Tough Questions Answered: if James denied Jesus' miracles, he likely wouldn't have believed Jesus rose from the dead

This is my reply to an  Tough Questions Answered article entitled:           

How Does James’ Belief in Jesus Corroborate the Resurrection?

Posted: 11 Aug 2017 06:00 AM PDT

The astute reader will be astonished to see, in Acts 12, that James, the half-brother of Jesus, is mentioned by name by Peter before Peter leaves Jerusalem to escape Herod Agrippa. Let’s quickly review what we know of James from the Gospels.

    Jesus’ brothers did not believe in him during his ministry (Mk 3:21, 31-35; 6:3; Jn 7:1-10).

Why?  Because Jesus' miracles were fake?  Or because Jesus' brothers had a method of miracle-investigation that impeached their credibility?

    Jesus’ brothers taunted him (Mk 6:3; Jn 7:1-10).

    Jesus’ brothers were apparently absent at Jesus’ crucifixion, where Jesus entrusted the care of his mother to one of his disciples, suggesting his brothers were nonbelievers at the time (Jn 19:25-27).

His brothers don't believe during the three year miracle ministry, and they are absent from him as he dies from crucifixion.  If you want me to believe their skepticism existed because they were stupid morons who didn't know how to properly investigate claims, that credibility problem will continue impeaching them as a character trait even if later accounts say they suddenly believed in his resurrection.  You can believe in Jesus resurrection because of an inability to properly investigate the claim. 

Given the fact that Jesus’ family, including James, rejected his messianic claims while he was alive, why would Peter want his Christian brothers and sisters in Acts 12 to tell James what had happened?

I deny the legitimacy of the question, as it blindly presupposes the truth of biblical inerrancy, here, blindly assuming that the author of Acts 12 is telling the truth about Peter wishing to tell James.  I argue elsewhere that Luke's unfairly biased and already unbelievable account of the clash between the apostles and Judaizers at the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) justifies suspicion toward anything Luke says that is not independently corroborated (this does not mean proof of such corroboration will meet my challenge.  The corroborating witness has to pass their own tests of reliability and credibility, etc.

Michael Licona, in The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, explains that James seems to have changed his mind about Jesus after Jesus was crucified. He notes:

    Jesus’ brothers were in the upper room with Jesus’ disciples and mother after the resurrection (Acts 1:14).

    James was an apostle and leader in the Jerusalem Church (Gal 1:19; 2:9, 12; Acts 12:17; 15:13).

    Paul reported his activities to James (Acts 21:18).

    It would appear that at least some of Jesus’ brothers became believers (1 Cor 9:5).

The best explanation for James’ change of heart is that he saw his brother after he was raised from the dead. Licona writes, “James’s transformation from skeptic to believer is plausibly explained by his belief that Jesus had been raised and by a postresurrection appearance of Jesus to him (1 Cor 15:7). James believed his risen brother appeared to him.”

Same answer:  I claim any atheist or non-Christian who thinks Luke is telling the truth here, to be sloppy in their research or at least innocently ignorant of my reasons for saying Luke's bias as a historian is too great to justify giving him the benefit of the doubt in cases where he is not corroborated independently.

Licona adds:

“[Gary] Habermas asserts that the majority of critical scholars writing on the subject grant the conversion of James as a result of what he perceived was a postresurrection appearance of Jesus to him. As examples he lists Betz, Conzelmann, Craig, Davis, Derret, Funk, Hoover, Kee, Koester, Ladd, Lorenzen, Ludemann, Meier, Oden, Osborne, Pannenberg, Sanders, Spong, Stuhlmacher and Wedderburn. We may add Allison, Bryskog, Ehrman and Wright to Habermas’s list.

There is significant heterogeneity within this group that includes atheists, agnostics, cynics, revisionists, moderates and conservatives. With James, we have significant evidence that indicates he and his brothers were not among Jesus’ followers.

And that is a permanently fatal problem for you, because you think Jesus was doing genuinely supernatural miracles during his three year ministry, that is, the time James and the other brothers did not believe Jesus was the messiah.  So does James have significant credibility problems because he doesn't believe even when a member of his immediately family gives infallible proof of divinity?

Or was James responsible and prudent, when watching Jesus do miracles, to conclude that the tricks didn't involve any supernatural agency? 

However, sometime after the crucifixion of Jesus, James became a follower of his brother, a leader in the church Jesus had started and finally died as a Christian martyr.

And given that the area suffered a terrible famine around 40 a.d., I can imagine James thinking it prudent for the larger goal of group survival that he act like a good politician, and publicly profess to believe something he didn't seriously believe, as countless pastors and politicians do today.

The best explanation for this change of heart is that James came to believe that his brother had risen from the dead. It is probable that James had an experience that he perceived as being a postresurrection appearance of Jesus. However, it cannot be stated with certainty whether his conversion was prior to the experience or resulted from it.”

Something caused James to go from skeptic to believer. If James had seen his crucified brother alive days later, we could all understand why he converted. Absent the resurrection, there seems to be every reason for James to remain a skeptic the rest of his life. After all, following Jesus was a death sentence for most of the apostles.

 Once again,  my reasons for rejecting Luke where he cannot be corroborated by reliable independent sources are strong.  The family of Jesus continuing to be unbelievers and skeptics all the way through his miracle ministry and up to his death, cannot be brushed aside without harmful consequences to the Christian position:

Given your blind trust that the gospels are reliable when reporting Jesus' family didn't accept his messianic claims, how do you explain their skepticism, and are your reasons for this belief more convincing than the "they-didn't-believe-because-Jesus'-miracles-were-fake" reason?

I am PISSING myself with fear that the hypothesis that Jesus rose from the dead best explains the historical data.  I wish that Christian apologists would stop doing what they do and withdraw their books from circulation so I can feel better about my atheism.