After a recent discussion with my wife about the authenticity of the resurrection, I decided that the soapbox I so often stood upon needed to be committed to writing. So I went in search of one of the apologist articles on the “evidence” and “proof” of the resurrection. They usually provide the same information. I found one by Josh McDowell and I will now analyze it piece by piece.[1]
The first thing McDowell must do is prove the veracity of the New Testament because there is no non-biblical record of any event written in the gospels that directly pertains to the specifics of Jesus christ. In other words, no third-party source confirms the birth, miracles, death, or resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. So McDowell takes the two usual tacks, the first is stating that the Disciples would have been alive to confirm or deny the stories and the second is quoting various Christian college professors with lofty titles that state emphatically, and entirely without providing evidence, that the gospels were written by a certain year (the closer to Christ’s death the better) and that we should all just believe the gospels because they are true.
I will address the second tack first. The “scholars” that are quoted are almost always Christians. They already believe the Bible to be true and thus cannot be trusted because they will believe because they want to believe. Non-Christian scholars that have come to the opposite conclusion are never quoted by apologists, and if they are, the quote is often out of context. The best verifier of something is a skeptic. So the apologists often quote someone who spent many years trying to find fault with some specific aspect of one of the gospel writers; after failing in their attempts, they become Christians. Just because we can verify the secular facts from the gospels, doesn’t prove the supernatural facts and the supernatural facts are the big issue. Just because XYZ gospel writer got something right about the geographic location in which he lived doesn’t mean he was telling the truth about Jesus of Nazareth rising from the dead and being the savior of mankind. I will come back to the first tack in a moment.
McDowell presents the following “facts” to support the resurrection: 1) Broken Roman Seal, 2) Empty Tomb, 3) Large Stone Moved, 4) Roman Guard Goes AWOL, 5) Graveclothes Tell a Tale, and 6) Jesus’ Appearances Confirmed. For the record, NONE of these “facts” is confirmed in any other historical document. No other historian confirms any of this. No non-biblical eyewitness has anything to say about this. ONLY the Bible mentions these things. We don’t even know who wrote the gospels. Apologists emphatically point to tradition stating that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote the gospels because it weakens the validity of the Bible if they did not. The truth is NO ONE knows who wrote the gospels. It could have been eyewitnesses or it could have been lunatics in an ancient psych-ward. Most of these “facts” about the empty tomb would have been wiped out in 70 C.E. when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem.[2] This brings us to the first tack I mentioned in the above paragraph. It is interesting that the quote McDowell uses by William F. Albright says that all books of the New Testament should be dated before 80 C.E., which is 10 years after the destruction of Jerusalem and long enough for the stories to get a little muddled, which is apparent in the disagreements in the gospels.
McDowell appeals to witnesses. He cites Paul’s mention of 500 witnesses in 1 Corinthians. Paul most likely believed in a spiritual resurrection.[3] If Paul and these 500 people believed in a spiritual resurrection, then they could have believed whatever they wanted. Paul’s own vision presented in Acts is of a spiritual being, not a physical one. We also have no record of anything written by these 500 people. How do we know Paul didn’t make them up? Paul doesn’t name them. So how would the readers of 1 Corinthians find and question these people? It seems a shaky case to build a religion on. In a weak attempt to sew up the witness argument, McDowell appeals to hostile witnesses. Again, the bible ALONE tells of hostile witnesses. McDowell goes so far as to call Paul a hostile witness; Paul is most definitely not a hostile witness. The man had a vision and converted to another religion. We now call people like that “crazy.” I’m not saying that to be cynical; I’m just putting it in present context.
McDowell tosses a bone to naturalistic explanations like the disciples arriving at the wrong tomb, the visions being hallucinations, the possibility that Jesus just passed out on the cross, and the possibility that the body was stolen. The wrong tomb argument assumes it all actually happened, and since history confirms that the gospels were written post 70 C.E.[4], there was no one and no location to confirm or deny. As we have a description of Paul’s hallucination in Acts, why is that explanation so unlikely? Jesus not dying and the stolen body both also ignore the fact that the gospels were written after Jerusalem was destroyed, thus the facts could no longer be confirmed. Both arguments assume the gospel’s version of events is true despite the lack of third party historical evidence.
His nail in the coffin point is that the disciple’s lives were real proof. The only disciple that we have record of doing much of anything after Jesus’ death is Paul, even that all comes from the bible itself, and Paul never met Jesus face to face, only in a vision. McDowell appeals to the martyrs and those that were persecuted. There are people all over the world and all throughout history that have been persecuted and martyred for various religions, why is Christianity any different? 909 people willfully committed suicide with Jim Jones in 1978, and they had their leader right in front of them.[5] A leader that coerced them with fear, the same way Jesus and the Christians did. “Follow us or you’ll suffer a horrible fate after you’re dead.” It’s time human beings rejected such emotional garbage outright. Jesus never rose from the dead; he might not have even existed. It’s time we stopped wasting our lives living for a mythical spirit being and started being true to ourselves and our own dreams.
“The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.” –Benjamin Franklin
“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man [...or god?…], nor ask another man to live for mine.” — Ayn Rand, John Galt’s Oath from “Atlas Shrugged”
[1] http://leaderu.com/everystudent/easter/articles/josh2.html
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Jerusalem_(70)
[3] http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/resurrection/3.html
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Mark#Date
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown
