This is my reply to Lydia McGrew's YouTube video
Lydia's video description there says:
Development theories about the resurrection stories usually start with the observation that, if the longer ending of Mark is non-canonical, Mark "doesn't have" any appearance stories. This assumes, further, that Mark originally ended after verse 8 (which I'd say is probably false). But it also treats the alleged absence of appearance stories as if Mark was denying appearances. Not only is this the worst kind of argument from silence, it also runs contrary to other indications right in the undeniably canonical text of Mark itself.
As always, the issue is not which theory of Mark's ending is correct, but which theory of Mark's ending is reasonable. Lydia is up against a brick wall here. The fact that most Christian scholars take Mark's long ending to be non-canonical, is entirely sufficient, alone, to render reasonable the person who says Mark originally ended at 16:8. Since most Christian scholars also believe Mark was the earliest gospel, we are equally reasonable to adopt the theory that the earliest gospel lacked a resurrection appearance narrative. While the view of the scholarly majority doesn't determine "truth", it certainly determines reasonableness. Few indeed are the instances in which a scholarly majority are so clearly in the wrong that the majority view is rendered unreasonable.
Some fool will say this doesn't make sense because it raises the possibility that we can be reasonable to adopt an ultimately false theory. I realize Christian legalists fallaciously think truth and reasonableness are synonyms, but they are wrong. If they weren't wrong, they'd have to declare the unreasonableness of every Christian with whom they disagreed upon some biblical issue. After all, to disagree is to assume the other person is "wrong", and the legalist thinks "wrong" and "unreasonable" are synonymous. Thankfully, most people are not stupid legalists, they realize that truth, especially biblical truth, doesn't always make itself clear to those who sincerely seek it. Otherwise, the legalist would have to say the reason somebody missed or misinterpreted a biblical truth is because they didn't sincerely seek it during their bible studies. So the stupid legalist is forced to say unreasonableness and insincere pursuit of truth are two traits that necessarily inhere in every Christian she disagrees with on some biblical matter. That's fucking absurd.
By the way, Lydia has disabled comments for that video. I say it is because she is aware of how easy it is to defend the reasonableness of the skeptical position, so instead of admitting that uncomfortable truth, she takes the proper steps to ensure that the best possible rebuttals cannot be linked to her argument, her fans will simply have to google the issues she raises to see if any skeptic has provided a response.
Before launching into her arguments, her summary has her saying she thinks one of the assumptions in the development-theory is "definitely" false. If Lydia considers herself a scholar, then she should know that in cases where a historical truth has nothing to support it beyond "testimony", there is no 'definiteness' about whether the testimony is true. Yes, this humble attitude imposed by the non-absolute nature of historiography does indeed clash with Lydia's firm religious convictions, but that's her problem. The more Jesus wanted his followers to be sure that some testimony was definitely true, the more he wanted his followers to shun the sort of historiography that Lydia and other Christian scholars routinely employ. Historicity determinations are an art, not a science.
Lydia clarifies that the use of Mark's short ending to attack Jesus' resurrection is "illicit".
Lydia's first point is her admission that the long ending of Mark (16:9-20) is not original to the gospel of Mark. Fair enough. But I could refute her even at this early point: what if she was being prosecuted for murder on the basis of a written bit of testimony that has all of the authorship, genre and textual problems Mark has? Would she insist on calling experts to testify that such a literary mess can still possibly be historically reliable? Or would she say such written testimony is so inherently unreliable that no jury could possibly find her guilty beyond a reasonable doubt?
What if the part of the written testimony saying she murdered somebody, was agreed by the experts to not be present in the original? Would she seek to have experts educate the jury on how the lack of originality in the most important part is negligble? Or would she say this flaw prevents any jury from finding her guilty beyond a reasonable doubt?
Lydia's next point is to mention that she hasn't read a certain book that argues for the originality of the long ending, but that she is open to changing her mind. That's fine, but if she doesn't want to be a hypocrite, she must allow skeptics the same freedom to disagree with a position argued in a book and remain open to possibly changing their minds later. Like disagreeing with the arguments in her books. However, it is unlikely Lydia would allow this. She thinks that the fact that she has written several books, puts the skeptics to task and demands either rebuttal, or concession. Otherwise, she would have to allow that a skeptic could possibly be reasonable to disagree with an argument in her book despite making a choice to avoid that book. If Lydia can be reasonable to turn away from a criticism of her views, her critics can be reasonable to turn away from her criticism of their views, book or no book. Fair is fair.
Lydia tries to soften the consequences of the short ending (i.e., no resurrection story = no resurrection in history) by characterizing the short ending as unexpectedly "abrupt". She does this in an effort to make it seem like the author surely had more to say and simply chose not to say it. She argues that it seems like there should be something more. No, the only person who thinks there should be something more is the bible-believing Christian who has already concluded that the resurrection narratives in Matthew 28, Luke 24 and John 20-21 are historically true. If the person reading Mark is, however, an unbeliever with no vested interest in making the gospels harmonize, or doesn't have knowledge of the other 3 gospels, she will not notice any abruptness in Mark's short ending. Somebody will say God wanted us to read all 4 gospels together, but that's about as historically certain as Luke's preference for spicy food. You lose.
Lydia next argues that certain information in canonical original Mark creates a probability that there was more to the story beyond the short ending. That would be a more proper objective way to get a resurrection narrative out of Mark, but those "data points" are hardly convincing. She says the question is why Mark, having an interest in telling what happened to the women, didn't round off the ending in a smoother fashion. She argues that the change in style between the abrupt ending and the longer ending implies there was something else that was there. But that is absurdly speculative. The change in style only exists because an early scribe decided to append something else to Mark after 16:8. That is, Lydia is trying to justify a resurrection narrative in Mark on the basis that a later editor adding something. Her point seems to be that the editor's dissatisfaction with the short ending convincingly argues that he thought the true ending went beyond 16:8. But it could just as easily be that he added the ending because he didn't like the fact that Mark ended so abruptly. Trying to get "he knew Mark said more" out of "he added something to Mark's ending" is without force. She concludes from such "data" that Mark did originally end with a resurrection appearance narrative, but this became lost and replaced by the longer ending in vv. 9-20. I'm sorry, but this is a very weak justification for saying Mark originally ended with a resurrection appearance narrative. It most certainly doesn't reduce the reasonableness of those who say Mark never wrote a resurrection appearance narrative.
Furthermore, a standard textual rule of thumb is that the text form producing the difficulties is likely original, because later copyists tend to smooth things out, not complicate them. So the fact that Mark ends so abruptly is precisely what argues that the short ending is original. This wouldn't be a rule of thumb if the mere fact that Mark could possibly have smoothed things out in a now lost ending forced reasonable people to forever avoid drawing skeptical conclusions. The rule of thumb does not have to be an absolute requirement, or infallible, to render reasonable the person who says the more difficult shorter ending is, on present evidence, more likely how Mark intended to end the gospel.
Mark also infamously does not express or imply that Jesus was virgin-born, even though such a story would most certainly support his apparent goal of establishing Jesus as the Son of God. We are thus reasonable to assume the VB is absent from Mark because he either didn't know about it (implying it is late fabrication), or he thought it was false. The notion that he simply chose to exclude the VB while believing it was historical truth, is absolutely unacceptable. That would be akin to YOU having evidence that your mother, currently being prosecuted for murder, is innocent, but for reasons unknown, you made no effort to bring that evidence of innocence to the Court's attention. It doesn't matter that you can dream up reasons for saying silent, we normally do not expect such silence, so until the day that somebody explains why you remained silent in circumstances we'd be expecting you to scream in, we are going to be reasonable to say the reason you stayed silent is because you didn't know of any evidence that your mother was innocent, that's why you didn't say anything. The point is, the apologists who so aggressively attempt to impute Matthew's knowledge to Mark cannot do so with such force as to render the skeptical position less reasonable. There is no rule of historiography that obligates anybody to always assume harmony and always exhaust all possible harmonization scenarios before adopting the inconsistency-theory. Just like when police determine whether probable cause for arrest exists, they are not required to first ensure that all possible evidence of innocence in his alibi is considered or falsified. They can lawfully arrest and have sufficient probable cause even when there remains a real possibility that the suspect is innocent. Likewise, we have probable cause to arrest Matthew, Luke and John for lying, upon the probable cause established by Mark's resurrection silence, even if that silence cannot operate to conclusively falsify the resurrection testimony in the other three gospels.
Lydia then argues that it is an argument from silence, indeed the worst sort, to argue that Mark ends at 16:8 because he didn't know of any resurrection appearance tradition. Not true. We are reasonable to assume that the gospel authors did not expect their originally intended audiences to read all 4 gospels together. They would have realized all the conundrums we see today when trying to do that, and they would more than likely have simply produced their own gospel harmony like Tatian's Diatessaron. Their refusal to testify in a way that clearly harmonizes all 4 accounts justifies us to say they intended their accounts to be read as stand-alones, or separate from other accounts. In that case, there is no need for a skeptic to "argue from silence". Reading Mark separately from the other 3 gospels, the epistemological situation is "Mark ends by saying the women ran from the tomb with great excitement and an anticipation that the disciples will see the risen Christ in Galilee". The epistemological situation cannot be "why didn't Mark mention somebody seeing the risen Christ?", because that would presuppose that Mark wanted his originally intended audience to harmonize his gospel with other gospels, which is an assumption that cannot be established. Indeed, the patristic testimony is that the Church in Rome requested that Mark reduce Peter's preaching to writing because they needed such a thing, forcing the logical deduction that they didn't have such a thing previously, thus, Mark was not likely expecting them to read his gospel in the light of some other gospel. In other words, when we ask why Mark doesn't mention the resurrection appearances we see in other gospels, we are asking a question that would not have occurred to the Mark's originally intended audience. The question only pops up because Christian apologists of today are aware of 3 other gospels that mention resurrection appearances, and they would rather die than admit the 4 gospels contradict each other.
Lydia then gives the analogy showing it is reasonable to question one relative's silence if another family member speaks on the same matter and supplies more details. Ok...are Matthew, Luke and John members of Mark's "family"? No, for as established earlier, Mark in all likelihood did not expect his originally intended audience to harmonize his gospel with another gospel. So we are not obligated to explain why it is that Mark is silent about a fact that is mentioned in the other gospels. Such a harmonizing concern is an artificial dilemma not consistent with Mark or his originally intended audience. It is a problem created solely by people who are so used to seeing all 4 gospels packaged together that they unreasonably demand a harmonization theory. You lose.
Lydia mocks the fact that skeptics ratchet up Mark's resurrection silence as if it held great significance, but it clearly does possess great significance: Mark is not silent about mere details...he is silent about the one event that Christians think is the crown of Christianity. This is why the argument from silence, if we need to use it, operates legitimately here: it is when you would naturally expect the author to mention X, that you are justified to offer a theory for why he remains silent about X.
And what Lydia doesn't mention is that the argument from silence, as described above, is still allowed in criminal court cases. From the U.S. Supreme Court in Jenkins v. Anderson, 447 US 231, 239 (1980):
The petitioner also contends that use of prearrest silence to impeach his credibility denied him the fundamental fairness guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. We do not 239*239 agree. Common law traditionally has allowed witnesses to be impeached by their previous failure to state a fact in circumstances in which that fact naturally would have been asserted. 3A J. Wigmore, Evidence § 1042, p. 1056 (Chadbourn rev. 1970). Each jurisdiction may formulate its own rules of evidence to determine when prior silence is so inconsistent with present statements that impeachment by reference to such silence is probative.
Once again, reasonableness does not require that we answer questions about how all 4 gospels could possibly be harmonized. We are reasonable to read Mark in isolation from other gospels and from the concerns of modern apologists, in which case we can accept Mark's ending at 16:8 without issue. Again, the only people making an issue are those who insist the 4 gospels must be harmonized, therefore, there must be a question as to why Mark doesn't have a resurrection appearance narrative when the other 3 gospels do. Sorry, that's not an issue for those who lack a harmonizing agenda.
The way Lydia carries on this video, you'd think embellishment didn't exist until after the book of Revelation was published.
What Lydia also neglects to mention is that a purpose of embellishment can be found in some gospel authors, such as my arguments that Matthew has embellished one of Mark's pericopes, see here.
Lydia then says skeptics commit to the premise that Mark itself is already "developed". Not sure what her point was, but apparently she is arguing that if we skeptics date Mark to 70 a.d., we are likely going to say this was the result of much development, he didn't just sit down and write an entire gospel all at once. Yes, we certainly do not pretend the patristic explanations of gospel authorship are inerrant. We have no trouble using redaction criticism to justify classifying the early church fathers as liars or misinformed. The large majority of Christian scholars similarly reject the patristic testimony that Matthew was written first, in favor of Markan priority. So apparently, even spiritually alive people do not think something an early church father said is the end of the matter.
Lydia then says a skeptical scholar does not believe the details in Mark 16:1-8 are true. That is a fundamentalist caricature and hasty generalization. But even so, we are justified, after all, the original apostles characterized the experience of the women at the tomb as a 'vision'. Luke 24:23. No, you cannot trifle that "vision" can still possibly refer to events in physical space-time, because you must combine the vision-descriptor with the other belief of the original apostles, that the resurrection testimony of the women returning from the tomb was "silly talk" (Luke 24:11). When so combined, it is reasonable to say the apostles meant "only in your head" when saying the women had seen a "vision".
Lydia then asks what point skeptics are trying to make in using Mark to cancel the resurrection testimony of the other three gospels, when in fact skeptics think nearly all of Mark's resurrection story is fiction. Our point is that we are presuming Mark's historical accuracy solely for the sake of argument. That is, even if you assume Mark is historically accurate, his silence spells doom for the resurrection appearance narratives in the later gospels. If you wish, then yes, we could argue against the supernatural and preempt any need to use Mark as a sword.
She mocks the skeptical position because it says Mark makes up angels but requires him to "draw the line" and refuse to make up a resurrection appearance story. Not at all, Mark is full of fiction and embellishment. We do not allege that Mark "drew the line" at all, we merely insist that the original form of the story simply lacked a resurrection appearance narrative in the first place. Again, why it is that Mark doesn't mention resurrection appearances is a false dilemma created by apologists who insist on harmonizing Mark with the other 3 gospels. We would arrive in the same position as the skeptic if we read Mark in isolation, as he likely intended. Instead of saying "the other 3 gospels have embellished on Mark's more primitive tale", we would simply have no reason to think anybody ever actually saw a risen Jesus. That makes us lack a resurrection belief just as much as skeptics lack it.
Lydia overlooks other concerns skeptics have with Mark 16, for example: the women include those who tagged along with Jesus since the time-frame mentioned in Luke 8...but if they heard Jesus predict his own resurrection and saw him do real miracles for at least a year before he died, how are they so sure that he remains dead on this third day, the day he said he would rise? Why are they seeking to embalm a corpse? Might it be reasonable for skeptics to infer from such details that the women did not find Jesus' miracles or predictions very credible? If some of Jesus' own followers didn't find his miracles too convincing, isn't it only a fool who would expect more of somebody living 2000 years after the fact?
Lydia's final argument of any significance is the tactic of saying the content Mark did include, strongly suggest that he intended for the reader to draw the conclusion that a few people really did see the risen Christ. This is the contention of most apologists including N.T. Wright. In Mark 16:7, the angel at the tomb says the disciples will see Jesus in Galilee. I'm not seeing the point. If I end my testimony in a criminal complaint saying "the mugger then told me to meet him in St. Louis", are the police obligated to think such a meeting actually took place? Of course not.
The bigger problem for Lydia is why Mark was willing to get so close to saying anybody actually saw the risen Christ, but stops short of providing such appearance-details that were apparently so important to later gospel authors. We'd surely expect that if Mark thought this future meeting of Jesus and disciples took place, he would mention some details, given how interested he was in promoting the pre-resurrection Jesus. A risen Christ would deserve an even more detailed treatment. Lydia will say this is why she thinks Mark's original did describe such appearances, and that ending was lost. Once again, that theory is not so forceful as to render the skeptical take unreasonable. For example, the fact that Mark expects resurrection eyewitnesses but doesn't actually narrate them, can also argue that he didn't know of any traditions of disciples actually seeing the risen Christ.
And the more Lydia pushes the "lost ending" thesis, the more she concedes that significant chunks of important gospel text could be lost so early in the transmission process that the extant ms. tradition cannot document it. We wonder how many other important bits of gospel text became lost in the very early stages where falsifying or verifying such a hypothesis is now impossible.
Lydia asks why we think Mark is deliberately excluding. That's merely one possibility. The other possibility is that the latest resurrection traditions at the time Mark wrote did not say anything beyond the angel's reminder that the disciples would meet Jesus in Galilee. Lydia doesn't explain why she thinks this type of ending strongly implies the tradition at the time also asserted that the meeting actually took place. But we know why she pushes that theory: there are 3 other gospels that say such a meeting actually took place, and god wants Lydia to harmonize all the details of all 4 gospels. That's why.
Lydia chides the skeptic as harboring a "completely bogus" theory that is "at odds with the text of Mark itself", but a) we are assuming Mark's accuracy solely for the sake of argument, not because we trust that anything Mark said was true history, and b) we do not believe the gospel authors were honest, so we don't exactly lose sleep when we realize one of our theories contradicts some assertion in the gospels.
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