Did Jesus Truly Rise from the Dead? II

(Cont'd)

In the first part of this blog, I have dealt with a number of reasons why we should be careful about what is being said in the New Testaments and not take everything at face value but only with a very large grain of salt. In the second part, I shall examine a little closer the kind of evidence we actually have to help us come to our own conclusion about what might really have happened. If Jesus really rose from the dead, it must be viewed by anyone as a miracle!

Are Miracles believable?

David Hume has said long ago that it is not reasonable for us to believe in a miracle unless it would be more "miraculous" or incredible if we were not to believe that it really happened than that it did not. He says that it is more probable that a miracle has not happened (no natural law has been violated) than that it has (natural law being violated) because "there must be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation.". In the modern world, there is a strong presumption in favor of the view that the natural law will not be violated. Loftus cited in support of his view that there was probably no resurrection of Jesus what is said by biblical scholar David F Strauss (The Life of Jesus Critically Examined 2006) when the latter said: "We may summarily reject all miracles, prophecies, narratives of angels and demons, and the like, as simply impossible and irreconcilable with the known and universal laws which govern the course of events." Hume found miracles incredible for, inter alia, four reasons:
1. claims of miracles are usually made by uneducated and superstitious people who lack common sense, integrity or a good reputation.
2. there are many instances of fraudulent miracles which goes to show only mankind's love to believe a wondrous and extraordinary story.
3. miracle claims often originate amongst tribes which are uncivilized, ignorant and barbarous but not nowadays.
4. competing religions support their beliefs by claims of miracles, hence such claims cancel out each other.

In The Case Against Christianity (1991), Michael Martin argues that to assess whether or not evidence of miraculous resurrection is reliable and the weight of such evidence, we should look at five factors as follows:
1. if the evidence of various witnesses are consistent, that would increase their evidential weight;
2. eye-witness evidence should be preferred to hearsay evidence;
3. if the eye-witness are known from other sources to be reliable and trustworthy, that would increase their evidential worth;.
4. independent confirmation of the evidence of the witness makes it more believable whilst lack of such independent evidence makes it less so.
5. if the purpose of the author in writing the relevant text leads us to believe that the document was not a reliable historical account, then this should lower the evidential weight of the relevant statement .
To me, these are sensible criteria.

Do we have eyewitnesses? Only the apostle John claims in his gospel that he ran to the empty tomb with Peter (John 21: 24) and the only evidence of Jesus' post-resurrection appearance is that from the apostle Paul. What we have are probably multiple-hearsay accounts written some 40 to 100 or more years after the death of Jesus which are later doctored, containing obviously fictional elements by people each with a clear theological and apologetic agenda, contradicting many known facts and inconsistent with each other, has little independent non-Christian sources corroborating the happening of the "miraculous" bodily "resurrection" of Jesus which would certainly not be believed were it to happen nowadays. And there is thus no evidence to suggest that their records are particularly reliable. Even the Christian scholar Richard Bauckkham admits in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: the Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (2006) 93 that "Historical work, by its nature, is always putting two and two together and making five--or twelve or seventeen."  Loftus doubts if the author of John was one of Jesus disciples, as is often thought,  because of the generally anti-Jewish sentiments expressed in that gospel.

We should note that Mark, the earliest of the gospel upon which Luke and Matthew based theirs, the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus (written about by the other evangelists and by Paul) are conspicuous by their absence! All that women visiting the empty tomb said was that they had been told that Jesus had been raised and that when they left, they did not tell anyone about it because they were afraid.(see John Selby Spong Resurrection: Myth or Reality? (1994) 60-61). Those who heard the story did not believe it initially (Lk. 24: 11 and John 20: 24-29) including Thomas. John elaborates that Jesus appeared to Thomas "even though the the doors were locked". If so, then Jesus must have either appeared out of thin air or have passed through the wall! It was claimed that Jesus then told Thomas to put his finger in Jesus' hands and his hand in Jesus's side. How could Thomas touch Jesus' wound and hand if it were not a physical hand or a physical body with blood still oozing out from that bleeding wound? Or has the bleeding somehow stopped? If not, then it must be a vision which Thomas had! In addition, to speak will normally require a pair of lungs and a larynx! Did the post-resurrection Jesus have both a functioning heart, a functioning lung and a functioning pharynx? If Jesus was still breathing (John 20: 22), then he must have retained all such organs as well as a blood circulatory system. But then, did he not lose all his blood at the crucifixion? It is said that often, Jesus' disciples did not recognize him during his post-resurrection appearances. (Jn. 20:14; Lk 24:16)

Conflicting Accounts by Various Evangelists as to what Happened after Jesus' Resurrection

There are conflicting accounts of what actually happened after Jesus rose from the dead:

1. Mark, Matthew and Luke conflict with John in that there the women visited the empty tomb, encountered the angels and successfully relayed the angelic message but in John, the women did not encounter any angels on their first visit and were not told to relay any messages.
2. In Marks and Luke, the stones had already been rolled away when the women arrived but in Matthew, they saw the angels, there was a description of an earthquake and the stone was removed only after they arrived.
3.  Luke claimed that Jesus appeared on the first Easter Sunday to 11 men (Lk 24: 13, 36) suggesting all disciples except Judas whilst John denies that Thomas was there (Jn 20: 19-24)
4.  In Luke's version, Jesus rose to heaven in Bethany on the same day as his resurrection (Lk 24:51) But in Acts 1, Jesus ascended from the Mount of Olives 40 days after his resurrection!
Michael Martin (The Case Against Christianity 1991 83) thinks that the gospels are either inconsistent or "can only be made consistent with the aid of implausible interpretations"  Willi Marxen (The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth 1970 74) argues that "The conclusion is inescapable: a synchronizing harmony of the different accounts of the resurrection proves to be impossible". Spong concludes in his Resurrection: Myth or Reality  (1994 105) : "When we embrace all of their versions in our minds at one time, we discover that all we have in the Bible about Easter is an inconsistent, contradictory, mutually exclusive witness"

(To be cont'd)