Debate between William Lane Craig and Bart D. Ehrman about Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus

College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts  March 28, 2006  Copyright 2006 William Lane Craig and Bart D. Ehrman. All Rights Reserved.  Introduction  Students, faculty, and staff, and guests from the Worcester-area community, I am delighted to  welcome you to the Hogan Campus Center at the College of the Holy Cross. My name is  Charles Anderton and I am a professor of economics here at Holy Cross. On behalf of the  sponsoring organizations – the Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture and the Campus Christian  Fellowship – I warmly welcome you to this evening’s debate. The question before us tonight is  one of enduring interest for Christians and many non-Christians: Is there historical evidence for  the resurrection of Jesus? Supporting the affirmative position will be Dr. William Lane Craig,  Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, California.  Supporting the opposing position will be Dr. Bart Ehrman, James A. Gray Distinguished  Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina  at Chapel Hill.  During the debate, I ask that you respectfully consider the viewpoints of the debaters. Please  refrain from any applause, comments, or actions of support or criticism. A question-and-answer  session will follow the formal part of the program and provide an opportunity for interaction  between the debaters and the audience. Please note that the debate and the question and answer  session will be audio- and video-taped. I also ask that you please turn off your cell phones.  The moderator for this evening’s debate is Dr. William Shea, Director of the Center for Religion,  Ethics and Culture here at Holy Cross. Dr. Shea received his Ph.D. in 1973 from the Columbia  University School of Philosophy. He has taught at Catholic University of America, the  University of South Florida, and Saint Louis University. He has also served as president of the  College Theology Society. Dr. Shea has published more than 50 essays and articles in scholarly  journals and he has written and edited numerous books including: Naturalism and the  Supernatural; The Struggle Over the Past: Religious Fundamentalism in the Modern World;  Knowledge and Belief in America: Enlightenment Traditions and Modern Religious Thought;  Trying Times: Essays on Catholic Higher Education in the 20th Century; and most recently his  book, The Lion and the Lamb: Evangelicals and Catholics in America. Please welcome Dr.  William Shea.  Moderator’s Remarks  Good evening. Debate is an ancient form of discourse that combines elements of information,  education, hoped-for conversion, and entertainment. The Greek philosophers, the “sophists,”  were accomplished at debate, and the Platonic dialogues and Aristotelian dialectics were refined  literary forms of debate. The Christians took over the literary form of debate and debated philosophical and theological issues without end. The medieval universities were crowded with  students and professors who wanted to argue. Some medieval Christians thought that if only they  could best spokespersons from the Jewish community in debate, that they would convert the  masses of Jews to the Christian Gospel. At one famous debate in 13th century Spain, a  Dominican friar challenged a noted Rabbi to debate whether or not Jesus was the messiah. The  Rabbi hesitated to debate, knowing that if he won the debate by giving good reasons why Jesus  was NOT the messiah, he and his fellow Jews would lose anyway, and that is exactly what  happened: the Rabbi won the debate, the Friar lost, and Christians burned Jewish homes and  businesses. I hope that after tonight’s debate none of you will burn down Talbot Divinity School  or the University of North Carolina.  My personal favorite debate took place in Cincinnati in 1834 when Alexander Campbell, the  founder of the Protestant denomination The Disciples of Christ, debated the Catholic bishop of  Cincinnati, John Purcell, on the question whether the Catholic Church was the anti-Christ and the  Beast from the Sea. That debate lasted for six days, and took six hours each day and was printed  in a volume covering 500 pages of closely printed text. Both of those men lived many years and  neither one of them ever stopped talking. You are safe tonight, I hasten to add, because we are  working tonight under very tight talk-guidelines. And here they are:  Professor Victor Matheson will time the speakers by holding up cards.  Each speaker will make a 20 minute opening statement  Each speaker gets 12 minutes for a first rebuttal.  Each speaker gets an 8 minute second rebuttal.  Each speaker draws a conclusion in 5 minutes.  Then you may applaud – and not before.  You may then ask questions of each speaker, for a total of 30 minutes.  We may then applaud again.  Dr. Anderton will make a final statement.  We applaud again, and then go to our homes peacefully, burning nothing on the way.  The two speakers do not know one another except by name and reputation. They have not  practiced with one another. This is a serious argument; it is not a meeting of the World Wrestling  Federation. They are debating a serious question, namely, just what kind of literature are the  New Testament books and to what uses can they be put? They are both well established scholars,  authors and speakers.  William Lane Craig has a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Birmingham and a  doctorate in theology from the University of Munich. He studied at the Catholic University of  Louvain for seven years. He has been research professor of philosophy at Talbot School of  Theology for the past ten years. He has written and edited over thirty books, including one titled  Assessing the NT Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus, and two volumes of  previous debates, one with Gerd Lüdemann of Göttingen University in Germany and one with  John Dominic Crossan of DePaul University.  Bart Ehrman is James Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of  North Carolina. He received his doctorate from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1985, and he has been at North Carolina since 1988. He has written 19 books, of which my favorites are his  introductions to the New Testament and early Christian Literature, and his recent book on the  DaVinci Code.  Dr. Craig will make the first statement, followed by Dr. Ehrman.  Dr. Craig’s Opening Statement  Good evening! I want to say how grateful I am for the invitation to participate in tonight’s  debate. I’ve really been looking forward to discussing the issues with Dr. Ehrman this evening.  In preparing for this debate, I had quite a surprise. I was amazed to discover how much our life  stories are alike: as slightly marginalized teenage boys with some passing acquaintance with  Christianity, both of our lives were turned upside down when at the age of 15 or 16 we each  experienced a spiritual rebirth through personal faith in Christ. Eager to serve him, we both  attended the same college in Illinois, Wheaton College, where we both even studied Greek under  the same professor. After graduation we both went on to pursue doctoral studies.  Thereafter our paths radically diverged. I received a fellowship from the German government to  study the resurrection of Jesus under the direction of Wolfhart Pannenberg and Ferdinand Hahn  at the University of Munich and at Cambridge University. As a result of my studies, I became  even more convinced of the historical credibility of that event. Of course, ever since my  conversion, I believed in the resurrection of Jesus on the basis of my personal experience, and I  still think this experiential approach to the resurrection is a perfectly valid way to knowing that  Christ has risen. It’s the way that most Christians today know that Jesus is risen and alive. But  as a result of my studies, I came to see that a remarkably good case can be made for Jesus’  resurrection historically as well, and I hope to show tonight that the resurrection of Jesus is the  best explanation of certain well-established facts about Jesus.  Sadly, Dr. Ehrman came to radically different conclusions as a result of his studies. In his most  recent book he poignantly describes how he came to lose his teenage faith. I’m not sure, based  on Dr. Ehrman’s writings, whether he still believes in Jesus’ resurrection or not. He never denies  it. But he does deny that there can be historical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection. He maintains  that there cannot be historical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection. Now this is a very bold claim,  and so naturally I was interested to see what argument he would offer for its justification. I was  stunned to discover that the philosophical argument he gives for this claim is an old argument  against the identification of miracles which I had studied during my doctoral research and which  is regarded by most philosophers today as demonstrably fallacious. So as not to steal Dr.  Ehrman’s thunder, I’ll wait until he’s presented his argument before I show where the fallacy  lies.  For now, I want to sketch briefly how a historical case for Jesus’ resurrection might look. In  constructing a case for Jesus’ resurrection, it’s important to distinguish between the evidence and  the best explanation of that evidence. This distinction is important because in this case the  evidence is relatively uncontroversial. As we’ll see, it’s agreed to by most scholars. On the other  hand, the explanation of that evidence is controversial. That the resurrection is the best  explanation is a matter of controversy. Now although Dr. Ehrman says that there cannot be any  historical evidence for the resurrection, we’ll see that what he really means is that the  resurrection cannot be the best explanation of that evidence, not that there is no evidence.  That leads me, then, to my first major contention, namely:  (I) There are four historical facts which must be explained by any adequate historical  hypothesis:  o Jesus’ burial  o the discovery of his empty tomb  o his post-mortem appearances  o the origin of the disciples’ belief in his resurrection.  Now, let’s look at that first contention more closely. I want to share four facts which are widely  accepted by historians today.  Fact #1: After his crucifixion Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea in a tomb.  Historians have established this fact on the basis of evidence such as the following:  1. Jesus’ burial is multiply attested in early, independent sources.  We have four biographies of Jesus, by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which have been  collected into the New Testament, along with various letters of the apostle Paul. Now the burial  account is part of Mark’s source material for the story of Jesus’ suffering and death. This is a  very early source which is probably based on eyewitness testimony and which the commentator  Rudolf Pesch dates to within seven years of the crucifixion. Moreover, Paul also cites an  extremely early source for Jesus’ burial which most scholars date to within five years of Jesus’  crucifixion. 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.  Thus, we have the remarkable number of at least five independent sources for Jesus’ burial, some  of which are extraordinarily early.  2. As a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin that condemned Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea is unlikely  to be a Christian invention.  There was an understandable hostility in the early church toward the Jewish leaders. In Christian  eyes, they had engineered a judicial *** of Jesus. Thus, according to 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, most New Testament critics concur that Jesus was buried by Joseph  of Arimathea in a tomb. According to the late John A. T. Robinson of Cambridge University, the  burial of Jesus in the tomb is “one of the earliest and best-attested facts about Jesus.” Fact #2: On the Sunday after the crucifixion, Jesus’ tomb was found empty by a group of  his women followers.  Among the reasons which have led most scholars to this conclusion are the following:  1. The empty tomb is also multiply attested by independent, early sources.  Mark’s source didn’t end with the burial, but with the story of the empty tomb, which is tied to  the burial story verbally and grammatically. Moreover, Matthew and John have independent  sources about the empty tomb; it’s also mentioned in the sermons in the Acts of the Apostles  (2.29; 13.36); and it’s implied by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthian church (I Cor. 15.4).  Thus, we have again multiple, early, independent attestation of the fact of the empty tomb.  2. The tomb was discovered empty by women.  In patriarchal Jewish society the testimony of women was not highly regarded. In fact, the  Jewish historian Josephus says that women weren’t even permitted to serve as witnesses in a  Jewish court of law. Now in light of this fact, how remarkable it is that it is women who are the  discoverers of Jesus’ empty tomb. Any later legendary account would certainly have made male  disciples like Peter and John discover the empty tomb. The fact that it is women, rather than  men, who are the discoverers of the empty tomb is best explained by the fact that they were the  chief witnesses to the fact of the empty tomb, and the Gospel writers faithfully record what, for  them, was an awkward and embarrassing fact.  I could go on, but I think enough has been said to indicate why, in the words of Jacob Kremer, an  Austrian specialist on the resurrection, “By far most exegetes hold firmly to the reliability of the  biblical statements concerning the empty tomb.” Fact #3: On different occasions and under various circumstances different individuals and  groups of people experienced appearances of Jesus alive from the dead.  This is a fact which is virtually universally acknowledged by scholars, for the following reasons:  1. Paul’s list of eyewitnesses to Jesus’ resurrection appearances guarantees that such  appearances occurred.  Paul tells us that Jesus appeared to his chief disciple Peter, then to the inner circle of disciples  known as the Twelve; then he appeared to a group of 500 disciples at once, then to his younger  brother James, who up to that time was apparently not a believer, then to all the apostles.  Finally, Paul adds, “he appeared also to me,” at the time when Paul was still a persecutor of the  early Jesus movement (I Cor. 15.5-8). Given the early date of Paul’s information as well as his  personal acquaintance with the people involved, these appearances cannot be dismissed as mere  legends.  2. The appearance narratives in the Gospels provide multiple, independent attestation of the  appearances.  For example, the appearance to Peter is attested by Luke and Paul; the appearance to the Twelve  is attested by Luke, John, and Paul; and the appearance to the women is attested by Matthew and  John. The appearance narratives span such a breadth of independent sources that it cannot be  reasonably denied that the earliest disciples did have such experiences. Thus, even the skeptical  German New Testament critic Gerd Lüdemann concludes, “It may be taken as historically  certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus’ death in which Jesus appeared to  them as the risen Christ.” Finally,  Fact #4: The original disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe that Jesus was risen  from the dead despite their having every predisposition to the contrary.  Think of the situation the disciples faced following Jesus’ crucifixion:  1. Their leader was dead.  And Jewish Messianic expectations had no idea of a Messiah who, instead of triumphing over  Israel’s enemies, would be shamefully executed by them as a criminal.  2. Jewish beliefs about the afterlife precluded anyone’s rising from the dead to glory and  immortality before the general resurrection of the dead at the end of the world.  Nevertheless, the original disciples suddenly came to believe so strongly that God had raised  Jesus from the dead that they were willing to die for the truth of that belief. But then the obvious  question arises: What in the world caused them to believe such an un-Jewish and outlandish  thing? Luke Johnson, a New Testament scholar at Emory University, muses, “Some sort of  powerful, transformative experience is required to generate the sort of movement earliest  Christianity was.”  And N. T. Wright, an eminent British scholar, concludes, “That is why, as an  historian, I cannot explain the rise of early Christianity unless Jesus rose again, leaving an empty  tomb behind him.” In summary, there are four facts agreed upon by the majority of scholars: Jesus’ burial, the  discovery of his empty tomb, his post-mortem appearances, and the origin of the disciples’ belief  in his resurrection.  Now in his early published work Dr. Ehrman expressed skepticism about these facts. He insisted  that we cannot really affirm these facts.  Why not? Well, he gave two reasons:  First, he said, historians cannot say that a miracle probably occurred. But here he was obviously  confusing the evidence for the resurrection with the best explanation of the evidence. The  resurrection of Jesus is a miraculous explanation of the evidence. But the evidence itself is not  miraculous. None of these four facts is any way supernatural or inaccessible to the historian. To  give an analogy, did you know that after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, there was actually a  plot to steal his body as it was being transported by train back to Illinois? Now the historian will  obviously want to know whether this plot was foiled or not. Was Lincoln’s body missing from  the train? Was it successfully interred in the tomb in Springfield? Did his closest associates like  Secretary of War Stanton or Vice-President Johnson claim to have seen appearances of Lincoln  alive after his death, and so on? These are questions any historian can investigate. And it’s the  same with the four facts about Jesus.  But Professor Ehrman had a second reason why he thought the historian cannot affirm these  facts: the Gospel accounts of these events are hopelessly contradictory. But the problem with  this line of argument is that it assumes three things: (i) that the inconsistencies are irresolvable  rather than merely apparent; (ii) that the inconsistencies lie at the heart of the narrative rather  than just in the secondary, peripheral details; and (iii) that all of the accounts have an equal claim  to historical reliability, since the presence of inconsistencies in a later, less reliable source does  nothing to undermine the credibility of an earlier, more credible source. In fact, when you look  at the supposed inconsistencies, what you find is that most of them—like the names and number  of the women who visited the tomb—are merely apparent, not real. Moreover, the alleged  inconsistencies are found in the secondary, circumstantial details of the story and have no effect  at all on the four facts as I’ve stated them.  So most historians haven’t been deterred by these sorts of objections. And in fact Dr. Ehrman  has himself come to re-think his position on these issues. Inconsistencies in the details  notwithstanding, he now recognizes that we have “solid traditions,” not only for Jesus’ burial,  but also for the women’s discovery of the empty tomb, and therefore, he says, we can conclude  with “some certainty” that Jesus was in fact buried by Joseph of Arimathea in a tomb and that  three days later the tomb was found empty. When I discovered that Professor Ehrman had reversed himself on this question, my admiration  for his honesty and scholarly objectivity shot up. Very few scholars, once they’ve gone into  print on an issue, have the courage to re-think that issue and admit that they were wrong. Dr.  Ehrman’s reversal of his opinion on these matters is testimony, not merely to the force of the  evidence for these four facts, but also to his determination to follow the evidence wherever it  leads. What this means is that my first contention is not an issue of disagreement in tonight’s  debate. The whole debate will therefore turn upon Dr. Ehrman’s response to my second  contention, namely:  (II) The best explanation of these facts is that Jesus rose from the dead.  This, of course, was the explanation that the eyewitnesses themselves gave, and I can think of no  better explanation. The Resurrection Hypothesis passes all of the standard criteria for being the  best explanation, such as explanatory power, explanatory scope, plausibility, and so forth.  Of course, down through history various alternative naturalistic explanations of the resurrection  have been proposed, such as the Conspiracy Hypothesis, the Apparent Death Hypothesis, the  Hallucination Hypothesis, and so on. In the judgment of contemporary scholarship, however,  none of these naturalistic hypotheses has managed to provide a plausible explanation of the facts.  Nor does Dr. Ehrman support any of these naturalistic explanations of the facts.  So why, we may ask, does Dr. Ehrman not accept the resurrection as the best explanation? The  answer is simple: the resurrection is a miracle, and Dr. Ehrman denies the possibility of  establishing a miracle. He writes, “Because historians can only establish what probably  happened, and a miracle of this nature is highly improbable, the historian cannot say it probably  occurred.”9  This argument against the identification of a miracle is an old one, already refuted in  the 18th century by such eminent scholars as William Paley and George Campbell, and is  rejected as fallacious by most contemporary philosophers as well. Now I’ve promised to say  more about this later; but for now, let me simply say that in the absence of some naturalistic  explanation of the facts, Dr. Ehrman’s hesitancy about embracing the resurrection of Jesus as the  best explanation is really quite unnecessary. Dr. Ehrman would be quite within his rational  rights to embrace a miraculous explanation like the resurrection—and so would we.  In conclusion, then, I think that there is good historical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection.  Specifically, I’ve staked out two basic contentions for discussion tonight:  I. There are four historical facts which must be explained by any adequate historical  hypothesis: Jesus’ burial, the discovery of his empty tomb, his post-mortem appearances, and  the very origin of the disciples’ belief in his resurrection, and  II. The best explanation of these facts is that Jesus rose from the dead.  Dr. Ehrman's Opening Statement  I would like to thank Bill for that highly impressive opening statement. I’ve heard over the years  that Bill is a skilled debater and rhetorician, and now I’ve seen for myself why the evangelical  Christians that he speaks for are so proud of his abilities.  In my opening speech here I will not be dealing directly with the many, many points Bill has  already raised. I will instead lay out my own case, which, by the way, is not exactly that case that  he said I was going to make, although there are some points of similarity. I’ll lay out my own  case, and in my next speech I’ll show why, in my opinion, the position that he has just staked out  is so problematic.  I want to say at the outset something similar to what he said at the beginning of his speech. I  used to believe absolutely everything that Bill just presented. He and I went to the same  evangelical Christian college, Wheaton, where these things are taught. Even before that I went to  a yet more conservative school, Moody Bible Institute, where “Bible” is our middle name. We  were taught these things there even more avidly. I used to believe them with my whole heart and  soul. I used to preach them and try to convince others that they were true. But then I began  studying these matters, not simply accepting what my teachers had said, but looking at them  deeply myself. I learned Greek and started studying the New Testament in the original Greek  language. I learned Hebrew to read the Old Testament. I learned Latin, Syriac, and Coptic to be  able to study the New Testament manuscripts and the non-canonical traditions of Jesus in their  original languages. I immersed myself in the world of the first century, reading non-Christian  Jewish and pagan texts from the Roman Empire and before, and I tried to master everything  written by a Christian from the first three hundred years of the church. I became a historian of  antiquity, and for twenty-five years now I have done my research in this area night and day. I’m  not a philosopher like Bill; I’m a historian dedicated to finding the historical truth. After years of  studying, I finally came to the conclusion that everything I had previously thought about the  historical evidence of the resurrection was absolutely wrong.  Let me begin by explaining in simple terms what it is that historians do. Historians try to  establish to the best of their ability what probably happened in the past. We can’t really know the  past because the past is done with. We think we know that past in some instances because we  have such good evidence for what happened in the past, but in other cases we don’t know, and in  some cases we just have to throw up our hands in despair.  It is relatively certain that Bill Clinton won the election in 1996. It may be somewhat less clear  who won the election next time. It’s pretty clear that Shakespeare wrote his plays, but there’s  considerable debate. Why? It was hundreds of years ago, and scholars come up with alternative  opinions. It’s probable that Caesar crossed the Rubicon, but we don’t have a lot of eyewitness  testimony. Historians try to establish levels of probability of what happened in the past. Some  things are absolutely certain, some are probable, some are possible, some are “maybe,” some are  “probably not.”  What kinds of evidence do scholars look for when trying to establish probabilities in the past?  Well, the best kind of evidence, of course, consists of contemporary accounts; people who were  close to the time of the events themselves. Ultimately, if you don’t have a source that goes back  to the time period itself, then you don’t have a reliable source. There are only two sources of  information for past events: either stories that actually happened based on, ultimately, eyewitness  accounts or stories that have been made up. Those are the only two kinds of stories you have  from the past – either things that happened or things that were made up. To determine which  things are the things that happened, you want contemporary accounts, things that are close to the  time of the events themselves, and it helps if you have a lot of these accounts. The more the  merrier! You want lots of contemporary accounts, and you want these accounts to be  independent of one another. You don’t want different accounts to have collaborated with one  another; you want accounts that are independently attesting the results. Moreover, even though  you want accounts that are independent of one another, that are not collaborated, you want  accounts that corroborate one another; accounts that are consistent in what they have to say about  the subject. Moreover, finally, you want sources that are not biased toward the subject matter.  You want accounts that are disinterested. You want lots of them, you want them independent  from one another, yet you want them to be consistent with one another.  What do we have with the Gospels of the New Testament? Well, unfortunately we’re not as well  off as we would like to be. We’d like to be extremely well off because the Gospels tell us about  Jesus, and they are our best sources for Jesus. But how good are they as historical sources? I’m  not questioning whether they’re valuable as theological sources or sources for religious  information. But how good are they as historical sources? Unfortunately, they’re not as good as  we would like. The Gospels were written 35 to 65 years after Jesus’ death—35 or 65 years after  his death, not by people who were eyewitnesses, but by people living later. The Gospels were  written by highly literate, trained, Greek-speaking Christians of the second and third generation.  They’re not written by Jesus’ Aramaic-speaking followers. They’re written by people living 30,  40, 50, 60 years later. Where did these people get their information from? I should point out that  the Gospels say they’re written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But that’s just in your  English Bible. That’s the title of these Gospels, but whoever wrote the Gospel of Matthew didn’t  call it the Gospel of Matthew. Whoever wrote the Gospel of Matthew simply wrote his Gospel,  and somebody later said it’s the Gospel according to Matthew. Somebody later is telling you  who wrote it. The titles are later additions. These are not eyewitness accounts. So where did they  get their stories from?  After the days of Jesus, people started telling stories about him in order to convert others to the  faith. They were trying to convert both Jews and Gentiles. How do you convert somebody to stop  worshipping their God and to start worshipping Jesus? You have to tell stories about Jesus. So  you convert somebody on the basis of the stories you tell. That person converts somebody who  converts somebody who converts somebody, and all along the line people are telling stories.  The way it works is this: I’m a businessman in Ephesus, and somebody comes to town and tells  me stories about Jesus, and on the basis of these stories I hear, I convert. I tell my wife these  stories. She converts. She tells the next-door neighbor the stories. She converts. She tells her  husband the stories. He converts. He goes on a business trip to Rome, and he tells people there  the stories. They convert. Those people who’ve heard the stories in Rome, where did they hear  them from? They heard them from the guy who lived next door to me. Well, was he there to see  these things happen? No. Where’d he hear them from? He heard them from his wife. Where did  his wife hear them from? Was she there? No. She heard them from my wife. Where did my wife  hear them from? She heard them from me. Well, where did I hear them from? I wasn’t there  either.  Stories are in circulation year after year after year, and as a result of that, the stories get changed.  How do we know that the stories got changed in the process of transmission? We know the  stories got changed because there are numerous differences in our accounts that cannot be  reconciled with one another. You don’t need to take my word for this; simply look yourself. I tell  my students that the reason we don’t notice there’s so many differences in the Gospels is because  we read the Gospels vertically, from top to bottom. You start at the top of Mark, you read  through to the bottom, you start at the top of Matthew, read it through the bottom, sounds a lot  like Mark, then you read Luke top to bottom, sounds a lot like Matthew and Mark, read John, a  little bit different, sounds about the same. The reason is because we’re reading them vertically.  The way to see differences in the Gospels is to read them horizontally. Read one story in  Matthew, then the same story in Mark, and compare your two stories and see what you come up  with. You come up with major differences. Just take the death of Jesus. 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.  You have the same problems for all of the sources and all of our Gospels. These are not  historically reliable accounts. The authors were not eye witnesses; they’re Greek-speaking  Christians living 35 to 65 years after the events they narrate. The accounts that they narrate are  based on oral traditions that have been in circulation for decades. Year after year Christians  trying to convert others told them stories to convince them that Jesus was raised from the dead.  These writers are telling stories, then, that Christians have been telling all these years. Many  stories were invented, and most of the stories were changed. For that reason, these accounts are  not as useful as we would like them to be for historical purposes. They’re not contemporary,  they’re not disinterested, and they’re not consistent.  But even if these stories were the best sources in the world, there would still be a major obstacle  that we simply cannot overcome if we want to approach the question of the resurrection historically rather than theologically. I’m fine if Bill wants to argue that theologically God raised  Jesus from the dead or even if he wants to argue theologically that Jesus was raised from the  dead. But this cannot be a historical claim, and not for the reason that he imputed to me as being  an old, warmed over 18th century view that has been refuted ever since. Historians can only  establish what probably happened in the past. The problem with historians is they can’t repeat an  experiment. Today, if we want proof for something, it’s very simple to get proof for many things  in the natural sciences; in the experimental sciences we have proof. If I wanted to prove to you  that bars of ivory soap float, but bars of iron sink, all I need to do is get 50 tubs of lukewarm  water and start chucking in the bars. The ivory soap will always float, the iron will always sink,  and after a while we’ll have a level of what you might call predicted probability, that if I do it  again, the iron is going to sink again, and the soap is going to float again. We can repeat the  experiments doing experimental science. But we can’t repeat the experiments in history because  once history happens, it’s over.  What are miracles? Miracles are not impossible. I won’t say they’re impossible. You might think  they are impossible and, if you do think so, then you’re going to agree with my argument even  more than I’m going to agree with my argument. I’m just going to say that miracles are so highly  improbable that they’re the least possible occurrence in any given instance. They violate the way  nature naturally works. They are so highly improbable, their probability is infinitesimally  remote, that we call them miracles. No one on the face of this Earth can walk on lukewarm  water. What are the chances that one of us could do it? Well, none of us can, so let’s say the  chances are one in ten billion. Well, suppose somebody can. Well, given the chances are one in  ten billion, but, in fact, none of us can.  What about the resurrection of Jesus? I’m not saying it didn’t happen; but if it did happen, it  would be a miracle. The resurrection claims are claims that not only that Jesus’ body came back  alive; it came back alive never to die again. That’s a violation of what naturally happens, every  day, time after time, millions of times a year. What are the chances of that happening? Well, it’d  be a miracle. In other words, it’d be so highly improbable that we can’t account for it by natural  means. A theologian may claim that it’s true, and to argue with the theologian we’d have to  argue on theological grounds because there are no historical grounds to argue on. Historians can  only establish what probably happened in the past, and by definition a miracle is the least  probable occurrence. And so, by the very nature of the canons of historical research, we can’t  claim historically that a miracle probably happened. By definition, it probably didn’t. And  history can only establish what probably did.  I wish we could establish miracles, but we can’t. It’s no one’s fault. It’s simply that the cannons  of historical research do not allow for the possibility of establishing as probable the least  probable of all occurrences. For that reason, Bill’s four pieces of evidence are completely  irrelevant. There cannot be historical probability for an event that defies probability, even if the  event did happen. The resurrection has to be taken on faith, not on the basis of proof.  Let me illustrate by giving you an alternative scenario of what happened to explain the empty  tomb. I don’t believe this. I don’t think it happened this way, but it’s more probable than a  miracle happening because a miracle by definition is the least probable occurrence. So let me give you a theory, just one I dreamt up. I could dream up twenty of these that are implausible  but are still more plausible than the resurrection.  Jesus gets buried by Joseph of Arimathea. Two of Jesus’ family members are upset that an  unknown Jewish leader has buried the body. In the dead of night, these two family members raid  the tomb, taking the body off to bury it for themselves. But Roman soldiers on the lookout see  them carrying the shrouded corpse through the streets, they confront them, and they kill them on  the spot. They throw all three bodies into a common burial plot, where within three days these  bodies are decomposed beyond recognition. The tomb then is empty. People go to the tomb, they  find it empty, they come to think that Jesus was raised from the dead, and they start thinking  they’ve seen him because they know he’s been raised because his tomb is empty.  This is a highly unlikely scenario, but you can’t object that it’s impossible to have happened  because it’s not. People did raid tombs. Soldiers did kill civilians on the least pretext. People  were buried in common graves, left to rot. It’s not likely, but it’s more likely than a miracle,  which is so unlikely, that you have to appeal to supernatural intervention to make it work. This  alternative explanation I’ve given you—which again is not one that I believe—is at least  plausible, and it’s historical, as opposed to Bill’s explanation, which is not a historical  explanation. Bill’s explanation is a theological explanation.  The evidence that Bill himself doesn’t see his explanation as historical is that he claims that his  conclusion is that Jesus was raised from the dead. Well, that’s a passive – “was raised” – who  raised him? Well, presumably God! This is a theological claim about something that happened to  Jesus. It’s about something that God did to Jesus. But historians cannot presuppose belief or  disbelief in God, when making their conclusions. Discussions about what God has done are  theological in nature, they’re not historical. Historians, I’m sorry to say, have no access to God.  The cannons of historical research are by their very nature restricted to what happens here on this  earthly plane. They do not and cannot presuppose any set beliefs about the natural realm. I’m not  saying this is good or bad. It’s simply the way historical research works.  Let me give you an analogy. It’s not bad that there can be no mathematical proof for the  existence of an anti-Semitic polemic in The Merchant of Venice. Mathematics is simply  irrelevant to purely literary questions. So too, historical research cannot lead to theological  claims about what God has done.  To sum up, the sources we have are not as good as we would like. They’re written many decades  after the fact by people who were not there to see these things happen, who have inherited stories  that have been changed in the process of transmission. These accounts that we have of Jesus’  resurrection are not internally consistent; they’re full of discrepancies, including the account of  his death and his resurrection. But there’s the problem with miracle. It’s not the philosophical  problem with miracle discussed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It’s a historian’s  problem with miracle. Historians cannot establish miracle as the most probable occurrence  because miracles, by their very nature are the least probable occurrence. Thank you!