By DOUG SHAVER
August
2006
Craig begins this article:
Five reasons are presented for thinking that critics who accept the historical credibility of the gospel accounts of Jesus do not bear a special burden of proof relative to more skeptical critics.
It is not clear what he thinks a "special burden" would be. If he is accusing skeptics of employing a double standard, then he has my sympathy in cases where the accusation is merited—and I don't deny that there are such cases. If he is saying that people who believe the gospels to be historically accurate are not obliged to defend their beliefs, then very well, they don't have to, but let them not also try to stigmatize people who do not share those beliefs. But if Craig is telling me that I deserve to burn in hell for all eternity just because I think his religion is a mistake, then the burden of proof is on him whether he wants it to be or not. I furthermore do not think it unreasonable to demand extraordinary proof, but let us first see what we can reasonably infer from his evidence if we examine it the way we ordinarily examine evidence when studying history.
He starts out poorly, barely mentioning various extrabiblical sources that allegedly attest to Jesus' actual existence and then quoting an apologist scholar affirming that nobody in his right mind questions it.
[Jesus is] referred to in pagan, Jewish, and Christian writings outside the New Testament. . . . . According to Luke Johnson, a New Testament scholar at Emory University,
Even the most critical historian can confidently assert that a Jew named Jesus worked as a teacher and wonder-worker in Palestine during the reign of Tiberius, was executed by crucifixion under the prefect Pontius Pilate and continued to have followers after his death.
What is actually proved by the extrabiblical historical record has been too thoroughly discussed elsewhere to need rehashing here. We can stipulate that Johnson's assertion is widely believed even among staunch secularists. Skeptics deny that the evidence is as conclusive as evangelical Christians would have us think, but it is nevertheless true that even among atheists, there are few who doubt Jesus' historical existence. Their position is that notwithstanding the paucity of the evidence, it is nonetheless quite reasonable to infer from it that there was a historical Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified by Pilate and whose followers created the Christian religion. What they doubt is that the gospels are accurate in their reporting of certain specifics about that man's existence.
So the next question is how much credence we should put in the gospels. Should we believe everything in them, nothing in them, or some of what is in them? If only some, how do we decide which parts are true and which are not? Craig would have us think this is a no-brainer.
Here we confront the very crucial question of the burden of proof. Should we assume that the gospels are reliable unless they are proven to be unreliable? Or should we assume the gospels are unreliable unless they are proven to be reliable?
I'll have to sacrifice thoroughness for brevity in my response. No professional historian takes that approach to ancient documents. They assume neither reliability or unreliability. They assume only that all documents are produced by human beings, and they assume that all humans are fallible in various ways. How fallible, and in what way, varies from one human to another. If the author of a certain document can be identified with some confidence, then we might have good reason for believing that he was likely to be wrong about some particular things and right about certain other particular things. It will depend among other things on what we know about that author beyond the bare fact that he wrote that document. And if historians cannot confidently identify the author, then much if not all that is in the document will be regarded as of uncertain reliability, because no document can be more reliable than its author. Documents do not produce themselves. They are produced by people, and people are never 100 percent reliable.
It is of course possible for a human being to write something that is 100 percent true. It can be done. It has been done. But it can never be assumed to have been done. If it is claimed that a document containing 1,000 sentences is entirely true, then each of the 1,000 sentences must be separately proved true. This may be trivially easy for some documents, but for others it will be impossible. Where it cannot be proven, it might be justifiable, for any of many reasons, to suppose that the document is entirely true, but this cannot imply the unreasonableness of supposing that the document could contain some errors. There is a great intellectual gulf between "Everything in that document is probably true" and "Nothing in that document can possibly be wrong." Reliability may be justifiably inferred (not presupposed) in many cases, but reliability is not the same as inerrancy, and in no case can inerrancy be inferred from any partial confirmation. A document that has been proved 99 percent true can still be 1 percent false.
Craig goes on to offer "five reasons why I think we ought to assume that the gospels are reliable until proven wrong," but some of his points do not actually address what ought to be assumed. They address instead certain particular claims that have been made about how the gospels are unfactual, i.e. what they might contain in addition to a certain amount of truth. Putting it a different way, to skeptics who say, "The gospels are wrong about A, B, and C," Craig is actually saying, "No, we may reasonably believe that with regard to A, B, and C, the gospel authors had their facts straight." Furthermore, his reasons are question-begging, assuming either his conclusion or facts not yet in evidence.
Let us now examine his five reasons for trusting the gospels.
1. There was insufficient time for legendary influences to expunge the historical facts.
Well, legends about Jesus might or might not have expunged historical facts by the time the gospels were written, but they surely could have supplemented the facts. Legends about people can and do arise during their lifetimes. Plenty of stories that were written about Wyatt Earp before his death were a mix of fact and fiction. Parson Weems's stories, published barely two decades after George Washington's death, expunged no facts about the first president but did add some fiction to them.
2. The gospels are not analogous to folk tales or contemporary "urban legends."
Craig does not explain here what is the relevant difference between the gospels and folk tales or urban legends that compels us to assume the gospels are entirely factual. He does assert, "Tales like those of Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill or contemporary urban legends like the 'vanishing hitchhiker' rarely concern actual historical individuals," but there are two problems there. First, these stories all claim to be about real people, and many urban legends do name those people. Second, there are folk tales and legends, urban or otherwise, about real people. Whether they are rare or plentiful is a semantic issue, not a question of fact. Craig is just being fatuous if he is trying to suggest that all stories about real people must be presumed entirely true.
3. The Jewish transmission of sacred traditions was highly developed and reliable.
Maybe it was and maybe it was not, but this is a complete irrelevancy until Craig offers some proof that the gospel stories originated as sacred Jewish traditions.
From the earliest age children in the home, elementary school, and the synagogue were taught to memorize faithfully sacred tradition.
Maybe. I've seen this alleged many times, but never with any supporting documentation from historians of relevant competence. That is not to say there is none, just that I have never seen it.
But we can disregard my personal ignorance. For this argument to work as proof of the gospels' reliability, it must assume a cultural homogeneity in ancient Palestine that has never been observed in any other society at any time in history. Few children went to any kind of school, and there is no evidence that first-century Palestinian Jewish parents were uniformly concerned about training their children to memorize sacred traditions.
The disciples would have exercised similar care with the teachings of Jesus.
This assumes the truth of everything the gospels say about Jesus and his disciples, and it assumes that the gospel stories originated with those disciples, which is not a claim made by any of the gospel authors themselves. Craig is just arguing in a circle here.
4. There were significant restraints on the embellishment of traditions about Jesus, such as the presence of eyewitnesses and the apostles' supervision.
And he's doing it again here. We do not know that there were any eyewitnesses unless we know that the stories were true. If the gospels are a mix of fact and fiction, then the factual parts could have come from eyewitnesses while the other parts did not. It is also ludicrous to imagine that in every Christian community, in all places and at all times during the decades after Jesus' death, there was an apostle or other eyewitness hanging around to make sure that the stories told about Jesus were consistent with their memories. And by the time the gospels were written, few if any apostles would have remained alive to supervise their composition. In any case, there is no compelling evidence that the gospel authors wrote under anybody's supervision.
5. The Gospel writers have a proven track record of historical reliability.
This is more question-begging. The gospels are the gospel writers' only track record that we know about. Since inerrantists assume that the gospels are true, that suffices in their minds to establish the writers' track record for reliability. We who do not assume inerrancy do not see such reliability.
Craig then offers some elaborations on points 1 and 5. Against the legend hypothesis, he offers not evidence but the opinion of one secular historian, A. N. Sherwin-White. I know nothing of his work and can make no judgment about his competence, but the opinion of one man, no matter how competent, is not sufficient grounds for dismissing factual evidence. It is a fact that legends can and do arise, and can be and are believed, during the lifetimes of their subjects, and if Sherwin-White says otherwise, then he is mistaken.
According to Sherwin-White, the sources for Roman and Greek history are usually biased and removed one or two generations or even centuries from the events they record. Yet, he says, historians reconstruct with confidence the course of Roman and Greek history.
Yes, of course they reconstruct it. They do that by sorting the facts from the legends. But Craig is trying to argue that there can be no legends in the gospels. In the judgment of a majority of scholars, the gospels are indeed "removed one or two generations . . . from the events they record."
For example, the two earliest biographies of Alexander the Great were written by Arrian and Plutarch more than 400 years after Alexander's death, and yet classical historians still consider them to be trustworthy.
If Craig is trying to imply that a double standard is being used, then he is equivocating. No classical historian thinks the writings of Arrian and Plutarch are trustworthy in the sense that evangelical Christians think the gospels are trustworthy. They assuredly do not presume that either Arrian or Plutarch got none of his facts wrong. Real historians do not presume that any ancient document is inerrant, no matter who wrote it, and they don't bother trying to prove errancy. They take it for granted that human beings can make mistakes. Yes, that is a presupposition. Let Craig or any other apologist try to prove that it is an unwarranted presupposition.
Craig then tries again to conflate substitution with accretion, paraphrasing Sherwin-White as affirming that "the tests show that even two generations is too short a time span to allow legendary tendencies to wipe out the hard core of historical facts." Assuming, as most skeptics do, that the gospels were written within a generation or two of Jesus' lifetime, it would indeed be incredible if they contained no factual material at all. But few skeptics think that. The usual objection to Christian orthodoxy is not that the gospel stories are entirely legendary, but rather that it is reasonable to think they are partly legendary.
Craig next observes that "the gospels themselves use sources that go back even closer to the events of Jesus's life." I don't know anybody whose opinion I would value who thinks otherwise. Between believers and skeptics in general, there is no argument about that. The argument is about whether the gospel authors' sources were themselves reliable. Evangelical dogma says they were. Skeptics see no reason to assume they were.
Then he tries appealing to Paul, who he says "hands on information concerning Jesus about his teaching, his Last Supper, his betrayal, crucifixion, burial, and resurrection appearances" and who he says could have been writing "within five years after Jesus's death." But out of all the teachings contained in the Pauline corpus, the author attributes not one to Jesus himself. Neither does he identify any human source for what he has to say about the last supper, betrayal, crucifixion, burial, or resurrection. On the contrary, he told the Galatian church that he learned everything he knows about the gospel by divine revelation, specifically denying that he got his message "from any man." Craig says it "becomes irresponsible to speak of legends" in Paul's case. I'm inclined to agree with that, but I don't think it so irresponsible to speak of hallucinations in Paul's case.
Craig next tries to establish the gospel authors' "proven track record," and he begins by focusing on the author of Luke's gospel and Acts. It is the nearly unanimous judgment by skeptics and believers alike that the same man wrote both books, and whether we know who he was or not, we might as well call him Luke. The question is who this Luke person was and whether we should believe everything he wrote. Craig begins by quoting the gospel preface, in which Luke declares his intention to write real history. This does nothing to establish a track record. A track record would be other documents written by Luke and containing stories the truth of which has been independently confirmed. Such a record, if it existed, would do much to establish Luke's credibility. We might have many reasons for considering Luke highly credible, but a track record is not one of them because there is none. What Craig is doing is looking for some other reasons.
The preface to Luke's gospel is nothing but a "trust me" plea. I severely doubt that Craig would endorse the position that anyone who says "I wouldn't lie to you" must be taken at his word. It's not that I think Luke told any lies. He could have believed every word he wrote, and if he did then he was not lying, but just because Luke believed it doesn't mean I have to believe it. What Craig needs to prove is that Luke necessarily would not have believed anything he wrote unless it had been true—that he was incapable of error, in other words.
Craig assures us that Luke got his information from eyewitnesses, and that Luke himself offers this assurance. It is not so, as a careful reading of the preface shows. Luke says the stories he is about to relate originated among eyewitnesses, but he does not say that he himself knew any of those eyewitnesses or talked to any of them. He does not specifically identify any of his sources, primary or otherwise. Nowhere does he say, "This was told to me by so-and-so."
As Craig notes, Luke implies a firsthand source for certain of Paul's journeys by switching his narrative to the first person—the "we passages" in Acts—and Craig would have the reader think that there is no plausible explanation for doing so except that Luke did in fact travel with Paul on those occasions.
Sceptical critics have done back-flips to try to avoid this conclusion. They say that the use of the first-person plural in Acts should not be taken literally; it's just a literary device which is common in ancient sea voyage stories. Never mind that many of the passages in Acts are not about Paul's sea voyage, but take place on land! The more important point is that this theory, when you check it out, turns out to be sheer fantasy. {4} There just was no literary device of sea voyages in the first person plural--the whole thing has been shown to be a scholarly fiction!
I have not read enough ancient literature to know whether such a device was common, rare, or nonexistent, but I have read comments by people who seemed qualified to know, and they say it was common. They could be wrong, and I'm prepared to be convinced that they are wrong, but I need more than Craig's assurance on the matter to be convinced. But are we to suppose that Luke could not have employed a literary device that no writer before him had used? Why? Luke is widely regarded by Greek scholars as an excellent writer. Do excellent writers never employ unusual or innovative literary techniques? We may ask why he would have used this particular one. And I may have no idea why, but am I to supposed that there can be no explanations save those that I can think of?
And actually, I can think of one. Maybe Luke wanted his readers to think he had occasionally traveled with Paul even though in fact he had not. That is a possibility. For many reasons, I think it unlikely, but it is hardly incredible. It would have been a lie, and I have said I don't think Luke lied. I don't. But neither do I think it impossible that he lied. If Craig is going to insist that the man was incapable of deceit, he needs to prove it. I don't have to prove that Luke was capable of lying. His humanity is proof enough of that.
Craig next brings up the chestnut about the corroboration of incidental details. "The book of Acts," he says, "overlaps significantly with secular history of the ancient world, and the historical accuracy of Acts is indisputable. . . . from the sailings of the Alexandrian corn fleet to the coastal terrain of the Mediterranean islands to the peculiar titles of local officials, Luke gets it right." Well, Shakespeare got a lot of things right, too. In fact, he got so many things right that some people think anyone as meagerly educated as he was could not have written the plays attributed to him. Nobody suggests, though, that the plays, no matter who wrote them, contain nothing but pure truth.
Having elaborated on the "track record" of Luke, and Luke alone, Craig concludes with a generalization about all four gospel authors: "[W]e are justified in accepting the historical reliability of what the gospels say about Jesus unless they are proven to be wrong." This is pure bravado that cannot impress anyone not already convinced. Up to this point, Craig has demonstrated at most that it is reasonable to think the gospels contain at least some true history. He provided no assurance aside from his own conviction that it is unreasonable to think some parts of them could be untrue.
The reasonableness of doubt does not imply the unreasonableness of belief. Where evidence for any particular claim is inconclusive, reasonable people can either believe it or not. I am not aiming here to prove that the resurrection could not have happened. I aim only to prove that it is reasonable to suspect that it did not. If a reported event possibly could have happened, then I cannot rightly impugn the intellectual integrity of anyone who thinks it did happen even if his belief rests on a demonstrably unreliable source. At the same time, though, if it possibly could have not happened, even if reported by a reliable source, then the believer cannot rightly impugn the intellectual integrity of anyone who thinks it did not happen. Of course there is such a thing as unreasonable skepticism, but so is there such a thing as unreasonable credulity. Nobody is forced into one or the other position, though. For many claims, either belief or doubt can be reasonable.
Craig sort of acknowledges the distinction I am trying to make. He notes: "How could you prove, for example, the story of Jesus's visiting Mary and Martha? You just have here a story told by a reliable author in a position to know and no reason to doubt the historicity of the story." That story is in John's gospel, and Craig has said not a word to establish the credibility of that author, and so he is begging questions again. But he seems to be conceding, obliquely, that we are not compelled to take an all-or-nothing attitude toward any of the gospels, that some parts of one of them could be harder to believe than other parts, and that we could conceivably have reason to doubt a particular story without rejecting all of them.
And so Craig takes four particular claims made by the gospel authors and tries to prove that they must be given special credence, that it is especially unreasonable to think the authors were wrong about them. We'll go over them in a moment, but first a reminder. Except for Luke, Craig has offered nothing in the way of evidence establishing the identity of any of the authors or of their sources. We don't know who any of them was. We don't know where any of them spent any portion of their lives. We don't know whom they talked with, if anybody, before writing their books. We do know that Luke claimed to have traveled with Paul, and that is it. About Matthew, Mark, and John, we have zilch. Or at least, Craig has given us zilch. With that in mind, let's see what they said that, according to Craig, we dare not disbelieve lest we prove ourselves to be utter fools.
Claim #1: Jesus's Radical Self-Concept as the Divine Son of God.
According to Craig, "radical critics" (and no others?) doubt that Jesus ever really claimed to be the son of God. Craig says this doubt is not reasonable. Why not? Because the first Christians, being Jews, would not have believed he was the son of God unless he had said he was the son of God. Craig says it is "inexplicable how monotheistic Jews could have attributed divinity to a man they had known, if he never claimed any such things himself." That is a plausible argument, but it implies that they believed he was the son of God because he said he was and for no other reason, which is hardly any less inexplicable. If they did have other reasons—if anything other than his say-so led them to suspect he was the son of God—then why would they have insisted on having heard him say it? Craig does not say why. What is most inexplicable in the first place is how a group of first-century Jews came, by whatever means, to think that any man was any kind of divinity. It is absurd to suggest that whether they had believed it or not would have depended primarily on whether he had said he was. That would surely have been the least of their considerations.
Craig then tries an indirect appeal to scholarly consensus. The "majority of scholars" agree, he says, that "among the historically authentic words of Jesus are claims that reveal his divine self-understanding." OK, but just what is a divine self-understanding? No NT writer attributes one to Jesus. The phrase might be in the scholarly literature, but "divine self-understanding" is not in the Bible. If I have a divine self-understanding, do I think I am the son of God? Or do I just think that God has given me my self-understanding? Or do I understand that I, along with all other men, were created by God in his image—with at least one divine quality in contrast to all other living creatures? Craig does not elaborate on "divine self-understanding." He offers no gospel quotations in which a majority of scholars think Jesus revealed his belief that he had one, whatever it was.
Instead he begs leave to "focus on Jesus's self-concept of being the unique, divine Son of God." But he is forgetting something here. He is supposed to be proving that if the gospel authors claim that Jesus said something, then we are being very foolish if we doubt that Jesus actually said it. What he might have meant by anything he said is another issue entirely. "Even skeptical scholars," Craig says, "admit the authenticity" of the parable of the wicked tenants. And that parable, according to Craig, reveals that Jesus "thought of himself as God's special son, distinct from all the prophets, God's final messenger, and even the heir to Israel." That is a plausible interpretation, but it is not the only one possible. Besides, it is not true, as Craig tries to suggest, that no skeptical scholar doubts the authenticity of this parable. There are no unanimous opinions in NT scholarship, not even, and perhaps least of all, among skeptics.
Craig moves on next to Matt. 11:27, where Jesus is quoted thus: "All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him." Craig understands this as an unambiguous claim by Jesus to be "the exclusive and absolute Son of God." Taken at face value, it does so seem, but inerrantists can be very selective about whether a Bible passage ought to be taken at face value. Face value becomes worthless whenever it leads to an "apparent contradiction" with some other passage also taken at face value. But however this saying should be interpreted, Craig's point is that we are compelled by reason to believe that he in fact uttered it. But what reason? Well, Craig says it is "from an old source, which was shared by Matthew and Luke, which scholars call the Q document." OK. And where did the author of Q get his material? Nobody really knows, because the Q document no longer exists, if it ever did. Scholars infer its existence from various kinds of evidence, but its exact contents are purely conjectural. What is not conjectural but quite certain is that at least one of Matthew and Luke, and more likely both, quite freely revised whatever they took from Q. So, we have no reason to assume that Q accurately reported whatever Jesus said, and we have no reason to assume that Matthew accurately reproduced whatever Q claimed that Jesus said.
Then we get this:
Moreover, it is unlikely the Church invented this saying because it says that the Son is unknowable -- "no one knows the Son except the Father" --, but for the post-Easter church we can know the Son. So this saying is not the product of later Church theology.
For starters, I cannot help remarking that church theology has at no time been famous for its logical consistency. This argument might impress believers—who, as I have noted, are the only people Craig is really trying to impress—but nobody else. A bit more to the point, though: exactly what is Craig's argument here, anyway? Let's see if we can reconstruct it in a dialogue.
Skeptic: Jesus never claimed to be the son of God.
Craig: Oh, yes he did. Just read Matthew 11:27, you'll see.
Skeptic: Matthew is not history. It's church theology.
Craig: Oh, no, not this part. No way. According to Matthew, Jesus said, "No one knows the son except the father." After Easter, that was never the church's thinking.
Skeptic: Excuse me?
Craig: We Christians can know the son, and we've believed this ever since Jesus rose from the dead.
Skeptic: Uh huh. But according to Matthew, Jesus said no one knows the son.
Craig: Right. And so Jesus must have really said it.
Skeptic: Because the church thinks otherwise?
Craig: The church doesn't think Jesus never said it. The church would never have claimed that Jesus said it if the church had not believed that Jesus said it.
Skeptic: No, what I mean is, you seem to be saying that Jesus must have said X because the church thinks X is not true.
Craig: Yes, that's what I'm saying.
Skeptic: But if the church thinks Jesus said it, then why doesn't the church believe it?
I feel certain that Craig has some explanation for how the church could believe that Jesus spoke the truth when he declared that no one knows the son while also believing that Christians do know the son. I assume he would argue in some manner that the contradiction is not real but only apparent. But, if he can see that, then why could not the early church have seen the same thing? And if the early church saw no contradiction, then his argument vanishes, because it depends on there being a contradiction between Jesus' words and church theology.
Claim #2: Jesus's Miracles
Quoth Craig: "Even the most sceptical critics cannot deny that the historical Jesus carried out a ministry of miracle-working and exorcism." Most skeptics concede that the real Jesus had a real reputation for doing miracles and exorcisms. They do not infer, as Craig tries to say they do, that he therefore actually did miracles and exorcisms. To support his assertion that even the skeptical community has come around to admitting that the gospel miracles stories are factual, he offers as his sole evidence two quotations, from Ruldolf Bultmann and one other writer, one Craig Evans, whom he identifies simply as "a well-known Jesus scholar." The quotations convey the writers' opinions and are otherwise devoid of evidentiary content. Aside from the two quotes, Craig offers zero reasons for supposing that anyone who reads the gospels is remarkably foolish for doubting that Jesus actually did any miracles or exorcisms.
Claim #3: Jesus's Trial and Crucifixion
It is generally conceded that if there was a historical Jesus (and again, a majority of skeptics do concede that), then the one thing we can be pretty sure about is that he was tried and was executed by crucifixion. So why make a big deal of it? According to Craig, it is "inexplicable" unless it happened for the reasons given by the gospel authors. The evidence of their writings, he says, shows that Jesus' "blasphemous claims . . . would come across as treasonous" to Roman officials. But in fact the gospels say the contrary. Is Craig conveniently forgetting the adamance with which Pilate insisted, "I find no fault with this man"? The gospels could hardly be clearer in laying the blame for Jesus' death, not on the Romans, but on the Jews. According to the gospels, Pilate ordered Jesus' execution solely in order to appease a Jewish mob being orchestrated by the Jewish high priest. (Josephus's Testimonium, by the way, seems to corroborate this in the portion that so many people insist is authentic.)
We can here let slide the implausibility of Pilate's being so easily intimidated by his subjects. Our present concern is Craig's insistence that Pilate had to have a good reason for executing Jesus, and the only plausible reason is the one offered by the gospel authors: his "blasphemous statements." Just where does Craig get the notion that the Romans never executed anybody without a good reason? Or for that matter that Jewish officials never executed anybody without a good reason, since the gospels actually put the responsibility on them? If we stipulate that Jesus was in fact executed, and the next question is why, what is so unreasonable about thinking that we just don't actually know? Of course we wish we knew, but wishing will not make it so. Plenty of answers are plausible, and not one can be ruled out solely on grounds of its failing to conform exactly with the gospel stories. Craig sets up a couple of liberal hypotheses about Jesus and insists that the Romans would never have executed a man so characterized, because such a man "would threaten no one." But according to the gospels, not only did Jesus never threaten the Romans, but the Romans knew he was no threat to them.
The mere fact of Jesus' execution, assuming it to have been a fact, has no logical implication that the gospels accurately report the reasons for his execution or any statements he might have made that brought about his execution. And, Craig makes no serious effort to establish such an implication. He offers nothing but his personal assurance, and that of a couple of like-minded scholars, that such an implication is there. We are to believe that either the gospels stories are exactly true, or else Jesus would never have been executed. Why must we believe that? Because Bill Craig says so. No other reason is tendered.
Claim #4: The resurrection of Jesus
The gospels say it happened, and we must think that therefore it did happen. Craig lists four facts that, according to him, support this argument.
1. Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea in the tomb.
Craig cannot call this a fact without assuming his conclusion. It is just another assertion made by the gospel authors. He says the fact is "highly significant because it means that the location of Jesus's tomb was known to Jew and Christian alike." But the gospels offer no reason for that conclusion. Of course Joseph would have known where his tomb was, and whoever helped him with the burial had to know, and the guards had to know. But nobody else had to know. It might or might not have been common knowledge, but Craig cannot simply assume that it must have been.
We can grant that it was probably no big secret, and that anybody who wanted to find a particular tomb belonging to Joseph of Arimathea probably could have found it. But what that tells us about the credibility of resurrection begs the question. If we're told that we must believe Jesus was buried in Joseph's tomb because the gospel authors say so, then we must believe that he rose from the dead for the exact same reason. But if we reasonably doubt the resurrection, then we may also reasonably doubt Joseph's role in the burial.
But let us stipulate Joseph's involvement. Craig is suggesting that absent a resurrection, the corpse would have stayed in the tomb, its continuing presence would have been common knowledge, and therefore nobody would have believed in the resurrection and Christianity would never have gotten off the ground. There are actually a few plausible alternatives, none of which Craig even tries to refute. But the biggest weakness in his argument is that it depends for its force on a ludicrous assumption. It makes no difference how many people knew where the tomb was, or whether there was a body in it, unless anybody who saw the body could have positively identified it. There was no DNA testing or dental records in those days. An unrecognizable rotting corpse would not have been the kind of evidence that ought to have changed anybody's mind. (There is also the question of how easily believers in any religion can be made to change their minds by showing them solid evidence against their beliefs, but we need not go there now.)
2. The tomb was found empty by a group of women.
Craig here quotes two people, Jakob Kremer ("an Austrian specialist on the resurrection") and D. H. van Daalen (not otherwise identified) as affirming that this really happened. According to Kremer, "most exegetes" think so. According to van Daalen, it is "extremely difficult to object" to the story's truthfulness. Well, of course it is difficult for believers to object, but what about the rest of us? Exactly what makes it so unreasonable for us to doubt it? Craig does not say. He offers no argument, just the opinions of these two men that if the gospel writers said some women found the tomb empty, then it must be a fact that some women found the tomb empty.
3. Many people "experienced appearances of Jesus alive" after his death.
Craig apparently is trying not to assume his conclusion here. He is ostentatiously not saying that anybody actually saw Jesus. He is saying only that some people had "experiences" that they interpreted as Jesus appearing to them. And he quotes the famously atheistic theologian Gerd Ludemann as siding with him.
Ludemann, perhaps the most prominent current critic of the resurrection, admits, "It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus's death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ."{18}
Craig is famous for his debating skills, and this is a good place to keep in mind that he is preaching to the choir. The subtext is obvious: "Nobody in his right mind denies that Jesus' disciples thought they saw him alive after his death. And are we supposed to think that they were all hallucinating. I don't think so!"
Well, some people in their right minds do deny the post-mortem appearances. Ludemann's credentials are unquestionably in order, and as far as I know it is a fact that many scholars, maybe most, agree with him. But many do not. They think the appearances are no more factual than the resurrection itself, and Craig offers no argument against them. He says the historical factuality of the appearances is "almost universally acknowledged among New Testament scholars today," but he offers only his word in evidence. I have no idea what he would consider "almost universal" agreement among New Testament scholars—60 percent? 90 percent? 99 percent?—but his appeal to scholarly consensus is disingenuous in any event. Craig believes at least a few things that are, by anybody's criterion, almost universally rejected within the relevant scholarly community.
4. The original disciples believed that Jesus was risen from the dead despite their having every reason not to.
And just what were their reasons not to believe? According to the stories, they had seen him bring other people back to life, walk on water, feed thousands of people with a few fish and loaves of bread, calm raging storms, and do all other kinds of apparently impossible things. According to the stories, at least some of them believed, before he ever went to the cross, that he was the son of God (Matt. 16:16; John 11:27). These are hardly things to engender disbelief in resurrections.
Craig says they had "every predisposition" against believing he would return from the dead. Oh, did they now? They were a bunch of die-hard skeptics, were they? Not according to the stories. They were people who, knowing nothing about him except that their friends were impressed by his sermons, quit their jobs to become his disciples just because he said, "Follow me."
Craig now summarizes: "Any responsible historian, then, who seeks to give an account of the matter, must deal with these four independently established facts." He is playing rhetorical games. Whether they be facts or not, he has done nothing like establish them independently. They are asserted, if at all, in the same documents he is using them to support, and some of them are not even asserted in those documents. In either case, he is engaged in pure question-begging.
Craig approaches the conclusion of this article with an anecdote about his debate with a skeptical university professor who argued that Jesus must have had a twin brother, and it was he whom the disciples saw on Easter Sunday. This, he assures us, shows the absurd lengths to which "skepticism must go in order to deny the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus." And yes, that is one possible explanation for his opponent's thinking. Another possibility, though, is that Craig had the good fortune to schedule a debate with an opponent who managed to earn a Ph.D. and land himself a university professorship in spite of being a complete idiot. The existence of one foolish skeptic is not evidence that all skeptics are fools. I dare say there are a few believers by whom Craig would not want his own intelligence judged.
He concludes this article:
In summary, the gospels are not only trustworthy documents in general, but as we look at some of the most important aspects of Jesus in the gospels, like his radical personal claims, his miracles, his trial and crucifixion, and his resurrection, their historical veracity shines through. God has acted in history, and we can know it.
But his primary readership was already convinced of all that. It is a good summary of his dogma, but not of any conclusions for which he has offered any cogent argument yet. He has assured us that the gospels are trustworthy in general, but he has not proved it. He has assured us that certain of their particular claims are specially trustworthy, but he has not proved it. Craig surely believes that God has acted in history, and he might be so certain as to think he knows it, but the rest of us do not know it and have seen no good reason yet to believe it.
Next: Could the disciples have been hallucinating?