Demolishing Triablogue: Jason Engwer's errors on the zombie-resurrection of Matthew 27:52

This is my reply to an article by Jason Engwer of Triablogue entitled

A Bad Argument Against The Resurrection That's Often Repeated

Monday, January 26, 2009

The January 17 edition of the "Unbelievable?" radio program featured a debate between two New Testament scholars, Michael Bird and James Crossley. Bird is a Christian, and Crossley is an agnostic. They debated two topics, whether Jesus viewed Himself as God and the resurrection.
Near the end of the program, Crossley brought up the common objection from Matthew 27:52-53 (start listening at the fourteenth minute of the second hour). Supposedly, the raising of the dead referred to in that passage is historically unlikely, since the other gospels don't mention it and Josephus doesn't mention it, for example.

I would argue that the more today's Christians say the claim of a resurrected Christ would have been laughed off by 1st century people, the more likely the NT authors would have been to mention such zombie-resurrection, since ever little bit of evidence would thus be supremely important.  The argument from silence is routinely allowed in American courts of law, an argument that I used against Dr. Timothy McGrew, see here (search for "omission").

Bird gave a poor response, referring to the passage as "tricky",

That's not poor, numerous Christian scholars have admitted the problems in this zombie-resurrection story, the most prominent of which is probably Michael Licona, one of the most capable defenders of Jesus' resurrection currently on the market.  The following quote is pertinent since Licona has a major agenda to prove Jesus' resurrection to be a real historical event, which means he likely started out believing the historicity of this zombie-resurrection story and was convinced by the evidence to reluctantly admit that Matthew had no trouble mixing fiction with historical truth when telling the story of Jesus' own resurrection:

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. (in answer to Bart Ehrman, see here)

See his comment to the same effect in his "Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historigraphical Approach", here.

Two pages later Licona revealingly admits:

If some or all of the phenomena reported at Jesus’ death are poetic devices, we may rightly ask whether Jesus’ resurrection is not more of the same (see here)

So apparently, grouping Jesus' resurrection in with the fictional tales Matthew surrounded it with, is nowhere near "unreasonable".  Licona's position is deemed by many conservative Christian scholars as consistent with the doctrine of inerrancy.  See here.

William Lane Craig, an inerrantist and evangelical Christian scholar popular for making strong arguments for Jesus' resurrection, denies the historicity of this zombie-resurrection:

Dr. Miller’s interpretation of this passage strikes me as quite persuasive, and probably only a few conservative scholars would treat the story as historical.

Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? 

Paul Copan, Ed., (Baker Academic, 1999) p. 164-165

N.T. Wright, also a conservative Christian scholar, says:

N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, vol. 3 of Christian Origins and the

Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), p. 633 ff.

Perhaps we should keep in mind that because N.T. Wright is a popular Christian scholar, he has his reputation in mind as he refuses to do what normally people normally do, and scoff at such fairytale madness as fiction.  By pretending the zombie resurrection story could possibly be historically literal, he avoids the otherwise inevitable inference that Matthew also used fiction to construct his story of Jesus' own resurrection.

In the Word Biblical Commentary, Evangelical D. A. Hagner quotes a lengthy bit from Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 1976:

This is a difficult and much discussed passage. A straightforward historical reading of these verses must face difficulties beyond those already mentioned. For example, there is the question of the nature of the bodies of the resurrected saints. Do these saints have what may be called new-order resurrection bodies, i.e., permanent bodies not subject to decay, or are they resuscitated bodies (like that of Lazarus) that later died again? (Could they have new-order resurrection bodies before Jesus, “the first-fruits of the dead” [1 Cor 15:20], did?) Related to this is the further question about what happened to these saints after they made their appearance in Jerusalem. (Were they raptured to heaven and, if so, when? Did they remain on the earth and, if so, where?) Furthermore, why is such a spectacular event “seen by many”—surely of great apologetic significance—referred to only here in the NT and not at all outside the NT? A further question concerns the basis on which this number of saints and these particular saints, and no others, were raised from the dead (was it arbitrary or do unknown criteria come into play?).

A surprising number of commentators sidestep the historical question altogether. Those who do raise it can be found to use terms such as “puzzling,” “strange,” “mysterious.” Stalwart commentators known for their conservatism are given to hesitance here: A. B. Bruce: “We seem here to be in the region of Christian legend” (The Expositor’s Greek Testament, ed. W. R. Nicoll [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1897] 332); A. Plummer: “a tradition with a legendary element in it” (402); W.Grundmann: “mythic-legendary” (562). Even those disposed to accept the historicity of the passage can indicate a degree of discomfort: R. T. France: “its character as ‘sober history’ (i.e. what a cine-camera might have recorded) can only be, in the absence of corroborative evidence, a matter of faith, not of objective demonstration. It was, in any case, a unique occurrence and is not to be judged by the canons of ‘normal’ experience” (401); L. Morris: “Since there are no other records of these appearances, it appears to be impossible to say anything about them. But Matthew is surely giving expression to his conviction that Jesus is Lord over both the living and the dead” (725); C.Blomberg: “All kinds of historical questions remain unanswered about both events [the tearing of the temple curtain and the raising of the saints], but their significance clearly lies in the theology Matthew wishes to convey” (421).

The question of the historicity of the event described in the present passage remains problematic. We should not, of course, rule out a priori that Matthew may be recording historical events in these verses. If God raised Jesus from the dead, he surely can have raised a number of saints prior to the time of the general resurrection. The question here, however, is one of historical plausibility. It is not in principle that difficult for one whose view of reality permits it (i.e., who has a biblical view of reality) to believe in the historicity of this event. The problem is that the event makes little historical sense, whereas what does make sense is the theological point that is being made. The various difficulties mentioned above together with the obvious symbolic-apocalyptic character of the language (e.g., darkness, earthquake, opening of tombs, resurrection) raise the strong possibility that Matthew in these verses is making a theological point rather than simply relating history. This hardly means that the evangelist, or those before him with whom the tradition may have originated, is necessarily inventing all the exceptional events in his narrative (pace R. E. Brown, Death of the Messiah, 1137–40). More likely, here as in the birth narratives a historical core of events, such as the darkness and the earthquake, has given rise to a degree of elaboration in the passing on of the tradition. This elaboration extends the original events and in so doing draws out the theological significance of the death of Jesus. Theology and a historical core of events are by no means mutually exclusive. See Lange, who concludes: “We must learn the alphabet of the language in which the evangelists—and the Spirit which they promote—have tried to make the ‘kernel of the matter’ accessible to us” (54–55).

I side, therefore, with such recent commentators as Gundry, Senior (Passion of Jesus), Gnilka, Bruner, Harrington, D. R. A. Hare (Matthew, Interpretation [Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993]), and R. E. Brown (Death of the Messiah) in concluding that the rising of the saints from the tombs in this passage is a piece of theology set forth as history. Sabourin is probably correct when he writes: “Matthew took for historical facts popular reports of what would have taken place at the time of Jesus. He used these stories to convey his own theological message” (919; so too R. E. Brown, Death of the Messiah, 1138). It is obvious that by the inclusion of this material Matthew wanted to draw out the theological significance of the death (and resurrection) of Jesus. That significance is found in the establishing of the basis of the future resurrection of the saints. We may thus regard the passage as a piece of realized and historicized apocalyptic depending on OT motifs found in such passages as Isa 26:19; Dan 12:2; and especially Ezek 37:12–14 (though Monasterio, Riebl, Gnilka, and others probably speculate too much in concluding Matthew’s dependence on a Jewish apocalyptic text oriented to Ezek 37; contrast Maisch who opts for Matthean composition). Ezek 37:12–14 is apposite: “Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from from your graves, O my people … And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you out of your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live … ” For the importance of Ezek 37:1–14 in the synagogue at Passover time, see Grassi (cf. Hill, IBS 7 [1985] 76–87).

R. E. Brown (Death of the Messiah) is probably correct when he concludes that Matthew wants to communicate that the death and resurrection of Jesus mark “the beginning of the last times” (so too Maisch; Senior, CBQ 38 [1976] 312–29; Hill, IBS 7 [1985] 76–87; pace Witherup, who, however, correctly sees that a salvation-historical turning point has been reached in Matthew’s narrative). Already in the events accompanying the death of Jesus Matthew finds the anticipation of the good news of the conquering of death itself and hence of the reality of resurrection for the people of God. The death of Jesus as well as the resurrection of Jesus is gospel, for that death is life-giving (Senior, CBQ 38 [1976] 312–29).

Hagner, D. A. (2002). Vol. 33B: Word Biblical Commentary : Matthew 14-28. 

Word Biblical Commentary (Page 850). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

Engwer continues, saying Michael Bird was:

failing to make some good points he could have made, and concluding that the passage isn't referring to a historical event.

Bird is a conservative evangelical Christian scholar who has offered rebuttal to Bart Ehrman.  Bird's admissions are going to justify amateur skeptics to dismiss John's gospel and walk on, even such admissions so something less for professional skeptics who attack fundamentalism...like me.

He suggested that other scholars consider the passage difficult to explain as well, citing the example of N.T. Wright.

How many conservative Christian scholar admissions to Matthew's mixing fiction and truth together in his resurrection narrative, does it take before the average skeptic can be "reasonable" to accept these admissions and conclude that Matthew's resurrection testimony is unworthy of serious historical merit?  What will you do next?  Scream that there is some type of conspiracy among conservative Christian scholars to lead the church into liberalism?  LOL.  That's YOUR problem.

In the past, I've discussed the use of this passage by other critics of Christianity, such as Richard Carrier, an atheist, and Nadir Ahmed, a Muslim. In debates on the resurrection, opponents of William Craig, such as Robert Miller and Hector Avalos, have repeatedly raised this issue in some form. Crossley refers to the objection as "classic". It shouldn't be a classic, though, and Christians shouldn't consider it as difficult as Bird does. See here.
Some points to keep in mind:
- The passage doesn't tell us whether resuscitation or resurrection is involved.

But beacuse the context is Jesus' own alleged "resurrection", we aren't violating any rules of historigraphy or hermeneutics by interpreting the rising of the saints as "resurrection".  You may try to pontificate how "absurd" it would be for such risen Saints to never die again, but that's only absurd for a Christian apologist hell-bent on getting rid of as much stupid crap in the NT as he possibly an without compromising his own position.  Skeptics see nothing particularly infeasible about an author like Matthew making wild assertions that lead to what modern people would consider "absurd".

- As the gospel accounts of resuscitations and Jesus' resurrection illustrate, we don't have reason to expect a raised body to look significantly different from a body prior to death.

You are blindly assuming the people Jesus raised from the dead were merely "resucitated" and died later.  Read John 11, "resurrection" and the immorality that it allegedly implies is all over that story.  OF course i could be wrong, after all, nobody ever said the historical details in the gospels were correctly supportive of all the theological beliefs Paul had.  And when you say the people whom Jesus raised from the dead later died a second time, YOU are arguing from silence. 

- Sometimes critics suggest that the raised individuals would have been naked, would have been wearing deteriorated clothing, would have been similar to zombies, etc.

I wouldn't argue that.

But as I wrote in response to one such critic in my article linked above, "The concept that God would raise people from the dead, but leave them with no clothing or deteriorated clothing, is ridiculous. It’s consistent with the imagery somebody might get from a horror movie, but it’s absurd in a first-century Jewish context. People wouldn’t have been walking around nude,

Then apparently you forgot about Isaiah's running around nude in Israel for a few years because he was such an attention-whore:

 1 In the year that the commander came to Ashdod, when Sargon the king of Assyria sent him and he fought against Ashdod and captured it,
 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.
 5 "Then they will be dismayed and ashamed because of Cush their hope and Egypt their boast.
 6 "So the inhabitants of this coastland will say in that day, 'Behold, such is our hope, where we fled for help to be delivered from the king of Assyria; and we, how shall we escape?'" (Isa. 20:1-6 NAU)

Some commentators trifle that this was only partial nudity, but the immediate context (i.e., bare buttocks, v. 4) renders reasonable the "full nudity" interpretation.  Indeed, when you see Egyptian reliefs of prisoners being marched around, they are usually naked.

and assuming that bodies would be restored without restored clothing is dubious.

If you are a modern day American trying desperately to reconcile everything in the bible with American notions of common sense, then yes.

Did Jesus have to travel nude for a while, looking for clothing, after His resurrection?

A question obviously not directed to skeptics but only Christians.

Does God raise a person, but then leave him on his own to find some clothing to wear?

Did Adam and Eve have clothing before they ate the forbidden fruit?  God likes nudity even if you don't. Maybe I could give a sermon entitled "Paradise Restored:  Heaven is a Nudist colony".

Did God also leave people buried in the ground or inside a sealed tomb, without any further assistance, after reviving them?

A question obviously not directed to atheists or skeptics, but only to thsoe who think 'god' exists.

Did Jesus have to move the stone in front of His grave Himself?

Is there anything about that theory that would contradict anything in the NT resurrection narratives?

...the gospel of Matthew was written in the context of first-century Israel. We know how other resuscitations and resurrections were viewed in that context.

You also have an apostle Paul who does a rather mouthy bad job in 1st Corinthians 15 of saying "the body that dies is the same body that rises".

We know what they thought of public nudity.

Which is precisely why Isaiah's nudity would have been a very effective attention-getter.

We know that angels who took on human form were clothed, for example.

No, only bible-believing Christians "know" any such thing.  Such tales could just as easily be fable.

The first-century Jewish context of Matthew's gospel doesn't lead us to view Matthew 27 in light of a modern horror movie.

Mike Licona would agree.

What leads you to view it as something more like a horror movie is your desire to criticize the passage....

Which can only mean that you don't give a fuck about Licona's scholarly justifications for viewing the passage as a zombie-resurrection.  What else are you going to allege about Licona's motives?

You don't ignore the implications of a context just because the text doesn't spell out every implication.

Agreed.  But if the text doesn't spell out every implication, YOU stand a legitimate chance of losing a debate about what was implied, if the inference can be objectively sustained, or shown

What does a term like 'raised' mean in a first-century Jewish context? Does it imply a zombie who walks around in the nude with a partially decomposed body?

You may as well pretend that 1st century Jewish views on woman were operative also for the original Christians.

If a historian refers to what Abraham Lincoln ate for dinner one day, then doesn't make any further references to meals until he's discussing a day in Lincoln's life twenty years later, do you assume that the historian thinks that no meals were eaten between those two dates?

No, not if the historian excludes miracles from the accounts.  But when you introduce miracles, then suddenly, a theory that somebody went without food for 25 years doesn't seem less plausible than a theory that they rose from the dead.

Or do you take into account factors such as what the historian would have known about the human need to eat more often, the fact that historians are often selective in what they do and don't mention, etc.?...

Once again, what humans "need" to eat is only important to a historian who stays away from miracles.  Otherwise, he can easily imply by silence that the character didn't eat for 25 years, since the believing audience would simply and automatically conclude "god did it".

Yes, historians are often selective in what they do and don't mention.  And it is precisely what they choose to mention and what they choose to exclude that allow us to make "reasonable" deductions about what they meant.

Given that so many other Jewish and Christian documents imply that God provides such things [clothing] (angels in human form are clothed, the risen Jesus is clothed, etc.), and given other factors such as ancient views of public nudity, the idea that risen people would be left naked is less likely.

I ultimately agree.  I'm just showing the reasonableness of the skeptic, since your objections, supra, are obviously intended to be answered by Christians, not skeptics.

Why is clothing people who are without clothes, by no fault of their own, 'ridiculous'? I would say that your concept that God sends these people into first-century Israel in the nude is what's ridiculous."

But God sent Isaiah nude into Israel for 3 years, see above.

- We aren't told how many people were raised or how many knew of the event.

We are told "many" such bodies arose (Matthew 27:52), and its anybody's guess as to how exactly many.  But even if it was merely 5, this would have been no less cause for startle and uproar than if 5 of your dead relatives came knocking on your door. 

The references to "many" in these two verses don't tell us much, since different numbers can be associated with such a term in different contexts. The many of Matthew 7:13 surely is a far larger number than the many of Matthew 8:30, for example. Many in the context of the judgment of mankind would be a much larger number than many in the context of a herd of pigs. Matthew 27 is set in a local context, the general vicinity of Jerusalem, and involves an event that's unusual enough for smaller numbers to constitute "many".

Except that they were rising from ground that was considered "the" cemetery (Golgatha), where we would naturally expect more than 100 bodies to be buried. 

- The fact that the raised individuals appeared to many in Matthew 27:53 doesn't demonstrate that all of those many understood what they had seen at that time or later.

Just like if I said I went roller-skating, that doesn't prove that I was implying that gravity continued holding me to earth the way it did before the skating.

- We aren't told whether any of the witnesses to the event were non-Christians and remained non-Christians afterward.

Probably because the account is, as Licona says, fiction.  The dramatic goal can be achieved without mentioning every detail.

- Historians accept many historical accounts that come from only one source.

But that doesn't place the skeptic under any intellectual obligation to do the same.  Historians naturally hate to lose ANY source that might possibly be historically valuable, that's why they don't just toss single accounts in the trash. But journalists usually insist on having independent corroboration before they go foward with a story, probably because more often than not, stories based on one single source have a greater tendency to prove inaccurate.

Perhaps this is where you suddenly discover how "unreasonable" it is for non-historians to insist on independent corroboration?

- The gospels refer to other individuals who were raised by Jesus. If the event of Matthew 27 is a resuscitation, then it's another manifestation of a miracle performed multiple times previously and reported by multiple sources. If the event is a resurrection, then it's not so similar to those previous events, but still has some similarity.

Except that 2nd century Clement of Alexandria, in his Stomata, chapter VI, thought it "plain" that the risen bodies were 'translated to a better state':

If, then, He preached only to the Jews, who wanted the knowledge and faith of the Saviour, it is plain that, since God is no respecter of persons, the apostles also, as here, so there preached the Gospel to those of the heathen who were ready for conversion. And it is well said by the Shepherd, "They went down with them therefore into the water, and again ascended. But these descended alive, and again ascended alive. But those who had fallen asleep, descended dead, but ascended alive." Further the Gospel says, "that many bodies of those that slept arose,"--plainly as having been translated to a better state. 

Should we care what the early church fathers believed?  Engwer continues:

- Matthew only mentions the event briefly, which undermines the critic's assumption that anybody who believed in the event would have thought so highly of it as to be sure to mention it in our extant literature.

Supporting the skeptical conclusion that even somebody like Matthew recognizes the value of keeping fiction to a minimum.  The fictional character of the zombie resurrection story in Matthew is very likely the reason other authors gave it no attention.

Matthew mentions it, as he mentions many other things, but he doesn't seem to have thought that it deserves as much attention as critics suggest.

If you plan to lie in your testimony, best to make the lie as short as possible.  Giving more and more dettails just enables the prosecutor to get lucky and find something he can positively disprove.  Ambiguity is the word of the day for all professional liars, just ask any attorney.

- Some Christians writing shortly after the gospel of Matthew was composed (Clement of Rome, Polycarp, etc.) didn't comment on the event of Matthew 27, even when they were discussing the topic of resurrection.

When you friend tells wild unlikely tales, you tend to avoid becoming involved.

We know that it was common for the Christians of that time to interpret the gospels in a highly historical manner (see, for example, here, here, and here), so it seems unlikely that they didn't comment upon this passage as a result of viewing it as non-historical.

I don't see your point:  the early fathers probably thought the zombie resurrection tale was straight history.  But as yo probably know, the early church fathers provide interesting quips about this or that, but their credulity was high.  And many of the surviving fathers were against gnostic forms of Christianity, requiring that they take as physical historical fact nearly everything in the gospels.  One  prominent exception was Origen.  Papias and his talking grapes is probably another.

Apparently, these early Christians, writing shortly after the time when Matthew's gospel was composed, didn't think that mentioning the event of Matthew 27 was as important as some modern critics suggest.

When you friend tells wild unlikely tales, you tend to avoid becoming involved.

- The claim that no other early Christian sources mention the event depends on the assumption that some passages referring to the raising of the dead don't have this event in mind. But there are some early passages that may refer to it (Ignatius, Letter To The Magnesians, 9; Quadratus, in Eusebius, Church History, 4:3). And both passages just cited include information not mentioned in Matthew's gospel, so neither seems to merely be repeating what he read in Matthew.

You don't win a history debate with a "may" or a possibility.  You have to turn that into some degree of probability.  You haven't done that.

Ignatius says:

If, therefore, those who were brought up in the ancient order of things have come to the possession of a new hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord's Day, on which also our life has sprung up again by Him and by His death — whom some deny, by which mystery we have obtained faith, and therefore endure, that we may be found the disciples of Jesus Christ, our only Master — how shall we be able to live apart from Him, whose disciples the prophets themselves in the Spirit did wait for Him as their Teacher? And therefore He whom they rightly waited for, having come, raised them from the dead. Matthew 27:52

This merely gets you in trouble, since he doesn't qualify how many such prophets, which makes it reasonable to interpret Ignatius as intending for ALL of the prophets, whom he thought waited for Jesus, were raised from the dead.  You can thank Ignatius for expanding your "many" into about 20.

But there is a more direct reference in Ignatius' Epistle to the Trallians, if one will allow that it is authentic:

He did in reality both eat and drink. He was crucified and died under Pontius Pilate. He really, and not merely in appearance, was crucified, and died, in the sight of beings in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth. By those in heaven I mean such as are possessed of incorporeal natures; by those on earth, the Jews and Romans, and such persons as were present at that time when the Lord was crucified; and by those under the earth, the multitude that arose along with the Lord. For says the Scripture, “Many bodies of the saints that slept arose,” their graves being opened. He descended, indeed, into Hades alone, but He arose accompanied by a multitude; and rent asunder that means of separation which had existed from the beginning of the world, and cast down its partition-wall.

Roberts, A., Donaldson, J., & Coxe, A. C. (1997). The Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol.I : Translations of the writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325. The apostolic fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems.

Perhaps Engwer didn't give this more direct reference because it shows an early church father thinking that the zombie tale is saying those dead saints "arose along with" Jesus...which would make Jesus' resurrection a bit more susceptible to notice by other ancient authors.  Or maybe Engwer would trifle that he thinks this "longer recension" is not authentically from Ignatius.

Jerome in Letter 60 To Heliodorus is quoting the passage, but says "heavenly" Jerusalem (i.e., he might have meant that he took Matthew to be saying the risen saints appeared unto many in the "heavenly" Jerusalem, not the earthly Jerusalem):

Even if Lazarus is seen in Abraham’s bosom and in a place of refreshment, still the lower regions cannot be compared with the kingdom of heaven. Before Christ’s coming Abraham is in the lower regions: after Christ’s coming the robber is in paradise. And therefore at His rising again “many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and were seen in the heavenly Jerusalem.”1813 Then was fulfilled the saying: “Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.”1814 John the Baptist cries in the desert: “repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”1815 For “from the days of John the Baptist the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force.”1816 The flaming sword that keeps the way of paradise and the cherubim that are stationed at its doors1817 are alike quenched and unloosed by the blood of Christ.1818 It is not surprising that this should be promised us in the resurrection: for as many of us as living in the flesh do not live after the flesh,1819 have our citizenship in heaven,1820 and while we are still here on earth we are told that “the kingdom of heaven is within us.”1821 4. Moreover before the resurrection of Christ God was “known in Judah” only and “His name was great in Israel” alone.1822 And they who knew Him were despite their knowledge dragged down to hell. Where in those days were the inhabitants of the globe from India to Britain, from the frozen zone of the North to the burning heat of the Atlantic ocean? Where were the countless peoples of the world? Where the great multitudes?

Schaff, P. (1997). The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Second Series Vol. VI. 

Jerome: Letters and Select Works. Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems.

Quadratus says:

“But the works of our Savior were always present, for they were genuine:- those that were healed, and those that were raised from the dead, who were seen not only when they were healed and when they were raised, but were also always present; and not merely while the Savior was on earth, but also after his death, they were alive for quite a while, so that some of them lived even to our day.” Such then was Quadratus.

In the context, "Savior was on earth" seems to require that the people Quadratus had in mind were those that Jesus raised from the dead before the crucifixion.  And indeed, the gospels say before Jesus died, he had gone around "healing" people and raising some from the dead.

- Non-Christian sources were writing in particular genres. To expect a Roman source to mention the event of Matthew 27, simply because he was writing around the time when the event would have occurred, doesn't make sense.

Under your own theory that says the zombies consisted of two resuscitated corpses who could have simply disappeared two seconds after saying hi to some people in Jerusalem, then yes.

George Bush's presidency was historically significant, but we wouldn't expect it to be discussed in a contemporary gardening magazine or book about motorcycles.

But we'd expect important scandalous events and reports of same to be found in ancient historians whose purpose was to document such things.  Perhaps there's a reason why we find such things in Tacitus and Josephus.

An ancient writer who composed poetry or wrote about Roman politics shouldn't be expected to discuss Christian miracles in such a work.

Sort of like "an ancient Hebrew writer who composed Psalm 16:10 shouldn't be expected to discuss Jesus' resurrection".

Ignorant skeptics sometimes make the mistake of acting as if the timing of an author is all that's relevant when considering whether he should have mentioned Jesus, Christian miracles, or something else related to Christianity, as if genre is irrelevant. As J.P. Holding put it, "Do books on public speaking today go off topic to mention Jesus?...Again, Jesus didn't lead any Roman armies, so where would he fit here [the writings of Appian]?...Pausanias -- a Greek traveler and geographer of the second century who wrote a ten-volume work called Descriptions of Greece. Check your travel guidebooks for Greece for mentions of Jewish miracle workers in a different country!"

Except that the NT repeatedly says "large crowds" followed Jesus, including entire cities stampeding each other just to get near him (Mark 1:45).  Stop forgetting about the extreme popularity that your own bible requires you to impart to Jesus.

As Craig Keener notes, "Without immediate political repercussions, it is not surprising that the earliest Jesus movement does not spring quickly into the purview of Rome’s historians; even Herod the Great finds little space in Dio Cassius (49.22.6; 54.9.3). Josephus happily compares Herodotus’s neglect of Judea (Apion 1.60-65) with his neglect of Rome (Apion 1.66)." (A Commentary On The Gospel Of Matthew [Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999], p. 64, n. 205)

I don't really push the "why didn't ancient secular historians mention the zombies" anyway, so I don't really care if you have to deal with other skeptics who argue differently than I do.  I'd advise the idiot skeptics to stop saying scandalous things, since the easier it is to refute, the more likely the stupid Christian will draw the hasty generalization that "skepticism" is "wrong".  We need to cast off the uncertain arguments and stick solely to the best possible arguments.

Critics of Matthew 27 sometimes mention Josephus and suggest that there are other relevant sources, but don't name them. They ought to be specific about who should have mentioned this event in Matthew 27 and where they should have mentioned it. I suspect that many of these people don't have anybody specific in mind other than Josephus, and they probably haven't given much thought to their citation of that one source.

Irrelevant to me, I wouldn't expect others to worry about gospel fiction.

- The idea that a non-Christian source would have a compelling desire to report such an event so favorable to Christianity is dubious and is an assumption I've never seen any critic justify. A source like Josephus might discuss such an event, but he also might prefer to avoid discussing it.

Which is why skeptics are better off not pushing that argument too much.  There are ways of justifying skepticism that fuck you up, it's not like all skepticism is rooted in fallacies.

- Josephus and other early non-Christian sources refer to Jesus' performance of apparent miracles. Sometimes they discuss specific miracles, and sometimes they don't. They may refer to Jesus as a sorcerer or magician or refer to Him as empowered by Satan, but not go into detail about the activity that led them to that conclusion. Why should we expect the event of Matthew 27 to be singled out for discussion?

We wouldn't if Matthew's original audience took the zombie resurrection part as edifying fiction only.

I would further argue that we don't even know whether Matthew intended all that he said to be made known to non-Christians.  There were, after all, "secret" teachings Jesus allegedly reserved only for his disciples.

How does the critic know that a reference to Jesus as a sorcerer or magician, for example, doesn't include an acknowledgement of the event of Matthew 27 along with other miracles? If a historical figure has a reputation as a miracle worker, then discussing individual miracles is one way to discuss his activity, but it isn't the only way. The more miracles there are associated with an individual, the less significant one miracle, such as the one of Matthew 27, may seem.

Irrelevant to me.

- As an example of some of the points above, consider the apostle Paul. He doesn't say much about his miracles, and he's often vague when he does discuss them (2 Corinthians 12:12).

Probably because any professional liar knows that if you go on and on about your alleged miraculous ability, you'll end up saying something that can be positively falsified.  Like any lawyer will tell you, your chances of successfully convincing a jury of yoru story increase if you keep your testimony to a minimum.

Luke goes into more detail, as we'd expect in the genre and historical context in which he was writing, but he doesn't go off on a tangent to address Paul's miracles in his gospel.

If you assume Luke thought Acts was something different than 'gospel'.

Rather, he discusses those miracles several chapters into Acts, in the proper chronological place, and even at that point he's selective in what he discusses. Later Christian sources who discuss Paul and accept the book of Acts often don't mention Paul's miracles or address them in a more vague manner than Luke does. Early non-Christian sources say little or nothing about Paul, even long after his letters began widely circulating. Origen makes a specific point of criticizing Celsus for ignoring Paul (Against Celsus, 1:63, 5:64).

Sounds like Origen was a smart guy, whose conclusions about gospel "facts" cannot be lightly dismissed as the raving of a heretic trying to get away from "truth".

The early enemies of Christianity, especially those who were Jewish, would have had difficulty with a prominent enemy of Christianity who converted to the religion on the basis of seeing the risen Christ.

Especially if that prominent enemy never converted, but only pretended to, due to his mental illness and need to be an attention-whore.  Like Paul.

Even less problematic religious leaders of that time, such as Gamaliel and John the Baptist, aren't mentioned much in our extant sources. Gentiles wouldn't have had much interest in discussing Jewish religious leaders, much as Jews wouldn't have had much interest in discussing a Gentile who was reputed as a miracle worker, such as Apollonius of Tyana.

- Sometimes it's suggested that if a Christian doesn't think this passage is describing a historical event, then he shouldn't interpret the accounts of Jesus' resurrection as references to a historical event either.

Mike Licona said that problem arises naturally, see above.

But the accounts of Jesus' resurrection are far more numerous,

No, the only eyewitness sources are Matthew, John and Paul, everything else in the NT mentioning his resurrection is either hearsay, vision or the author is not claiming to be an eyewitness of it.  The apostolic authorship of Matthew and John is easily discounted, and Paul's credibility problems would justify a 5,000 page monograph spread over a 10-volume series.  If you were on trial for murder and the only witness against you was somebody claiming to having seen you pull the trigger while the witness was flying physically up into heaven by non-physical means (2nd Corinthians 12:1-4), you would not ask the judge to allow a jury instruction saying they can consider the viability of a supernatural explanation...you'd be asking the judge to drop the charges for lack of evidence, since no jury could possibly find you guilty on the basis of such obvious delusion.

As far as numerosity, most Christian scholars take Mark as earliest, and also think authentic Mark stops at 16:8, and also think that the later Synoptic authors borrowed extensively from Mark, hence, it is reasonable for the skeptic to conclude that the earliest form of the gospel never said a risen Christ actually appeared to anybody, justifying a further inference that the only reason the later gospels say he did, is because of legendary embellishment.  That is, the later versions merely derive from and add to Mark's earlier account, they are not "independent".  So Jesus rose from the dead because of 3 first-hand easily impeached witnesses and a shitload of endlessly questionable hearsay?  FUCK YOU.

come from more sources,

No, same answer.  Of course you're going to get "more sources" when you start embellishing the original story. What's too bad for you is that Christianity did not deem the testimony of most of the original apostles worthy of preserving, despite the reasonable inference that as original apostles, you'd think the later generations would revere such testimony as of the greatest importance.

and are more detailed.

Reasonably construed as adding legendary embellishments to Mark's earlier less detailed account.  Let's just say Matthew and Luke denied Mark's "sufficiency" as scripture.

I disagree with Christians who interpret Matthew 27 as something other than a reference to a historical raising of the dead in first-century Israel. But those who hold that position are making a judgment about a brief passage in one source, a passage that isn't addressed much by other early sources. We don't have anything close to the level of evidence for the historicity of that passage as we have for the historicity of the accounts of Jesus' resurrection.

Not if I have anything to say about it.  Your evidence for the historicity of Jesus' resurrection is so poor and likely false or embellished, skeptics are perfectly reasonable to reject the hypothesis.  And I say this after having extensively reviewed the work of Licona, Habermas and W.C. Craig.  You lose.  Skeptics are not unreasonable.

If somebody thinks that the evidence for the historicity of Matthew 27 is insignificant enough to be overcome by other factors, it doesn't therefore follow that the same is true of the accounts of Jesus' resurrection.

Agreed.

- The gospel of Matthew is just one source among others that are relevant to the historicity of Jesus' resurrection. Even if we were to conclude that this passage in Matthew 27 undermines the testimony of that gospel, its testimony can be diminished without being eliminated.

But in practical life, you cannot accuse as unreasonable the person who moves immediately from "diminished" to "eliminated".  And if you were on trial for murder and you were only able to "diminish" but not "eliminate" testimony hostile to your alibi, you know perfectly well you'd be trying to persuade the jury to move immediately from "diminished" to "eliminated" anyway.   You cannot avoid the obvious reasonableness of justifying one's rejection of testimony because it has been "diminished".

And we still have other sources that give us information relevant to the resurrection of Christ.

All of which can be reasonably rejected on the basis of legend, vision, hearsay, lying and impeached credibility or contradiction.

Demolishing Triablogue: it's still reasonable to balk at Matthew's writing in the third-person

This is my reply to an article by Jason Engwer of Triablogue entitled

Writing About Yourself In The Third Person

Saturday, June 01, 2013

Critics of the Bible are often ignorant of ancient (and sometimes modern) literary practices that undermine their analysis of the Bible.

Ditto for most Christians.

For example, people will sometimes object to a document like the gospel of Matthew or the gospel of John on the basis that those documents shouldn't speak of Matthew and John in the third person if those men wrote the documents.

Because the third-person shows personal detachment, whereas you expect others to believe Matthew was written by some guy who became "amazingly transformed" by seeing the resurrected Jesus.  Writing in the third person is not an issue unless the author is claimed to have been all happy and excited beyond reason to provide the world his own account of some great miraculous thing.

But as Richard Bauckham explains:
"All of these passages [in the gospel of John] refer to him, of course, in third-person language. This is in accordance with the best and regular historiographic practice. When ancient historians referred to themselves within their narratives as participating in or observing the events they recount, they commonly referred to themselves in the third person by name, as Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius, Julius Caesar, or Josephus." (Jesus And The Eyewitnesses [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2006], 393)

But

a) the fact that the gospels represent a new type of genre might justify the skeptic to say the authors didn't feel compelled to imitate standard practice, and

b) many 1st century historians use the first person, Philo, Josephus.  Bauckham doesn't say most 1st century authors used the third person, he merely says "best and regular historigraphic practice".

c) doesn't matter if you are correct: using the third-person is unexpected under your other Christian assumptions that Matthew was "amazingly transformed" by seeing the resurrected Christ and therefore all happy and giddy to go around giving his personal testimony.  You can avoid this criticism by denying you think that way about Matthew, but then you raise the probability that Matthew wasn't quite as happy about his own experience of Christ as some Christians are today.

d) Jesus expanded the need for two or three witnesses to important events beyond the judicial context of its first appearance in the OT, (Matthew 18:16), so did Paul (2nd Cor. 13:1, 1st Timothy 5:19), so we are reasonable to expect that if the testmony in Matthew's gospel actually was written out by Matthew, he would find it important to make clear to the reader that he is the one doing the testifying.

Years ago, a skeptic told me that the phrase "I, Paul" in some of the Pauline letters was clear evidence that the documents are forgeries. Paul wouldn't have written that way. (See my response to that skeptic here.)

Probably because known forgeries before and after Paul use the same phrase to make the alleged author unmistakably clear, when this is nothing but pseudepigrapha.  See Daniel 8:15, Revelation, 1st Enoch, Infancy gospel of Thomas, Holy Constitutions, etc.  It could also mean Paul was gullible and thought such self-designation was the style of legitimately divine authors, so he chose to imitate it.

But I wouldn't push the point since Jesus' resurrection is abundantly steamrolled by my own arguments, which often allow early dating and apostolic authorship of everything in the NT.  Such as rendering Jesus resurrection irrelevant given that the OT gives Gentiles nothing to fear from god but physical death, and the NT doctrine of eternal conscious torment directly contradicts the OT.  Always use the earlier standard to test the newer standard.  I already accept that I will endure "annihilation" at death, so I'm not seeing how attacking the gospel puts me in any "danger".  If I'm not in "danger", then whether Jesus rose from the dead need never be anything mroe important than a mere intellectually curiosity for people who just naturally like to debate matters of ancient history.

A lot of critics don't make much effort to consult Biblical commentaries or other relevant scholarship.

I do.  It's why the draft of my book on justifying denial of Matthew's resurrection testimony is more than 700 pages long, I've written at least 50,000 pages of book draft (lost in a recent computer malfunction) not including 20 years of posting arguments on the internet.  It's why I constantly answer Triablogue posts in point by point fashion.  Clearly Romans 1:20 is true and I just don't like the idea of being accountable to a sky-daddy.  Yeah, that's it.  Sort of like the idiot Mormon who pontificates that the Triablogue boys are without excuse for rejecting the Book of Mormon.  Empty pontification is quite easy to engage in, and Paul apparently developed it into a science.

They make judgments based largely on their own ignorant impressions and poor reasoning as they read the Bible or other sources without much assistance. The results are often disastrous.

You could just as easily have been talking about Christians.  Nothing in your article tips the probability scale the least bit in the direction of Matthean authorship of the gospel now bearing his name.

Demolishing Triablogue: Steve Hays wants divinely inspired eyewitnesses to desire to use hearsay sources. Matthew and Mark

This is my reply to an article by Steve Hays of Triablogue entitled

Matthew and Mark

Saturday, April 16, 2016

i) A conventional objection to the traditional authorship of Matthew is that an apostle wouldn't make use of a secondhand source like Mark. There are several problems with that objection:

But none of them are very persuasive, therefore, we skeptics are well within the bounds of reasonableness to say that a person who not only had their own eyewitness memories but was promised by God himself to have special divine ability to recall the facts about Jesus to their own mind, would not very likely depend on a hearsay source to the great extent most Christian scholars believe Matthew depended on Mark:

 26 "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. (Jn. 14:26 NAU)

 However, we might expect somebody who has no divine inspiration, to do what most other authors do, and rely on prior sources to help create his story.

ii) According to Acts 12:12, Jerusalem was Mark's home town. So Mark may well have had firsthand knowledge of Jesus whenever Jesus came to Jerusalem.

"May"?  That's how you think you "win" a debate about what happened in history?  Positing mere possibilities?  I'm a really smart skeptic, I recognize that such a debate turns on which explanatory theory about historical events is most "probable".

You are also assuming that the "Mark" of Acts 12:12 is the exact Mark who authored the gospel, when in fact even conservative inerrantist Christian scholars admit Mark's name was very common:

A mediating position is that the book was written by someone named Mark, but not the John Mark of Acts. A major consideration in favor of this claim is that Mark was one of the most common Roman names.

Brooks, J. A. (2001, c1991). Vol. 23: Mark (electronic e.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 26). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

iii) Moreover, Mark hits many of the major points in the life of Christ. It's not as if Matthew is going to omit those events. Since these are key events in the life of Christ, we'd expect him to repeat them. And there's a rough chronology to the events, so why would Matthew make a special effort to change the plot?

Matthew could have relied on his own allegedly divinely inspired eyewitness memories to compose the gospel...without changing Mark's plot or relying on Mark at all.  The reliance is reasonably construed to mean the Matthew author did not have his own first hand memories of Jesus' life, which of course would necessarily imply the author wasn't one of the original 12 apostles.

iv) But here's another factor that's overlooked. Mark's mother hosted Christian gatherings in her home.

More objectively, the mother of a guy named Mark did that.  Whether that was the exact "Mark" who allegedly wrote a gospel is far from reasonably secure.

Peter knew the location of her home. Indeed, the slavegirl knew the sound of his voice (v13), so he must have been a frequent visitor.

Only if you are an anti-supernaturalist and deny that God could cause her to recognize Peter's voice.  Wow, I didn't know Steve Hays adopted the fallacy of naturalism.

But then, it must have been known to the other apostles. It stands to reason that Mark had many opportunities to befriend other apostles, as long as he and they were in Jerusalem.

As long as you can make the case for the Mark of Acts 12 being the Mark of the gospel, more reasonable than the other theory that says Mark was too common of a name to pretend that all NT references to it surely refer to one and the same man.

So what if Matthew was one of his informants? If Mark writes about some things he didn't personally observe, what was his source of information? Given his access to some of the apostles, they'd be a prime candidates.

Except that conservative Christian scholars refuse to blindly assume that because a church father said Mark followed Peter around, surely everything in Mark's gospel is rooted in Peter's preaching:

Petrine influence cannot be proved or disproved, but it should be acknowledged as a possibility. Even if that part of the tradition were false, the part about Mark being the author could still be correct.

Brooks, J. A. (2001, c1991). Vol. 23: Mark (electronic e.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 27). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers

At the same time, the evangelist had no inhibitions about employing traditional motifs, vocabulary, and style in his own redaction. Consequently, for the most part, one can only speak generally and tentatively when seeking to delineate between tradition and redaction. This conclusion does not dispute Mark’s use of traditional materials or the availability of multiple sources, but it does mean that one cannot precisely reconstruct or always identify the exact content of his source or sources.
...Without doubt a close examination of Mark’s material will show that the evangelist did not simply write his Gospel based on his notes or memory of Peter’s teachings. The amazing similarity in language, style, and form of the Synoptic tradition between the Markan and non-Markan materials of Matthew and Luke (cf. John’s Gospel) hardly suggests that Mark’s materials were shaped by one man, be he either Peter or Mark.

Guelich, R. A. (2002). Vol. 34A: Word Biblical Commentary : Mark 1-8:26. Word Biblical Commentary (Page xxxv, xxvii). Dallas: Word, Incorporated

Hays continues:

Indeed, he may have gotten information from several apostles, but if only two of them wrote Gospels, that's our only basis of comparison. We wouldn't recognize the input from other apostles who never penned Gospels.

 We also don't recognize anything distinctively 'Petrine' about Mark's gospel.  Indeed, one could argue, on the basis of Mark's shorter version of Peter's confession of Christ and Christ's bestowing him with special power (Mark 8:29, crf. Matthew 16:16-19) that the author of that portion of Mark didn't really like Peter.   See my blog piece on that specific synoptic parallel here.  See here for another blog piece on the problems of the early church associating Mark with Peter's preaching.

Suppose he questioned Matthew about Jesus, and incorporated that into his Gospel. Later, Matthew reads Mark and thinks to himself, "Well, as long as Mark is using my material, I might as well write up my own recollections to include additional material that I didn't mention to Mark." Or something like that.

Suppose he didn't. 

Would Matthew be using Mark?

under your hypothetical, yes, of course.  But unless you sacrifice your high view of Matthew's eyewitness status and divine ability to recall Jesus' words to his own mind, the mere fact that you can trifle about how an eyewitness could possibly want to use a hearsay source isn't going to disturb the reasonableness of the skeptical position that says such a person as Matthew likely would not use such a source.  At least not as extensively as most Christian scholars say Matthew used Mark. 

It might appear that way, given the order in which they were published. But the Apostle Matthew can one of Mark's sources even though his Gospel was published after Mark's Gospel.

Sure, and I believe Matthew very early wrote out sayings of Christ in Hebrew, Mark could possibly have used such a thing.  But you aren't going to persuasively argue that Matthew's Hebrew original was every bit as extensive as the canonical Greek version.

In that case, Matthew isn't using Mark; rather, Mark is using Matthew. It's just that Mark published some of Matthew's material before Matthew got around to publishing his own material. To some degree, it was Matthew's material all long.

But not to a large degree, so the eyewitness's using a hearsay source remains a significant problem refusing to be answered by the desperate trifles of those who cannot see anything but biblical inerrancy.

Mark borrowed from Matthew before wrote his own Gospel. Indeed, Mark's Gospel may have given Matthew the stimulus to do his own.

That doesn't get rid of the fact that under your own laudatory assumptions about Matthew, such a man simply is not likely to find sources less direct than his own divinely inspired memories as sufficient material to help him compose a gospel.  If Matthew came into the scene at 9:9, then he can rely on his own memories for everything that happens thereafter.  And when he doesn't, its probably because the author is not an eyewitness.

Incidentally, if Papias is right, it's possible that Mark made use of some catechetical material that Matthew originally produced in Aramaic.

That doesn't show the unreasonableness of saying a divinely inspired eyewitness normally doesn't desire to use sources less authoritative than his own brain.

v) If that sounds convoluted, here's a comparison. Wayne Grudem is one of John Frame's students. Grudem published a popular systematic theology.

Over 20 years ago, Frame mentioned in class that reading Grudem's Systematic Theology was a bit of a deja vu experience because he noticed that Grudem had incorporated some of Frame's lecture material into his systematic theology. Years later, Frame began turning more of his own classroom lectures into hefty books.

Now, a keen-eyed reader who compared the two, reading them horizontally, might be struck by parallels between Grudem and Frame. Since Grudem wrote before Frame, he might conclude that Frame borrowed from Grudem. But it's really the other way around. You can't infer the order of conceptual dependence from the order of publication. Grudem borrowed from Frame, not vice versa.

Once again, Matthew's Hebrew original was likely limited mostly to a few sayings of Christ.  So even if Mark used that Hebrew original, that is not the equal of Mark using the more extensive canonical Greek Matthew.  The problem of an eyewitness apostle relying on a hearsay source doesn't go away by merely showing a tiny bit of an apostle's testimony was the earliest source.

vi) Incidentally, this can be a cause of bitter feuds in the history of math and science. The question of priority. A scientist or mathematician may have been the first person to discover something or formulate a theory. And he scribbled it down. But he didn't publish it right away. Sometimes he's scooped by another scientist or mathematician who got it published first. Sometimes that's an independent development, but sometimes the published scientist or mathematician got it from the unpublished scientist or mathematician in private conversation or private correspondence. Watch the fur fly when he steals his thunder.

So I'm not making some outlandish proposal. This is a pretty commonplace distinction, both in principle and practice.

The skeptical theory that says a divinely inspired tax-collector capable of writing inerrantly on his own likely wouldn't think he needed any source beyond his own infallible memories for everything between Matthew 9:9 and 28:21, is, also, not an outlandish proposal.  You therefore fail to show that the skeptical theory (i.e., Matthew's author using a hearsay source makes it likely the author is not eyewitness Matthew) is improbable.

Demolishing Triablogue: Richard Bauckham is reasonable to deny Matthew's authorship

This is my reply to an article by Jason Engwer of Triablogue entitled

Richard Bauckham Is Wrong About Matthew's Authorship

Monday, May 29, 2017

 I deal with Engwer's trifles here since I believe Matthew and Levi were seperate persons only equated due to corruption in the earliest gospel traditions. Such a problem is part of my very extensive justification for denying Matthew's authorship of the gospel now bearing his name.

He's mostly right about gospel authorship issues. 

That would be enough for skeptics, if they chose, to view Bauckham's view as at least as reasonable as any other view. Reasonableness doesn't require post-graduate studies, nor does it require that one can defend one's views from skeptical attack, otherwise, most Christians would be unreasonable since they accepted Jesus at a time when they were horrifically ignorant of most biblical issues. would you ever counsel a biblically ignorant unbeliever from accepting Christ as their savior, if in fact they only confessed his bodily resurreciton and full diety, but had no clue how to defend such orthodoxy from the "heretical" arguments?  Probably not.  So even fanatical inerrantists are forced to agree one can possibly be reasonable to adopt viewpoint X, even if they cannot defend the view from attack.  Maybe you should hesitate before you label the ignorant skeptic "unreasonable".  Reasonableness doesn't require that she refute any attack.

He thinks Matthew may have had some sort of role in the origins of the gospel attributed to him, accepts the traditional authorship attributions of Mark and Luke, and attributes the fourth gospel to a close disciple of Jesus named John. But he doesn't think Matthew is responsible for the first gospel as we have it today, and he thinks the John who wrote the fourth gospel wasn't the son of Zebedee.

Which would be enough for a skeptic to conclude that Bauckham, a conservative, did not reach those conclusions lightly, but only reluctantly, since his obvious tendency, as a conservative and somebody interested in defending eyewitness authorship of the gospels, would be to make any plausible argument in favor of Matthew's authorship.  That is, a skeptic could be reasonable to say a guy like Bauckham would never have admitted the weakness of Matthew's authorship, unless he felt compelled by the evidence to do so.  You aren't going to demonstrate that any skeptic who accepts Bauckham's conclusions is "unreasonable". You may as well say sphere-earthers are unreasonable if they cannot "refute" flat-earther arguments.  The boys at triablogue couldn't really say exactly how much scholarly tit-for-tat the skeptic needs to research, before she can become "reasonable" to adopt a position on a biblical issue.  Instead, they blindly insist that as long as they can come up with some type of reply the skeptic hasn't quite answered yet, then presto, another vindication of the fool who wrote Romans 1:20. 

Now that the second edition of Bauckham's Jesus And The Eyewitnesses (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2017) is out, I want to revisit the issue of gospel authorship with a focus on his material on the subject in that book. This post will mostly be about the authorship of the first gospel. A later post, which I'll link here when it becomes available, will respond to Bauckham's view of the authorship of the fourth gospel.
You can search the archives for posts we've written over the years that cite some of Bauckham's comments on Mark and Luke. See, for example, here, here, and here.
Regarding Matthew, Bauckham argues (108-12) that it's highly unlikely that a first-century Jew living in Israel would have had two Semitic personal names as common as Matthew and Levi.

Inerrantist Craig Blomberg argued just the opposite:

Only Matthew uses the name “Matthew” here (but cf. Mark 3:18; Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13). Mark and Luke call this disciple Levi. It was common for first-century Jews to have two or three names. Sometimes more than one name was Jewish; more commonly one was Jewish and one Greek (cf. Saul-Paul).

Blomberg, C. (2001, c1992). Vol. 22: Matthew (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 155). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

 If we find that two respectable very conservative Christian scholars take opposite positions on how likely it was for a first century Jew to have two first names, it might make the skeptic reasonable to conclude the issue is not capable of reasonable resolution, and to therefore do what most Christian scholars do anyway and simply choose for himself the argument he personally finds the most compelling.

It's very unlikely, then, that Matthew is the Levi referred to in Mark 2:14 and Luke 5:27. And if Levi were another name for one of the Twelve, Mark surely would have explained that in his list of the Twelve, where so many other details are included (108). Since the author of the gospel of Matthew uses a passage about another man to tell his readers about Matthew's calling (Matthew 9:9), the author must have been somebody other than Matthew.

I think Bauckham was only making a probability argument, I wouldn't expect a person as knowledgeable as he about historiography to mischaracterize the issue as who the Matthew-author "must" have been.

"Matthew himself could have described his own call without having to take over the way Mark described Levi's call." (112) Bauckham also thinks the replacement of "his house" (Mark 2:15) with "the house" (Matthew 9:10) suggests that the author of the gospel of Matthew was only applying Mark 2:14 to the apostle Matthew and didn't think the rest of the passage was applicable (111).
What about the unlikelihood of somebody being named both Matthew and Levi? There are extremely rare names and combinations of names, sometimes even unprecedented ones, in every culture. Why do we conclude that people with such names exist? Because the prior improbability that somebody would have such a name is just one factor among others that have to be taken into account as well, and those other factors can outweigh the prior improbability that somebody would have that name. How reliable is a source who reports that somebody had such a name? How likely is it that such a report would exist if the person under consideration didn't have the name in question? And so on. In his book, Bauckham often accepts a highly unusual name if there are ancient sources attesting it, even just one source. He does it in his section on Matthew's authorship, where he mentions some ancient Jews who are referred to with two names, including at least one that's "unusual" or "very unusual" (109-10). The many comments he makes elsewhere in his book about how popular or unpopular various names were assumes that some unpopular names existed, even ones attested only once. Even if naming somebody both Matthew and Levi would have been "virtually unparalleled", "very unlikely indeed", etc. (109-10), we should go on to look at the other evidence pertaining to Matthew's names and Matthean authorship of the first gospel. We should try to determine the significance of the improbability Bauckham is appealing to in light of the evidence as a whole.

The gospels never specify that Jesus gave Matthew another name, despite specifying that he gave new names to other apostles (John 1:42, Mark 3:17).

Origen thought "Lebes" (Levi) was a tax-gatherer but different from Matthew, and said the view that equates them as one single person is not supported in the NT except in one copy of Mark:

And after such statements, showing his ignorance even of the number of the apostles, he [Celsus] proceeds thus: “Jesus having gathered around him ten or eleven persons of notorious character, the very wickedest of tax-gatherers and sailors, fled in company with them from place to place, and obtained his living in a shameful and importunate manner.” Let us to the best of our power see what truth there is in such a statement. It is manifest to us all who possess the Gospel narratives, which Celsus does not appear even to have read, that Jesus selected twelve apostles, and that of these Matthew alone was a tax-gatherer; that when he calls them indiscriminately sailors, he probably means James and John, because they left their ship and their father Zebedee, and followed Jesus; for Peter and his brother Andrew, who employed a net to gain their necessary subsistence, must be classed not as sailors, but as the Scripture describes them, as fishermen. The Lebes also, who was a follower of Jesus, may have been a tax-gatherer; but he was not of the number of the apostles, except according to a statement in one of the copies of Mark’s Gospel. And we have not ascertained the employments of the remaining disciples, by which they earned their livelihood before becoming disciples of Jesus. I assert, therefore, in answer to such statements as the above, that it is clear to all who are able to institute an intelligent and candid examination into the history of the apostles of Jesus, that it was by help of a divine power that these men taught Christianity, and succeeded in leading others to embrace the word of God.

NPN, Origen: Against Celsus, book 1, ch. 62

Clement of Alexandria distinguished Matthew from Levi:

“And when they bring you before synagogues, and rulers, and powers, think not beforehand how ye shall make your defense, or what ye shall say. For the Holy Spirit shall teach you in the same hour what ye must say.” In explanation of this passage, Heracleon, the most distinguished of the school of Valentinians, says expressly, “that there is a confession by faith and conduct, and one with the voice. The confession that is made with the voice, and before the authorities, is what the most reckon the only confession. Not soundly: and hypocrites also can confess with this confession. But neither will this utterance be found to be spoken universally; for all the saved have confessed with the confession made by the voice, and departed. Of whom are Matthew, Philip, Thomas, Levi, and many others. And confession by the lip is not universal, but partial.

NPN, Clement: “Stromata” book 4, ch. 9

Eusebius says a "Levi" was the "13th" Bishop of the church in His.Eccl. Book IV Chapter 5.

Skeptics have quite sufficient evidence to insist that Matthew and Levi were separate persons and that a corruption in the gospel tradition, or foul play on the part of a gospel author, is why the gospels attribute the same actions to each.

Engwer continues:

D.A. Carson refers to some problems with how Bauckham goes on to handle the remainder of the evidence:
"Yet whatever the onomastic improbability, the identification of Levi (Mark's gospel) with Matthew (here [in Matthew 9:9]) seems less implausible than Bauckham's explanation: the unknown evangelist knew that Matthew was a tax collector (like Levi), and knew he was one of the Twelve, and so simply transferred the story across (on the assumption that the conversion of one tax collector would be very much like the conversion of another?)." (The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Revised Edition, Vol. 9: Matthew & Mark [Gran Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2010], 263)
What's mentioned in Matthew 9:9 isn't what we'd expect of the calling of every tax collector, most of them, or even one other tax collector. How many tax collectors would be in their booth at the time of the calling and would be sitting while Jesus walked by?

All of the ones who were on lunch break?

How many would immediately leave their work and follow Jesus upon being told "Follow me"?

I'm a skeptic:  I don't believe every last little details of everything reported in the gospels.  Jesus might have had disciples, but I don't think they "left everything" quite as quickly as the bible insists.

How many would experience all of those things? It's doubtful that the author of the gospel of Matthew would have thought that the story of the calling of this tax collector would be so applicable to another tax collector.

Or maybe the real Matthew only wrote out Jesus' sayings, and only the non-Matthian author responsible for canonical Greek Matthew thought, for unknown reasons, that Matthew and Levi were the same person.
Or that the authors of Matthew were not trying to harmonize anything, we are simply seeing disparate traditions about two people in Matthew and Mark/Luke, and the only people insisting Levi=Matthew are later readers who have mistaken biblical inerrancy for something that deserves anybody's attention.  Like the lunatics at Triablogue.

Bauckham is wrong in commenting that "The story, after all, is so brief and general it might well be thought appropriate to any tax collector called by Jesus to follow him as a disciple." (111), since the story isn't "so brief and general". The appropriate response to Bauckham's claim that "Matthew himself could have described his own call without having to take over the way Mark described Levi's call." (112) is that anybody could have. There wouldn't have been anybody, whether Matthew or somebody else, who would have needed to use Mark's account about the calling of another man to describe the calling of Matthew. And it's very unlikely that the author of the first gospel would have wanted to tell Matthew's story in that manner. Why give such a significant figure in early Christianity such secondhand treatment, especially if the author of the gospel was associating his work with Matthew as much as Bauckham thinks he was?

Maybe because the later author knew that Matthew was more prominent in early circles, but faded in popularity over a few decades.

The scenario Bauckham is proposing is highly improbable.But he makes a good point about Mark's list of the twelve apostles. You'd think Mark would mention that Matthew was also known as Levi, if Mark had held that view. Luke's list of the Twelve isn't as detailed as Mark's, so the lack of clarification in Luke's list is less important, but it's significant that Luke, like Mark, doesn't explain to his readers, inside his list of the apostles or elsewhere, that Matthew and Levi are different names for the same person.

Agreed.  So skeptics can be reasonable to assume Matthew and Levi are two different people.  The problem is created by the inerrantist who wants to harmonize the Matthew of Matthew with the Levi of Mark, but the historical evidence indicates the reason the accounts give different names is because they were different people.  It could also just as easily be that the Matthew-author invented the name, or wanted to change Levi's name.  Engwer is doing nothing to foist an intellectual obligation upon skeptics to accept the equation of the persons.

However, there's other evidence Bauckham doesn't discuss that suggests that Mark and Luke viewed Levi as one of the Twelve. It follows that though Mark and Luke don't tell us who among the Twelve had the alternate name of Levi, they thought somebody among the Twelve did. That weakens Bauckham's argument about what's "clear" from Mark's list of the Twelve and how Mark "surely" would have included the detail that Matthew had that other name if he'd known about it (108).

Feel free to reduce "surely" to "it is reasonable to conclude".  John and Mark reveal when apostles were given new or surnames, so we are reasonable to conclude that, had Mark known Levi was later named Matthew, he would have said so.  The belief of Origin and Clement that Matthew and Levi were separate men remains significant.

In Mark and Luke's passages about the calling of Levi, the language, themes, and placement of the text are reminiscent of the calling of other apostles, which suggests that whoever is being called in the passage is an apostle as well. Compare Mark 1:16-20 to 2:14-17. Compare Luke 5:1-11 and 5:27-32. In both gospels, the calling of Levi is narrated in close proximity to the calling of those other apostles, with similar language and themes, leading up to the nearby choosing of the Twelve by Jesus and the listing of them by the gospel authors (Mark 3:13-19, Luke 6:13-16). Jesus is walking by and looks at the individual(s) in question and says "Follow me" and is immediately followed, which involves leaving a profession (fishing or tax collecting), in both contexts in Mark (1:16-20, 2:14). That theme of leaving a profession makes sense for the calling of an apostle in the sense of being one of the Twelve, since that sort of apostleship would require so much devotion. Similarly, both of Luke's passages have the individuals in question "leaving everything" to follow Jesus (5:11, 5:28). That theme of the apostles leaving everything is repeated elsewhere (Mark 10:28, Luke 18:28). Their leaving the professions they were involved with was important, "so that they would be with him [Jesus] and that he could send them out" (Mark 3:14). So, the passages in Mark and Luke about Levi have a series of connections both backward to the call of Peter and his associates and forward to what's said of the Twelve. Even without reading Matthew, the accounts about the calling of Levi in Mark and Luke look like the calling of a member of the Twelve.

You aren't refuting anything I believe.  I don't see how pointing out that Matthew puts Matthew in the same position that Mark and Luke had placed Levi in, does anything to hurt my arguments. Yes, the gospels as we now have them in their final polished form, certainly appear to say identical things about Matthew and Levi.  So?  We can assume Origin and Clement would have seen the similarities between the calling of Matthew and Levi, if we assume their own copies of the gospels textually read the same as ours do today.  Were these church fathers simply blind?  Or might their copies of the gospels have made it reasonable to assume Matthew and Levi were different men?

Some passages in Mark and Luke about people other than apostles refer to themes like following Jesus and leaving possessions and making other sacrifices to follow him. But those other passages have less similar language and themes and less significant placement in the text of the gospels. Something like Jesus' call to discipleship in Mark 8:34-38 or his interactions with Zaccheus in Luke 19:1-10 is somewhat reminiscent of the calling of the apostles, but also significantly different. Jesus walks by Zaccheus and looks at him (verse 5), and Zaccheus gives up possessions to follow Jesus (verse 8), for example, but Jesus is only staying in Zaccheus' house briefly (verse 5), there's no reference to his leaving his profession, the passage is far removed from the appointing of the apostles earlier in the gospel, etc. Likewise, Jesus' exchange with the rich young ruler (Mark 10:17-31, Luke 18:18-30) involves a call to discipleship and to giving things up to follow Jesus, but the man doesn't follow Jesus, the passage is far removed from the context of the calling of the apostles, and so on. Both passages contrast the rich young ruler's rejection of Jesus' call and the apostles' acceptance of it (Mark 10:28-31, Luke 18:28-30). While the calling of individuals like Peter and Levi is similar to Jesus' interactions with other people elsewhere in Mark and Luke, there are substantial differences as well. The calling of Levi is significantly similar to the calling of Peter and his associates in a way in which other passages in these gospels aren't. So, independently from the gospel of Matthew, Mark and Luke give us reason to place Levi among the Twelve.

Sure, but they also render skeptics reasonable to assume Jesus had more than 12 apostles, and the later redactors did a less than perfect job of reducing the historically true number of Jesus' closest disciples to the conveniently typological 12.

But they don't refer to any of the Twelve as Levi when they list the apostles, nor do they tell us elsewhere which apostle went by that name. They also leave out other information about apostolic names. Peter is referred to as Simon Barjona in Matthew 16:17, but not anywhere in Mark or Luke. Similarly, Luke doesn't tell us that James and John, the sons of Zebedee, were referred to as Boanerges, a detail that Mark does include. And so on. Bauckham doesn't claim that Mark and Luke are exhaustive about apostolic names. More significantly, Bauckham thinks the identification of Thaddaeus (Mark 3:18) with Judas the son of James (Luke 6:16) is "very plausible" (108), but neither Mark nor Luke offers that identification, even though Bauckham thinks Luke used Mark as a source and appeals to such sources in the opening of his gospel.

Well maybe Bauckham is not a fanatic who thinks it cannot be true unless a gospel author specifically admits it.

That's an instance in which Luke knew about a potential confusion over apostolic names, but didn't offer a clarification. Still, Luke's failure to clarify something potentially seen as a discrepancy between what he wrote and what's in a source he used and that many of his readers would be familiar with (Mark) isn't the same as a failure to clarify something that people could misunderstand in his own writings (that Levi and Matthew are the same person). I'm just giving some examples of Mark and Luke's failure to provide details and clarifications they could have provided about apostolic names, even though the examples I've cited in this paragraph are less significant than not clarifying the relationship between Levi and Matthew.

The fact that Origen and Clement think Matthew and Levi are different, is quite sufficient to render reasonable the skeptic who says they are, and who says inerrantist attempts to converge them into a single person in the name of biblical inerrancy are not convincing.   But I'm sure you'll attribute stupidity to any church father whenever expediency dictates.  But that certainly doesn't impose an intellectual obligation upon the skeptic to back off from saying Origin's NT probably didn't make an equation between Matthew and Levi very clear.  Origen often defended the gospels from charges of historical unreliability and was a great textual scholar himself. If the gospel manuscripts in his day made it clear that Levi and Matthew were the same person, we would expect he would not view them as separate persons.

Chrysostom, Homily XXX,  says Mark and Luke intentionally "concealed" Matthew's identity under the name "Levi", so if he is correct, we'd only be honoring the intent of Mark and Luke to continue "falsely" believing the two names referred to two men:

And we have cause also to admire the self-denial of the evangelist, how he disguises not his own former life, but adds even his name, when the others had concealed him under another appellation.

Engwer continues:

What's most important to recognize in this context is that identifying Levi and Matthew as two different individuals still leaves you with a substantial lack of clarity in Mark and Luke.

That doesn't bother anybody except inerrantists.

If Levi isn't Matthew, then which member of the Twelve is he, given the evidence cited above that he's portrayed as a member of the Twelve in the two gospels under consideration?

Fallacy of loaded question, there is the equally reasonable option, in light of Clement and Origin, that Jesus had more than 12 official 'disciples'.  My view is that Jesus had probably about 100 "disciples" and was later said to be most close to 'twelve' because some such disciples would naturally be closer to him than others, and the gospel authors couldn't resist changing historical fact for purposes of typological correspondence with the OT.

Or if you deny that Mark and Luke meant to portray Levi as one of the Twelve, why did they use language, themes, and text placement that are so suggestive of Levi's identity as one of the Twelve?

I think they did an imperfect job of whittling down the number of "disciples" to "12".

I don't see how a significant lack of clarity in Mark and Luke is a problem only for those who consider Levi and Matthew the same person. There's a substantial clarity problem for Bauckham's position as well.

I don't argue that position the way he does.  Good luck.

What should we think of the change from "his house" in Mark 2:15 to "the house" in Matthew 9:10?

Maybe a desire on the part of the author to do something modern apologists don't want him to do, and taunt the reader with hints of his identity, but without wishing to make it explicit, thus testifying against any claim that he was "amazingly transformed" and justifying the skeptic to consider such an author unworthy of serious consideration.

It could easily be an attempt on Matthew's part to clarify the passage rather than an attempt to distance verses 10-13 from verse 9. As Bauckham notes (111), the "his" in Mark 2:15 is sometimes taken as a reference to Jesus rather than Levi, so Matthew may have changed "his" to "the" in order to avoid that confusion.

Sounds like Matthew thought Mark wrote in a way that facilitates confusion.  Not a happy day in inerrancy-land.

Luke makes the passage clearer by referring to how "Levi gave a big reception for him in his house" (5:29). Perhaps Matthew intended to provide clarification. Or he may have just chosen different terminology than Mark without any intention of clarifying anything and without intending to distance verses 10-13 from verse 9 in the way Bauckham suggests. Furthermore, how would changing "his house" to "the house" have the implications Bauckham claims? To the contrary, the lack of qualification for "the house" motivates the reader to look at the surrounding context for indications of what house is in view. Why would the author send his readers to the surrounding context if he wanted them to avoid the conclusion that verse 9 provides the context they're looking for? The most natural way to take "the house" in verse 10 is as a reference to Matthew's house, since Matthew's booth had just been mentioned, and the reference in verse 9 to Jesus' traveling makes it more likely that he'd be in somebody else's house rather than his own.

Sorry, the only significance I see in the change from "his house" to "the house" is mere stylistic preference.  You may as well write a 5,000 page article psychoanalyzing Matthew and asking why 13:52 doesn't include the "among his own relatives" phrase given that he was copying Mark 6:4 anyway.  I deny that inability to answer such trifling questions suddenly tilts the probability scale in favor of the apologist.

And since I already have good grounds for saying somebody other than Matthew is responsible for the canonical Greek version we have today, I'm not under any obligation to give a fuck why a later anonymous redactor would have wanted to change "his house" to "the house".  It could also be that the later redactor changed it because HE thought this was Matthew's own house.  The option of saying Matthew is the guy making the change and wanting the reader to notice that the house was owned by the author of that gospel, is not the only reasonable option.

If the author of the gospel of Matthew had wanted to distance verses 10-13 from verse 9 as much as Bauckham suggests, he could have put one or more other accounts between the content of verses 9 and 10 or changed or added language to verses 10-13 to distance those verses from verse 9 rather than keeping them together and so undistinguished (e.g., he could have referred to "the house of Levi, a tax collector").
Most of the evidence for Matthew's authorship of the gospel isn't addressed by Bauckham. See here for a collection of posts discussing a lot of that evidence.

I'm almost done answering all of your posts on that subject point by point. 

Notice the number, variety, and strength of the factors involved: the unlikelihood of fabricating attribution to such a minor apostle,

But such attribution can just as easily argue that he wasn't minor in the very early period, he merely faded from view and now you fallaciously view him as always having been minor.

the universal acceptance of Matthean authorship while the authorship attributions of other documents were being disputed,

the early church was also universal that Matthew was written first, which is now found highly unlikely by most Christian scholars who adopt Markan priority.  This particular skeptic doesn't feel the least bit moved by "universal acceptance".  Neither do desperate apologists who reject the majority scholarly acceptance of Markan priority view merely because they don't like how easy Markan priority makes it for skeptics to justify denying Jesus' resurrection.

hostile corroboration of Matthew's authorship,

You forgot Jerome's comment that "many" in his day viewed Gospel to the Hebrews as "authentic Matthew", as if they only came to such view after investigating two different gospels each claiming to be from Matthew.

how well Matthean authorship explains the early prominence of the gospel, etc.

Ditto for GoH.