(I answer his actual video in point by point fashion after rebutting his introductory comments, see below)
J. Warner Wallace discusses the nature of reliable eyewitness accounts and demonstrates why we ought to expect eyewitness details to vary.
Given that the gospels clearly fail the "ancient documents rule", they are not admissible in court, and therefore, Wallace is begging for defeat by pretending the gospels should be evaluated by rules of evidence adopted in American courts.
And given that the gospels are more likely anonymous than authored by eyewitnesses, they show themselves to be eyewitness accounts, using American rules of evidence as found in American courts to evaluate the gospels is even more asinine.
Which is rather stupid because under that logic, every time two eyewitnesses provide variant accounts, the variation can only mean they are being truthful (!?)This doesn’t make them unreliable; in fact, the variations are a demonstration of their truthful, reliable nature.
So apparently the person who wrote those words does not believe the bible to be, alone, sufficient to govern faith and practice. Wallace clearly thinks you are missing something vital from your Christian faith and practice, if you don't associate what the bible says, with what he says.All believers must learn the rules of evidence and train themselves and develop a more reasonable, evidential faith, as described in the book, Forensic Faith: A Homicide Detective Makes the Case for a More Reasonable, Evidential Christian Faith.
Let's move on to answering Wallace's specific points in his video:
First, Wallace has soft music playing in the background, apparently his motives are no different than the churches who play similar music while the tithing plate is passed around. Churches wouldn't do this if such music didn't have a psychologically soothing effect increasing the odds the reader will find the speech acceptable. Hollywood knows emotions are stirred by such music, at least for most people, which is most serious romantic movie scenes are accompanied by soft music. Apparently, Wallace doesn't think the Holy Spirit moving through his voice is sufficient, Wallace apparently feels the need to employ the same psychological tricks secular people and organizations employ in their own godless advertising. Billions would not be spent on marketing like this, if soothing music had no appreciable effect on most of the intended listeners.
Second, Wallace says he never flinched for a minute on the differences he saw in the 4 canonical resurrection accounts (video at 1:30 ff). His reason? He knew, as a detective in modern-day America, that eyewitnesses often agree on the truth while providing variant testimony. Of course, this is foolish, because the variations in the resurrection testimony of the canonical gospels are there for reasons other than mere typical tendency of eyewitnesses to differ. Wallace's characterizing the canonical gospels as roughly on the order of under-oath affidavits taken shortly after the event in question happened, is foolish for myriad reasons:
---a) most Christian scholars do not believe the gospels were written by resurrection eyewitnesses (for example, most scholars accept that Matthew borrowed most of his text from earlier Mark who allegedly wrote down what Peter preached), in which case we have an eyewitness apostle Matthew choosing to prioritize the way a non-eyewitness characterized an alleged eyewitness's testimony, over Matthew's own memories, which is highly suspect to say the least. Worse, this scholarly view of Matthew contradicts Wallace's desire that eyewitnesses be separated early so they don't collude. Matthew did worse than collude, nobody can tell where his text reflects his own memories, and where it reflects only his copying off of Mark;
---b) Patristic accounts differ on whether Mark was written before or after Peter's death, raising the possibility that Peter died before he could supervise the finished form of Mark's record, hurting the apologetics argument that the gospels were written when the eyewitnesses were still alive and could be questioned;
---c) Clement of Alexandria said Peter knew about, but neither discouraged nor encouraged, the written version of his preaching produced by Mark, suggesting Peter thought it best that a written version not be made, or that the written version did not accurately record his preaching;
---d) we don't know enough about Matthew and his credibility to make a reasonably certain judgment call about his ability or willingness to tell only the truth; his presenting Jesus in the most Jewish of lights suggests Matthew's selection process was guided more by desire to spin Jesus a certain way, than to mere convey historical facts;
---e) the Muratorian Fragment asserts that apostle John wanted the other apostles to contribute to "his" gospel by fasting for three days and then reporting whatever had been divinely "revealed" to them, showing us just how far departed this alleged gospel author was from the modern Christian belief that he only intended convey historical facts. The MF says that in response, Apostle Andrew convinced John to write the account himself, and allow it to be "reviewed" or corrected by the other apostles before publication...if this be true, then it will prove impossible for the reader to figure out which parts of John's gospel, if any, represent errors by John that were corrected before publication, hence a possible way to impeach John's credibility has been lost.
---f) Luke and Mark infamously remark that the resurrected Jesus had appeared to the disciples sometimes looking so different that they didn't recognize him, or that their eyes were supernaturally prevented from recognizing him, and this sounds more like fictional drama to heighten the tension of the story, than it sounds like a god with the least bit of concern to lay a basis for future apologist to argue eyewitness authorship of the gospels.
Third, Wallace is absurd here because he doesn't have the first clue how much or how little the gospel traditions were changed and shaped before the time of our earliest textual evidence (church fathers).
Fourth, Clement of Alexandria asserted that after John recognized the Synoptic authors did a sufficient job providing the "history", he chose to write a "spiritual" gospel, and the fact that in John, Jesus makes his deity known far more clearly than in the Synoptics, suggests that the Synoptic authors either didn't know about, or didn't approve of, this critically important material, suggesting John either invented it as fiction, or made use of false traditions about Jesus. Exactly how much of the Christ-sayings in John are what Jesus historically said, and how many Christ-sayings were invented by the author and to what extend, is a never-ending debate in Christian scholarship...yet apologists think atheists are "compelling" to step into this in-house Christian debate and try to figure out which of God's spiritually alive people discerned the truth correctly.
Fifth, Wallace says its always good to separate murder-eyewitnesses when they are at the scene (video at 2:10 ff). That was rather disingenuous, since, if the basic history of the gospel is true, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John had plenty of time to share their experiences before they allegedly separated for mission work abroad. If Wallace thinks it critical to seperate eyewitnesses early, then logically he must think the gospel authors fail his own proposed test, and failed it with a great deal of gusto.
Sixth, Wallace blindly presumes that because the resurrection accounts differ the way other multiple eyewitness accounts do, the gospels must be eyewitness accounts. Again, Christian scholars are locked in ceaseless debate about how close the canonical form of the 4 gospels today matches the form/content they had before the second century. Most scholars dismiss Papias' testimony about Matthew, but for fundies who accept it, every other church father who mentions the language Matthew wrote in says Matthew wrote in Hebrew "letters", which likely means they thought Papias meant Hebrew "letters" when he said Matthew wrote in Hebrew dialectos. But most scholars agree that today's canonical Greek Matthew does not appear to be translation Greek. Fundies insist Matthew "must have" written a second original in Greek after his original Hebrew version (showing how willing they are to stop believing arguments from silence are fallacious, whenever expediency dictates), but a) there is no patristic testimony for a Greek-version Matthew, and b) while the church fathers say "Hebrew" every time they mention the language Matthew wrote it, they never say anything about him writing in "Greek", up to and including Jerome, writing in the 4th century. If that testimony is reliable, it means somebody other than Matthew is responsible for creating the Greek language form of that gospel, thus raising legitimate questions about how much or how little the Greek version departs from the original Hebrew version. Why do fundies believe the Greek and Hebrew versions contain exactly the same materials, when they don't have a clue what the Hebrew Matthew gospel looked like in the first century, and when they cannot possibly know who was responsible for creating the canonical Greek Matthew we use today? Wallace is a fool to characterize the 4 gospels as basically 4 affidavits from 4 eyewitnesses recorded soon after they saw the crime.
Seventh, Wallace says the resurrection account details can be harmonized, but a) the ability to harmonize something is done with expert proficiency by jail house lawyers every day in court to patch up problems in their dishonest client's testimony, but ability to harmonize hardly argues that the accounts are true.
b) Wallace seems to forget that variation can also come about because the two accounts are contradictory;
c) most Christian scholars assert that Mark is the earliest published gospel and that he intentionally ended his story at 16:8 (i.e., they say the long endings of Mark are later interpolations), and if that theory be true, it would appear that the resurrection appearances spoken of in the three later gospels are fictions created by later authors who knew the original story could be made more memorable and dramatic if such details were embellished into it.
Finally, Wallace says nothing about the fact that one of the most scholarly of the resurrection apologists today, Mike Licona, infamously believes John contradicts the Synoptics in some details , in ways that leave other Christian apologists stunned.
Again, Bart Ehrman says Mark's crucifixion time at 9 contradicts John's time for the event at around noon, and Licona responds by saying John used "artistry" when giving his own account.
And let's not forget Licona's infamous belief that the zombie resurrection in Matthew 27:52 was mere apocalyptic imagery:
Why is it that all of the other Gospels and nearly all of the earliest Church fathers who mention the darkness, the earthquake, and the tearing of the temple veil neglect to include the raised saints? To me, “special effects” is a more plausible understanding of how Matthew likely intended for his readers to interpret the saints raised at Jesus’s death.One could well argue that with conservative Christian scholars disagreeing with each other on such critical matters, the average atheist walking down the street has perfect rational justification to dismiss the question of Jesus rising from the dead and prioritize doing anything else in their free time after work or school. Bonding time with the kids, or fixing stuff around the house, or volunteering for a homeless charity event, is far more important than pointing out that your opponent on a religious issue got something wrong.
God is quite capable of presenting the evidence for Jesus rising from the dead in a way that is undeniable (such as with the force that causes jurors in criminal cases to overcome presumption of innocence and declare the defendant guilty, which they routinely do without having their freewill violated), so God shouldn't be asking me to put forth my best effort at analysis until he puts forth his best effort at presentation.
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