On Inerrancy and the Resurrection
4
ON THE AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE
Establishing the Gospels’ Reliability
I noticed that in many of your debates and articles, you put a lot of stock and faith in the gospel narratives. I do consider myself a Christian but have a big doubt. How do we really know if those gospel narratives are really all that reliable? Sure, they are historical, but are they true or not? I could write a paper about how Bigfoot, the Easter bunny, and Santa Claus came to my house and watched TV with me, then thousands of years later people stumble upon my documents and consider them to be true. The discoverers of the Ancient Joe Documents then say, “Well, we consider it truthful because there are about 26,000 complete copies and fragments of these ancient documents that have been found in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Plus, there are only about 680 copies of the Odyssey by Homer, which makes the Joe narratives completely reliable.” Sure, they are historical but definitely not true. What makes the gospel narratives truthful and not fake? If I can get this question answered, I can finally have faith that God has truly risen Jesus from the dead, and know that I will go to heaven. If you, or maybe one of your assistants, can answer this question, that would help me a lot. Thank you.
Joe
Dr. Craig’s Response
I’m glad for your question, Joe, because it surfaces a number of misconceptions that are widely shared by Christians and non-Christians alike.
Your fundamental question is: how do we know that the gospel narratives are historically reliable? You correctly observe that that question is not to be answered by appeal to the abundance and age of the manuscripts of the gospels. The idea that the abundance and age of the manuscripts of the gospels is evidence for their historical reliability is a misconception fostered by popular Christian apologetics. It’s true that the New Testament is the best attested book in ancient history, both in terms of the number of manuscripts and the nearness of those manuscripts to the date of the original. What that goes to prove is that the text of the New Testament that we have today is almost exactly the same as the text as it was originally written. Of the approximately 138,000 words in the New Testament only about 1,400 remain in doubt. The text of the New Testament is thus about 99 percent established. That means that when you pick up a (Greek) New Testament today, you can be confident that you are reading the text as it was originally written. Moreover, that 1 percent that remains uncertain has to do with trivial words on which nothing of importance hangs. This conclusion is important because it explodes the claims of Muslims, Mormons, and others that the text of the New Testament has been corrupted, so that we can no longer read the original text. It’s awe-inspiring to think that we can know with confidence that when we pick up Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, for example, we are reading the very words he wrote almost 2,000 years ago.
But, as you say, that doesn’t prove that what these documents say is historically accurate. We could have the text of Aesop’s fables established to 99 percent accuracy, and that would do nothing to show that they are true stories. After all, they are intended to be fables, not history. People in the future would say something similar about the Joe narratives, no matter how many copies existed.
Now, as you point out, the gospels are intended to be history. That is the import of your insight that the gospels “are historical” even if they are not true. That is to say, the gospels are of the literary genre of historical writing. They are not of the genre of mythology, fiction, or fable. This is an extremely important insight. Something of a consensus has developed within New Testament scholarship that the gospels are closest in genre to ancient biographies (“Lives,” as they are called, as in Plutarch’s Lives of Noble Greeks and Romans). Though differing in certain respects from modern biographies, such as lack of concern with strict chronology, ancient Lives did have a historical interest in presenting truthfully the life of the subject. That will make them very different from a deliberate fiction, such as you envision being written by yourself. The gospel writers were trying to write a historical account about real people, places, and events (just look at Luke 3:1–3).
So were they successful in getting the facts straight about Jesus of Nazareth? There are two ways to get at that question. One way would be by assessing the general credibility of the gospel accounts.16 The other way, more influential in contemporary New Testament scholarship, is to establish specific facts about Jesus without assuming the general reliability of the gospels. The key here are the so-called “Criteria of Authenticity” which enable us to establish specific sayings or events in Jesus’ life as historical. Scholars involved in the quest of the historical Jesus have enunciated a number of these criteria for detecting historically authentic features of Jesus, such as dissimilarity to Christian teaching, multiple attestation, linguistic semitisms, traces of Palestinian milieu, retention of embarrassing material, coherence with other authentic material, and so forth.
INSIGHT
Note the helpful suggestions on how to go about assessing whether the gospel accounts get the facts straight about the historical Jesus. This also reminds me of why we need not fear assessment or “critical scrutiny” about why we believe what we believe. If anything, assessing the credibility of the gospel accounts can show how our beliefs are rooted in knowledge of what is real.
It is somewhat misleading to call these “criteria,” for they aim at stating sufficient, not necessary, conditions of historicity. This is easy to see: suppose a saying is multiply attested and dissimilar but not embarrassing. If embarrassment were a necessary condition of authenticity, then the saying would have to be deemed inauthentic, which is wrong-headed, since its multiple attestation and dissimilarity are sufficient for authenticity. Of course, the criteria are defeasible, meaning that they are not infallible guides to authenticity. They might be better called “Indications of Authenticity” or “Signs of Credibility.”
In point of fact, what the criteria really amount to are statements about the effect of certain types of evidence upon the probability of various sayings or events in Jesus’ life. For some saying or event S and evidence of a certain type E, the criteria would state that, all things being equal, the probability of S given E is greater than the probability of S on our background knowledge alone. So, for example, all else being equal, the probability of some event or saying is greater given its multiple attestation than it would have been without it.
What are some of the factors that might serve the role of E in increasing the probability of some saying or event S? The following are some of the most important:
(1) Historical congruence: S fits in with known historical facts concerning the context in which S is said to have occurred.
(2) Independent, early attestation: S appears in multiple sources which are near to the time at which S is alleged to have occurred and which depend neither upon each other nor a common source.
(3) Embarrassment: S is awkward or counter-productive for the persons who serve as the source of information for S.
(4) Dissimilarity: S is unlike antecedent Jewish thought-forms and/or unlike subsequent Christian thought-forms.
(5) Semitisms: traces in the narrative of Aramaic or Hebrew linguistic forms.
(6) Coherence: S is consistent with already established facts about Jesus.17
Notice that these “criteria” do not presuppose the general reliability of the gospels. Rather they focus on a particular saying or event and give evidence for thinking that specific element of Jesus’ life to be historical, regardless of the general reliability of the document in which the particular saying or event is reported. These same “criteria” are thus applicable to reports of Jesus found in the apocryphal gospels, or rabbinical writings, or even the Qur’an. Of course, if the gospels can be shown to be generally reliable documents, so much the better! But the “criteria” do not depend on any such presupposition. They serve to help spot historical kernels even in the midst of historical chaff. Thus we need not concern ourselves with defending the gospels’ every claim attributed to Jesus in the gospels; the question will be whether we can establish enough about Jesus to make faith in Him reasonable.
I’m convinced that we can. Indeed, it’s shocking to me how much of Jesus’ life can be established, including His radical personal claims, His crucifixion, His burial in a tomb, the discovery of His empty tomb, His post-mortem appearances, and His disciples’ coming to believe suddenly and sincerely that God had raised Him from the dead. Take a look at my book Reasonable Faith for detailed argument. We, therefore, have quite solid reasons for believing in Christ on the basis of the historical facts preserved about Him in the gospels.
Is the Price of “Biblical Errancy” Too High to Pay?
After re-evaluating my Christian faith and pruning it for two years, I can’t shake what seem like two disparate conclusions. One is that the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection is impeccable. But the other is that there seem to be some very awkward realities about the composition of Scripture (like errors or authors claiming to write by another name). Yet, the authors of the New Testament, including Jesus, seem to use Scripture in a way that assumes it is word for word from God.
While inductive logic is used to arrive at a strong historical case for the resurrection of Jesus, inductive logic can also be used to arrive at a strong case for many of the peculiarities about Scripture previously mentioned.
It seems that the approach that many apologists take at this point is that, having established the authority of Jesus by the resurrection, if the argument being raised against Scripture contradicts an opinion expressed by Jesus in the gospels, then the argument for a contradiction must have no possible harmonization for it to really stick. But I don’t see how this is fair to say, since (1) it seems unfair to use inductive logic to evidence Jesus’ resurrection but then not use it for criticisms against the Bible and (2) an inductive argument can be strong despite what Jesus, as recorded in the gospels, says, especially since we cannot assume the precision with which many of the sayings were recorded. And (3), anybody can cook up a harmonization of some verse that is possible but not plausible, which I am sure you have seen firsthand many times.
Yet, holding these two positions in tension tends to be corrosive to my faith and ultimately leads to a certain bitterness against God for allowing the biblical writers to play fast-and-loose with His words and for not providing a clarity that brings more certainty about what is from Him and what isn’t. Any help you can give to relieve this tension would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Joshua
Dr. Craig’s Response
Your question is one that every Bible-believing Christian familiar with modern biblical criticism has had to wrestle with. There’s much to be said here, so let me hit a few main points.
INSIGHT
Notice some of the factors involved in seeking an answer to these questions; namely, bitterness against God seems to be real and formational for how Joshua has come to view this tension. That’s not to delegitimize Joshua’s questions. Rather, it is to acknowledge that more than mere intellectual tensions are at play. For example, what if some of his presuppositions were rooted in recognizing that God is trustworthy because what He communicates is true? What difference would that make, even as a hypothesis, to inform even his “inductive” approach to the question?
To begin with, the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, as I learned it and, I think, as most of its adherents today would defend it, is not arrived at inductively, but deductively. Inerrantists freely admit that no one reading through the Bible and keeping a list of difficulties encountered along the way, whether inconsistencies or mistakes, would come to the conclusion at the end of his reading that the Bible is inerrant. He would likely conclude that the Bible, like almost every other book, has some errors in it. But inerrantists have maintained that belief in biblical inerrancy is justified as a deduction from other well-justified truths. For example, the late Kenneth Kantzer, Dean of the seminary I attended, argued for inerrancy by means of the following two syllogisms:
1. Whatever God teaches is true.
2. Historical, prophetic, and other evidences show that Jesus is God.
3. Therefore, whatever Jesus teaches is true.
4. Whatever Jesus teaches is true.
5. Jesus taught that the Scriptures are the inspired, inerrant Word of God.
6. Therefore, the Scriptures are the inspired, inerrant Word of God.
The claim here is that we have good reasons to think that the Bible, despite its difficulties, is the inerrant Word of God and, therefore, we should accept it as such. As Martin Kahler once put it, “We do not believe in Christ because we believe in the Bible; we believe in the Bible because we believe in Christ.”18
When confronted with biblical difficulties, the inerrantist will attempt to show that alleged mistakes are not really mistakes after all and to provide plausible harmonizations of apparent inconsistencies. Where this cannot be done, he will honestly admit that he doesn’t know the solution to the difficulty but nonetheless insist that he has overriding reasons to think that the text is accurate and that were all the facts to be known the alleged difficulty would disappear. Such an approach has served the inerrantist well: example after example could be given of supposed biblical errors identified by previous generations which have now been resolved in light of more recent discoveries. One of my favorite examples is Sargon II, an Assyrian king mentioned in Isa. 20:1. Earlier critics claimed that the reference to Sargon was an error because there was absolutely no evidence that an Assyrian king named Sargon II ever even existed—until, that is, archaeologists digging in the region of Khorsabad unearthed the palace of one Sargon II! We now have more information about Sargon than about any other ancient Assyrian king.
Now, the question raised by your letter is what our reaction should be if we become convinced that there really is an error in the Bible. Won’t such a conclusion have a kind of reverse effect along our chain of deductive reasoning, leading us to deny Jesus’ resurrection and deity? This was apparently the conclusion of Bart Ehrman, who says he lost his faith in Christ because he discovered one minor error in the gospels.
Such a conclusion is unnecessary for two reasons. First, we may need instead to revise our understanding of what constitutes an error. Nobody thinks that when Jesus says that the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds (Mark 4:31) this is an error, even though there are smaller seeds than mustard seeds. Why? Because Jesus is not teaching botany; He is trying to teach a lesson about the kingdom of God, and the illustration is incidental to this lesson.
Defenders of inerrancy claim that the Bible is authoritative and inerrant in all that it teaches or all that it means to affirm. This raises the huge question as to what the authors of Scripture intend to affirm or teach. Questions of genre will have a significant bearing on our answer to that question. Poetry obviously is not intended to be taken literally, for example. But then what about the gospels? What is their genre? Scholars have come to see that the genre to which the gospels most closely conform is ancient biography. This is important for our question because ancient biography does not have the intention of providing a chronological account of the hero’s life from the cradle to the grave. Rather ancient biography relates anecdotes that serve to illustrate the hero’s character qualities. What one might consider an error in a modern biography need not at all count as an error in an ancient biography. To illustrate, at one time in my Christian life I believed that Jesus actually cleansed the Temple in Jerusalem twice, once near the beginning of His ministry as John relates, and once near the end of His life, as we read in the Synoptic gospels. But an understanding of the gospels as ancient biographies relieves us of such a supposition, for an ancient biographer can relate incidents in a non-chronological way. Only an unsympathetic (and uncomprehending) reader would take John’s moving the Temple cleansing to earlier in Jesus’ life as an error on John’s part.
We can extend the point by considering the proposal that the gospels should be understood as different performances, as it were, of orally transmitted tradition. The prominent New Testament scholar Jimmy Dunn, prompted by the work of Ken Bailey on the transmission of oral tradition in Middle Eastern cultures, has sharply criticized what he calls the “stratigraphic model” of the gospels, which views them as composed of different layers laid one upon another on top of a primitive tradition.19 On the stratigraphic model each tiny deviation from the previous layer occasions speculations about the reasons for the change, sometimes leading to quite fanciful hypotheses about the theology of some redactor. But Dunn insists that oral tradition works quite differently. What matters is that the central idea is conveyed, often in some key words and climaxing in some saying which is repeated verbatim; but the surrounding details are fluid and incidental to the story.
Probably the closest example to this in our non-oral, Western culture is the telling of a joke. It’s important that you get the structure and punch line right, but the rest is incidental. For example, many years ago I heard the following joke:
“What did the Calvinist say when he fell down the elevator shaft?”
“I don’t know.”
“He got up, dusted himself off, and said, ‘Whew! I’m glad that’s over!’”
Just recently someone else told me what was clearly the same joke. Only she told it as follows:
“Do you know what the Calvinist said when he fell down the stairs?”
“‘Whew! I’m glad that’s over!’”
Notice the differences in the telling of this joke; but observe how the central idea and especially the punch line are the same. Well, when you compare many of the stories told about Jesus in the gospels and identify the words they have in common, you find a pattern like this. There is variation in the secondary details, but very often the central saying is almost verbatim the same. And remember, this is in a culture where they didn’t even have the device of quotation marks! (Those are added in translation to indicate direct speech; to get an idea of how difficult it can be to determine exactly where direct speech ends, just read Paul’s account of his argument with Peter in Galatians 2 or Jesus’ interview with Nicodemus in John 3.) So the stories in the gospels should not be understood as evolutions of some prior primitive tradition but as different performances of the same oral story.
Now, if Dunn is right, this has enormous implications for one’s doctrine of biblical inerrancy, for it means that the evangelists had no intention that their stories should be taken like police reports, accurate in every detail. What we in a non-oral culture might regard as an error would not be taken by them to be erroneous at all.
I was struck by your insight that you feel “a certain bitterness against God for allowing the biblical writers to play fast-and-loose with His words and for not providing a clarity that brings more certainty about what is from Him and what isn’t.” Joshua, you are imposing upon God what you think ought to be the standards of inerrancy rather than coming to the Scriptures and learning from them what inerrancy means. The biblical writers aren’t playing fast and loose with His words if God never intended His words to be taken in the way you suggest. A Bible that employs a rich variety of genres should not be treated like a flat, monotone book. We need to come to God’s Word with humility and learn from it what it intends to teach and affirm.20
INSIGHT
Note that how or why Joshua imposes what he does may very well relate to whether he actually trusts that God is actually a good and credible authority on what He says.
So if we are confronted with what appears to be an error in Scripture, we should first ask whether we’re not imposing on Scripture a standard of inerrancy that is foreign to the genre of the writing and the intent of its author. I remember Dr. Kantzer once remarking that many of his constituents would be shocked if they knew what he was willing to allow in Scripture and not call it an error. He understood that we must put ourselves within the horizon of the original authors before we ask if they have erred.
But secondly, suppose you’ve done all that and are still convinced that Scripture is not inerrant. Does that mean that the deity and resurrection of Christ go down the drain? No, not at all. For the far weaker premise in the above two syllogisms will be premise (5), rather than premise (2). As you recognize, we have a very strong case for the resurrection of Jesus. That case in no way depends on the Bible’s being inerrant. This became very clear to me during my doctoral studies in Munich with Wolfhart Pannenberg. Pannenberg had rocked German theology by maintaining that a sound historical case can be made for the resurrection of Jesus. Yet he also believed that the gospel resurrection appearances stories are so legendary that they have scarcely a historical kernel in them! He did not even trust the Markan account of the discovery of the empty tomb. Rather his argument was founded on the early pre-Pauline tradition about the appearances in 1 Cor. 15:3–5 and on the consideration that a movement based on the resurrection of a dead man would have been impossible in Jerusalem in the face of a tomb containing his corpse.
Evangelicals sometimes give lip service to the claim that the gospels are historically reliable, even when examined by the canons of ordinary historical research; but I wonder if they really believe this. It really is true that a solid, persuasive case for Jesus’ resurrection can be made without any assumption of the gospels’ inerrancy.
By contrast, the case for Jesus’ belief that the Old Testament Scriptures are inerrant is much weaker. I think there’s no doubt that (5) is the premise that would have to go if biblical inerrancy were to be abandoned. We should have to re-think our doctrine of inspiration in that case, but we needn’t give up belief in God or in Jesus, as Bart Ehrman did. Ehrman had, it seems to me, a flawed theological system of beliefs as a Christian. It seems that at the center of his web of theological beliefs was biblical inerrancy, and everything else, like the beliefs in the deity of Christ and in His resurrection, depended on that. Once the center was gone, the whole web soon collapsed. But when you think about it, such a structure is deeply flawed.
At the center of our web of beliefs ought to be some core belief like the belief that God exists, with the deity and resurrection of Christ somewhere near the center. The doctrine of inspiration of Scripture will be somewhere further out and inerrancy even farther toward the periphery as a corollary of inspiration. If inerrancy goes, the web will feel the reverberations of that loss, as we adjust our doctrine of inspiration accordingly, but the web will not collapse because belief in God and Christ and His resurrection and so on don’t depend upon the doctrine of biblical inerrancy.
So rather than be corrosive to your faith, I hope that biblical studies can become for you, as they have for me, a source of novelty, excitement, and encouragement.
A Middle Knowledge Perspective on Biblical Inspiration
I have been listening to Series 2 of your Defenders Class and just finished the one on the doctrine of Revelation.21 In this recording, you defend the Middle Knowledge perspective of the verbal, plenary, and confluent view of revelation.
My question is: If we invoke middle knowledge to describe inspiration, how do we avoid saying that all writings in history are inspired? Wouldn’t God know exactly what type of book any author, say Christopher Hitchens, would freely write given their particular set of circumstances? Therefore, all writings, including Christopher Hitchens’, are inspired.
Aaron
United States
Dr. Craig’s Response
For those who are not familiar with the background of this question, let me explain that it concerns my defense of verbal, plenary, confluent inspiration of the Bible in my Philosophia Christi article, “‘Men Moved by the Holy Spirit Spoke from God’ (2 Peter 1:21), A Middle Knowledge Perspective on Biblical Inspiration.”22 In that piece, I argue that divine middle knowledge enables us to affirm the verbal, plenary inspiration of Scripture without divine dictation. For God knows under just what circumstances Paul would, for example, freely write his letter to the Romans. By placing Paul in those circumstances, God can bring it about that Romans is just the message He wants to convey to us.
Now, your question, Aaron, is a good one. Since God is omniscient, He knows what any human author would freely write in whatever circumstances He might place him. By placing Christopher Hitchens in the circumstances he has been in, God sovereignly brought it about that Christopher Hitchens freely wrote just what he did. So what makes the one God’s Word to us and the other not?
The essential difference lies not in the mode of God’s action. Remember that inspiration is a property of the written text, not the mode of its production (though I am entirely open to the idea that the circumstances surrounding Paul’s freely writing Romans may have included certain promptings of the Holy Spirit absent from Hitchens’ circumstances). Rather, the essential difference lies in God’s attitude toward what is written. In the one case, God wills to communicate via the author His message to us.
INSIGHT
Note that Dr. Craig raises some important nuances here. (1) Inspiration is a property of the written text, not the mode of its production; and (2) what matters significantly is God’s attitude toward what is written. Does it reflect His character, for example?
He intends that the letter to the Romans be His Word to us. Romans is, therefore, a case of appropriated or delegated speech, much as a boss makes a letter composed by his secretary his own by affixing his signature to it. By contrast, God merely allows Hitchens to write what he does without endorsing its truth or adopting it as His own. God lets Hitchens put forth his falsehoods because in His providence Hitchens’ books have their part to play in God’s overall plan for human history. But God does not see Hitchens’ books as His Word to us, to be trusted and obeyed. Therein lies the essential difference between the Bible and every other literary product of free human activity.
On Inerrancy and the Resurrection
I was reading a debate between William Lane Craig and Bart Ehrman. Craig refuses to answer whether or not the Bible is inerrant when directly asked it by an audience member. He merely sidesteps the question and responds that this is not what they are debating.
1) What outside sources (outside of the Canon) are there that support Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection in bodily form, and ascension into heaven?
2) The message of Jesus was spread by word of mouth until the gospels were written. How do we know legend wasn’t developed, such as Jesus being buried by Joseph of Arimathea?
3) What about other pagan miracle workers such as Honi the Circle-Drawer, Hanina ben Dosa, and Apollonius of Tyana (p 27). Doesn’t the fact that these pagan people doing miracles similar to Jesus discredit Jesus as a miracle worker?
4) What about the seeming contradictions in the different gospel accounts? Please give me a different answer other than, “These are only secondary details and do not lie at the heart of the matter.” If we go to a university that declares the Bible is inerrant, then shouldn’t we be able to explain these? I quote from Mr. Ehrman in his debate vs. Craig on p. 11:
“What day did Jesus die on and what time of day? Did he die on the day before the Passover meal was eaten, as John explicitly says, or did he die after it was eaten, as Mark explicitly says? Did he die at noon, as in John, or at 9 a.m., as in Mark? Did Jesus carry his cross the entire way himself or did Simon of Cyrene carry his cross? It depends which gospel you read. Did both robbers mock Jesus on the cross or did only one of them mock him and the other come to his defense? It depends which gospel you read. Did the curtain in the temple rip in half before Jesus died or after he died? It depends which gospel you read. Or take the accounts of the resurrection. Who went to the tomb on the third day? Was it Mary alone or was it Mary with other women? If it was Mary with other women, how many other women were there, which ones were they, and what were their names? Was the stone rolled away before they got there or not? What did they see in the tomb? Did they see a man, did they see two men, or did they see an angel? It depends which account you read. What were they told to tell the disciples? Were the disciples supposed to stay in Jerusalem and see Jesus there or were they to go to Galilee and see Jesus there? Did the women tell anyone or not? It depends which gospel you read. Did the disciples never leave Jerusalem or did they immediately leave Jerusalem and go to Galilee? All of these depend on which account you read.”
Well, thanks for any help. Please don’t refer me to some book or website as I am reading these debates, Evidence that Demands a Verdict by McDowell and The Case for Christ by Strobel. Can I get a straight answer to each question from one of the top Christian Apologetic Centers in the world?
Thanks,
Grant
Dr. Craig’s Response
Can you get straight answers to your questions? You betcha! Read on.
First, to set the context, you put it rather tendentiously when you say that I “merely sidestepped” the question of biblical inerrancy in my debate with Bart Ehrman over whether there is historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. A more sympathetic and, I think, more accurate way of putting it would be to say, “Craig refused to let Ehrman derail the debate into a discussion of biblical inerrancy but kept the debate on track.” Or an even more accurate reading of the situation would be: “Ehrman tried to goad Craig into an affirmation of biblical inerrancy so that he could impugn Craig’s objectivity and, hence, integrity as a historian; but Craig, knowing that his case for Jesus’ resurrection didn’t presuppose biblical inerrancy, refused to take the bait.”
INSIGHT
Note this important insight into the consequence of one’s belief formation and how certain beliefs have “place” in one’s “web of beliefs.” It seems that part of our job when answering people’s questions is to help them discern whether what is at the very center of their web of beliefs in fact merits such attention. We can help people come to see how these beliefs can form people’s decisions.
As I explain elsewhere,23 Ehrman, when he was a Christian, had a flawed theological system in which inerrancy lay at the very center of his web of beliefs, so that once he became convinced of a single error in Scripture the whole web collapsed. As a result, the doctrine of inerrancy looms abnormally large in his thinking. But the case for Jesus’ resurrection that I presented doesn’t in any way presuppose the inerrancy of the documents, so that the doctrine becomes irrelevant so far as belief in the resurrection goes.
Now to your questions:
1. WHAT SOURCES OUTSIDE OF THE CANON ARE THERE THAT SUPPORT JESUS’ DEATH, BURIAL, AND RESURRECTION IN BODILY FORM, AND ASCENSION INTO HEAVEN?
Actually, there are lots of extra-canonical sources that support Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection, sources which I suspect you’ve never thought of. You’re thinking of later extra-canonical sources like Josephus and Tacitus. But the really interesting extra-canonical sources are the earlier ones, that is to say, the sources used by the New Testament writers themselves. Now, before you cry foul, you need to reflect that these sources are not themselves in the Canon but go back even closer to the events than the canonical books. These are, therefore, the center of historical Jesus study today, not the later extra-canonical sources. Honestly, if you’re focused on what later extra-canonical sources there are for Jesus, you’re really missing the boat.
What are some of these sources? The Passion story used by Mark, the formula cited by Paul in 1 Cor. 1:3–5, Matthew’s special source called M, Luke’s special source called L, and so forth. Some of these are incredibly early sources (which helps to answer your second question). The pre-Markan Passion story probably dates from the 30s AD and is based on eyewitness testimony, and the pre-Pauline formula in 1 Cor. 15:3–5 has been dated within a couple of years or even months of Jesus’ death. I think you can see why these are the really interesting sources, not some later report by Josephus.
Now, these sources provide abundant, independent testimony to the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Later references to Jesus by the Roman historian Tacitus, the Jewish historian Josephus, the Syrian writer Mara bar Serapion, rabbinical writings, and extra-biblical Christian authors confirm what the New Testament documents tell us about Jesus but don’t really give us anything new. You can find such sources cited and discussed in R. T. France’s very fine book The Evidence for Jesus24 or in Robert Van Voorst’s definitive Jesus Outside the New Testament.25 What is key for the historian, however, will be not these later sources, but the New Testament documents themselves and their sources.
Which leads to my question to you: why are you interested in extra-canonical sources rather than the primary source documents themselves? Doesn’t your very question betray the prejudice that the New Testament documents are historically unreliable? But if there are sources outside the New Testament that speak of Jesus, ah, that’s real evidence!
You need to keep in mind that originally there wasn’t any such book called “The New Testament.” There were just these separate documents handed down from the first century, things like the Gospel of Luke, the Gospel of John, the Acts of the Apostles, Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth, and so on. It wasn’t until a couple of centuries later that the church officially collected all these documents under one cover, which came to be known as the New Testament. The church only included the earliest sources that were closest to Jesus and the original disciples and left out the later, secondary accounts like the forged apocryphal gospels, which everyone knew were fakes. So from the very nature of the case, the best historical sources were included in the New Testament. People who insist on evidence taken only from writings outside the New Testament don’t understand what they’re asking for. They’re demanding that we ignore the earliest, primary sources about Jesus in favor of sources that are later, secondary, and less reliable, which is just nuts as historical methodology.
The real question is, how reliable are the documents for the life of Jesus that came to be incorporated into the book we now call the New Testament? That leads to your second question.
2. THE MESSAGE OF JESUS WAS SPREAD BY WORD OF MOUTH UNTIL THE GOSPELS WERE WRITTEN. HOW DO WE KNOW LEGEND WASN’T DEVELOPED, SUCH AS JESUS BEING BURIED BY JOSEPH OF ARIMATHEA?
In my article “Rediscovering the Historical Jesus,”26 I discuss five reasons why we can have confidence in the general reliability of the gospels:
1. There was insufficient time for legendary influences to expunge the hard core of historical facts.
2. The gospels are not analogous to folk tales or contemporary “urban legends.”
3. The Jewish transmission of sacred traditions was highly developed and reliable.
4. There were significant restraints on the embellishment of traditions about Jesus, such as the presence of eyewitnesses and the apostles’ supervision.
5. The gospel writers have a proven track record of historical reliability.
I won’t repeat here what I already develop there.
In addition to these general considerations, scholars have enunciated certain “criteria of authenticity” to help detect historically reliable information about Jesus even in a document which may not be generally reliable. What the criteria really amount to are statements about the effect of certain types of evidence upon the probability of various sayings or events narrated in the sources. For some saying or event S, evidence of a certain type E, and our background information B, the criteria would state that, all things being equal, Pr (S|E&B) > Pr (S|B). In other words, all else being equal, the probability of some event or saying is greater given, for example, its early, independent attestation than it would have been without it.27
Now, specifically with respect to Jesus’ burial by Joseph of Arimathea, this is one of the best-established facts about Jesus. Space doesn’t permit me to go into all the details of the evidence for the burial. But let me just mention a couple of points: First, Jesus’ burial is multiply attested in extremely early, independent sources. The account of Jesus’ burial in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea is part of Mark’s source material for the Passion story. Moreover, the formula cited by Paul in 1 Cor. 15:3–5 refers to Jesus’ burial:
… that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,
and that He was buried,
and that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,
and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve.
But, we might wonder, was the burial mentioned by the formula the same event as the burial by Joseph of Arimathea? The answer to that question is made clear by a comparison of the four-line formula with the gospel narratives on the one hand and the sermons in the Acts of the Apostles on the other:
This remarkable correspondence of independent traditions is convincing proof that the four-line formula is a summary in outline form of the basic events of Jesus’ passion and resurrection, including His burial in the tomb. We thus have evidence from two of the earliest, independent sources of the New Testament for the burial of Jesus in the tomb.
But that’s not all! For further independent testimony to Jesus’ burial by Joseph is also found in the sources behind Matthew and Luke and the Gospel of John, not to mention the extra-biblical Gospel of Peter. The differences between Mark’s account and those of Matthew and Luke suggest that the latter had sources other than Mark alone. These differences are not plausibly explained as Matthew’s and Luke’s editorial changes of Mark because of their sporadic and uneven nature, the inexplicable omission of events like Pilate’s interrogation of the centurion, and the agreements in wording between Matthew and Luke in contrast to Mark.
Moreover, we have another independent source for the burial in John’s gospel. Finally we have the early apostolic sermons in the book of Acts, which are probably not wholly Luke’s creation but preserve the early preaching of the apostles. These also make mention of Jesus’ interment in a tomb. Thus, we have the remarkable number of at least four and perhaps more independent sources for Jesus’ burial, some of which are extraordinarily early.
Second, as a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin that condemned Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea is unlikely to be a Christian creation. Joseph is described as a rich man, a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin was a sort of Jewish high court made up of seventy of the leading men of Judaism, which presided in Jerusalem. There was an understandable hostility in the early church toward the Jewish Sanhedrists. In Christian eyes, they had engineered a judicial murder of Jesus. The sermons in Acts, for example, go so far as to say that the Jewish leaders crucified Jesus (Acts 2:23, 36; 4:10)! Given his status as a Sanhedrist—all of whom, Mark reports, voted to condemn Jesus—Joseph is the last person one would expect to care properly for Jesus. Thus, in the words of the late New Testament scholar Raymond Brown, Jesus’ burial by Joseph is “very probable,” since it is “almost inexplicable” why Christians would make up a story about a Jewish Sanhedrist who does what is right by Jesus.
For these and other reasons, the wide majority of New Testament critics concur that Jesus was buried in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea. Since even Ehrman affirms this, along with most scholars, why don’t you?
3. WHAT ABOUT OTHER PAGAN MIRACLE WORKERS SUCH AS HONI THE CIRCLE-DRAWER, HANINA BEN DOSA, AND APOLLONIUS OF TYANA? DOESN’T THE FACT THAT THESE PAGAN PEOPLE DOING MIRACLES SIMILAR TO JESUS DISCREDIT JESUS AS A MIRACLE WORKER?
First of all, these aren’t pagan miracle workers. Honi and Hanina ben Dosa were Jewish holy men who also were reputed as miracle workers. Far from undermining the historicity of the gospel accounts, the existence of such figures supports the credibility of the gospel accounts of Jesus’ ministry as a miracle worker, since it shows that such activity was at home in first-century Judaism and was not ascribed to Jesus as a result of the influence of so-called “divine men” of pagan mythology.
The stories of Jesus’ miracles are so widely represented in all strata of the gospel traditions that it would be fanciful to regard them as not rooted in the life of Jesus. Thus, the consensus of New Testament scholarship is that Jesus did carry out a ministry of “miracle” working—however one might want to interpret or explain these. At the end of his long and detailed study of Jesus’ miracles John Meier concludes:
The overall attestation of the figure of Jesus as healer of physical infirmities and illnesses is thus even stronger than the attestation of his activity as an exorcist…. In sum, the statement that Jesus acted as and was viewed as an exorcist and healer during his public ministry has as much historical corroboration as almost any other statement we can make about the Jesus of history.28
The miracles of Jesus, like His exorcisms, were taken to be signs of the in-breaking of the kingdom of God. As such, they functioned fundamentally differently from the wonders performed by Hellenistic magicians or Jewish holy men. Moreover, Jesus’ miracles differed from those of Honi and Hanina in that Jesus never prays for a miracle to be done; He may first express thanks to the Father, but then He effects it Himself. And He does so in His own name, not God’s. Moreover, neither Honi nor Hanina carried out a prophetic ministry, made messianic claims, or brought any new teaching in conjunction with their miracles. Thus, Jesus is more than just another charismatic Jewish holy man.
As for Apollonius of Tyana, this is a figure constructed in large part by Philostratus centuries later as a deliberate counterpoint to Christianity. The church had grown quite large and influential by that time, so Philostratus constructed Apollonius as a pagan alternative to Jesus. How does this in any way undermine the historical credibility of the gospel accounts of Jesus’ miracles?
4. WHAT ABOUT THE SEEMING CONTRADICTIONS IN THE DIFFERENT GOSPEL ACCOUNTS?
Here’s your straight answer, Grant: they don’t matter. I could accept that all of these apparent discrepancies are irresolvable, and it wouldn’t affect my historical argument one wit. Don’t believe me? Then let’s let Bart Ehrman speak for himself. Does he think that the seeming contradictions he lists undermine the historical credibility of the facts upon which my argument is based? No! He says:
The resurrection of Jesus lies at the heart of Christian faith. Unfortunately, it also is a tradition about Jesus that historians have difficulty dealing with. As I said, there are a couple of things that we can say for certain about Jesus after his death. We can say with relative certainty, for example, that he was buried …
Some scholars have argued that it’s more plausible that in fact Jesus was placed in a common burial plot, which sometimes happened, or was, as many other crucified people, simply left to be eaten by scavenging animals (which also happened commonly for crucified persons in the Roman Empire). But the accounts are fairly unanimous in saying (the earliest accounts we have are unanimous in saying) that Jesus was, in fact, buried by this fellow, Joseph of Arimathea, and so it’s relatively reliable that that’s what happened.
We also have solid traditions to indicate that women found this tomb empty three days later. This is attested in all of our gospel sources, early and late, and so it appears to be a historical datum. As so I think we can say that after Jesus’ death, with some certainty, that He was buried, possibly by this fellow, Joseph of Arimathea, and that three days later He appeared not to have been in His tomb.29
The same goes double—well, many times more than double—for Jesus’ crucifixion. This event is widely recognized as the most solidly established fact about the historical Jesus, denied only by kooks and Muslim true believers. Yet Ehrman’s first five discrepancies are all connected, not with the burial and empty tomb narratives, but with the crucifixion accounts! So are you going to deny that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified under Roman authority at the time of the Jewish Passover feast in 30 AD because of these differences in the narratives? If so, Grant, then you will have not only intellectually marginalized yourself but also shown that you are not a sincere seeker after truth.
Do you see now, Grant, why I refused to be drawn into a dispute about how many angels there were at the tomb? Insofar as the historicity of the empty tomb is concerned, it just doesn’t matter. You say those who go to a university committed to biblical inerrancy should be able to explain these discrepancies. That’s silly, Grant. Why think that Coach Holmquist should be able to explain these discrepancies? Why think that even someone in the New Testament department should be able to explain these? Maybe there just isn’t the historical information available to resolve every discrepancy. It seems to me that you must think that the belief in biblical inerrancy is arrived at inductively, but that is problematic.30
I think what you really want to say is that those affiliated with such a university ought to be interested in explaining these discrepancies and, therefore, should not “sidestep” them, as you accuse me of doing. Yes, I’d agree with you that we inerrantists ought to be interested in explaining such discrepancies. But there’s a time and place for everything. A debate on the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, where time is limited and the central facts of the case are agreed upon by the majority of scholars in the field, is not the time for being diverted into such a discussion. That discussion can be profitably pursued and is being pursued elsewhere.
So let’s take them one at a time:
Date and time of the crucifixion: All the sources agree that Jesus was crucified on Friday. What is in dispute is whether Passover was on Thursday or Friday. The Synoptics seem to suggest that Jesus’ Last Supper with the disciples on Thursday night was a Passover meal. John agrees that Jesus did share a Last Supper with His disciples on Thursday night in the upper room prior to His betrayal and arrest. But John says that the Jewish leaders wanted to eliminate Jesus before the Passover meal began Friday night. So was Passover on Thursday or Friday? That’s the whole dispute! (I hope this puts the issue in perspective for you.)
One possibility is that John has moved the Passover to Friday to make Jesus’ death coincide with the slaughter of the Passover lambs in the Temple. But maybe not: since there were competing calendars in use in first-century Palestine, the sacrifices may have been made on more than one day. The Pharisees and people from Galilee reckoned days as beginning at sunrise and ending at the following sunrise. But Sadducees and people from Judea reckoned days as beginning at sunset and ending with the next sunset. In our modern age, we adopt what I think is the rather weird convention that the day begins in the middle of the night at midnight and goes until the next midnight. Well, this difference in reckoning days completely throws off the dating of certain events.
Passover lambs were offered on the 14th of the month of Nisan. According to the Galilean reckoning, the 14th of Nisan begins about 6:00 a.m. on the day we call Thursday. But for the Judean, 14 Nisan doesn’t begin until 12 hours later, about 6:00 p.m. on our Thursday. So when the Galilean, following Jewish regulations, slays the Passover lamb on the afternoon of 14 Nisan, what day does he do it on? Thursday. But when the Judean offers his lamb in sacrifice on the afternoon of the 14th of Nisan, what day is that? Friday! When night falls, he then feasts on the lamb, by his reckoning, on 15 Nisan. Thus, in order to meet the demands of both Galilean-Pharisaical sensibilities and of Judean-Sadducean sensibilities, the Temple priesthood would have to have made Passover sacrifices on both Thursday and Friday. Jesus, as a Galilean and knowing of His impending arrest, chose to celebrate the Passover Thursday night, whereas the chief priests and scribes responsible for Jesus’ arrest went by the Judean calendar, as John says. Although we have no evidence that Passover sacrifices were made on both days, such a solution is very plausible. The population of Jerusalem swelled to around 125,000 people during the Passover festival. It would be logistically impossible for the Temple priesthood to sacrifice enough lambs for that many people between 3:00 and 6:00 on one afternoon. They must have sacrificed on more than one day, which makes it entirely possible for Jesus and His disciples to celebrate the Passover Thursday night prior to His arrest.
Similarly for the time of Jesus’ crucifixion: Mark says the crucifixion was at the third hour, that is, 9:00 a.m., but John says Jesus was condemned “about the sixth hour,” that is, around noon. Again, maybe John has moved the time until later. But maybe not: in the Synoptic gospels and Acts the only times of day ever referred to (with one exception) are the third, sixth, and ninth hours. Obviously in an age without modern time-keeping devices, round numbers or quarters of the day are being used. The third hour could refer to any time between 9:00 a.m. and noon.
Did Jesus carry His cross the entire way? No, Simon of Cyrene was a historical person, whose role in the narrative John simply chooses to omit. Simon was probably impressed into service by the soldiers when Jesus proved too weak to carry the crossbeam all the way to Golgotha.
Did the robbers rail against Jesus? Mark says merely that those who were crucified with Jesus reviled Him. No details are given. But Luke tells of how one of the criminals expressed faith in Jesus. You could just write off Luke’s story as a pious development of the crucifixion narrative. But how do we know that Luke is not working with an independent source here that remembers this man’s repentance, whereas Mark passes over it? I don’t have any confidence that we have a real contradiction here.
When did the veil of the Temple tear? This alleged discrepancy is purely imaginary, since Mark and Luke mention the rending of the Temple curtain but don’t pretend to specify its timing. Luke would have been amazed had some modern reader accused him of contradicting Mark when he groups together the supernatural signs occurring at Christ’s death.
Who went to the tomb? A group of women, including Mary Magdalene, who is always named. John focuses on her for dramatic effect, but he knows of other women, as is evident in Mary’s words, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him” (John 20:2; cf. 20:13). We don’t know all the names of the other women, but they included another Mary, who was the mother of James and Joses, and Salome. The fact that women, rather than men, appear in the narrative as the discoverers of Jesus’ empty tomb is, by the way, one of the most convincing factors leading most scholars to accept the historicity of the narrative.
Was the stone rolled away before they got there and what did they see? Yes, it was; there’s no discrepancy here. They saw one or two angels. Mark’s “young man” is clearly an angelic figure, as evident from his white robe, his revelatory message, and the women’s response of fear and trembling. Moreover, Mark’s earliest interpreters (Matthew and Luke) understood the young man to be an angel.
What were they told? They were told to go to Galilee, where they would see Jesus. Since Luke doesn’t plan on narrating any Galilean appearances, he alters Mark’s wording of the angel’s message for literary purposes. The tradition of appearances in Galilee is very old and virtually universally accepted.
Did the women tell anyone? Of course, they did! When Mark says that they said nothing to anyone, he obviously means as they fled back to the disciples. Mark foreshadows the appearances in Galilee, so obviously he didn’t mean that the women failed to give the angel’s message to the disciples. This discrepancy is purely imaginary.
Did the disciples leave Jerusalem for Galilee? Of course, as indicated above. Luke just chooses not to narrate any Galilean appearances because he wants to show how the gospel became established in the holiest city of the Jews, Jerusalem.
So some of these alleged discrepancies are easy to answer and are what we should expect from independent accounts of the same event. Others are more difficult but are in the end not of great consequence. Historians expect to find inconsistencies like these even in the most reliable sources. No historian simply throws out a source because it has inconsistencies. Moreover, the inconsistencies Ehrman is talking about aren’t within a single source; they’re between independent sources. But obviously, it doesn’t follow from an inconsistency between two independent sources that both sources are wrong. At worst, one is wrong if they can’t be harmonized.
The problem with focusing on discrepancies is that we tend to lose the forest for the trees. The overriding fact is that the gospels are remarkably harmonious in what they relate. The discrepancies between them are in the secondary details. All four gospels agree: Jesus of Nazareth was crucified in Jerusalem by Roman authority during the Passover Feast, having been arrested and convicted on charges of blasphemy by the Jewish Sanhedrin and then slandered before the governor Pilate on charges of treason. He died within several hours and was buried Friday afternoon by Joseph of Arimathea in a tomb, which was sealed with a stone. Certain women followers of Jesus, including Mary Magdalene, having observed His interment, visited His tomb early on Sunday morning, only to find it empty. Thereafter, Jesus appeared alive from the dead to the disciples, including Peter, who then became proclaimers of the message of His resurrection.
All four gospels attest to these facts. Many more details can be supplied by adding facts which are attested by three out of four. So don’t be misled by the minor discrepancies. Otherwise you’re going to have to be skeptical about all secular historical narratives that also contain such inconsistencies, which is quite unreasonable.
16. Take a look at Dr. Craig’s free article at ReasonableFaith.org titled, “The Evidence for Jesus” (http://bit.ly/ EvidenceForJesus) for five lines of evidence supporting the general credibility of the gospel records of Jesus’ life.
17. For a good discussion of these factors see Robert Stein, “The ‘Criteria’ for Authenticity,” in Gospel Perspectives I, R. T. France and David Wenham, eds. (Sheffield, England: JSOT Press, 1980), 225–63.
18. Martin Kahler, The So-called Historical Jesus and the Historic, Biblical Christ, translated, edited, and with an introduction by Carl E. Braaten (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1964), 75. Readers may be interested to know that one of the best examples of the approach that the Kahler quote suggests to the doctrine of biblical inerrancy is John Wenham’s Christ and the Bible (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1972).
19. See James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003).
20. For further study, see Dr. Craig’s article “‘Men Moved by the Holy Spirit Spoke from God’ (2 Peter 1:21): A Middle Knowledge Perspective on Biblical Inspiration,” Philosophia Christi 1:1 (1999): 45–82, for a proposal on how to conceive of verbal, plenary, congruent inspiration of Scripture. This article can be accessed for free at ReasonableFaith.org (http://bit.ly/MolinismInspiration). To subscribe to Philosophia Christi, the journal of the Evangelical Philosophical Society and where many of Dr. Craig’s scholarly articles first appear, please visit www.epsociety.org/philchristi for more info, or to purchase, www.epsociety.org/store.
21. This audio is accessible for free at ReasonableFaith.org (http://bit.ly/DoctrineOfRevelation).
22. This article can be accessed for free at ReasonableFaith.org (http://bit.ly/MolinismInspiration).
23. See Dr. Craig’s reply to the question above, “Is the Price of ‘Biblical Errancy’ Too High to Pay?” pages 105–11.
24. R. T. France, The Evidence for Jesus (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1986).
25. Robert E. Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000).
26. “Rediscovering the Historical Jesus: The Evidence for Jesus,” Faith and Mission 15 (1998): 16–26. This article can be freely accessed at ReasonableFaith.org (http://bit.ly/RediscoveringHistoricalJesus).
27. As the reader may recall, the “criteria” mentioned has already been discussed in the question on “Establishing the Gospel’s Reliability” (pages 101–4). The important point to recall is that these criteria do not presuppose the general reliability of the gospels. Rather, they focus on a particular saying or event and give evidence for thinking that specific element of Jesus’ life to be historical, regardless of the general reliability of the document in which the particular saying or event is reported.
28. John Meier, A Marginal Jew, vol. 2 (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 969–70 (Dr. Craig’s emphasis).
29. See Ehrman’s “From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity,” Lecture 4: “Oral and Written Traditions about Jesus,” The Great Courses, at http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/Courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=6577.
30. To learn more, see Dr. Craig’s answer to the question, “Is the Price of ‘Biblical Errancy’ Too High to Pay?” (pages 105-11).