. And it may be that these appearances, like the resurrection appearances, occurred primarily to those who were already followers of Jesus. In this case, the appearances would have no more apologetic value than the resurrection appearances themselves.

I highlight these points to illustrate why it's somewhat difficult for me as a maximalist to engage with Allison on the resurrection of Jesus. We are simply approaching the matter in two very different ways. Allison's methodology presupposes that my way of approaching the Gospels is incorrect. But because this is a presupposition, he does not directly argue against my way of approaching the Gospels. As such, the vast majority of his 400-page book is simply not applicable to my argument for the resurrection. Our starting points are just so radically different that we would have to engage in a deeper debate pertaining to our overarching methodologies before we could have a substantive debate over the particulars.

With all that being said, Allison does offer some very brief comments on the resurrection arguments of Timothy and Lydia McGrew as well as of Jake O'Connell. Since my argument for the resurrection is broadly within the same family, I will take some space to consider Allison's criticisms of the McGrews and O'Connell.

Regarding O'Connell, Allison writes, "O'Connell, in order to arrive at odds of a quadrillion to one in favor of Jesus's resurrection, needs to establish that the Gospels are generally reliable. This task involves defending the historicity of the resurrection of saints in Matthew 27 and ironing out even minor discrepancies among the Gospels. Not only will his argument sway none, save those already swayed, but one is puzzled as to why anyone who swallows the camel of Matthew 27 with its resurrection of many should strain at the gnat of Mark 16 with its resurrection of one. Indeed, the Gospels are so steadfastly factual for O'Connell that one wonders why he needs anything more. If all the relevant texts are literally true down to their details, the orthodox conclusion would seem to be inevitable."

There are two points of clarification which need to be made here. The first is that Allison seems to have misunderstood O'Connell. The maximalist argument asserts that the Gospels faithfully represent what the eyewitnesses claim to have seen. It does not, as Allison seems to think, assert that the Gospels are factual in every respect. I have made this point extremely clear in the third premise of my argument, where I explicitly say that it is possible that the testimony is deliberately false or honestly mistaken. By leaving open those possibilities, I do not presuppose the factuality of the testimony. The truth of that testimony remains to be revealed by the excluding of those other possibilities. This distinction is critical because it is in virtue of this that maximalist arguments for the resurrection are not question-begging, as Allison implies.

The second point is that Allison seems to have misunderstood O'Connell's purpose in defending the plausibility of the rising of the saints in Matthew. The point is not to establish that this actually happened. The point is to undercut the idea, proffered by scholars like Allison, that it is just absurd to believe that this event could have happened. If Matthew made it up, then we would have reason to question the thesis that Matthew's Gospel represents a faithful account of what the original eyewitnesses claim to have seen. O'Connell is trying to take that objection off the table. And so he defends the rationality of believing that this event might have happened. This is all that the maximalist needs to defend. Allison is guilty of a very serious misunderstanding of the maximalist case for the resurrection, and his critique of O'Connell puts that misunderstanding on full display.

Regarding the McGrews, Allison writes, "As for the McGrews, they presume the detailed facticity of Luke 24:36-43, where the risen Jesus eats fish, and John 20:24-29, where Jesus shows himself to doubting Thomas. Narratives whose historicity many, including everyone who disbelieves in the resurrection of Jesus, query. Perhaps it would be instructive were someone to apply Bayes' theorem to other astonishing religious claims. What would happen were a Tibetan Buddhist to run the numbers for this or that master achieving rainbow body? I cannot begin to guess what such exercises might yield or even how they might be conducted. But the lack of a comparative yardstick argues my hesitation regarding the efficacy of Bayesian analyses of Jesus's resurrection."

Once again, we see the same misunderstanding. Timothy and Lydia McGrew are clear in their Blackwell article, which Allison is discussing, and elsewhere, that they are not presupposing the historical factuality of the text, but rather just that it corresponds to what the original witnesses claimed. In their Blackwell article, they say in no uncertain terms, "Where the texts do assert something miraculous, for example, Jesus's post-resurrection appearances, we take it, given the basic assumption of authenticity, that the narrative represents what someone relatively close to the situation claimed." And elsewhere, Lydia McGrew has said, "This argument is not question-begging, since it is a statement about what the alleged witnesses claimed. Their testimony with this content must then be explained." I think that the McGrews have been more than clear that their argument assumes only that the Gospels accurately relay what the apostles claimed. It does not assume that what the apostles claimed, and so what the Gospels report, is necessarily truthful. And they have offered numerous arguments for why they think that the Gospels are trustworthy on this front. I don't claim that Allison is doing this deliberately, but yet again, we see that he has some fairly serious misunderstandings regarding the structure and nuances of the maximalist case for the resurrection.

As for his statement about rainbow bodies, his mentioning them gives me an opportunity to discuss what some might regard as one of Allison's more unique contributions to the resurrection debate. Allison claims that the evidence for the Buddhist phenomenon of so-called rainbow bodies is comparable to the evidence for the resurrection. It is a somewhat common strategy in replying to resurrection arguments that some other religion has miracles which are attested as well or better. Rainbow bodies are Allison's preferred example, as he goes on for the entirety of chapter 12 of his book explaining why, if you think that the evidence for Jesus's resurrection is rationally compelling, then you should similarly find yourself rationally compelled to believe in rainbow bodies. The phenomenon of rainbow bodies involves a body, typically after death, rapidly shrinking or dissolving over a period of days until it disappears. This is supposed to indicate that one has achieved a profound state or level of spiritual realization. Allison believes that this example should give Christian apologists pause to think, as he explains, "What would follow if every single one of the stories from Tibet is a hagiographical fabrication or the product of pious hocus-pocus? A Christian wanting to defend the uniqueness of Jesus's resurrection might think this the obvious view to back, yet to my mind, the apologist should here be ill at ease. Would not rejection of all the non-Christian stories reinforce the skeptics' repeated insistence that religious sincerity and eyewitness testimony do not ensure historical truth? If Tibetan bodies never mysteriously dissipate in a few days, but rather, against the multiple testimonies, some of it indisputably firsthand, invariably succumb to the usual phases of biological decay, then some must be, if not liars, then deluded victims of someone's misperception or trickery. And surely the more examples of such delusion and/or deceit surrounding dead bodies that one can amass, the more confident skeptics will be in rejecting the testimony to the resurrection of Jesus."

Now, the example of rainbow bodies is by no means a special case. Skeptics have appealed to a large number of cases which are supposedly comparable to the resurrection of Jesus. Certain Catholic miracles tend to feature prominently in such discussions. There are always two points to make in response to these sorts of arguments, which apply to Allison's example of rainbow bodies as well.

The first is that not all miracles are equal in terms of what they can establish. Not all miracles confirm the truth of the religions in which they may occur. There is no reason to suppose that the Christian God, for example, could not miraculously heal the child of Muslim parents. Just because the miracle happened within a Muslim family, it does not therefore confirm Islam. So, we have to distinguish between miracles which corroborate doctrines and miracles which do not. The defender of Jesus's resurrection does not need to reject every last miracle in every other religion. He just needs to show that Jesus's resurrection can support Christian doctrines. And since Jesus said that his resurrection would be the one sign that his teachings were true, that's pretty easy to establish. The defender of Jesus's resurrection would probably want to contest any miracles which would corroborate doctrines which conflict with Christianity. However, it's not immediately clear how the phenomenon of rainbow bodies would conflict with any doctrines of Christianity. So, the Christian may not have to reject this phenomenon in order to retain his Christian beliefs. Ultimately, we should be concerned with the evidence. If the evidence for another miracle is as good as the evidence for the resurrection, and if the evidence for the resurrection warrants belief, then Christians should believe in other miracles with comparable evidence. This will only create a problem if the other miracle is in conflict with Christianity.

As a second point, and probably more importantly, the evidence for these other miracles actually needs to be on par with the evidence for the resurrection if the critic is to have an argument. And here is where I maintain that Allison's example of rainbow bodies is not comparable to the resurrection. In the first place, I don't agree with Allison that we are dealing with multiple attestation. He gives three examples of this phenomenon in his book, but in each case, they are reported by just one source. In one instance, the source claims that three Tibetan monks could corroborate the story. But in this case, the three monks only saw the shrinking body as it lay covered by a blanket. So while they assumed that what they saw was a body, they did not actually confirm this. Consequently, it's quite easy to see how they could have been deceived.

In addition to a lack of multiple attestation to any particular instance of a rainbow body, we don't have comparable grounds for thinking that any of the witnesses would not have lied in this case. This phenomenon of rainbow bodies is perfectly acceptable within Buddhist communities. And so, unlike the apostles when they proclaimed the resurrection, the witnesses in these cases were not opening themselves up to a serious threat of persecution and death, for the most part. Furthermore, as I have already indicated, it's often easy to see how the witnesses could have been honestly mistaken, as with the three witnesses who presumed that they were seeing a body shrink underneath a blanket. But the situation is very different when it comes to the apostles. The resurrection is multiply attested. Persecution and martyrdom were real threats which the disciples faced for proclaiming it. And it is not at all easy to see how the disciples might have been mistaken about the resurrection, given what they tell us about what the appearances of Jesus were like. So the Christian need feel no guilt over being inconsistent when simply rejecting reports about rainbow bodies as cases of lies or as cases of being honestly mistaken, because these reports are not comparable to the reports about the resurrection.

As Lydia McGrew explains, "They're not comparable. They're not similar. That's the question is whether they're comparable or similar. So, let me talk a little bit about how they're not comparable or similar. How difficult in some of the, in the things that he quotes and cites as evidence, would it be to be mistaken and for some of the people whose accounts we have to just be mistaken? Now, it might be that somebody else is carrying out a fraud, but in that that case, we don't know who they are or whether anybody knew who they were and whether they got in any trouble for it or whatever. And for many rainbow body claims and for many of the [clears throat] people, not that hard."

He has this very strange quotation concerning the Dalai Lama, who believes that someone achieved rainbow body. He further knows firsthand some of the witnesses involved. Witnesses who handed him physical evidence related to the alleged event. You want to know what the physical evidence is? A piece of a robe. Okay. So, the Dalai Lama talked to a couple of disciples of one of the Buddhists who supposedly achieved rainbow body. They appear not to have gotten into trouble for doing this. And they meet the Dalai Lama and they say, "Yeah, our master achieved rainbow body." And they hand him a piece of cloth. This is a joke. This is like a bad epistemological joke. If I said that my husband flew around the house yesterday and I handed you a shoe and I said, "And this was the shoe he was wearing." That shoe proves nothing. That's not physical evidence related to the event. What are you talking about? It's a piece of cloth. It could be from somebody's robe. It could even be from that master's robe. That is no evidential vector at all to support their claim beyond the claim itself. Ridiculous. They handed him physical evidence related to the alleged event. I mean, if the Dalai Lama thought, "Wow, you handed me a piece of his robe," then you know, Allison has this other talk about how the Dalai Lama is incredulous. Well, if he thought the piece of the robe was epistemologically relevant, that's pretty darn credulous.

Or, there was one case where they were coming in every day after the person died, and there was this robe covering his body completely to begin with, and then people would come in and they believed that it looked like the object under the robe, which was presumed, Allison says, to be the body, was getting smaller each day. Are the objects under the robe? We don't know what they're presuming to be the body. This reminds me of the origins of Mormonism, where Joseph Smith wouldn't let the other so-called witnesses even see the alleged golden plates. He said he'd been told he'd be killed if he showed them. So, he had these metal plates of some kind wrapped up in his tunic. And they said they saw them with the eyes of the spirit. So, it's like an object under a robe.

Okay. Or to come in and say that the body was gone later. So they would find they would open the room after seven days and the body was gone. Okay. So maybe the body was gone. But to be mistaken about whether it turned into a rainbow, very easy. Um, there was even a relative of one of these whose uncle had died, and he thought that his uncle's body was getting smaller. So he's like sitting by the corpse and he's like, "Huh, it looks smaller to me." Now, we don't know how much smaller or what. And this guy actually did suffer persecution. He contacted the newspapers. He wanted the journalists to come and he wanted measurements to be made of his uncle's body. The communists weren't happy about this. He was thrown in prison. I don't know for how long, but then the body was burned, was cremated. So this nephew's already in a religious tradition where they believe that bodies disappear and turn into rainbows. Again, this is not establishing a whole new idea like the disciples of Jesus were. And there's one of those older apologists that shrewdly says that it's much easier to support an existing religion by allegations of miracles within that religious context than it is to establish a new set of religious ideas by an allegation of a miracle within a hostile context. And it is completely true. So this guy already believes that they turn into rainbows, and he thinks that his uncle may be achieving the rainbow body because the body looks somewhat smaller. Well, I mean, it's very subjective.

And then, you know, it was never carried out. So he could have been sincere. Okay. And then there's one where there are some guards. They've thrown the living Buddhist master himself into prison, and he's there. I think they guarded him for like a year, and then eventually they come in to the room and they find nothing. Well, first of all, the claim is they came into the room and they found his body shrunk to the size of a child. He was dead, and his body shrunk to the size of a child. Like, was it just curled up, or did someone else add that to the story? You know, there can be religious embellishments of stories. Okay, I don't deny that there are religious embellishments of stories. I just argue that that's not happening in the case of the resurrection claims, and I'm prepared to argue for that. Um, but and then later they come in and there's just a robe and some hair and some nails. I might add that as far as I know, no one did DNA testing to see if they were that guy's hair and nails. And even if they were, you could take them off the corpse and you could leave them there and leave them there with the robe. So, who knows, you know, what happened to that body, but I don't think it turned into a rainbow. Sorry if you just think that's a theological prejudice, but the point is that this would be, if the guards were impressed, this would be something they could easily be mistaken about, that it really turned into a rainbow. Okay. So, a lot of that is interpretation. Um, and sometimes the even the alleged data itself is something that someone could just be mistaken about, like, well, my body, my uncle's body looks like it's something smaller. Okay.

And then, then I sort of anticipated this a little bit, but the question of faking. If all we had in the case of Jesus were the empty tomb, we'd have a much weaker case. It would still have, you know, some evidential force, but it would be a much weaker case. Not something you would go out and, I think, reasonably die for, commit your life for. Not something I would commit my life for if all we had was, you know, his body disappeared. In the case of the disciples, I contend that what we have is that these people are saying, "We were with him. We met with him. We ate with him. We were able to touch him after he rose from the dead after he had been dead, and then he met with us in a group." That's not the kind of thing you can be mistaken about. Allison is not even presenting that. Okay. These are claims that people could have interpreted as somebody turning into a rainbow that was just the body being missing, or that people who faked don't seem to have suffered a serious fate. Okay. Okay. And that would actually be, you know, not all that hard to fake. You know, put some object under a robe and then you put a smaller object under the robe the next day and so forth. Pretty easy to fake. Or going and meeting the Dalai Lama and handing him a piece of cloth. I mean, that's not impressive. It's just astonishing to me that Allison makes a big deal about these things.

Now, he also makes a big deal about how recent it is. He seems to think that the fact that something happened in the, allegedly happened in the 20th century or was alleged in the 20th century or even the early 21st century should be extremely exciting. Not in and of itself. I mean, I imagine there are people out there credulously believing miracles today. So, I hope this has given you some idea of the nature of the differences between the cases.

To summarize, while Allison's book does discuss a lot of the literature surrounding the resurrection, I think it fails to provide any reason to seriously shake the apologist's confidence in the historical case for Jesus's resurrection. Allison's approach is hampered by the problematic way in which he approaches the Gospels. He has unfortunately and seemingly uncritically accepted most of the assumptions and methods inherent within contemporary New Testament studies, but nowhere defends those assumptions or methods. We have seen that Allison's criticism of the maximalist approach to the resurrection pretty flagrantly misunderstands it. And lastly, I have argued that his favorite counterexample to the case for the resurrection, namely rainbow bodies, are not analogous to the resurrection with respect to the quality of evidence which supports them.

Allison has become something of a darling of both several apologists and counter-apologists. He is praised by many on both sides as a refreshing beacon of honesty. The reason for this, I suspect, is that Allison comes to very middle-of-the-road conclusions. He defends aspects of both the apologetic and skeptical approaches to the resurrection. But I would suggest that there is a very important distinction between being moderate and being honest. It seems to me that many people on both sides have mistaken Allison's moderation for a sign of honesty. This is not to suggest that I think that Allison is dishonest or anything like that, but it is to suggest that Allison is subject to the exact same biases and methodological blunders as anyone else. And while his book certainly deserves to be widely read, it also deserves as much criticism and critique as any other book on this subject. Mike Licona reminds us, "Even humility can be employed immoderately, resulting in agnosticism that forfeits itself against mounting evidence that threatens it."

There is a newer line of response to the historical argument for the resurrection of Jesus, spearheaded by Matthew McCormack, which is based upon a comparison between the evidence for Jesus's resurrection and the evidence for the Salem witch trials. A certain segment of online counter-apologists, notably my friend Ben Watkins from Real Atheology, have been impressed with McCormack's argument. John Loftus has also indicated to me that he would endorse McCormack's basic approach to the case for the resurrection. As such, it merits some attention here.

Like most of the skeptics I have engaged, McCormack rejects the second premise of my argument, asserting the credibility of the New Testament witness to the resurrection of Jesus. As he explains, "Up until a few hundred years ago, the traditional view was that all of the Gospels were written by the followers of Jesus for whom the books are named. But the view now, on the basis of modern work in history and Bible scholarship, is that none of the Gospels were written by the apostle to whom it is attributed. Their authors are unknown. Furthermore, it is widely agreed that none of the authors were eyewitnesses to the events themselves. They heard the stories from others and recorded them many years after the alleged events transpired."

All McCormack offers by way of a defense for rejecting the traditional ascriptions of authorship is to appeal to the fact that this is widely agreed upon by contemporary biblical scholars. While this is true, it is worth asking if contemporary biblical scholars have good reasons for this agreement. And in my videos on "Gospel Authorship" and "Gospel Anonymity," I already assessed their reasons and found them to be wanting. Furthermore, I found that they have underappreciated the positive case for the traditional authorship of the Gospels. As such, McCormack doesn't offer anything new to the conversation on this front. Indeed, he doesn't even seem to be familiar with it. He appears to have just uncritically accepted the opinions of mainstream biblical scholarship on this matter.

But even if traditional authorship is granted, McCormack thinks that there is a further reason not to trust the Gospel authors, namely that they were uneducated and biased. As he says, "We have good reasons to doubt that the record is impartial and objective, and the people who recorded and transmitted the Jesus miracles did not have the conceptual tools, investigative methods, principles of good evidence, or background knowledge that would be necessary to adequately evaluate and represent the phenomena."

There are two key points to raise in reply to McCormack here. The first is that being impartial or unbiased is not a necessary prerequisite for being honest or for being trustworthy. Clearly, McCormack himself is quite biased towards the testimony of modern educated, scientifically literate people. But this doesn't mean that we have to therefore reject everything that McCormack says. Angus Menuge notes the irony, saying, "McCormack argues that the biblical reports of the resurrection are not credible because they reflected believers' enthusiasm, desire, and ideological commitments, and because their low levels of scientific knowledge, education, and literacy would have given them a low level of skepticism for what we would identify as supernatural, miraculous, or paranormal claims. However, both of the charges commit a genetic fallacy and hint of red herrings, too, and reveal a serious modernist bias in McCormack's own approach."

Second, and more importantly, the witnesses to Jesus's resurrection don't need any special academic qualifications or conceptual distinctions in order for us to be able to trust their testimony, as McCormack seems to think. They simply need the common ability to tell the difference between a person's being alive and being dead. Again, Menuge makes this point well. "The important point is that establishing that a resurrection occurs does not require any unfamiliar special test. We do not have to confirm some bizarre theory of how a resurrection happens, but simply apply the normal tests for telling if someone is alive or dead. The only difference in the case of the resurrection is that the tests are applied in reverse of the normal order: death preceding life instead of life preceding death."

McCormack does offer some other fairly standard objections to the trustworthiness of the Gospels, and later in his book, he defends the plausibility of bereavement hallucinations to account for the resurrection appearances. I have addressed most of these points in other videos or elsewhere in this one. So, I want to bypass all of that for the sake of focusing upon McCormack's truly unique contribution to this debate. Namely, his claim that the quality of the evidence for the resurrection is comparable to the quality of the evidence for witchcraft at Salem. Hence, if one rejects the idea that witchcraft transpired at Salem, then they should also reject the reality of the resurrection. McCormack presents this argument in chapter 3 of his book, "Atheism and the Case Against Christ." As he puts it, "Does our evidence justify concluding that there was real magic at Salem? Much can be said for the supernatural explanation. First, hundreds of people were involved in concluding that some of the accused were witches. Eyewitnesses testified in court, signed sworn affidavits, and demonstrated their utter conviction that those on trial were witches. Furthermore, the accusers came from diverse backgrounds and social strata, including magistrates, judges, the governor of Massachusetts, respected members of the community, husbands of the accused, and so on. They all became passionately convinced that the charges were true on the basis of what they had seen. The witnesses, accusers, and investigators had a great deal to lose by being correct. Men would lose their wives. Children would lose their mothers. Community members would lose friends they cared about. It seems very unlikely that such accusers could have ulterior motives leading them to such a dramatic and profound conclusion. Accusing a friend or a wife of being a witch very likely would have the horrible outcome of getting her executed."

And he goes on to drive his point home, saying, "Of course, I am not making a serious case for real witchcraft at Salem. I do not think you should conclude that the accused were really witches. The point is that they were not witches, and you probably do not believe that they were based on this substantial body of historical evidence. If we take seriously the attempts to prove the resurrection of Jesus on historical grounds, then in order to be consistent, we must also accept that the Salem witches actually performed acts of black magic."

So, right off the bat, there are some real problems here. In the first place, there is a critical difference between the context in which the witchcraft and the resurrection are supposed to have occurred. The Salem witch trials occurred within a staunchly Puritan colony where fear of witchcraft was already acknowledged as an abiding threat. As such, it is not surprising that this might have been a readily acknowledged possibility for all sorts of phenomena. As Emerson Baker observes in his scholarly study of the Salem witch trials, "Salem offered a perfect storm, a unique convergence of conditions and events that produced what was by far the largest and most lethal witchcraft episode in American history. Salem was a small part of a much larger pattern. Although England and her colonies saw fewer cases of witchcraft accusations than on the continent, they were still common and long-standing. Between 1645 and 1647, at the height of the English Civil Wars, more than 250 people were accused of witchcraft in East Anglia and more than 100 were executed, 15 in one day. In Salem, a total of 25 people lost their lives." Indeed, so paranoid were the residents of Salem about witches that they thought that even unusual behavior from animals counted as evidence for witchcraft. Again, Baker says, "Witches were also believed to be able to assume the shape of animals. Thus, unusual behavior in an animal, especially a strange one, might suggest the presence of a witch," and goes on to suggest, "the step from affliction to accusation was a short one." Today we attribute mass psychogenic illness to global concerns about toxic waste and terrorism. But in 1692, the omnipresent threat was witchcraft. In 1692, everyone believed in the existence of witches in league with the devil who had been created by God as a challenge to man. During the Salem witch trials, there was no dispute over the existence of witches. All ministers and learned people knew that witches were real and that they had the power to harm. The debate was over how one detected witchcraft and whether the victims were truly victims or were just faking their ailments. The point again is just that the Salem witch trials occurred within a context where people were already primed to appeal to witchcraft as an explanation for certain events. By contrast, the proclamation of Jesus's resurrection occurred in the context of Second Temple Judaism, where there was no expectation at all that a resurrection would occur in the middle of history. In other words, the people involved in the Salem witch trials were already primed to appeal to witchcraft to explain things in a way which first-century Jews were not primed to appeal to a resurrection. There is an element of social contagion present in the case of the Salem witch trials which is simply not present for the resurrection.

Second, McCormack's claim about what the witnesses stood to lose in the case of the Salem witch trials is not analogous to what the witnesses to the resurrection stood to lose. McCormack points out that the witnesses at Salem stood to lose certain women within their community. But why exactly are we to suppose that the witnesses would have been strongly motivated to protect these women within their community? Surely, we are all too familiar with jealousy and dislike for people among the members of communities. So, it's not terribly difficult to imagine that certain individuals within the Massachusetts Bay Colony would have been willing to give false testimony against other members of the community. Losing certain members of the community may have been viewed as a benefit rather than a loss. As Baker puts it, "Those accused of witchcraft were perceived as a threat, directly or indirectly, or as somehow related to a threat to the spiritual, political, or military stability and well-being of the community or the colony. Furthermore, there can be no doubt that the accusations involved power and authority, and in particular their perceived misuse and corruption. If any one factor links virtually all of the accused, it has to be religion. The trials were largely an effort to bolster Puritanism and orthodoxy under attack on multiple fronts. For in Massachusetts Bay, religion was the fabric that held the polity and society together. Many of those accused were perceived as posing a threat to the religious order." And indeed, when one looks at the situation preceding the Salem witch trials, it looks rather plausible that these people would be willing to lie about one another. Emerson Baker observes how two of the principal witnesses, Joseph and Ba-Sheba Pope, were part of the minority of Quakers within the Bay Colony. Coincidentally, they were also Benjamin Franklin's uncle and aunt. These two had previously been persecuted by several members of the dominant Puritan community. It is therefore not unfathomable that they should have been willing to falsely accuse their neighbors of witchcraft due to a lingering grudge. As Baker concludes, "The story of the Popes also reveals the complexities behind witch trials in Salem and elsewhere in New England, as well as some of the inaccuracies in how these events are often portrayed. Traditional textbooks and popular tales make the trials sound like a Puritan affair. Yet, the Popes were Quakers." Indeed, Baker goes on for the entirety of chapter 3 of his book, detailing the turbulent history of Salem, arguing that the village was ripe for something like this to break out. As he concludes, "Regardless of which factor ultimately was most important, the witchcraft accusations resulted from a long-standing failure of leadership. Not only did Salem Village's ministers fail to help resolve the divisions, but something about the ministry there brought out the worst in them. Overall, this was not a group to inspire confidence, let alone build a community of Christian believers in the face of adversity. Given its small size, poor pay, and frontier location, Salem Village was not able to attract the gifted divines who could have healed its wounds. The battle lines were drawn for a new kind of war against sinners and worse."

So McCormack simply doesn't know what he's talking about when he claims that the people of Salem would have been strongly motivated to avoid lying about one another. The evidence suggests just the opposite, namely that there were sufficiently vicious inner conflicts and divisions to lead to these sorts of false accusations. By contrast, when it comes to the apostles, they stood to lose their own livelihoods and even their own lives for proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus. We know that human beings are, as a general rule, strongly motivated to protect their own well-being. So, the motivations to not deliberately lie are not even remotely similar for the respective witnesses in these cases.

Third, McCormack overlooks contemporary counter-evidence. Notably, the governor of Massachusetts forbade any publication pertaining to the trials in recognition that things had gone horribly wrong. As Baker points out, "One reason that witchcraft disappeared from the public record was that the governor of Massachusetts Bay insisted upon it. Engaging in one of the first cover-ups in American history, Governor Sir William Phips banned the publication of any account of the witch trials." Even before the trials ended, people realized that something had gone horribly wrong and that some innocent people had died. This is a tacit acknowledgment that it was well known from very early on that the quality of the evidence was not anything like sufficient to condemn many of those who died at Salem on charges of witchcraft. McCormack simply doesn't mention any of this. But the situation for the resurrection is very different. No one close to the events leaves a trail of trying to cover something up. On the contrary, the early Christians readily invited people to check out the truth of their testimony for themselves. This is another significant difference between the evidence for witchcraft at Salem and the evidence for the resurrection.

On a related note, some of the witnesses are just known to have been fakes. Baker points out that one of the principal early witnesses was Mary Warren, who was supposedly being afflicted by someone accused of being a witch and yet had a remarkable recovery as soon as her master threatened to whip her. Margaret Jacobs famously recanted of her testimony, saying that it was all a lie. Baker rightly says, "While it is possible that the erratic behavior of the girls sparked a mass psychological phenomenon, a considerable amount of deliberate fraud eventually took place, carried out for a range of reasons. Scholars have speculated that Abigail Williams might have accused people because of the attention she received." By contrast, none of the apostles are known to have recanted of their belief in the resurrection despite facing persecution and death.

Fourth, quantity of testimony is not the same thing as quality of testimony. McCormack makes much of the sheer amount of testimony we have for the presence of witchcraft at Salem, saying, "How much evidence do we have? Enough to fill a truck." Modern archives at the University of Virginia and elsewhere have thousands of documents, books, records, transcripts, affidavits, testimonials, and other works detailing the events. But there is this thing called the law of diminishing returns. At a certain point, simply piling on more witnesses gets one only a marginal degree of greater confirmation. Eventually, the quality of the testimony itself has to be assessed if significantly more evidential mileage is to be had out of it. And here is precisely where the defender of the resurrection claims to have the advantage, for the details of the testimony pertaining to witchcraft at Salem often do not justify the belief that witchcraft was present. Emerson Baker observes that in some cases the testimony consisted of nothing more than vague references to being tormented by specters of the accused. As he says, "Like some of her neighbors, Bathsheba said that she was afflicted by witches, specifically claiming that the specters of John Proctor, Martha Corey, and Rebecca Nurse tormented her." But what exactly is it like to be tormented by a spectre? And how would this indicate that someone is guilty of witchcraft? We have no idea. No details are present in this sort of testimony which provides a significant symmetry breaker with the testimony about the resurrection appearances of Jesus. Furthermore, this affliction was not

experienced by more than one person at a time. As Baker notes, Bath Sheba and her cohorts suffered spectral attack. That is, they were assaulted by a spirit that was invisible to everyone except the afflicted.

As the circle of accusation grew in Salem Village, the afflicted would even point the finger at people they had never seen in person. These are but a few of the contradictions behind what happened in 1692 during a witch hunt that in many ways was an aberration from earlier proceedings. So we can see that the element of corroborating testimony is also missing from most of these accusations. To be sure, many people might have claimed to suffer spectral attack from the same person, but the actual instances of it were thought to be private events which were incapable of being shared even in principle.

This too provides a significant difference between the supposed witchcraft at Salem and the resurrection appearances of Jesus. For Jesus is experienced in the Gospels by groups of people and the Gospels serve to corroborate one another. In some cases, the testimony consisted of nothing more than descriptions of illness which people at the time simply didn't understand and interpreted as affliction by invisible demons followed by delirious claims from those who were ill.

Again, Baker explains, "Reverend Samuel Paris and his wife Elizabeth began to notice that their daughter Betty and niece Abigail Williams were behaving oddly. Betty was nine and her cousin was about 11, vulnerable ages in a time when illness all too often proved deadly. Soon, the minister called in friends and colleagues, including Reverend John Hail, from neighboring Beverly, to observe the girls. Hail noted, 'These children were bitten and pinched by invisible agents. Their arms, necks, and backs turned this way and that way and returned back again, so it was impossible for them to do of themselves, and beyond the power of any epileptic fits or natural disease to affect. Sometimes they were taken dumb, their mouth stopped, their throats choked, their limbs racked and tormented. They also suffered by pins invisibly stuck into their flesh and pricking with irons.'"

They baked a loaf of rye bread mixed with some urine from the afflicted girls, then fed it to the family dog. This was one of many known counter-magical folk remedies. When the dog ate the witch cake, it was supposed to reveal the witch's identity. Indeed, the afflicted girls soon cried out that it was Tatuba who was tormenting them.

I ask if this sounds anything like the accounts of the resurrected Jesus in the Gospels. Are the sightings of Jesus in the Gospels something which can be easily explained away by physical ailments and delirium coupled with a healthy dose of superstition? In my judgment, the answer is clearly negative. But McCormack just glosses over these sorts of critical differences, claiming that the evidence for witchcraft is just as good as the evidence for the resurrection.

In other cases, the evidence for witchcraft consisted of nothing more than a bunch of people testifying to strange or unusual happenings, but nothing which could reasonably be interpreted as witchcraft. As Baker comments, as was often the case at witch trials, the accusations confirmed the long-held suspicions of neighbors who then came forward to recount a long history of Bishop's satanic acts. A total of 10 witnesses testified about strange actions that surrounded her, some dating back to the 1670s. From unusual accidents and the disappearance of money to mysterious deaths and her apparent ability to summon monstrous satanic imps, Bishop was a bilious reservoir of the invisible world. To no one's surprise, Bishop was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged.

Apparently, McCormack thinks that testimony pertaining to a history of unusual events supports the reality of witchcraft as strongly as the testimony of multiple people having bodily experiences of the risen Jesus supports the resurrection. But I take it that the asymmetry is obvious. Astonishingly, despite all of this, McCormack still claims with apparent sincerity that the evidence for witchcraft at Salem is actually of better quality than the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, saying, "When it is put up against the case for the resurrection in the important respects, the historical evidence for witchcraft is better than the historical argument for the resurrection."

We do not have any of the original Gospels, only copies from centuries later. The Gospel stories are only a few anecdotal hearsay stories from passionate and committed religious adherents passed by word of mouth for decades through an unknown number of people before being written down. All that remains of those stories are copies of copies from decades or even centuries later, then were actively called and patched together from a wider range of more varied writings. By reasonable measures of quantity and quality, the evidence we have for witchcraft at Salem is vastly better than the evidence we have for the magical return from the dead by Jesus.

But this claim can only hold water if McCormack is right in his assessment of the Gospels as late, unreliable hearsay in the first place. But the defender of my resurrection argument, and indeed probably of most resurrection arguments, is not likely to agree with McCormick's assessment of the Gospels. And as already noted, McCormack makes no attempt whatsoever to defend this assessment of the Gospels. Surely, if McCormack were to be right about the Gospels being of as little historical value as he thinks, then he would be correct that the evidence for the resurrection would be comparable to the evidence for witchcraft at Salem, which is to say, not very strong. But that is precisely the point of contention between McCormack and myself. I do not agree with him regarding what the Gospels are. And the comparison to the Salem Witch Trials only succeeds on that unargued assumption. Consequently, the whole comparison to the Salem Witch Trials is irrelevant. If I agreed with McCormick about the Gospels, I would automatically agree with him that belief in the resurrection is unjustified. And I would agree with this even apart from his comparison to the Salem Witch Trials. The real premise of McCormack's argument, which I take issue with then, is that the Gospels are the end result of years of stories being passed down to unknown authors. Without that premise, the comparison to the Salem Witch Trials cannot be made. And it is precisely this premise which McCormack utterly fails to defend. All in all, McCormack's book simply fails to engage the substantial amount of argumentation which Christian scholars have put forward in defense of the historical credibility of the Gospels, opting instead to lazily take the opinions of critical scholarship at face value. Even more problematic is how McCormick fails to critically engage recent scholarship surrounding the Salem witch trials. For how confidently he asserts that the evidence for the resurrection is comparable to the evidence for witchcraft at Salem, McCormick's book demonstrates surprisingly little knowledge of the specific evidence. Indeed, based upon Baker's persuasively argued research, I think that the conclusion that McCormack is simply repeating a sort of pop history about the Salem witch trials, which lacks a substantial basis in history, is more than warranted. This has caused him to grossly overestimate the quality of evidence for witchcraft at Salem. His failure to seriously engage conservative biblical scholarship has correspondingly caused him to grossly underestimate the quality of the evidence for the resurrection, thereby skewing his final judgment about the respective quality of the evidence for both events.

As with Matthew McCormack, Robert Greg Caven is a philosopher who is skeptical of the resurrection of Jesus. Like McCormack, he eschews the prospect of muddying himself in the trenches of history by dealing with the actual historical evidence, preferring instead to cast down objections from his philosophical ivory tower. Caven's case against the resurrection is not so much an argument that it did not happen as that it would be impossible for us to have any evidence for it, even if the Gospels are 100% true, and even if the resurrection actually occurred. As he says, "I shall argue in particular that because resurrection entails the transformation of a corpse into a supernatural body, our only sources of potential evidence, the New Testament Easter traditions, do not provide sufficient information to enable us to establish the historicity of the resurrection even on the assumption of their complete historical reliability."

Now, if you have a similar reaction as I had when I first heard this, then you are wondering how Caven can possibly sustain such a thesis. After all, if the resurrection happened, then it was a historical event and should be capable of being justified by historical means, right? But Caven disagrees. To understand why, we must first be clear on the distinction between a resurrection and a resuscitation. A resuscitation merely involves a dead body returning to life. But the body will continue to age, to deteriorate, and eventually to die again. This is not what Christians believe happened to Jesus.

As Steven T. Davis puts it, "When the Jewish disciples of Jesus spoke about his resurrection, they were not claiming that he had simply come back to ordinary earthly life. This is what we would call resuscitation. Think here of the prophet Elijah raising the widow's son from the dead, or of Jesus bringing Jairus's 12-year-old daughter back to life, or of Jesus raising his friend Lazarus from the dead after he had been 4 days in the tomb. In all of these cases, the person is miraculously brought back to life. Eventually, however, each of them would die again. By contrast, a resurrection involves being raised back to life in an incorruptible, glorified body which will never again see death. This is what Christians believe happened to Jesus."

But just here, we must stare down Caven's argument. For Caven contends that all of the evidence that we do have, and indeed all of the evidence we could ever have, will not be able to distinguish between Jesus being resuscitated and Jesus being resurrected, as he explains.

"Now from this brief review of the concept of resurrection held by those who claim that there is sufficient historical evidence to establish the resurrection of Jesus. It is clear that the hypothesis of the resurrection is not to be identified with the comparatively weak claim of revivification. One, Jesus died and afterward he became alive once again, which is strictly neutral between the hypotheses of Jesus's resurrection and resuscitation. Rather, the resurrection hypothesis is logically equivalent to the much bolder claim. Two, Jesus died and afterward he was transformed into a living supernatural body. Correlatively, it is clear that those who claim that the New Testament Easter traditions are sufficient to establish the resurrection hypothesis are claiming not merely that there is sufficient evidence to establish one, but quite significantly that this evidence is sufficient to establish a much stronger hypothesis, two. And in consequence the specific dispositional propositions it logically implies. But now while one may be established through sense perception, this is quite impossible in the case of two."

Now we might respond to Caven in broadly two ways. In the first place, we might suggest that we are for the moment merely arguing for the thesis that Jesus was raised by God from the dead and simply leave open the question of whether or not this was a resuscitation or a resurrection. Even if Jesus's being raised back to life after 3 days was merely a resuscitation, we can still argue that it was miraculous. After all, when people are resuscitated after being pronounced clinically dead, this typically happens as the result of CPR, defibrillation, advanced airway management, and within a few minutes of death. Even in the most extraordinary case of a medical resuscitation on record, Velma Thomas was revived 17 hours after being pronounced clinically dead. We simply have no reason whatsoever to believe that someone who was dead for three whole days without any medical attention could have been resuscitated naturalistically. This is especially so given the particularly brutal nature of Jesus's death. Add to this Jesus's prediction that he would return to life as a divine vindication that his message came from God. And I think that we have more than enough reason to conclude that Jesus returning to life was a miracle, regardless of whether it was a resurrection or a resuscitation.

As Stephen T. Davis puts it in his review of Caven's article, "It seems to me that most Christian apologists for the resurrection, like me, are only trying to establish the rational credibility of belief in one, which of course describes a miracle that is big enough in itself."

Caven argues as follows: "It is clear that those who claim that the New Testament Easter traditions are sufficient to establish the resurrection hypothesis are claiming not merely that there is sufficient evidence to establish one, but quite significantly that this evidence is sufficient to establish the much stronger hypothesis too." Well, the truth of this claim depends on what is meant by the resurrection hypothesis. If we mean the entire Christian doctrine of the resurrection, Caven is right. But if it means something like God raised Jesus from the dead, it is not true. I think the New Testament Easter traditions are sufficient to establish that claim.

And J.P. Holding adds, "Is Caven's demand that we can't be sure Jesus really resurrected unless we're able to be sure he didn't die of old age in 1300 AD?" The pose is a curious one, since a Jesus who comes back from the dead to die of gangrene hundreds of years later has already undergone some sort of miraculous recovery which begs an explanation and is contrary to what is possible in Caven's materialistic worldview. And this is all we really need to establish in making the case for Christianity. We have a miracle which confirms the truth of what Jesus taught. But once this has been appreciated, then we must also realize that one of the things which Jesus taught was that he was going to be resurrected. So, as long as we can establish that Jesus returning to life was a miracle functioning as a divine confirmation of his teachings, we have evidence for Jesus's resurrection. To be sure, the historical evidence would be supporting nothing more than that Jesus was at least miraculously resuscitated. But coupling this fact with Jesus's teachings, which were confirmed by that miracle, we are more than warranted in concluding that Jesus was not just resuscitated, but was also resurrected.

As William Lane Craig explains, "Given the religio-historical context of Jesus's own radical self-understanding and blasphemous personal claims, not to mention his activity as a miracle worker, exorcist, and herald of the inbreaking of God's kingdom, God's raising Jesus from the dead is most plausibly understood as God's ratification of those claims."

Caven does anticipate this move, but his response is difficult to take seriously. He objects that we cannot trust Jesus's testimony on this point because it's conceptually possible that other factors might explain this. As he says, "It is conceptually possible that a very powerful evil spirit or a group of technologically advanced but unscrupulous aliens brought about the resuscitation, ascension, and glorious appearances of Jesus, either forcing him against his will to lie about the resurrection, or else tricking him into believing that it had actually occurred by enthroning him after his ascension in a fake heaven."

I must admit that I am a little taken aback at finding this level of argumentation from a qualified philosopher in the opening chapter, no less, of a book which is ostensibly supposed to provide a serious challenge to the resurrection of Jesus. Caven has offered us nothing more than the bare possibility that Jesus might have been wrong. But what needs to be shown is that this is more probable, or at least as probable, as that he was telling the truth. It is possible that we were all created 5 minutes ago, complete with memories and food in our stomachs. Yet few take this to be a reason to consider this possibility very likely. It is possible that we are living in the Matrix or as victims of Descartes' evil demon and that the external world does not exist. Yet few consider this possibility reasonable to believe. Possibility comes cheap. It is always possible to create a highly elaborate and ad hoc story to get around any body of evidence. But by doing so, one ratchets up the complexity of their hypothesis and correspondingly lowers the likelihood that it is true. The fact that Caven can tell a highly complex alternative story about how Jesus might have been resuscitated and then falsely claimed that this was divine proof of his resurrection does not even begin to make that story a serious contender to the resurrection hypothesis.

Again, Craig correctly points out the objector seems to think that the Christian apologist needs to be able to deduce logically from the evidence that, for example, Jesus could have survived cholera or an automobile crash. But that's not the way an inductive argument works. For any data set, there will be an infinite number of hypotheses that are consistent with the data. In inferring that Jesus was raised from the dead in the full Jewish sense of that term, one is inferring to the best explanation of the data.

As a second point, from the historical evidence alone, we are able to conclude that Jesus's body possessed different abilities after he was raised from the dead. He is able to simply vanish and reappear at will. He is able to walk through closed doors and so on and so forth. While these special abilities may not supply evidence that Jesus's risen body was specifically incorruptible or immune from aging, they do supply evidence that it was not just a normal human body. And if we accept this, then this should increase our credence that Jesus's risen body possessed other special abilities, such as those of a resurrected body. As Richard Swinburne says, "The resurrection of Jesus was a resurrection in which Jesus had supernatural powers to pass through doors, etc." I argued in the previous chapter that Jesus did claim a divine status and coming to life again with supernatural powers. Jesus would at least be showing that he had a supernatural status, and that is some of the way towards showing his divinity.

Holding adds, "It is certainly true that we have no direct evidence that Jesus would not have been able to be destroyed by a hydrogen bomb and so on. However, the direct evidence Jesus provided functions as circumstantial evidence that he would have been able to survive such attempts." In any case, Caven's whole discussion seems a bit hypothetical. I am fairly confident that he himself does not believe that Jesus was actually raised from the dead, but that this was a mere resuscitation. Indeed, I don't know of any skeptic who believes this. For this reason, my suspicion is that this whole line of argumentation from Caven is one big smoke screen intended to distract us from the question of what he actually believes happened on that first Easter morning. If he started defending that over against the idea that Jesus did rise from the dead rather than quibbling over precisely how far the historical evidence allows us to go, I have a feeling that things would go very poorly for him. For the record, when Caven has ventured to comment on what he actually believes happened, he suggests the ludicrous idea that Jesus had an identical twin brother who was mistaken for Jesus after his crucifixion. So, it's a small wonder that he prefers to quibble over how far exactly the historical evidence will allow us to go rather than defend the twin brother hypothesis. But even just taken on its own, Caven's case against rationally believing in the resurrection strikes me as extraordinarily weak. It feels like a trivial semantic argument which leaves the substantive underlying issues completely unaddressed.

To sum up, this section has considered Robert Greg Caven's case that historical evidence alone is indeterminate between the possibilities of a resurrection and a resuscitation. I have offered two general lines of response. First, I have suggested that even if Jesus was only resuscitated, this would still be miraculous and would therefore still support the truth of Christianity. And from this it follows that we would have reason to believe that what Jesus taught was true. Jesus taught that he was resurrected. Therefore, even if the historical evidence alone only allows us to infer a miraculous resuscitation, we can pretty easily move from this to a miraculous resurrection. Second, Jesus's resurrected body demonstrated abilities far beyond those of a natural body. This renders the idea that Jesus's risen body possessed other special properties, including those of a resurrected body, fairly plausible. Together, I think that these points are sufficient to show that Caven's case against believing in the resurrection of Jesus may be readily dismissed.

Lastly, I want to discuss James Fodor's case against the resurrection of Jesus, which he details in his book, Unreasonable Faith. Now, in that book, Fodor is laser-focused upon William Lane Craig's case for the resurrection of Jesus. While Craig's case is not as minimal as say Gary Habermas's or Mike Licona's, I think it is fair to say that he still very much falls into the minimalist camp. Again, I recognize that Craig rejects being labeled as a minimalist, but as shown earlier, his resurrection argument falls within the boundaries which I have stipulated for a minimalist approach. And as I explained before, I reject a minimalist approach to defending the resurrection. As such, Fodor's objections are not specifically directed against the sort of resurrection argument which I am offering. With that being said, I still think it will be of value to survey his objections. This is because Fodor's contribution to this debate is somewhat unique. And by showing how the maximalist can overcome Fodor's objections, I will further cement the strength of the maximalist case for the resurrection.

William Lane Craig's resurrection argument is based upon four allegedly widely accepted historical facts. These are: one, the burial of Jesus; two, the empty tomb; three, the post-mortem appearances of Jesus; and four, the disciples' belief in the resurrection. Craig argues that the resurrection of Jesus is the best explanation of these four facts. Fodor's response grants Craig all of these four facts, but argues that the resurrection is not the best explanation of them. As he explains, "I wish to pursue quite a different strategy, one that I believe has been largely neglected in the discourse thus far. Specifically, subject to only a few relatively minor qualifications, I will accept both of the first two premises of Craig's argument. I believe Craig has provided adequate evidence to attest to the four historical facts, even if I believe he does overstate his case at times. I also largely accept the criteria that he presents for judging explanations. Instead, I want to focus my attention on Craig's third premise that the resurrection hypothesis is the best explanation for the four historical facts. I will present an alternate explanation for Craig's historical facts, defend it against various objections, and then argue that this alternate explanation better fulfills the criteria for a good explanation than does Craig's resurrection hypothesis. As such, I argue that Craig fails to show that the resurrection of Jesus is the best explanation for the historical facts and therefore his argument for the truth of Christianity fails."

Fodor's alternative hypothesis is a combination of four different theses which, according to him, better explain Craig's four facts than the resurrection when assessed by the criteria of a best explanation. He calls it the RHBS hypothesis, as he summarizes: "I have termed this explanatory hypothesis the RHBS model, which stands for Rearial, Hallucination, Biases, and Socialization, corresponding to the key elements of the model. A summary of the model follows: Rearial. Between Jesus's burial on Friday afternoon and the discovery of the empty tomb on Sunday morning, Jesus's body was removed from the tomb and subsequently re-buried. Exactly why is a secondary matter, but in my view, the most likely explanation is that Joseph of Arimathea himself wished to remove Jesus's corpse from his family tomb. Individual hallucinations. Following the discovery of the empty tomb and exasperated by grief and emotional excitement, one or more of Jesus's followers experienced individual hallucinations of the risen Jesus. The most likely candidates are Mary and Peter, though that is not essential to the argument. Group religious experiences. These followers then discussed their experiences with the disciples, generating an expectation that they might experience something similar, partly as a result of this expectancy and also mediated by social reinforcement, strong emotions, sensory distortions, and environmental influences. The early disciples had several collective religious experiences of the risen Jesus. These experiences were social in nature and so not purely psychological hallucinations, but were delusory in the sense that they did not involve the disciples actually seeing a physically resurrected Jesus. Memory and cognitive biases. In the process of discussing these experiences among themselves afterwards, the disciples' memories of what they experienced were reshaped through processes of reconstructive recall and social memory co-cognition in the direction of increased coherence between individual accounts and also greater impressiveness of the experiences. In the process, a standard version of these experiences began to develop. Cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, selective perception, and other similar biases combined to reduce any inconsistencies or discrepancies in the accounts or memories. Socialization and marginalization of doubt. Public expressions of doubt, disagreement, and skepticism were further muted because few disbelievers cared enough about Christianity to engage much with early Christians or disprove their claims, and most of those exposed to these claims had neither the inclination nor the ability to check for themselves."

Fodor goes on to examine how his RHBS hypothesis compares to Craig's with respect to satisfying the criteria of a best explanation. He begins by considering the relative parsimony of his hypothesis versus Craig's. He identifies a more plausible explanation as one with fewer new assumptions and better justified new assumptions. He identifies the new assumptions of the RHBS hypothesis as follows: One, Jesus's body was removed from the tomb before its discovery by Jesus's women followers. Two, some of Jesus's followers experienced individual hallucinations of Jesus appearing to them. Three, reports of the empty tomb and these first appearances triggered a series of collective experiences of the risen Jesus among the disciples. Four, the memories and understanding of these experiences were reshaped over time by psychological and sociological forces towards being more consistent and impressive. Fodor goes on at considerable length arguing that none of these new assumptions are terribly implausible, since he thinks that he can tell a plausible story to support the first, and that there is considerable psychological evidence to support the plausibility of the other three. Furthermore, he contends that collectively these new assumptions possess the explanatory power to adequately account for all of Craig's four facts. This makes it a real competitor against the resurrection hypothesis, as he concludes overall. "Therefore, I conclude that each of the four postulates of the RHBS model is plausible and that taken together, they have adequate explanatory scope and moderately high explanatory power in accounting for Craig's four historical facts. As such, I think that the RHBS model provides a reasonably good explanation for the historical facts. It is certainly not a perfect explanation. It does not account for every detail, nor does it do so with maximal degrees of plausibility or explanatory power. Nevertheless, I think it accounts for the facts in question in as good a manner as can reasonably be expected given the paucity of the evidence for such an ancient event."

Fodor then moves to assess the relative plausibility and explanatory power of the resurrection hypothesis as Craig defends it. He concludes that the new assumptions which it includes, namely that God exists, that God would want to raise Jesus from the dead, and that Jesus would want to be seen after his resurrection, are not independently plausible. Fodor is willing to grant that the resurrection hypothesis has strong explanatory power with respect to most of the facts, although he does quibble with its ability to explain the fourth. That is about as brief a summary of Fodor's case as I can give without glossing over essential details. And I actually think that it's a reasonably good response to Craig's resurrection argument and to minimalist arguments. More generally, the key problem with minimalist arguments, which Fodor effectively leverages, is that they do not make any reference to the details of the resurrection appearances in the Gospels. Without those details, it's impossible to make a determination with respect to the question of whether or not the disciples were rational in their belief in the resurrection of Jesus. One can argue all they like for the mere fact that the disciples genuinely believed in the resurrection. But if they did not believe it for good reasons, then this fact is not significant. The whole idea behind an argument based on historical testimony is that the justification which people in the past had for their beliefs is to some extent supposed to be able to be transmitted to us in the present. And the justification which those people had was the details of their own experiences. Therefore, our being able to access some of the details of those experiences is absolutely essential to our being able to have justified beliefs about the past. But Craig's four facts, which make up the premises of his resurrection argument, make no use of the details within the resurrection accounts. Craig attempts to argue for the resurrection just from the fact that the disciples saw Jesus in some sense and then came to believe that he was resurrected. This is the critical oversight in minimalist arguments for the resurrection, and Fodor exploits it very well, as he puts it.

"I should note, however, that accepting these four facts does not amount to accepting the historicity of every detail recorded in the New Testament or in the Gospels specifically. In particular, I do not necessarily grant the historicity of all the details surrounding Jesus's death, burial, and appearances, nor that each appearance recorded in one of the Gospels is necessarily historical. I grant that experiences of the risen Jesus occurred and that they took place on multiple occasions in different circumstances with individuals and groups of people. This does not, however, entail that all details of such accounts in the Gospels are completely accurate or can be uncritically appealed to."

Fortunately, we do not have to rely on minimalist arguments for the resurrection. The maximalist argument which I have made explicitly utilizes those details by referencing the credibility of the testimony pertaining to the resurrection of Jesus. Again, the maximalist is not necessarily appealing to the historicity of the details within the resurrection narratives. Rather, the maximalist is appealing to the idea that these details are part of what the original eyewitnesses claim to have seen. Fodor's case against the resurrection depends critically upon the details in the Gospels pertaining to the resurrection appearances not being anything like what the disciples originally experienced. In this way, Fodor drives a wedge between the disciples' belief in the resurrection and the rationality of that belief. The failure of minimalist arguments is that they allow skeptics like Fodor to make this move. The maximalist case, however, is equipped with the resources necessary to block this move.

My argument for the resurrection takes for granted something which I extensively defended in a prior video, namely the traditional authorship of the four Gospels. In order to get to the conclusion that the resurrection narratives in the Gospels are nothing like what the disciples originally experienced, one might think that Fodor would have to deny the traditional authorship of the Gospels. After all, it doesn't seem likely that Matthew and John, for example, could be mistaken about their own experiences when they relayed them in their respective Gospels. But Fodor is actually willing to grant traditional authorship. And yet, he maintains that this is not sufficient to guarantee that the details in the Gospels accurately relay what the appearances of Jesus were like. As he explains, "The embellishments that occurred to the story, therefore, were not primarily gradual legendary accretions, but largely were the result of the psychological and sociological processes I have just outlined, shaping and reshaping the disciples' memories and understandings of what they themselves had experienced. As such, the RHBS model that I am here defending is in no way dependent upon gradual legendary accretion or on the Gospels not having access to original eyewitness testimony. Although I regard it as unlikely that any of the Gospels were directly written by eyewitnesses. Nevertheless, my account is consistent with this possibility, since the RHBS model seeks to explain how the eyewitnesses themselves came to believe that the risen Jesus appeared to them in the flesh."

The key in achieving this remarkable conclusion for Fodor is his suggestion that the disciples' memories of what had originally occurred in their visionary or hallucinatory experiences were distorted by sociological factors to the extent that they really came to believe that their experiences occurred in the way that they are reported in the Gospels. As he explains, "The final postulate of the RHBS model is that the stories of Jesus's appearances that came to be told by Jesus's followers do not correspond exactly to what the disciples really experienced in their collective religious experiences of the risen Jesus. Even though the disciples really did believe they were truthfully reporting their experiences, this is the result of the disciples' memories of what they experienced being altered over time, leading to a general increase in impressiveness of the accounts, incorporating new elements from the recollections of other different disciples and also to enhance the overall coherence of the accounts of different disciples."

The weight that Fodor's case will carry against the maximalist argument for the resurrection then is directly proportionate to the strength of his evidence that this level of memory distortion really occurred. But before addressing Fodor's case for memory distortion, I just need to flag one thing about his appeal to hallucinations. For although he appeals to memory distortion to explain away the details of the Gospels, Fodor thinks that the disciples' belief in the resurrection was originally generated by hallucinatory experiences. As a result, it is worth asking how likely it is that hallucinations would lead the disciples to believe in the resurrection in the first place, even if the details in the Gospels could be explained by recourse to memory distortion. The basic worry here is that although bereavement hallucinations are somewhat common, they do not typically lead those who have them to believe that the deceased has returned to life. More commonly, they are just interpreted as communications from the deceased from beyond the grave.

As David Gregg observes, "Fodor then turns to bereavement hallucinations, which are more relevant to the question of Jesus's resurrection. One crucial question that Fodor does not consider is: if hallucinations are common, why are such experiences not regularly understood as resurrections? Fodor then cites studies on individuals involved in new religious movements indicating that such people are more prone to fantasize. While I can agree with Fodor that hallucinations are relatively commonplace realities, they are consistently interpreted by reasonable people to be at most communications of comfort about the departed from beyond the grave. Which is to say, even if the disciples had experienced hallucinations, it is improbable, given their first-century memory schematics of the afterlife, that they would have remembered this as a resurrection. Instead, it is more probable that the disciples would have interpreted this as evidence that Jesus was dead and destined to arise at the end of the age or assumed into heaven. If bereavement hallucinations are not a good explanation for the disciples' belief in the resurrection in the first place, then Fodor's hypothesis has plausibility difficulties right from the start, even aside from the viability of his claims about the likelihood of memory distortion."

But let us put this point aside. Even granting Fodor that bereavement hallucinations could account for the disciples' initial belief in the resurrection, I argue that memory distortion is not a good explanation for how those hallucinatory experiences got transmuted into the reports we find in the Gospels. Now, a preliminary point to make in response to any objection to the historicity of the details within the Gospels on the basis of potential distortions of memory is that one must always be very careful about arguing against the reliability of memory. For one thing, it becomes far too easy to reject almost any historical event one likes on the basis of the possibility of memory distortion. As Angus Menuge puts it, "If the possibility of unreliable memory is a reason to reject the reliably preserved, multiply attested reports of eyewitnesses to the resurrection, that would mean that we ought to reject vast amounts of history. Even more seriously, arguments against the reliability of memory are prone to having much more wide-ranging skeptical consequences than is typically appreciated. Furthermore, such arguments are prone to being self-defeating. The reason for this is quite simply that the vast majority of our knowledge is based at some level on memory. This is obviously true when it comes to our historical beliefs, but it is also true of our scientific beliefs, which depend on the trustworthiness of the memories of the scientists who perform the experiments which justify scientific beliefs. It is even true of our everyday beliefs. For we rely upon memory to justifiably believe that we did perform such and such an action last week, yesterday, or even 5 minutes ago. In fact, any belief about some event which we are not directly perceiving in the present will depend upon memory. Hence, casting widespread doubt upon the reliability of memory will have disastrous epistemic consequences for almost all of our beliefs. And such skepticism is likely to end up being self-defeating because inevitably whatever studies one wishes to cite in support of the thesis that memory is unreliable will have depended upon memory in various ways in order to acquire the evidence that memory is unreliable."

The point here is not to ignore the evidence which Fodor cites in support of the idea that memory can sometimes be unreliable. Rather, the point is to caution against being too quick to jump to the conclusion that unreliable memories are very common without being careful to specify the conditions under which they occur and can be identified. For otherwise, one risks the argument being generalized to invalidate nearly everything which we believe. The upshot here is that if we wish to avoid making it far too easy for people to reject absolutely any historical event that they please, or more seriously, if we wish to avoid global skepticism about the past, we should have a high degree of credence in the general reliability of memory. We should be slow to adopt the unreliability of memory as a basis for rejecting the historicity of a reported event unless we have very good reasons for doing so in that particular instance. In other words, we should want far more than just general indicators that memory is sometimes unreliable or susceptible to distortion. We should want reasons for thinking that memory distortion is actually at play in a particular case.

With all that being said, [snorts] what are we to make of the evidence Fodor cites in support of the thesis that false memories can occur rather easily? Fodor gives us five examples which are supposed to render credible the thesis that what we have in the Gospels are sincere but misremembered recollections of hallucinations. I should highlight from the start that none of his examples of memory distortion or of false memories are particularly similar to what he is proposing. That is to say, none of them involve memory distortion of hallucinations at all. Indeed, it's somewhat difficult to assess the relevance of any of Fodor's examples, since Fodor leaves it quite vague to what extent he believes that the content within the Gospels results from hallucinations and to what extent it involves memory distortion.

As David Gregg points out, "While there is some good humility in Fodor stating that the details of precisely what occurred can never be known and that his model does not pretend to explain exactly how these collective experiences occurred, this is also a weakness of his view, as it is too broad to move from mere possibility to plausibility. Most of all, as explained above, it would be inconsistent with the disciples' worldview and expectations to conclude that Jesus had risen as the historical texts record. Consequently, Fodor's view lacks explanatory power."

According to all of the accounts, the appearances of Jesus began 3 days after the crucifixion and then ended abruptly around 40 days later. Is it Fodor's belief that the group hallucinations actually began precisely at this time and then sharply ended 40 days later? Or is this idea to be attributed to memory distortion? It's really impossible to say because Fodor doesn't tell us. It is difficult to take seriously the suggestion that the disciples really had collective hallucinations only for this precise time frame. As Timothy and Lydia McGrew observe, "These detailed parallel integrated hallucinations must be invoked repeatedly across a period of more than a month during which the disciples were persuaded that they repeatedly interacted with their Lord and Master here on earth and then abruptly they stopped. Christ no longer appeared on earth. From the standpoint of calculating a Bayes factor, the problem with the hallucination theory is that it has a vanishingly small probability. Given that this is radically implausible, I presume that Fodor would opt for the idea that the appearances lasting precisely 40 days owes to memory distortion. But what this implies is that for Fodor, memory distortion rather than hallucination is really doing the heavy lifting in explaining the content of the resurrection narratives in the Gospels. So from this it follows that the examples of false memories which he cites need to demonstrate this level of memory distortion if they are to make his thesis plausible. In this next section, I shall argue that his examples do not do this."

Fodor's first example comes from a 2006 paper by Chrissy Wilson and Christopher French, and it regards a questionnaire in which participants were asked to recall memories about dramatic news footage of five different events. Four of the events were actually documented with video footage, whereas one of them, the bombing of a nightclub in Bali, was not. And yet, 36% of participants reported false memories about seeing footage of this bombing. While this example does demonstrate the fairly uncontroversial thesis that humans sometimes form false memories, it's not clear why it does much of anything to support Fodor's thesis that the resurrection appearances of Jesus, as described in the Gospels, can be understood as distorted memories. In the first place, it's relatively easy to see why participants might claim to remember footage of the Bali bombing. It was suggested by the questionnaire itself. For all we know, the participants were genuinely remembering footage of a bombing on TV, and they simply carelessly connected it to the Bali bombing when this was suggested by the questionnaire. Furthermore, there had actually been bombings in Bali just four years earlier, which were probably doing some work in generating false memories. Given that participants were being asked about several different dramatic events as they were seen on television, it's fairly easy to see how some confusion might arise. In addition, we don't really know much about how deeply the participants were affected by these news stories. While such stories can surely impact people, there is almost inevitably a greater level of detachment when one sees something on television than when one experiences it for oneself.

As David Pilmer points out, "Similarities and differences between direct and indirect exposure to a shocking occurrence have yet to be studied fully. Comparisons of experienced and reported events suggest that memories of these two types of occurrences do in fact differ in some respects. For example, flashbulb memories of how one heard the news of a public tragedy appear to be factually less consistent over time than on memories of tragedies experienced personally. People who directly experienced the 1989 California earthquake had highly consistent memories of this event a year and a half later, whereas people who only heard the news of the earthquake showed more evidence of memory distortion or loss. By contrast, the resurrection accounts in the Gospels are not the results of the prompts of a questionnaire, but rather flow from the conviction of the evangelists. As such, they are not open to the power of suggestion in the same way in which random participants who answer a questionnaire might be. The Gospel accounts are not describing a series of events as seen on television, but rather are recounting the experiences which changed their author's lives. As such, this first example does show that people can make mistakes in forming false memories, especially when the power of suggestion is present when relaying their memories about several similar events or when reporting what they have learned indirectly through mediums such as television. But this doesn't do much to render plausible the idea that this is what was going on in the case of the resurrection narratives in the Gospels."

As Robert McIver observes, "While the DRM false memory procedure might be interesting in its own right, and while the ability to induce false memories by social contagion is fascinating, it might fairly be asked, what do these and other experimental procedures described have to do with the study of the nature of the Gospel traditions? What have doctored photos, misleading questions, and memorizing lists of words, and all other diverse ways that have been shown to generate false memories have in common? The answer is that they are all able to induce false memories because they share the same characteristic of plausibility. The memory frailties of transients, suggestibility, and hindsight bias investigated in earlier chapters were discovered to have more impact on the details of memories rather than on the general gist of what is remembered. If this is true of eyewitness testimony in general, it is therefore true of the contributions that the individual eyewitnesses would have made to the formation of the traditions found in the Synoptic Gospels. Their memories would have been accurate more often than not. They would have been most reliable in reporting the gist of the event and what happened and least reliable about matters relating to time. Their contribution would have had a first-order faithfulness to the events in Jesus's life that they had witnessed."

Fodor's second example involves an experiment discussed in a 2004 paper by Carrie Pickle where test subjects viewed a videotaped robbery and then were interviewed about it a week later. The experiment showed that some witnesses reported certain details not present within the video. Once again, the relevance of this case to Fodor's thesis seems minimal. Unfortunately, the research he cites within the book doesn't tell us what percentage of the witnesses added false details. Was it a sizable number of witnesses or was it just a handful? The section cited by Fodor doesn't say what sorts of details were added. Were these added details incidental or were they added details on the level of Thomas demanding to touch Jesus's wounds, as Fodor's thesis would require? And the paper explicitly leaves open the possibility that the witnesses who did add these details not present in the video were simply lying. This is a possibility that is not open to Fodor given that he has granted the sincerity of the disciples. In short, it's simply unclear how much memory experiments in a laboratory setting can

Tell us about human memory of real life experiences. As Andrew Lok and Nick Meter observe, many of the studies cited in favor of a skeptical view are conducted in the laboratory. For example, the simple idea that memory decays with time is sometimes put forward without acknowledgment that most studies involved meaningless experimental materials and that there are numerous counter examples. Distortion and deterioration begins within a very short time after the event. Yet in memory of real world events of greater importance to individuals, initial decay in the total amount recalled typically plateaus, resulting in stable and largely accurate long-term recall of the remainder.

Similarly, laboratory experiments designed to manipulate memory or implant false memories may be misleading. The fact that memory can be manipulated in the laboratory is important but does not by itself allow of any conclusion about how reliable memory is under normal real life circumstances. And in any case, recent studies have shown that the way in which participants in these sorts of experiments are asked questions affects the perceived accuracy of their answers. In general, where there is greater opportunity for participants to clarify and add nuance, the level of accuracy increases, casting doubt on the significance of these findings.

As John Wix and his co-authors explain, laboratory studies typically have participants view a mock crime after which different interviewing strategies are compared, e.g., the cognitive interview versus a standard police interview protocol. Although most studies are concerned with the ability of a structured interview, such as the cognitive interview, to elicit more information than alternative techniques, many studies also report the accuracy of the obtained information. In an early meta-analysis of the literature, it was determined that the cognitive interview elicited significantly more information than alternative interviews. More importantly for our present purposes, they also found that accuracy was as high or slightly higher in the cognitive interviews than in the comparison interviews. Comparable accuracy scores were recently reported by River Fiser Robertson and Hearn Mueller in a more realistic study, critically of the recalled information that could be corroborated. The accuracy rates were 88% correct and 87% correct for the cognitive interview and a standard interview protocol, respectively. Accuracy rates that fall in the range of 85% to 90% correct indicate that eyewitness recall for details is not perfect. But such results are hard to reconcile with the prevailing notion that eyewitness memory is simply unreliable.

Another factor overlooked by Fodor and the individuals he is citing is that oftentimes the surveys of these individuals do not allow participants to give an indeterminate answer. Participants are sometimes forced to answer yes or no to the questions, which effectively makes them guess and so is insensitive to the fact that memory may not even be in play at times. Yet if the participants guess incorrectly, then this is taken to be a strike against the reliability of their memory. Obviously, this skews the final results of many studies on memory, giving an unfairly negative perception of the reliability of memory.

Again, Wix and his co-authors suggest witness confidence may be assessed unobtrusively by allowing witnesses to withhold uncertain responses or to say, "I don't know." Presumably, if given the opportunity to withhold a response, witnesses will withhold the low confidence responses. In a test of this hypothesis, Evans and Fiser showed experimental witnesses a brief crime video and then tested them with either free recall, cued recall, or yes and no questions. Moreover, witnesses were either permitted to withhold responses, say, "I don't know," or they were forced to answer all questions. As might be expected, witnesses were less confident about responses they withheld and were later asked to report than responses they provided voluntarily. In agreement with the results summarized in figures three and four, witnesses were very accurate for the high confidence answers they provided voluntarily, but accuracy declined considerably when they were forced to also provide low confidence responses.

Fodor's third example draws from a 1994 paper by Roger Buer and Dale Griffin which showed that an individual's interpretation of an event can shift after they either conform to or dissent from the viewpoint of a group. I confess that this seems rather unremarkable to me. I don't really need a scientific study to tell me that one's affiliation with a particular group can color how they see the world, since common experience bears this out. Fodor neglects to explain how this is supposed to support his thesis. I suppose the idea is that once a group of Christians was established, the group perspective colored the way in which the disciples viewed their hallucinatory experiences, thereby giving us the gospel narratives. But this then seems to assume that these experiences of the risen Jesus, as they are reported, were not the basis for Christianity in the first place. This again raises the question of how belief in the resurrection originated. And in any case, the types of examples canvassed in Buler and Griffin's paper don't really encompass flashbulb memories or personal event memories, which are the two most likely classes of memories under which the resurrection appearances of Jesus would have been formed. And there is good evidence that these sorts of memories are less susceptible to the sorts of distortion that Fodor is bringing up here. More on this in a moment.

Fodor's fourth example comes from a 2002 paper by Agnika Niduenska, though he accidentally cites it as a 2012 paper, and it regards an experiment wherein students were asked to recall two significant autobiographical events, then were shown a videotape of a young woman recounting her own experiences of those events. After this, they were asked to recall those autobiographical events again, and it was found that most of the students ended up incorporating elements from the young woman's account into their second account. Yet again, I really struggle to see the relevance of this experiment to Fodor's thesis. Obviously, if one has recently heard someone else recounting an event which they lived through, then they are more likely to incorporate some of those elements within their own account. This is especially so if the other person has mentioned an aspect which the original witness saw but neglected to mention, or if that aspect is consistent with their own experience. It's really not even clear that this is a case of memory distortion. It seems to be more akin to the results of DRM experiments showing that similar ideas tend to be remembered alongside others simply because of the close association between the concepts.

As Macyver puts it, Rodener and McDermott discovered that if experimental participants were asked to recall the following list of words: bed, rest, awake, tired, dream, wake, snooze, blanket, doze, slumber, snore, nap, peace, yawn, drowsy, that the word "sleep" would be remembered as frequently as any of the words in the middle of the list. This should not be surprising, given that the word "sleep" has strong associations with all the other words in the list. One must note what kind of an error it is to include "sleep" in a list comprised of bed, rest, dream, etc. It is true that "sleep" is not a part of the list, but it is consistent with the list. One could question whether "sleep" is a false memory or just memory working in its usual way, as it endeavors to bring out the underlying meaning of experiences. But even if Fodor's example does present us with a case of genuine memory distortion, it involves melding similar memories together. Fodor has got to explain how the entire story of Thomas touching Jesus's wounds, for example, developed as the result of memory distortion when this wasn't anything like anyone's actual hallucinatory experience. And it seems pretty clear that this example does little to further this goal.

Fodor's final example is a study which revealed that witnesses tend to modify their description of suspects based upon their audience's evaluation of the suspect. But again, I really fail to see how this relatively common sense observation is supposed to support the idea that memory distortion can account for the resurrection narratives representing honest but misremembered descriptions of hallucinations. As Greg concludes, Fodor lists an article arguing that flashbulb memories only have perceived accuracy based on North Carolina students' memories of an event in other states. However, he does not engage studies that found that the greater the connection that one has to an event, the more likely one is to form an accurate flashbulb memory. Admittedly, Fodor does proceed to cite studies indicating that false memories are not limited to disinterested individuals. These results do not actually support Fodor's argument because in the cases Fodor references, it is not that the individuals misremembered that the event took place, but that they misremember who did it. Further, Fodor mentions the cases of identifying a rape victim, one of which was sadly misremembered as an individual who was seen on television during the terrible violation. And consequently, it is not clear that such cases are analogous.

So far, I have objected to Fodor's thesis on the grounds that we should be very reluctant to appeal to the fallibility of memory to explain away testimonial evidence on pain of global skepticism about memory. As a result of this, we should have case-specific evidence for memory distortion before being too enthusiastic about settling on memory distortion as a significant explanation for how some testimony came to be. And I have further objected that the specific examples he cites of memory distortion don't seem particularly analogous to what he is proposing for the descriptions of the resurrected Jesus in the gospels. But we should also consider the positive case for the general reliability of memory and the reliability of memories of significant moments in particular. It will be instructive to consider Robert Mcyver's excellent work on memory here, since he directly connects it to the testimony contained within the gospels.

After surveying much of the contemporary psychological literature, Macgyver finds that memory regularly deteriorates by up to 20% within the first 5 years of an event having happened. If the event is remembered at all after this time, Macgyver's findings suggest that memory is stable after this point for at least 20 years. As he says, "Each of the experiments on human memory reported so far has underlined the fact that human memories are indeed transient. Moreover, most reveal that the macro effects of this transience are largely predictable. But of the different kinds of memory that have been shown to exhibit a similar pattern of retention and loss, episodic memory that survives for the first 5 years after an event is likely to be very stable for the next 20 years or more, after which time a further slow decline takes place. It may even be estimated that between 30 and 50% of significant material is likely to survive long enough to become a near permanent part of long-term memory."

Macgyver's findings are not only supported by the psychological data which he examines, but they also more or less comport with common sense. We don't need to perform exotic experiments to know that we have a harder time remembering things as time goes on up until a certain point. The upshot here is simply that human memory, while certainly not infallible, is generally fairly reliable. It deteriorates more quickly within the first 5 years after an event, but even here it tends to remain up to 80% accurate. And after 5 years, memory tends to remain stable for another 20.

As David Pilmer puts it, "Despite these qualifications, research supports a conclusion that fits nicely with commonly held conceptions of human memory. Memories of personal life episodes are generally true to the original experiences, although specific details may be omitted or misremembered, and substantial distortions occasionally do occur." Fodor is right to remind us of the distortions to which memory is subject, but the preponderance of data suggests that this is not what is typically going on. And when memory is distorted, the distortions tend to turn up in details like the time at which an event occurred, the color of people's clothing, or the interpretation of someone's underlying motives. But clearly, these sorts of minor errors of memory are not anything like what Fodor is proposing. Fodor needs memories of hallucinations to be transmuted into the sorts of descriptions we find of the risen Jesus in the gospels. And neither these common sorts of memory distortions nor even some of the more extreme cases documented by Fodor illustrate that this level of memory distortion is possible, let alone that it is common.

As David Pillmer concludes, "It is safe to say that memory researchers do approach a consensus on some issues. There is widespread agreement that memory is an active reconstructive process rather than a passive reproductive process. In the process of constructing a memory narrative, errors can occur. At the same time, memory for the most part does its job. That is, memory descriptions usually are consistent with the general form and content of past experiences even if particular details are lost, added, or distorted in the act of remembering. A person hit by a car may misremember its color or the day of the week, but will rarely confuse being hit by a car with, say, falling down a mountain."

Andrew Lok and Nick Meter add, "Since the mid-2010s we have seen another revision of the consensus on reliability of memory. For example, Battle League questions whether the focus on the sins of memory has led researchers to downplay the virtues of memory. Recent studies give support to this suggestion." And elsewhere, Nick Meter says, "An influential study published a few years ago kickstarted a replication crisis in psychology. Researchers were only able to replicate the findings of a third to half of all studies they investigated. This started a period of reflection across the discipline. There is growing evidence of an unrealistically negative view on the accuracy of memory. But perhaps more significantly, there is compelling evidence that specific types of memories are more reliable than general memories. In particular, there has been a lot of discussion surrounding what psychologists have labeled flashbulb memories and personal event memories. These are particularly vivid memories of short but significant events."

As David Pilmer says, "Flashbulb memory has come to be associated primarily with memories of learning about newsworthy events. Presumably, the disciples considered Jesus's resurrection to be newsworthy, since it would come to form the heart of the gospel. The Greek word for gospel is 'euangelion' and it literally translates to 'good news.' Flashbulb memories are likelier to form when an event is especially important to someone." Macgyver gives the following example: "The reported study included 40 white students and 40 black students. It was discovered that the black students were much more likely to form a flashbulb memory of the death of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King than the white students. Brown and Kulick concluded that this is evidence that personal consequentiality is important in the formation of flashbulb memories." As a result of their analysis, Brown and Kulick postulated that "a flashbulb memory is fixed for a very long time and conceivably permanent, varying in complexity with consequentiality, but once created, always there and in need of no further strengthening. This memory, they suggested, is not preserved in a narrative or verbal form but in other forms such as images."

Robert Macgyver argues that the evidence is strong that these sorts of memories are uniquely resilient against the sort of memory distortion which Fodor's hypothesis requires. He finds that more recent research has corroborated the idea that personal event memories display a higher level of immunity to distortion than typical memories. A particularly striking example here regards a comparison between the memories of veterans who actually fought during World War II and the memories of those who did not. The veterans were consistently able to get the details right, such as the weather during particular days, the specific dates of particular invasions, and even the days of the week on which particular battles occurred, far more often than those who were not directly involved. Macgyver summarizes the results, saying, "Compared to many other types of memory, flashbulb and other personal event memories are long-lived and have the ability to retain many details with great accuracy. Not all details are remembered, and not with 100% accuracy. What is retained, though, is sufficient to contain the gist of the event. Thus, one is safe in concluding that personal event memories are more long-lived than other types of memory and can be relied on to conserve the general gist of the event, even if some of the details might be lost or even wrong."

It seems likely that, whether hallucinatory or not, the disciples' experiences of the risen Jesus would have formed flashbulb memories or at the very least personal event memories, given their personal connection to Jesus and the obvious significance which these experiences had on them. But since these types of memories appear to be particularly resistant to being distorted, Fodor's hypothesis is a particularly implausible explanation for them, as Lok and Meter suggest.

Several studies have shown that events of personal or emotional significance are recalled far more accurately. And it has been argued in recent literature that the earliest Christians' remembrance of Jesus's post-resurrection appearances belongs to this category, as such events would have been regarded to be of foundational importance for the earliest Christian movement. And Macyver adds, "Much of the episodic memories of the eyewitnesses of Jesus would have been of such a nature as to form personal event memories. What has been discovered about personal event memories allows at least three more observations about the contribution that the memories of the eyewitnesses may have made to the formation of the gospel traditions. First, while their memories are often likely to be accurate in the details recounted, they would have been most reliable at the level of gist. Second, eyewitness memories tend to be concentrated around a moment of time. Personal event memories are characterized by the recollection of emotional reactions and vivid details concentrated in a very short period of time. Eyewitness memory then is granular. It remembers short moments in great detail. Of significance is the observation that was made in the previous chapter that the various paricopies that make up the synoptic gospels exhibit a similar granularity. Studies on personal event memories do show that humans can accurately remember some details over periods as long as 50 or more years. This lends more credibility to the observation made already. Though it's eyewitness memories of Jesus's ministry that survived intact for the first five or so years would likely have lasted over the lifetime of that eyewitness."

In addition to the comparable resistance of personal event memories against the sort of distortion which Fodor is positing, we should also note that specific details within the resurrection narratives themselves are resistant to explanation by recourse to memory distortion. Of particular interest here is the example of doubting Thomas in the Gospel of John. Thomas is said to have demonstrated remarkable skepticism towards the idea that Jesus rose from the dead until he was permitted to touch Jesus's wounds. It's difficult to see how this episode fits within Fodor's hypothesis. If this event is admitted to be part of the apostles's original testimony, then it seems that Fodor could see the appearance to Thomas either as being a hallucination which Thomas experienced or as a distortion of J's memory. But both alternatives face difficulties. As a skeptic in denial about the resurrection, Thomas does not appear to be in a frame of mind which would have made him susceptible to a bereavement hallucination. Plus, the group setting accompanied by an invitation by Jesus for Thomas to touch him further mitigates against the plausibility of this episode having been entirely hallucinatory.

As David Greg puts it, "In theory, others might be able to convince someone that Jesus appeared to them. However, this would depend on the individual's personality. For example, in the case of a doubting Thomas, one might require more evidence. Consequently, while such studies on memory might support the notion that some of the 500 came to believe as outlined earlier, it would not, however, support the idea that all experiences of the risen Jesus could have arisen in that way."

However, there were also problems with trying to explain the doubting Thomas episode as a distortion of memory because the evidence that distortion due to factors such as suggestibility and social contagion indicates that such distortion must at least broadly be consistent with the original memory or event. As Greg observes, "Is it plausible that such a statement might have implanted the notion that the tomb was empty and Jesus was raised? Studies on suggestibility show that one is only able to implant information within limits consistent with the context. And so even given resurrection predictions, the first century Jewish beliefs about the afterlife, not to mention someone would have eventually checked for the body, such an extrapolation is not supported by research on memory. Yet there appears to be no way for the episode with Thomas to be consistent with the original memory if this episode is purely or primarily the result of distortion. Either Thomas originally demonstrated skepticism towards the resurrection or he did not. If he did, then as we have already noted, hallucinations are not a plausible explanation for how he came to believe in it. If he did not demonstrate initial skepticism, then the memory distortion which Fodor is hypothesizing is not a plausible explanation for how this episode came to be written down since it is no longer even remotely consistent with the original event. Thomas's skepticism makes him resistant to Fodor's explanation for how his belief in the resurrection might have arisen. And for an independent reason, Thomas's skepticism makes him resistant to Fodor's explanation for how this story might have arisen as the result of memory distortion. There is therefore a genuine dilemma for Fodor's hypothesis here."

If the account about Thomas is an authentic part of what the apostles originally claimed, it is worth highlighting that when he specifically addresses the story of doubting Thomas, Fodor simply rejects its authenticity. He says, "Many scholars have noted the clear apologetic intent of this passage, which combined with the fact that it is only reported in John, the latest of the gospels, has led many scholars to doubt its historicity. Furthermore, claims to prior skepticism, as seen in the case of Thomas and elsewhere in the Gospels, are a well-known narrative device used in reporting miraculous or paranormal events. The accounts of doubting Thomas are therefore best explained as later apologetic accretions to the core narrative made likely unconsciously in accordance with the common motif of the avowal of prior skepticism concerning miraculous claims."

Craig has not provided evidence to show that Thomas truly was as skeptical as John claims he was or that the events in this passage occurred exactly as John claims they did. As such, Craig's appeal to the appearance to Thomas adds no compelling evidence to his case for the resurrection. David Greg replies to Fodor on this front by saying, "Just because only one source mentions an event does not mean that one should doubt that account. Instead, one source still increases the likelihood of the authenticity of an event, even if multiple independent attestation would further strengthen the case." Fodor also points out that prior claims to skepticism are a common narrative device. However, what Fodor needs to demonstrate is that in this instance, it is merely a fictional narrative device. Based on the little information known about Thomas, his doubt concerning Jesus's resurrection is consistent with his character. And so, it is probably a historically plausible event. Greg is right to point out that a source should not be rejected simply because it is the only source to mention an event. Other factors pertaining to the general trustworthiness of the source must also be considered.

However, in the context of his book, I actually think that Fodor is permitted to reject the appearance to Thomas. This is because that chapter is a direct response to Craig's argument for the resurrection. And since Craig does not show that the story of doubting Thomas meets any of his criteria of authenticity, Fodor is well within his rights to disallow Craig from appealing to it. Things become more complicated, however, when Fodor moves away from this very narrow task and suggests that his RHBS model can be applied more generally, even to more robust resurrection arguments like mine. Recall that Fodor thinks that his RHBS hypothesis can succeed even on the assumption of traditional authorship and on the assumption that the apostles were intending to be honest. Perhaps he means to accommodate these requirements by suggesting that the story of Thomas was likely unconsciously added to the narrative. I really must wonder how exactly Fodor conceives of that happening. It's not as though one can modify a few things within the episode with Thomas to get around the difficulty which it poses for Fodor's hypothesis. The exclusive reason why the story is included at all is to spotlight Thomas' skepticism. So Fodor can't get around this just by saying that a few elements may have been unconsciously added to the narrative. On the contrary, what he is suggesting would require that the entire story has been fabricated for apologetic reasons. But how are we to imagine that such a thing could happen unconsciously? The very suggestion is so implausible on its face that it does not merit serious consideration.

While Craig's methodology allows Fodor to simply reject the story of doubting Thomas, Fodor is not permitted to reject it in the context of my argument for the resurrection precisely because my argument is predicated upon the premise that the resurrection accounts in the Gospels present an accurate picture of what the original witnesses claim to have seen. Fodor may challenge this premise, of course, but in doing so, he tacitly admits that he cannot in fact make the case that the resurrection appearances in the Gospels represent sincere but misremembered recollections of hallucinations. Contrary to his claim that his hypothesis can work even granting traditional authorship and the sincerity of the original witnesses, he actually does have to suggest that certain resurrection appearances are either knowingly false or at the very least not faithful to what the original eyewitnesses claim. This is all that I need to establish in order to show that Fodor's RHBS hypothesis does not succeed against my argument for the resurrection.

This section has reviewed James Fodor's RHBS hypothesis as a rival to the resurrection hypothesis. I have granted that Fodor's hypothesis presents a reasonably good defeater to minimalist arguments for the resurrection like William Lane Craig's. However, I have taken issue with Fodor's more ambitious suggestion that his hypothesis can also succeed as a rival against a more maximal case for the resurrection like mine. Specifically, it struggles to account for the descriptions of the resurrected Jesus in the Gospels, if those descriptions are faithful to what the original disciples claim to have seen. Fodor's case here depends critically upon the plausibility of the thesis that these descriptions can be explained as cases of memory distortion. I have argued in response that we should be very slow to accept explanations which depend upon memory distortion due to the radically skeptical consequences to which this sort of reasoning opens the door. I have also argued that Fodor's specific examples of memory distortion are importantly disanalogous to the sort of memory distortion that his hypothesis would require. I have further argued that there is a good positive case for the reliability of memory in general and for personal event memories in particular. Lastly, I have argued that the story of doubting Thomas provides a unique hurdle for Fodor's hypothesis as deployed against a maximalist argument for the resurrection. This is because maximalism deliberately closes off the very exits which Fodor uses to escape the conclusion of minimalist arguments. While I consider Fodor's RHBS hypothesis to be the best alternative to the resurrection on offer for skeptics, I believe that the points I have raised are collectively sufficient to show that the resurrection remains a better explanation of the total evidence by a fairly significant measure.

This video has detailed my case for the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. I have explained why I reject the minimal facts approach to defending the resurrection. I have developed my own syllogistic version of a maximalist case for the resurrection. We have seen that given that the resurrection appearances in the gospels are faithful representations of what the original eyewitnesses claimed, then three possibilities emerge: the apostolic testimony is either true, deliberately false, or honestly mistaken. I have argued that these latter two possibilities are indefensible, leaving only the first, namely that the testimony is true, which entails that Jesus rose from the dead. I have supplemented my case by critically engaging seven popular critics of resurrection apologetics. These included Bart Airman, Richard Carrier, Michael Alter, Dale Allison, Matthew McCormack, Robert Greg Caven, and finally James Fodor. In each case, it was seen that the objections of these critics failed to undermine a maximalist argument for the resurrection of Jesus. Because of this, I can confidently join the Apostle Paul in saying, "But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, and by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."