James Patrick Holding fails to properly define the resurrection

This is my reply to a video by James Patrick Holding entitled

The Resurrection Series, 

Part 1A: Defining the Resurrection

Arguing to persuade a skeptic, and arguing to help those who already agree with you to feel better about their beliefs being true, are wildly different goals.  Holding apparently isn't arguing to convince skeptics, but only to help his inerrancy-salivating followers to feel more confident that what they believe is actual reality.

That is, true to Holding's consistently stated goal, he only cares about making things convincing to those who already believe.  He is thus analogous to a Mormon apologist who doesn't argue to convince non-Mormons, but only to convince those who already accept the Mormon religion.  Gee, what a tough job.

Holding might consider that if he argued for the purpose of convincing skeptics, his arguments would have to be far more powerful, and would thus have even greater potential to be found persuasive by his followers.

Holding blindly presumes, throughout the video, that if he can establish that physical resurrection was known in and before the first century, then presto, that shall be the lens through which we must interpret the NT statements about Jesus rising from the dead.  Otherwise, what was the point of establishing that pre-Christian concepts of resurrection referred to a physical body?  Why did Holding think establishing such a background was a good idea before getting to the NT statements themselves?

Holding's arguments are simplistic and do not account for the conflicting views of resurrection running loose on the ancient landscape out of which Christianity grew.

Holding starts the video with the scholarly comment that it is necessary to first define what resurrection is, which makes perfect sense...but then he kills any sense of objectivity by immediately inundating the reader with his absurd and sarcastically embellished cartoon characters allegedly representing "fundy atheists".

So Holding needs to explain why he thinks his followers, who are people he would never call stupid or gullible, can be helped toward the truth by such distracting and prejudicial imagery, when in fact such imagery clearly doesn't have relevance to the merit of his arguments.  What is it about these defamatory cartoons that Holding thinks will cause his followers to find his arguments more persuasive than if he simply presented argument alone?

Also, while Holding typically chooses nearly unlistenable Looney Tunes type music as background noise for his video replies to myself and his other critics, the background music for this particular video is much more pleasant.  His employment of psychological tricks like soft background music (reminding one of fundy churches where the soothing piano or organ music isn't heard until the altar call at the end of the sermon) would seem to indicate he thinks the Holy Spirit needs marketing gimmicks used by secular capitalists to make people buy the product.  

Holding is not alone in this, of course, modern Christianity is chock full of unnecessary bells and whistles and other inventions of unbelievers who recognize it's possible to wear down a customer's initial reluctance with such things.  If Holding seriously believed the Holy Spirit doesn't need such crap, he probably would be satisfied that the argument, alone, was sufficient.  So, Mr. Holding...does the Holy Spirit need soft music to aid in his effort to convict people of the truth, yes or no?  If not, then why DO you employ tricks of pesuasion the Holy Spirit doesn't need to do his job?

Could it be that the reason you employ such bells and whistles and other reluctance-reducing tricks is because you don't believe there is any more Holy Spirit in your propaganda than there is in the pitch of a used car salesman?  Liars have to have good memories.  Your unbeliever-status will eventually show up in your works if you don't carefully suppress it at all times.  Yes, I apply the exact same logic to other Christians, which is why I say that if Christianity is true, 99% of its followers are not genuinely born again.  Frank Turek and J. Warner Wallace market their bullshit the way Taco Bell markets tostadas, and I accuse them of the same level of hypocrisy.  Why do you put forth effort to make your presentations interesting and entertaining, if the Holy Spirit does not need such bells and whistles to do his job of teaching/convicting?

timecode 0:18-23, Holding falsely accuses atheists of defining resurrection to mean whatever they want it to mean.  That is an generalization fallacy, since while admittedly not all atheists are as scholarly as they can be, the atheists that are most vocal in their resurrection-attacks do not simply mount the pulpit and scream that resurrection was some esoteric nonsense concept.  Richard Carrier has debated resurrection apologists Mike Licona and William Lane Craig, and both times, provided an objective historical biblical basis for his definition of resurrection.

0:23-0:28, "However the Jewish contextual literature of the period describes the nature of resurrection in some detail."

Apparently Holding thinks that whatever is asserted about resurrection in Jewish contextual literature before and during the first century should control our interpretation of NT statements about Jesus' resurrection.  But it is far from certain that such Jewish contextual literature is consistent enough to justify allowing it to control biblical exegesis.  First, what rising from the dead actually is, even puzzled Jesus' original disciples, which would hardly be the case if its meaning were as "obvious" as modern western Christians think it is:

 9 As they were coming down from the mountain, He gave them orders not to relate to anyone what they had seen, until the Son of Man rose from the dead.
 10 They seized upon that statement, discussing with one another what rising from the dead meant. (Mk. 9:9-10 NAU)

Holding has a choice:  either a) the reason they discussed what rising from the dead meant, is because in the first century, Jewish conceptions of rising from the dead were inconsistent/incoherent, or b) first century Jewish conceptions of rising from the dead were consistent, they obviously refer to the physical body coming out of the grave and being physically restored,  and as a result, we have rational warrant to classify Jesus' disciples as unforgivably ignorant dolts for not even being aware of basic Jewish religious concepts...a characteristic that operates to impeach their general credibility...which reduces the factual force of their alleged "Jesus is risen!" proclamations later (which is to merely pour salt in the wound, since despite Jesus having 12 apostles (Matthew 10:2 ff) , 70 lower ranking disciples (Luke 10:1 ff) and some 500 people who saw him risen all at once (1st Cor. 15:6), the only resurrection accounts in the NT which come down to us today in first-hand form are Matthew, John and Paul (and that's generously granting absurdly dubious assumptions of apostolic authorship of the gospels which I am otherwise prepared to destroy).

Apparently, God was not a Christian apologist in the first century, as he didn't give a fuck about preserving the resurrection testimony of 497 of the 500 alleged eyewitnesses, d espite modern apologists who believe God is moving through them as they tirelessly tout the virtues of eyewitness reporting.

If Holding acknowledges that Jewish concepts about many subjects were inconsistent and confusing (i.e., who the messiah is, when he will arrive, what he will do, what events will precede his coming, how many books should be in the inspired OT canon, etc, etc) why does he pretend that Jewish concepts of resurrection would be helpful background to understanding the specific nuance of resurrection promoted by NT authors?

The Sadducees also had a concept of resurrection:  it was false doctrine (Matthew 22:23) (their OT canon was limited to the books authored by Moses, that's why, despite the fact that Jesus could have cited to Daniel 12 when answering a Sadducee challenge to the resurrection, he limited himself to a quotation from Exodus 3:6, since his opponents denied the canonicity of all OT books outside those authored by Moses).

 23 On that day some Sadducees (who say there is no resurrection) came to Jesus and questioned Him,
 24 asking, "Teacher, Moses said, 'IF A MAN DIES HAVING NO CHILDREN, HIS BROTHER AS NEXT OF KIN SHALL MARRY HIS WIFE, AND RAISE UP CHILDREN FOR HIS BROTHER.'
 25 "Now there were seven brothers with us; and the first married and died, and having no children left his wife to his brother;
 26 so also the second, and the third, down to the seventh.
 27 "Last of all, the woman died.
 28 "In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife of the seven will she be? For they all had married her."
 29 But Jesus answered and said to them, "You are mistaken, not understanding the Scriptures nor the power of God.
 30 "For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.
 31 "But regarding the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God:
 32 'I AM THE GOD OF ABRAHAM, AND THE GOD OF ISAAC, AND THE GOD OF JACOB '? He is not the God of the dead but of the living."
 33 When the crowds heard this, they were astonished at His teaching. (Matt. 22:23-33 NAU)

Needless to say, Jesus' was squeezing blood out of a turnip in squeezing resurrection out of Exodus 3:6, as God's nature would require that he doesn't stop being the God of Abraham just because Abraham died (Romans 14:9).  Yet Jesus argues that God is not a god of the dead (v. 33).

Needless also to say, Jesus, as might be expected, evaded the point:  The issue was not whether God was a god of the dead or the living or both, and the issue wasn't whether Abraham and the others continued conscious existence beyond the grave.  The issue was resurrection from the dead (which according to Holding and his Jewish sources has to do with the dead physical body coming back to life).  And yet Jesus apparently thought Exodus 3:6 was "regarding the resurrection of the dead" (Matthew 23:31).

It is not without violent force that liberals and skeptics assert the subjective confusing manner of
interpretation adopted by Jesus and the NT authors.  Jesus could probably find dvd discs in Deuteronomy.

0:40-0:45 - "Not surprisingly, our first stop is in the Old Testament".

First, correct, coming from a false Christian like Holding who in truth doesn't believe Jesus rose from the dead (he only bothers with Christianity because it gives him numerous opportunities to revel in his sinful desire to talk shit about everything he disagrees with), it is not surprising that Holding gives exegetical first place to the older light,  when in fact common sense says it is the later light (i.e., the NT) that would provide the more comprehensive and accurate definition of resurrection, especially in light of the fact established above, that pre-Christian concepts of resurrection were not consistent.

Second, it is funny that any professing 'Christian' apologist should start their definition of resurrection with Daniel, when in fact literal resurrection was allegedly performed by Elijah and Elisha:

Elijah, who was apparently a necrophiliac pedophile since God wouldn't require you to physically lay on a child merely to resurrect the kid.  From 1st Kings 17:

 21 Then he stretched himself upon the child three times, and called to the LORD and said, "O LORD my God, I pray You, let this child's life return to him."
 22 The LORD heard the voice of Elijah, and the life of the child returned to him and he revived.
 23 Elijah took the child and brought him down from the upper room into the house and gave him to his mother; and Elijah said, "See, your son is alive."

Elisha appears to be a more perverted necrophiliac pedophile, as the way he laid on the child is described with greater unnecessary detail:

 33 So he entered and shut the door behind them both and prayed to the LORD.
 34 And he went up and lay on the child, and put his mouth on his mouth and his eyes on his eyes and his hands on his hands, and he stretched himself on him; and the flesh of the child became warm. (2 Ki. 4:33-34 NAU)

Did appropriation of God's resurrection power require that this man physically lay on this child in such disgusting close intimacy?

What would you think of a Christian doctor who came out to your house, and said he could effect a divine cure for your 5 year old son's flu by laying on his body and putting his mouth on the child's mouth?

Isn't it funny that as long as its not sources from the bible, you agree with all skeptics that such acts are total bullshit?

Holding then quotes Daniel 12:2-3 and Isaiah 26:19.

At 1:00 ff, he also quotes Ezekiel 37:5-9.

1:09 ff, "these three passages, especially Ezekiel, are programmatic.  Clearly some sort of physical body is involved in these descriptions."

 Unfortunately, other conservative Protestant Evangelical inerrantist Christian scholars admit that whether Ezekiel intends anything like the resurrection in 1st Cor. 15, is a matter of scholarly dispute, and so Holding is, again, guilty of falsely pretending that ambiguous bible texts "clearly" teach whatever he says they teach. L. E. Cooper says:

This literature presented its message in symbols and visions whose meanings were not immediately apparent...

 (yet Holding just quoted Ezekiel 37 with little commentary to the viewer, as if he expects the meaning of the passage to be immediately apparent)

...Regarding the resurrection of the dead, there is nothing in the Old Testament that can compare to New Testament passages like 1 Cor 15:1–58. Most interpreters agree that teaching a doctrine of the resurrection of the dead was not the main point of Ezek 37. Zimmerli denies any thought in the passage of the resurrection of individuals. Wevers also denies any hint of the resurrection in vv. 1–14 but does acknowledge the belief that Yahweh was the author of life, and the possibility of the resurrection is left open. Cooke simply said that the passage referred to the “present state of the living, not to the future state of the dead.” But then he admitted that vv. 1–14 must have contributed to the development of the resurrection ideas in the Old Testament, especially in its most highly developed expression in Dan 12:2–3.62
Hals similarly noted that only a national resurrection was in view but admitted he found curious the imagery of vv. 1–14 portrayed on the wall of a synagogue in Dura-Europos as an illustration of the promise of resurrection from the grave.
Several interpreters deny the possibility that Ezekiel would have been aware of a developed concept of the resurrection of the human body as we already have noted. Death in most of the Old Testament was viewed as an impossible situation from which there was no return. All who died went to the grave called sheol from which no one returned. Hals was therefore surprised by the imagery of vv. 1–14, which obviously rose above this view of death.64
Ezekiel’s primary purpose was not to teach a doctrine of the resurrection. The main purpose of the vision was the restoration of Israel.
Cooper, L. E. (2001, c1994). Vol. 17: Ezekiel (electronic ed.). Logos Library System;
The New American Commentary (Page 319). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

But apparently, Holding disagrees with other inerrantist Christian scholars and thinks the meaning of Ezekiel's vision is "immediately apparent".  Fundy exegesis does that to your brain.  All the scholars who agree with you are smart guys.  All the scholars who disagree with you are just stupid morons.

And lets not forget the type of people Holding is depending on, since their ways would strongly suggest under NT criteria that they were not inspired by the God who works in the lives of today's western Christians:

Isaiah - ran naked through the streets of Jerusalem, apparently thinking the dolts to receive the message wouldn't get the point unless he made it in an absurdly graphic way that was horrifically shameful in that culture:

 2 at that time the LORD spoke through Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying, "Go and loosen the sackcloth from your hips and take your shoes off your feet." And he did so, going naked and barefoot.
 3 And the LORD said, "Even as My servant Isaiah has gone naked and barefoot three years as a sign and token against Egypt and Cush,
 4 so the king of Assyria will lead away the captives of Egypt and the exiles of Cush, young and old, naked and barefoot with buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt. (Isa. 20:2-4 NAU)

Ezekiel - thought God wanted him to eat paper:

 1 Then He said to me, "Son of man, eat what you find; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel."

 2 So I opened my mouth, and He fed me this scroll.

 3 He said to me, "Son of man, feed your stomach and fill your body with this scroll which I am giving you." Then I ate it, and it was sweet as honey in my mouth.   (Ezek. 3:1-3 NAU)

He uses a sword to cut off his beard, then burns and plays with the hairs:

 1 "As for you, son of man, take a sharp sword; take and use it as a barber's razor on your head and beard. Then take scales for weighing and divide the hair.

 2 "One third you shall burn in the fire at the center of the city, when the days of the siege are completed. Then you shall take one third and strike it with the sword all around the city, and one third you shall scatter to the wind; and I will unsheathe a sword behind them.

 3 "Take also a few in number from them and bind them in the edges of your robes.

 4 "Take again some of them and throw them into the fire and burn them in the fire; from it a fire will spread to all the house of Israel. (Ezek. 5:1-4 NAU)

He opposes God’s command that he bake bread over human dung, so God changes his mind and decides cow dung will suffice, and Ezekiel goes along with the change:

12 "You shall eat it as a barley cake, having baked it in their sight over human dung."

13 Then the LORD said, "Thus will the sons of Israel eat their bread unclean among the nations where I will banish them."

14 But I said, "Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, I have never been defiled; for from my youth until now I have never eaten what died of itself or was torn by beasts, nor has any unclean meat ever entered my mouth."

15 Then He said to me, "See, I will give you cow's dung in place of human dung over which you will prepare your bread."  (Eze 4:12-15 NAU)

He lays on his side for more than a year, then his other side for 40 days, all just to make a point:

 4 "As for you, lie down on your left side and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel on it; you shall bear their iniquity for the number of days that you lie on it.

 5 "For I have assigned you a number of days corresponding to the years of their iniquity, three hundred and ninety days; thus you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.

 6 "When you have completed these, you shall lie down a second time, but on your right side and bear the iniquity of the house of Judah; I have assigned it to you for forty days, a day for each year. (Ezek. 4:4-6 NAU)

Then he gives a speech wherein he uses unnecessarily graphic sexual language to condemn sin (if your child is reading this with you, send him out of the room first):

 17 Then the Babylonians came to her, to the bed of love, and in their lust they defiled her. After she had been defiled by them, she turned away from them in disgust.

 18 When she carried on her prostitution openly and exposed her naked body, I turned away from her in disgust, just as I had turned away from her sister.

 19 Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt.

 20 There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.

 21 So you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when in Egypt your bosom was caressed and your young breasts fondled. (Ezek. 23:17-21 NIV)

Inerrantist commentaries agree "emission" is nothing other than explicit sexual imagery:

Also Judah’s political prostitution was presented in explicit sexual terminology. This idolatry produced the same revulsion by God that prompted him to annihilate their forefathers in the wilderness for the worship of the gods of Egypt (v. 21; Exod 32:11–18). Judah lusted for her lovers whose “genitals were like those of donkeys, and whose emission was like that of horses” (v. 20). These proverbial phrases were intended to show divine contempt for those attracted by the military power portrayed by reference to sexual potency.

Cooper, L. E. (2001, c1994). Vol. 17: Ezekiel, New American Commentary

If you saw such a man doing these things in a time and circumstance where your apologetics defense mechanisms were not on red alert, you would have no trouble agreeing with everybody else that this man doesn't have the least bit of credibility and is suffering from a mental illness or is seriously stoned on drugs…or likely both.  But no, this crap is "in the bible", so surely it must be good and wise.

1:30 ff, Holding hypocritically cites intertestamental literature of 4th Ezra and 1st Enoch as if it was assuredly reliable for telling about Jewish views on resurrection, despite his other belief that these works were not reliable enough to deserve being placed in the biblical canon.

What Holding doesn't tell you is that there was an extensive literature produced by Jews up to the first century, and resurrection of the body was just one of many different conflicting evolving ideas floating around in such Jewish lore.  It would thus appear that original Christianity was nothing more than one of the many ways Judaism continued to evolve with its ever-changing fairy tales.

Holding cites to 4th Ezra, what he doesn't do is give you the context, for had he done so, the credibility of that source would have been called into question:

4Ezr 7:28-       For my son the Messiah shall be revealed with those who are with him, and those who remain shall rejoice four hundred years.

4Ezr 7:29-       And after these years my son the Messiah shall die, and all who draw human breath.

4Ezr 7:30-       And the world shall be turned back to primeval silence for seven days, as it was at the first beginnings; so that no one shall be left.

4Ezr 7:31-       And after seven days the world, which is not yet awake, shall be roused, and that which is corruptible shall perish.

4Ezr 7:32-       And the earth shall give up those who are asleep in it, and the dust those who dwell silently in it; and the chambers shall give up the souls which have been committed to them.

4Ezr 7:33-       And the Most High shall be revealed upon the seat of judgment, and compassion shall pass away, and patience shall be withdrawn;

4Ezr 7:34-       but only judgment shall remain, truth shall stand, and faithfulness shall grow strong.

4Ezr 7:35-       And recompense shall follow, and the reward shall be manifested; righteous deeds shall awake, and unrighteous deeds shall not sleep.

Notice the errors of the Ezra author, which impeach his credibility on theological matters too:

7:29, all humanity will die around the time that the Messiah does.
7:30, the world at the time of the Messiah's and everybody else's death will revert to the silent way it was in primeval times, this is phrase in absolutes: "no one shall be left".  Yet obviously humanity didn't die off when Jesus died.
7:30, this primeval state will last for 7 days, but the NT does not teach any 7 day period in which all humanity is dead before the general resurrection.

As far as 1st Enoch 51, R.H. Charles says

"Conflicting views are advanced on the Messiah, the Messianic kingdom, the origin of sin, Sheol, the final judgement, the resurrection, and the nature of the future life."  (The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English : with introductions and critical and explanatory notes to the several books. by Charles, R. H. (Robert Henry), 1855-1931. Apocryphile Press Edition, 2004, p. 164)

2nd Baruch says the resurrection will not change the form of the person, (50:2) and in context, that meant that just as the earth received the body, so shall the body also rise restored from the earth.  This is in conflict with Paul's doctrine of the resurrection which knows of no period of resurrected state before the change, but that the resurrection would BE the change:

 51 Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed,
 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.
 53 For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. (1 Cor. 15:51-53 NAU)

Also, Holding gave the citations to the intertestamental literature in the following order:

4 Ezra 7:32

1 Enoch 51:1

Sib. Or. IV

2 Baruch 50:2ff

Pseudo-Phocylides 103-4

What's interesting is that some person going under the pseudonym Socraticknight posted these references in this exact same order, on a webpage discussing the 2006 Craig-Ehrman resurrection debate:

Socratricknight said...
Evidence for the physical resurrection (as a back drop for the physical resurrection of Jesus the Christ), from other Jewish scriptures:
C) Psydo- writings
a. 4 Ezra 7:32 The earth shall restore those who sleep in her, and the dust those who rest in it, and the chambers those entrusted to them.
b. 1 Enoch 51:1 In those days, the earth will also give back what has been entrusted to it, and Sheol will give back what it has received, and hell will give back what it owes.
c. Sib. Or. IV ...God Himself will refashion the bones and ashes of humans and raise up mortals as they were before.
d. 2 Baruch 50:2ff For certainly the earth will then restore the dead. It will not change their form, but just as it received them, so it will restore them.
e. Pseudo-Phocylides 103-4 ...we hope that the remains of the departed will soon come to light again out of the earth. And afterward, they will become gods.

Socraticknight's bio is as follows:

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Apparently, Holding is either stealing somebody else's work, or Socraticknight is some of the force behind the omniscient Mr. Holding.  The order isn't likely a coincidence.  But that unfortunately means that this Socraticknight, who seems to be courteous and professional, is willing to partner with the despicable Mr. Holding who never graduated Christian ethics kindergarten.

If Mr. Socraticknight is reading this, he might wish to read some of my documented evidence that Holding's moral failures disqualify him, under NT criteria, from any teaching position.

Nobody doubts that a concept of physical resurrection existed in first-century religion.  Yes, the skeptics who allocate it all into the spiritual category are wrong.  But that hardly makes the fatal problems in the NT concepts of resurrection suddenly disappear.

2:10 ff, Holding then concludes on these historical grounds that "resurrection was a physical event involving the bodies of the deceased in real time.  Second, it was a restoration of the body the person had in life, using the same material, or stuff the body was made of.  This is clearly what we find described in the New Testament gospels.:"

First, Holding only derives the conclusion about physicality by ignoring the Sadducees who denied the resurrection in full. It is far from obvious that their denial of this and their 5-book canon constituted error. Pharisaic Judaism became more popular, of course, but popularity doesn't determine truth.  I suppose Holding avoided mentioning the Sadducees because

• to mention them is to allow his viewers to ask the question of how these particular Jews could deny a resurrection theory that Holding pretends was such an obvious clear staple of normative Judaism...
• thus leading to questions about Judaism itself being nothing more than a ceaselessly evolving religion...
• thus leading to the conclusion that what the ancient Jews thought about resurrection is too ambiguous and inconsistent to qualify as the interpretive lens through which Holding apparently thinks the NT resurrection claims should be viewed.

Second, regarding Holding's statement that resurrection was of the same "stuff" the earthly body had been made of, Mike Licona was clobbered to death on that point by Greg Cavin, goto time-code 137:15, where Cavin drills Licona on the point and demonstrates how deceptively vacuous the term "resurrected body" really is.  No wonder Cavin called it a "pixie dust" theory.  We may as well talk about Tinkerbell's magic glitter, and how it really can change a frog into a prince even though we cannot provide adequate or coherent descriptions of what it is or how it works.

Third, Holding boasts that this physical resurrection is "clearly" what we find described in the NT gospels, but while it cannot be denied they sometimes specify that Jesus appeared to them physically (Luke 24:39, John 20:27), the gospels are not consistent in this regard:

a) Matthew admits in 28:17 that some of the 11 "doubted", the only other place this Greek word distazo appears in the NT is Matthew 14:31, where Jesus rebukes Peter for lacking minimally sufficient faith, strongly arguing that in 28:17, the same author Matthew intended to convey that some of the 11 lacked minimally sufficient faith to see what the rest of the group were "seeing", suggesting that to see what the others were seeing, required minimally sufficient faith, and thus this Jesus could not be physically seen.

b) Luke strangely asserts in 24:16 that the reason the disciples on the road to Emmaus didn't notice that the stranger walking with them was Jesus, was because some supernatural power was preventing them from recognizing him.  Luke likes this motif, divinely caused stupidity is also asserted in 9:45 and 18:34.  One inerrantist Christian scholar tries to make a serious point where it is impossible to do so:

The passive “were kept from recognizing” is a divine passive, i.e., God kept them from recognizing Jesus . This lack of recognition allowed Jesus to teach the necessity of his death and resurrection and to show how this was the fulfillment of Scripture (Luke 24:25–27).
Stein, R. H. (2001, c1992). Vol. 24: Luke (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 610). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

That makes no sense, since in light of his allegedly three year ministry beforehand, Jesus taught the necessity of his death and resurrection and to show how this was the fulfillment of scripture.  Disguising himself would do little more than cause the skeptical disciples to write him off as just another follower with a theory, while if Jesus taught these things after convincing them it was really him, risen from the dead, these "lessons" would be etched into their memories more deeply.

c) Luke 24:31 says when they finally recognized him, he vanished from their sight.  Unfortunately 1) the idea that a physical body could just vanish is for good reason limited solely to cartoons and other fictions, such a feat is contrary to the same daily experience creationists tell us to rely on when they say "we know" that life doesn't ever come from non-life, and vanishing constitutes an incoherent idea regardless, especially in this context where it is allegedly a physical body that disappears.

If you told somebody that the gallon of milk you were carrying home from the store suddenly 'vanished', even fanatically obsessed apologists who go around trying to make the case for miracles, would harbor initial skepticism, knowing, like David Hume, that this kind of crap doesn't happen and therefore either you are lying or deluded, 2) if you were watching a criminal trial in which a man was being prosecuted for theft and the only witness against him said that while the thief was standing two feet in front of the witness, he just vanished and suddenly wasn't there anymore, would you strongly suspect the witness has severe credibility problems?  Or would you want the judge to instruct the jury that they are allowed to infer the supernatural if they feel the Defendant used supernatural power in the commission of the crime?

d) the same problem of physical humans doing that which is physically impossible appears in John 20:26, where Jesus materializes inside a closed room.  The only reason anybody thinks this crap plausible is because they've been conditioned to accept it as plausible by watching too many cartoons, movies, and reading too many fiction books.

e) for those who think Mark is the author of Mark 16:9-20, this text blatantly asserts that after Jesus appeared to Mary, he appeared to the disciples "in another form":

 9 Now after He had risen early on the first day of the week, He first appeared to Mary Magdalene, from whom He had cast out seven demons.
 10 She went and reported to those who had been with Him, while they were mourning and weeping.
 11 When they heard that He was alive and had been seen by her, they refused to believe it.
 12 After that, He appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking along on their way to the country. (Mk. 16:9-12 NAU)

The Greek word for 'form' is morphe, and means form or shape and most inerrantist scholars think it means "what a thing really is as opposed to what it looks like" when it is used in Philippians 2:6 to say that Jesus was in the "form" of God.  So apparently this physically resurrected Jesus also had the cartoon-attribute of changing his physical attributes and so disguise himself so convincingly that not even those closest to him for the last three years would recognize it was him.

In summary,

• Holding blindly and falsely assumes that pre-Christian concepts of resurrection were consistent, they were not.  
• He also assumes OT texts like Ezekiel 37 have a meaning that is apparent on their face, when other inerrantist Christian scholars deny this is the case.  
• He seems to think that because the NT gospels at certain times speak about a physically resurrected Jesus, a physically resurrected Jesus is the only way they describe him, which is also untrue. 
• Holding doesn't deal with something any alleged "apologist" should have dealt with, the problem of the resurrection definition being fallaciously question begging by necessitating belief in other things for which there is no evidence, such as physical bodies that can vanish like cartoon characters. To say the resurrected body is "physical" means nothing if this must be qualified to mean that the body doesn't age, doesn't get hurt, can disappear, float, etc.
• Finally, he violated the order of exegesis required by the resurrected Jesus, for while Holding wished to start with sources other than the NT, the resurrected Jesus's explanation of pre-Christian concepts of resurrection is the logical place for the "bible-believing" inerrantist to start (Luke 24:27), as in the Christian world view, Jesus is the "later light", there is no more authoritative definition for anything, than the definition Jesus himself gives.

But if, like Holding, you aren't really a Christian in the first place, and you simply side with Christianity because doing so gives you something to bitch about,  you aren't likely to view the NT as the interpretive lens through which to see the OT, you are likely to invert this divine method of exegesis.