Demolishing Triablogue: Why the resurrection case cannot be made

This is my reply to an article by Steve Hays entitled

Making a case for the Resurrection

Monday, April 17, 2017

Over the years I've read a number of prominent Christian apologists make their case for the Resurrection. Notable examples include John Warwick Montgomery, C.E.B. Cranfield, William Lane Craig, Timothy and Lydia McGrew, Richard Swinburne, Gary Habermas, N. T. Wright, and Mike Licona. Craig in particular has been influential in making a stereotypical case for the Resurrection, based on his minimal facts strategy, that's widely copied.
 So I was thinking recently about how I'd make a case for the Resurrection if I was asked to give a presentation at church or college.
  I. Prima facie historical evidence
 1. One thing that's often lost sight of in debates over the Bible is that testimony is prima facie evidential in its own right unless we have reason to doubt it. You don't need corroborative evidence before testimony can have evidential value.

You aren't making any sense.  You are a 5-Point Calvinist, and consistently you hold that God has infallibly predestined all acts and thoughts and choices of people for all time.  If God has predestined somebody at the church or college to find your argument unconvincing, no amount of apologetics will overturn that.  If God has predestined a person to be saved, keeping them away from apologetics arguments their whole life will not prevent their salvation.

Lack of corroboration for testimony often leads to false convictions, and testimony that lacks corroboration is more likely to be false than corroborated testimony.  For these reasons, the technical fact that uncorroborated testimony still operates as "evidence", accomplishes nothing beneficial to apologetics.  Worse, in the case of ancient historical evidence, uncorroborated testimony is even less reliable since, at least in the case of NT authors, there isn't enough reliable information on who they were or what they were like to rationally warrant drawing conclusions about their general credibility or lack thereof.  No fool bets his life that Tacitus' uncorroborated word is true, and nobody should (and even most apologists probably wouldn't) bet their life that uncorroborated testimony in the bible is true.

For instance, my grandmother used to tell me stories about her life. That's my primary source of information about her before I was born. I have no reason to think she was lying or misremembering basic facts about her life.

That's hardly an argument.  Plenty of grandmothers and grandfathers embellish what really happened so as to make stories of their younger years more dramatic to the kids.

Most of what I know about my parents before I was born comes from what they told me about their life.

And since parents never lie to their kids, its obvious that people who toss the gospels in the garbage are irrational.

In some instances I might be able to corroborate their testimony, but that's hardly necessary for their testimony to be trustworthy.

But you cannot make a determination about the level of trustworthiness of their testimony, unless you have facts about their general character at your disposal.  Unfortunately, nearly everything the bible and the early patristic sources say about NT authors is the subject of scholarly dispute.  It is not irrational for the unbeliever to cast resurrection arguments aside until facts corroborating the alleged's witnesses' identities and general credibility are confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt.  You can hardly use evidence that fails to rise to that level of certain and then pretend unbelievers who reject that stuff are being "unreasonable", unless you think there is something inherently wrong with requiring evidence to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

Unless we have evidence that the witness is a chronic liar, or unless we have evidence that the witness was motivated to lie in this particular case, it's irrational to discount testimonial evidence.

So what is your advice to the jury who hears a woman testify that the defendant raped her...and there is no evidence that she is a chronic liar, no evidence she was motivated to lie and there is no corroboration of her testimony?

Would you tell the jury that she is obviously telling the truth?

2. The Gospels
 The NT consists of 27 1C documents about a 1C historical figure.

Paul is infamous for his screaming silence toward the teaching Jesus gave during his earthly ministry, making Paul a heretic since according to the resurrected Jesus himself, the teachings he gave before he died on the cross were to be that gospel that was to go to the Gentiles, Matthew 28:20.  Matthew himself obviously didn't think "justification by faith" had jack shit to do with the gospel.

The Epistle of James says nothing about Jesus except that he is Lord (1:1, 2:1).

Jude mentions Jesus and Christ several times, but not with reference to facts about his earthly ministry.

Revelation hardly counts since it constitutes a vision, and you get in serious trouble if you insist that 2,000 year old vision-based commentary needs to given a fair hearing.

i) In the case of the Gospels, there's the antiquity if not the originality of the titles. The uniformity of the titles in the textual tradition is hard to account for unless they are either original or extremely primitive editorial ascriptions. And as soon as more than one Gospel was in circulation, it would be necessary for each Gospel to be entitled, to distinguish it from another or others. Cf. Martin Hengel, The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ (Trinity Press International, 2000), chap. 3, §3.

But even conservative scholars refuse to wax confident about this. Guthrie cautions:

The earliest description of this gospel of which we have any evidence attributes it to Matthew (ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΤΘΑΙΟΝ). This is testified by strong tradition. It was indisputably acknowledged before the close of the second century and there is no positive evidence that the book ever circulated without this title. Indeed it may reasonably be claimed that the title was affixed at least as early as a.d. 125.5 It is, moreover, a fair inference that the form of the title would have been understood as implying authorship. Nevertheless, the title cannot without hesitation be regarded as a part of the original text. Indeed it is generally assumed that no importance can be attached to it, since it was probably acquired in the course of the early history of the document. There are no means of reaching certainty about this. Some facts, however, are clear. The author’s name does not occur in the body of the text and this might suggest that the original copy was anonymous. On the other hand the absence of any parallel forms to our gospels makes it difficult to be certain whether this literary form lent itself to the personal identification of the author. Even Luke’s preface, which uses the first person singular, contains no hint of who is the writer.
Guthrie, D. (1996, c1990). New Testament introduction. Series taken from jacket. (4th rev. ed.). [The master reference collection]. Downers Grove, Ill.: Inter-Varsity Press.  

Hays continues:

ii) According to Acts 12:12, Mark's hometown was Jerusalem. So his home was the site of an original house-church in Jerusalem.

Maybe so.

Given the time and place, he was likely an eyewitness to some of Christ's public ministry, and he had access to the disciples for further information.

Now you are disagreeing with Papias who said Mark neither heard the Lord nor followed him, Eusebius, H.E. 3:39.  If you think Papias was wrong, you have to say Papias got wrong something that any idiot could have gotten right by simply reading Acts, thus impeaching Papias' general credibility.  Get rid of Papias and you get rid of the earliest evidence we have for Mark's and Matthew's authorship.  And if as most scholars claim, the later church fathers were only echoing Papias on Matthew's authorship, getting rid of Papias on Matthew also means getting rid of Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, Augustine and Jerome on the authorship of Matthew.

This is an incidental detail in Luke's narrative, so it can't be chalked up to a forger who's trying to give Mark's Gospel an illustrious pedigree.

Agreed.  Luke's admission that Paul and Barnabas disagreed sharply on whether Mark was sufficiently credible/reliable to remain in ministry, Acts 15:37-39, passes standard tests of historiography and is likely true.

iii) Matthew has a preoccupation with Judaism that would be moot after the fall of Jerusalem and dissolution of the Jewish establishment.

And a forger would know that having "Matthew" obsess on issues the forger knew didn't exist in Matthew's day, would be a dead giveaway.  No fool would author a book in which President Carter vowed while in office to hunt down and kill those responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

And assuming the apostolic authorship of Matthew, which is defensible, he was an eyewitness to much of what he records.

A theory being "defensible" doesn't do the job you cocky apologists wish it did, i.e., render the doubter unreasonable.  That Bigfoot is a genuine cryptid is "defensible" but hardly compels those outside the group to either believe it or be unreasonable.

Yes, there is plenty of evidence that Matthew authored something.  Exactly what its nature and scope was, however, are sufficiently disputable as to rationally justify those who agree with the majority scholarly view that the evidence is too confused to get any reasonably confident conclusions from.

iv) Luke and Acts share the same author. Because Acts intersects with more Roman history than Luke, there's more corroborative evidence.

I don't see the point; most of the Christian theology and history mentioned in Acts is not corroborated, and the Christian scholarly dispute on how and whether Acts' Paul can be reconciled with the Paul of the epistles, rages on and on.  Whether Paul's visit to Jerusalem recounted in Galatians 2 is the same as the visit that involved the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15, appears to be unresolvable, no doubt because the Calvinist god is still stuck in the first century and thinks ambiguous ways of talking separate the elect from the reprobate.

Given that Luke is demonstrably accurate in Acts,

No, he has non-existent interest in telling the reader how the Judaizers argued their views, but he certain loads up the reader with what the apostles had to say in reply, Acts 15.  Luke was aware of what all modern marketing companies and media agencies know; you can create a faulty impression by leaving things out, you don't have to "lie".

we'd expect him to be accurate in his Gospel.

So under your logic, if the suspect agrees to and corroborates many facts alleged by the prosecution, then he is also being truthful when denying guilt.

Evidence for the historical accuracy of Acts includes: Colin Hemer, The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History (Eisenbrauns, 1990); Craig Keener, Acts: A Exegetical Commentary, 4 vols. (Baker Academic, 2012-2015). 

Evidence against the accuracy of Acts includes “Acts and Christian Beginnings:  The Acts Seminar Report”, Dennis Smith, Joseph B. Tyson, editors.  Polebridge Press, 2013. Contributors: Ruben Dupertuis, Perry V. Kea, Nina E. Livesey, Dennis R. MacDonald, Shelly Matthews, Milton Moreland, Richard I. Pervo,  Thomas E. Philips, Christine R. Shea, Dennis E. Smith, Joseph B. Tyson, William O. Walker, Jr.

See also E. Haenchen, "The Acts of the Apostles, a Commentary", Trans. B. Noble, G. Shinn, H. Anderson, R.M. Wilson (Philidelphia; Westminster, 1971), p. 14-50.

v) On a conventional solution to the Synoptic Problem, Matthew and Luke use Mark as a source. That gives us an opportunity to double check on how they handle sources. We can compare Matthew to Mark and Luke to Mark. Both of them are extremely conservative in their use of Mark. That gives us reason to believe they are equally faithful in how they appropriate or edit their other sources.

Except those places where inerrantist scholars say Matthew and or Luke omitted something Mark said because they thought it theologically or historically problematic, or otherwise "toned down" Mark's language:

6:5 This statement about Jesus’ inability to do something is one of the most striking instances of Mark’s boldness and candor. It is omitted by Luke 4:16–30 and toned down by Matt 13:58. 

Brooks, J. A. (2001, c1991). Vol. 23: Mark (electronic e.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 100). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

Mark 8:25 This is the only example in the Gospels of a healing in two stages. An incomplete cure and a two-stage healing may have been thought by some to be discrediting to Jesus. This consideration may be why Matthew and Luke omitted the story.

Brooks, J. A. (2001, c1991). Vol. 23: Mark (electronic e.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 133). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

Mark 4:38 ...The disciples’ question strongly rebukes Jesus and is another example of Mark’s candor, which Matt 8:25 and Luke 8:24 tone down.

Brooks, J. A. (2001, c1991). Vol. 23: Mark (electronic e.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 87). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

5:31 The disciples’ sarcastic reply is an example of Markan candor that is omitted by Matthew (cf. 9:20–22) and toned down in Luke (8:45).

Brooks, J. A. (2001, c1991). Vol. 23: Mark (electronic e.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 96). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

Hays continues:

vi) John's Gospel contains many extraneous details that are consistent with a firsthand observer who's remembering the past–indeed, seeing the past in his recollection, viz. the time of day ("about the tenth hour" [1:39]; "about the sixth hour" [4:6]; "six stone water pots, each holding twenty or thirty gallons" [2:6]). For further details, cf. J. B. Lightfoot, "Internal evidence for the authenticity and genuineness of St. John's Gospel," Biblical Essays (Baker, 1979), chap. 3.

But the Muratorian Fragment presents John as thinking visions after a period of starvation are the best way to come up with gospel material.  And resurrection scholar and inerrantist Protestant Mike Licona says John is not telling the historical truth but only giving "artistry" when giving the time of day something happened.

Apparently, attacking the historicity of John's gospel does not necessarily arise from demonic possession or stupidity.  But Licona isn't a Calvinist and you are, so I can't really say how you'd characterize conservative Christian apologists who don't find your arguments persuasive.  But seeing a demon around every corner makes the job a lot easier, I'm told.

Archeology has confirmed the accuracy of John's detailed description in 5:2. Cf. Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of John's Gospel (IVP, 2001), 109; Craig Keener, The Gospel of John (Hendrickson, 2003), 1:636-38. That's impressive considering the fact that the Romans razed Jerusalem in 70 AD.

Irrelevant, especially in light of the fact that forgers and liars have known for thousands of years that packing the lie with as much truth as possible will tend to motivate others to believe it to be truth.  Under your logic, if the prosecution can confirm many of the factual details in the testimony of the gang-member on trial for murder, then obviously, he is also being truthful when declaring his innocence.

Some critics attempt to minimize archeological confirmation of the NT by saying authors of historical fiction deliberately sprinkle their stories with factual tidbits to give them an air of verisimilitude. Yet critics also Acts and the Gospels were written by authors far removed in time and place from the events they purport to record.

But not far enough removed that they couldn't pepper the text with historically accurate info.

But in that case they wouldn't have access to the necessary background information.

No, see above.  I don't know any scholars taht date Acts so late that the forger was living too late to be able to know the historical details present therein.

Or if they did, that's a reason to think they're accounts are generally accurate, since they are based on access to firsthand information. The critics can't have it both ways.

Gosh, Steve, for all your scholarly acumen, you sure do have a rather naive idea that 'first-hand' means "generally accurate".  Can't say about you, but on planet earth, eyewitnesses lie and are mistaken rather routinely.

vii) An interesting feature of John's Gospel is the number of editorial asides. Cf. Andreas J. Köstenberger, Encountering John (Baker Academic; 2nd ed, 2013), Excursus 3. John will quote a statement by Jesus or narrate an event in the life of Christ, then add an explanatory comment to forestall the reader's misunderstanding.

Which thus probably wasn't inspired by God, since the intended effect was lost on many Christians throughout history.  Everything from eternal security to Jesus' nature.

That, however, is a very clumsy device is his Gospel is pious fiction. In that event, why first make a confusing statement that you must then clarify?

Perhaps you should ask a novelist that question, they seem to find much good in having story characters misunderstand what's going on, only to discover the truth with a clarifying comment.

If you're making stuff up whole cloth, why not build your interpretation directly into the narration rather than interrupt the story with these distracting interjections?

They aren't distracting to other people, and regardless, you are hitting a straw man, the weighty scholarly objections to John's historicity don't come from the extreme skeptical camp that says John made up everything he had to say wholesale.  And you don't know that the gospel authors didn't build their interpretations directly into the narration, as is implied by the Muratorian Fragment on John's authorship.

By contrast, this is consistent with oral history. With someone who's writing or dictating from memory.

Muratorian Fragment, John wished to create gospel material by relying on starvation-induced visions, not "memory".

He recounts what someone said. He recounts what he saw. Then he add his own parenthetical comment to clarify the scene for the benefit of a listener who wasn't there. To provide necessary context.

Or to spin what Jesus said to make sure the alternative interpretation is the one that is adopted.

Anyone who spends much time listening to the elderly talk about their lives is familiar with this practice. Indeed, it can be a big maddening. We want them to cut to the chase.

It's nice to know you don't see any reason to think your elderly relatives never stretched the truth or embellished their own history for your entertainment.  You do indeed strike me as rather gullible, with your clear preference for quantity over quality.

viii) The Gospels are strikingly reserved in their accounts of the Resurrection.

And criminals are routinely advised by attorneys to be strikingly reserved in their answers to the prosecutor's cross-examination.  So reservation and brevity are consistent with dishonesty, and therefore, you need to do something more than cry "short!" to get reliability out of reserved statements.

None of them directly describes the Resurrection itself. None of them depicts Jesus returning to life in the tomb and exiting the tomb. Rather, all of them narrate the aftermath of the Resurrection. People discovering the empty tomb and Jesus reappearing to people.

Only if you think the long ending of Mark 16 is canonnical, when in the opinion of most Christian scholars, it isn't, in which case Mark doesn't give the world any testimony about a resurrected Jesus appearing to disciples.  And if the Christian scholarly consensus is correct in asserting that Mark is the earliest of the gospels, then the earliest of the gospels happens to be the one lacking resurrection appearances, which is perfectly consistent with the theory that says those appearances only show up in the later 3 gospels by reason of fictional embellishment.

And that's consistent with eyewitness reportage, since there were no eyewitnesses to the Resurrection itself.

The “miracle of the sun” in Fatima were reported by thousands of eyewitnesses, see Meet The Witnesses Of The Miracle Of The Sun, John M. Haffert, © 1961, Cover illustration: Picture of the crowd at the Cova da Iria during the Miracle of the Sun, October 13, 1917.  And yet you think all of them are lying or deluded, so apparently you don't believe that when we arrive at "eyewitness", the quest for truth has ended.

No one besides Jesus was in the tomb.

You don't know whether the alleged man/angel the women met went into the tomb or not.

If, however, the Gospels are pious fiction, we'd expect them to describe this central event in spectacular detail.

Given that Mark is the earliest of the gospels and gives us no resurrection appearance narrative, the extra facts supplied in the later 3 gospels constitute "spectacular detail" by comparison.

 Their restraint is an indication of historicity.

The guilty gang-member gave very short descriptions in his eyewitness account, before declaring his innocence.

They only report what they know.

You don't know that the gospel authors restricted their statements to what they themselves knew.  Papias says Mark neither heard the Lord nor followed him, which, if true, means what he gives you in his gospel, he's merely conveying what Peter said, he cannot vouch for the Jesus-stuff personally.

They don't embroider their accounts with sensational details.

Neither does the guilty gang-member who declares his innocence on the witness stand while describing what he saw in reserved fashion.  But again, the resurrection narratives in Matthew, Luke and John can be reasonably construed as sensational details if Mark is earliest and said nothing about resurrection appearances.  It isn't like there's some natural law that says "sensational" can only mean absurdly wild fancy.

 Admittedly, some critics think any supernatural incidents are a telltale sign of legendary embellishment, but that's a reflection of the critic's secular prejudice.

A prejudice that is well-founded in critical reasoning.  You are also suspicious of falsity when you hear miraculous details in the stories of strangers wherein the miracles were only witnessed by the cult members, nobody outside the group.  Again, fuck you and your double standard.

 3. James and Jude
 According to the Gospels, the public ministry of Jesus left him estranged from his family. That's not surprising.

Jesus' family watching him perform genuinely supernatural miracles and still refusing to believe his claims, isn't surprising?

He became a controversial figure.  An embarrassment to his family. Jesus alienated the Jewish establishment. Followers were expelled from synagogues (Jn 9:22). Christian leaders were arrested (Acts).

You don't know that the embarrassment was sourced in Jesus being controversial.  It is equally possible that the reason he was an embarrassment to his family was because they knew his miracle claims were bullshit, sort of like Benny Hinn's nephew knows Hinn's miracle healings are bullshit.  The gospels do not present following Jesus as a some disastrous dangerous affair.  Jesus ran around for three years with his disciples, talking crap to the Jewish religious elite.  Your attempt to find root in Christianity-friendly reasons the objections of Jesus' own family toward him, is abortive.  Common sense says if his miracles were genuinely supernatural, his family members would know this far more than non-family members in that collectivist society.

 Moreover, that doesn't depend on prior belief in the historicity of the Gospels and Acts. For that's a predictable reaction by the religious establishment. This is how people in power typically respond to dissidents, rivals, revolutionaries, "schismatics," and "heretics". That can be documented throughout religious and political historian. It's not confined to any particular religion.
 Eventually, he was convicted of blasphemy by the high court of Israel and executed as an enemy of the state. His stepbrothers would be strongly motivated to disown him for their own protection.

Sure, that's one theory.  Another theory is that they disowned him because they were forced to confront absolute proof that his claims were total bullshit.  Your God doesn't think the disciples had good excuse to abandon him after his arrest, so why do you?

Excommunication would invite an economic boycott of the dominical family. They'd have a lot to lose by guilty association with Jesus.

If you believe that Jesus was anything bigger of a deal to the Jews than a common criminal, then yes.  Was Jesus as big of a deal to the Jews as the gospels say?

 It took a personal encounter with the Risen Lord for his disaffected brothers (James, Jude) to be reconciled with Jesus.

You don't have the first fucking clue about the manner in which James and Jude came into the fold after Jesus died.  James and Jude don't even make the list of possible replacements for Judas in Acts 1, which takes place after Jesus allegedly rose from the dead, indeed, the apostle-selection in Acts 1 takes place after about a 40 day period of Jesus appearing to the disciples.  What is there in the bible or the early church Fathers that tells you the manner in which James the Lord's brother ascended to his leadership position?  It is only in 4th century Eusebius, who says James was voted into office:

Church History, book 2, chapter 1,
The Course pursued by the Apostles after the Ascension of Christ
First, then, in the place of Judas, the betrayer, Matthias, who, as has been shown was also one of the Seventy, was chosen to the apostolate. And there were appointed to the diaconate, for the service of the congregation, by prayer and the laying on of the hands of the apostles, approved men, seven in number, of whom Stephen was one. He first, after the Lord, was stoned to death at the time of his ordination by the slayers of the Lord, as if he had been promoted for this very purpose. And thus he was the first to receive the crown, corresponding to his name, which belongs to the martyrs of Christ, who are worthy of the meed of victory. Then James, whom the ancients surnamed the Just on account of the excellence of his virtue, is recorded to have been the first to be made bishop of the church of Jerusalem. This James was called the brother of the Lord because he was known as a son of Joseph, and Joseph was supposed to be the father of Christ, because the Virgin, being betrothed to him, "was found with child by the Holy Ghost before they came together," as the account of the holy Gospels shows.
But Clement in the sixth book of his Hypotyposes writes thus: "For they say that Peter and James and John after the ascension of our Saviour, as if also preferred by our Lord, strove not after honor, but chose James the Just bishop of Jerusalem."

If Eusebius can be trusted, the history gives us the reasons James the brother of the Lord became a member of the Jesus cult after Jesus died, and none of those reasons involve allegations that he had seen the risen Christ.  And since Matthew 10:2-3 tells us two Jameses were already named among the 12 apostles, the scholarly consensus that the James to whom Jesus allegedly appeared (1st Cor. 15:7) was the brother of Jesus who didn't believe the messianic claims before Jesus died,  is too ambiguous to allow reasonable certainty, and therefore, you cannot cite that Jesus appearing to "James" to argue that specific James who was brother of Jesus, saw the risen Jesus.  The possibility that you wish to get rid of, i.e., that James the brother of Jesus never saw the risen Jesus, remains on the table.

 James and Jude don't ride on the coattails of their stepbrother. They mention the family connection in passing, but they don't exploit that connection for personal gain. They don't use it as leverage to advance controversial claims. So there's no reason to think there letters are pseudonymous.

That's one interpretation.  Another interpretation says they don't make much of their connection to Jesus because they didn't have much of a connection to Jesus to consider worth mentioning.  They were caught up in leadership needs and like most pastors, would have felt keeping the flock in good health was far more important than their own personal views about Jesus.  People often go to church routinely even when they have serious doubts about the faith.

And no reason to think Luke lies about the position of James in the early church.
 4. According to the Gospels, the disciples were demoralized by his humiliating death.

Which is not consistent with their having watched him perform allegedly genuine supernatural miracles up close and personal for three years.  Turning the disciples into demoralized pupils at the death of their leader is a literary device intended to make their later transformation into resurrection preacher all the more stark.  It really isn't that different from the Exodus Jews who, after seeing the Red Sea parted, complain and wish to go back to Egypt.  Their constant failure to get the point affords ample opportunity for the story teller to entertain the reader with dramatic accounts of God's impatience and fearful wrath on doubters.

That doesn't depend on prior belief in the historicity of the Gospels. Rather, that reaction just stands to reason, given mundane human psychology.

That Jesus stayed dead after crucifixion just stands to reason to, given mundane human experience that those who remain dead for at least two day, stay dead forever afterward.   Don't cite Keener's references to resurreciton miracles, you were requested before, for reasons of efficiency, to take the one modern-day resurrection claim you think is the most plausible, and submit it to refute the skeptical charge that our experience against the resurrection possibility is uniform, and instead of doing what needs doing, you ran scared, recognizing perfectly well the beating you'd take once you were nailed down and told to put up or shut up.  We are still waiting for you to sign your own death warrant by committing yourself to defending whatever specific modern day resurrection claim you think is the most reliable.  There is no sense in atheists checking out hundreds of Keener's and others' claims, if you believe one of them stands out reasonably resistant to falsification.

 Yet according to Acts, as well as 1-2 Peter, Peter and John become outspoken representatives of the new faith.

With Peter needing to learn by divine vision, apparently for the first time, that God has granted to Gentiles the repentance that leads to life" (Acts 11:18), a conclusion that his audience of converts give, as if this was some shocking unexpected theological development they'd never have guessed without Peter's recent divine revelation.  Sorry, but Acts is whitewashing quite a few things.

If they thought Jesus died in ignominy, if they thought association with Jesus, as a reputed "blasphemer," "sorcerer," and enemy of the state, tainted them, wouldn't they do whatever they could to distance themselves from Jesus? His departure from the scene left them very vulnerable.

Maybe they were like so many smart Mormon women, who recognize the religion to be bullshit, but continue playing the game nonetheless for their own personal reasons, or because they believe this false religion has something more to offer than the other false religions.  Yet you talk as if there's no denying the reliable truthfulness of the NT authors.

 Even if you think the case for the traditional authorship of 2 Peter is weak, a solid case can be made for the traditional authorship of 1 Peter. I think both are defensible. Cf. Karen Jobes, 1 Peter (Baker, 2005); E. E. Ellis, The Making of the New Testament Documents (Brill, 1999), 120-33. 

The historical grounds for his authorship are sufficiently ambiguous as to rationally justify those unbelievers who refuse to get embroiled in all the dogshit details.

 5. Paul
 I agree with scholars like Paul Barnett and Stanley Porter that Paul probably had some firsthand knowledge of Jesus before the Resurrection. Cf. Stanley Porter, When Paul Met Jesus: How an Idea Got Lost in History (Cambridge University Press, 2016).
 Some critics think Paul only had a subjective vision of Jesus. But "visions" can be objective.

You do not meet your obligation when attacking skepticism, by simply pointing out that visions "can" be objective.  Nobody wins a history debate by reminding us that what they believe is still possible (unless the skeptic has said your position is impossible, and I don't do that).  The winner is the person who demonstrates that their possible theory is more likely to be true than the theory they disagree with.

The fact, moreover, that it was luminous doesn't make it subjective. Jesus was luminous at the Transfiguration.

The Transfiguration is bullshit too.  So is any "vision" where some heavenly figure is luminous.

 If Paul saw and heard Jesus during his visits to Jerusalem, that would explain why Paul was such an early opponent of Christianity, headquartered in Jerusalem.

But only 'IF' he saw and heard Jesus.  Did he?

 Paul was a rising star in Judaism. He had nothing to gain and everything to lose by changing teams.

You don't have the first fucking clue what exact relationship Paul had with his Jewish contemporaries, outside of self-serving statements and statements by his friends.  We don't have to prove Paul a liar.  We only have to show that the evidence on Paul is so old and controversial that those not already committed to his defense cannot reach reasonable certainty about his credibility, to justify tossing his bullshit out the window.

 1 Cor 15:3-8. The obvious source of Paul's tradition is his first visit to leaders of the Jerusalem church (Gal 1:18-19).

No, Paul specifies he didn't get his gospel from men, Gal. 1:1-2.  IF we keep that particular presupposition in mind, then because 1st Cor. 15:3-8 doesn't actually specify he got his tradition from the prior apostles, it would seem that an assumption of Paul's consistency demands that the "received" in 1st Cor. 15:3 is a revelatory reception straight from God.

Worse, the gospel Paul "received" as described in 15:4 is not the true gospel.  Jesus not only didn't single out his death or resurrection as having more significance than his other acts/teachings, he allegedly specified that the gospel to the Gentiles was the requirement that they obey ALL of his earthly teachings (Matthew 28:20), which Matthew's author certainly understood to involve far more than mere death, burial and resurrection.  So a) if Paul 'received' the 15:3 gospel from the apostles, then they are all guilty of misrepresenting the gospel to be something less than it was, and b) if Paul 'received' the 15:3 gospel via telepathy from god, then Jesus must have changed his mind since the time he spoke what's in Matthew 28:20.

Paul has no motivation to fabricate this tradition.

Sure he does, since according to Galatians 1 and 2, he desires to maintain his separate divine ordination from the original apostles despite the fact that it would have been perfectly Christian and biblical for him to have admitted relying on their authority.  Paul is an attention-whore, and he can't maximize his desires if he claims to merely do what the apostles tell him to do.  Claiming he got the gospel by divine telepathy is far more likely to fulfill his desire to draw attention to himself.

To the contrary, given how he jealously defends the independence of his divine commission and revelation, he had a disincentive to appeal to this tradition.

No, a) you haven't established that the 1 Cor. 15:3 tradition was a reference to something he got from the other apostles, it could still just as easily be a thing he "received" in the Galatians 1:1, 11 fashion, and b) even inerrantist scholars admit Paul found himself in a bind concerning his claims of independent authority and the clear authority of the original disciples.  Lightfoot is supposed to be 19th century conservative Christianity's savior, yet he even admitted Paul created a "shipwreck of grammar" here because he wanted to maintain his independence while not entirely discounting the need to include the 12 original apostles:

St Paul is here distracted between the fear of saying too much and the fear of saying too little. He must maintain his own independence, and yet he must not compromise the position of the Twelve. How can he justify himself without seeming to condemn them? There is need of plain speaking and there is need of reserve. In this conflict of opposing aims and feelings the sense of the passage is well-nigh lost. The meaning of individual expressions is obscure. The thread of the sentence is broken, picked up, and again broken. From this shipwreck of grammar it is even difficult to extricate the main incident, on which the whole controversy hinges. Was Titus circumcised or was he not?

23. J. B. Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (10th ed.; London: Macmillan, 1898) 104.

Trinity Journal. 1998 (electronic edition.). Deerfield, IL: Trinity Seminary.

Hays continues:

So he reports it despite his proprietary  inclinations to the contrary.

Yeah, got forbid we should ever think that a person makes grandiose religious claims for dishonest reasons.

 6. Hebrews
 The author of Hebrews incidentally identifies himself as a member of the Pauline circle (Heb 13:23), who is, moreover, in contact with eyewitnesses (Heb 2:3). Why would he lie about that?

Is it ever difficult for juries to tell whether the person on the witness stand is lying?  How much more so whether a person lied 2000 years ago?

If he's a charlatan, why not claim to be an apostle or eyewitness in his own right?

If Benny Hinn is a charlatan, why not claim to be Jesus himself reincarnated?

 7. Women at the tomb
 In that misogynistic culture, women were regarded as second-rate eyewitnesses.

That's probably why Paul doesn't mention them in 1st Cor. 15 despite his mentioning of other alleged eyewitnesses.  Having Paul think consistent with the culture he lived in, is perfectly reasonable.

If the Gospels are pious fiction, why would the narrators invent inferior witnesses rather than more culturally credible witnesses?

Maybe for the same reason those religious people believe God's strength is made perfect in weakness, and other inversions of common sense?

 Ironically, some critics object to the NT because it fails to say that Jesus appeared to more impressive witnesses like Pilate, Caiphas, Annas, or Caesar. But if the Gospels are pious fiction, why don't they say that?

Maybe because when forgers lie, they are aware that lying a bit too much might betray their hand?

That's too speculative.  We are talking about 2,000 year old documents here, why they "didn't" say something is an absurd exercise in futility, especially given the 2,000 years of intense conflict in the church these gospels have produced since their origin.

If the Gospels are pious fiction, they weren't not constrained by the facts.
 They don't say that because they report what they actually know. Because they report what actually happened.

So in the case of Mark, what actually happened stops at 16:8, since of course if he felt Jesus made resurrection appearances to the disciples, it isn't likely Mark would intentionally exclude material that so strongly supports his main point that Jesus is the Son of God.

 II. Miracles
 1. In response to (I), an unbeliever will say that even if testimony is prima facie evidence in ordinary cases, when the account includes reported miracles, that, in itself, makes it factually dubious.

That's what American courts require today, since otherwise, if you get a bunch of fundies on the jury and they are allowed to possibly find as fact that the devil really did make Johnny drive drunk...

Miracles only happen in the Bible, not in real life. Or more generally, miracles only happen in mythology and pious fiction, but not in the world you and I experience.

Given that for all your talk to the contrary, you'd rather die than produce the one modern-day miracle claim you think is the most reliable, we are justified to conclude from such apologetic fear that even Christians fear that miracles never occur in the real world.

 But a basic problem with that denial is monumental evidence for extrabiblical miracles.

And a basic problem with your problem is your failure to commit to the premise that ANY of these are reliable enough to survive the rigors of scrutiny.  I am well aware of the fact that the reason you take the absurd position that surely some miracle claims are true solely from the sheer numbers of such reports, is because you know perfectly well that if you ever do get down to business and specify one such miracle, you will get your ass handed to you in a debate by a skeptic.  So like the trifling pussy you are, you stay on the sidelines.  Even YOU are afraid that the crap you put forth as miracle-evidence, might end up being bullshit.

And not just miracles in general, but Christian miracles in particular.
 I'd add that while Christian miracles aren't direct evidence for the Resurrection, they are direct evidence for Christianity, which in turn makes them indirect evidence for the Resurrection inasmuch as the truth of Christianity entails the truth of the Resurrection. Useful collections of case-studies include Rex Gardner, Healing Miracles: A Doctor Investigates (DLT, 1987); Craig Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, 2 vols. (Baker, 2011); Robert Larmer, The Legitimacy of Miracle (Lexington Books, 2013); Robert Larmer, Dialogues on Miracle (Wipf & Stock, 2015). Larmer's books are primarily a philosophical defense of miracles, but his appendices include firsthand accounts of some miracles.
 In addition, there are some online resources, viz.,
 http://www.premierchristianity.com/Blog/Derren-Brown-wants-to-see-objective-evidence-for-miracles-Challenge-accepted
 http://www.craigkeener.com/talbot-school-of-theology-lecture-1-30-minutes/
 http://www.craigkeener.com/talbot-lecture-2/

Wow, that sure is a lot of evidence.  Can you pick one such claim among them which you feel is most impervious to falsification?  Or did God suddenly reveal to you how it is only the devil who requests specific evidence to support specific claims?

 On a related note is answered Christian prayer. This sometimes overlaps with Christian miracles. I'm referring to prayers addressed to Jesus or prayers in Jesus' name or prayers addressed to the Father of Jesus. In case of answered Christian prayers, that would not be direct evidence for the Resurrection. It would, however, be direct evidence for Christianity, which in turn furnishes indirect evidence for the Resurrection–inasmuch as the truth of Christianity implicates the Resurrection.

Again, you don't cite any prayer-answer you believe most impervious to falsification.  We're waiting.

 2. Unbelievers dismiss reported miracles on the grounds that this in itself makes the witness suspect. Moreover, they say miracles are at odds with what we know about the operation of the world
 Yet that's circular.

Yeah, it's also circular when you are automatically suspicious of a stranger's claim that he saw a  real winged elephant flying around.  Apparently under the logic you use to clobber skeptics, just because your experience of the world tells you there's no such thing as flying elephants, and just because the existence of such monsters flies in the face of all reason, doesn't necessarily limit what God is capable of doing.  So in your disturbed world, rational mature adults first weigh all the evidence for flying elephants, before deciding whether such accounts are reliable. And since anything is possible with God, rational mature adults would never dare assert that flying elephants don't exist, since they cannot possibly know what lives on the dark side of Jupiter.

How do you know what the world is like? You weren't born knowing what's possible. You discover that through your own observation and the observation of others. And that includes reported miracles. If, no matter how often a particular kind of event is reported, you discount the reports, regardless of who reported it, then your worldview isn't based on evidence.

Everybody moves away from strict evidence when they draw general conclusions.  So what?

But it is not irrational to draw conclusions after a period of examination.  It doesn't matter if God can make people levitate, the longer you notice that claims of levitation always go unsupported, the more likely it is that levitation is false.

The alternative is to be forever investigating the miraculous since there's no end of miracle claims.  Thanks, but I've got bills to pay, and this is the part where you say my risk of eternal damnation is so huge that it justifies me to give up my job and income and just sit somewhere investigating miracle claims all day every day, I wouldn't wanna be wrong and end up in hell, would I?

But your own refusal to put your money where your mouth is, is justifiably interpreted by us as indicating that you, the miracle apologist, don't find the modern-day miracle claims too persuasive.  You cannot expect atheists to give a fuck more about the subject than you do.

We've been hammering apologists for years with the offer to examine whatever modern-day miracle claim they think is the most impervious to falsification.  So far zip.  It's a pretty good argument that if Christians won't even put their money where their miracle-mouth is, then not even they have confidence that the miracle-reports are really as reliable as they shout.

 3. Dreams and visions of Jesus
 There are well-documented cases of Jesus appearing to people throughout the course of church history. Cf. P. Wiebe, Visions of Jesus: Direct Encounters from the New Testament to Today (Oxford 1997).

There are also "well documented" cases of Bigfoot appearing to people in the last 60 years.  Do you give a fuck?  No.

 i) Some Christian apologists may view this as a threat to the case for the Resurrection, if we consider it to be an alternative explanation for the post-Resurrection appearances of Christ in the NT, but I think that's a category mistake.

Only beause you refuse to allow all that is implied by the greek word optasia being used in Acts 26:19 to describe Paul's experience of the risen Christ.  Check out optasia in 2nd Corinthians 12:1-4, then come back and tell me that it is a category mistake to identify appearances of the risen Jesus as hallucinations.

 To begin with, "vision" is ambiguous. A "vision" isn't necessarily a psychological event. In principle, it can be an objective, physical appearance of the risen Lord. I'm not saying that's how all reported appearances should be classified. But it's a false dichotomy to define a vision in contrast to a physical appearance.

That technicality doesn't help you in light of the fact that the optasia word used in Acts 26:19 to describe Paul's experiencing the resurrected Jesus, is also used in 2nd Cor. 12:1 to describe Paul's infamously delusional drug-induced confusion whereby even 14 years after the fact, he cannot tell whether he went up to heaven in his body or out of his body.  If Luke in Acts 26:19 is reporting the words Paul actually spoke, then optasia for Paul can indeed refer to absurdly irrational esoteric experiences, so Paul's choice to use such a word and pretend it referred to an experience that other people could partially notice, is pure delusion.

 In addition, both can be true at different times. For instance, the fact that Jesus could appear to someone in a veridical dream doesn't preclude his Resurrection. It's just a different mode of communication. There's more than one way a person can encounter Jesus.

Sure is funny that if Jesus wanted to appear to Paul and commission him for service, Jesus didn't allow himself to be seen by Paul's traveling companions, who could only have spread the good news further or otherwise helped bolster Paul's story.  Sorry, but I've got bills to pay, I don't have the time to research studies in cases where somebody's delusion is partially experieced by outsiders.

There's no antecedent reason that visions of Jesus can't be caused by the risen Jesus.

There is if the whole concept of god and resurrection constitute incoherent terms.  They do.

They see, hear, and feel him via ordinary sensory perception.

I'm an atheist, I don't believe everything in the bible, and I'm still waiting for you to offer the one modern-day miracle claim you deem the most impervious to falsification.

An external stimulus producing the experience.
 Dreams are psychological, but by the same token, people won't confuse dreams with physical encounters.

Then perhaps the author of 2nd Cor. 12:1-4, who 14 years after the fact still couldn't tell whether his absurdly esoteric trip to heaven was an out of body experience or not, wasn't a person.

 ii) If some descriptions of appearances of Jesus are tangible, then that favors a corporeal appearance in those cases.
 iii) I'm not citing the phenomenon as direct evidence for the Resurrection, but evidence for the fact that Jesus didn't pass into oblivion when he died.

Yes he did.  The dreamers are just dreaming.  Dreams don't count.

It's a necessary, if insufficient, condition of the Resurrection, that Jesus still exist. Indeed, that he continues to appear to some people in time of need.
 iv) The reports might be dismissed on the grounds that some visions can be the product of pious expectations. Devout hallucinations. And I'm sure some reported apparitions are hallucinatory.
 However, even in the case of pious expectation, that's an inadequate reason to automatically discount the reality of the report. To take a comparison, Christians pray with the expectation that God sometimes answers prayer. But their expectation doesn't produce answered prayer, and their expectation can't be used to dismiss evidence for answered prayer.

But Christians have a funny way of looking for God's fortune-cookie answer to their prayer in subsequent events.  If they get in a car wreck, then maybe god didn't want them to meet that friend at the coffee shop that day.  Nothing could be more typical of Christianity than the Christian's desire to extract from life's situations God's answer to their prayer.  If they hear nothing, that doesn't count as nothing, it just means God is saying "not right now".

Indeed, if God exists, the expectation is well-founded.

But god in the religious sense of the term, constitutes an incoherent concept, so your attempt to help God keep unbelievers without excuse, fails.

Experience confirms that expectation.
 Moreover, the hallucinatory explanation fails in the case of veridical dreams and vision.
 v) In addition, not all dreams and visions are expected.

Indeed, most abusers of hallucinogens didn't expect to see the little fairies running through the walls.

There are reported visions of Jesus appearing to people who didn't expect it.

Or maybe the storyteller is lying and they did expect it, but the storyteller knows it makes for better drama to assert that Jesus appeared to them when they weren't expecting it:

Indeed, to hostile individuals who are naturally predisposed to reject Christianity, viz. Hugh Montefiore, The Paranormal: A Bishop Investigates (Upfront Publishing, 2002), 234-35; Nabeel Qureshi, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus (Zondervan, 2016); Tom Doyle, Dreams and Visions. Is Jesus Awakening the Muslim World (Thomas Nelson 2012); David Garrison, A Wind in the House of Islam (WIGTake Resources, 2014).

Please cite the one case you feel is the most impervious to falsification, and let's get started.  Unlike you, I don't have all day to just endlessly google whatever crap you point to.

 My post isn't meant to be exhaustive. I'm just highlighting what I consider to be the best lines of evidence. There are other works that fill in many of the details. I don't agree with everything they say, but they often supplement what I say.
 4. Messianic prophecy
 The OT has little explicit to say about the resurrection of the messiah.

a major reason to suspect that the Christian claim is nothing but an evolution of Judaism away from its former self to new things.  What else is new.

The best bet is Ps 16:10. And I think that interpretation is defensible. Indeed, I've defended it.

The reticence with which Christian scholars of the OT apply this to Jesus rationally warrants the atheists who just laugh at your attempt to make a mountain out of a molehill.

Even inerrantist Christian scholar Polhill cannot avoid admitting that Peter's attempt to apply Psalm 16:9-10 appears strained:

Peter’s application of the original Davidic psalm to Christ may seem somewhat strained but was very much in line with Hebrew thought, which saw a close link between individuals and their descendants.
Polhill, J. B. (2001, c1992). Vol. 26: Acts (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 114). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

Walter Kaiser admitted most commentators do not agree with Peters’ applying Psalm 16 to the resurrection of Jesus, see Three Views on the New Testament use of the Old Testament, Kaiser, Bock and Enns, contributors, Gundry, Berding, Lunde, ed., 2007, Berding and Lunde., p. 75.

Bock responded at p. 95 that Psalm 16's association with Jesus' resurrection is best understood typologically, but of course, while that makes sense, "typology" is mere "analogy", it doesn't take the texts to be predicting the future literally, but only saying things that can be used in new and improved ways by others encountering a similar situation.

 What's more interesting is the conjunction of two other OT themes. On the one hand, you have three prophetic texts about the messiah's violent death (Ps 22; Isa 52-53; Zech 12:10).

Sorry, those aren't about Jesus. Psalm 22:1 was a sinner's sincerely held belief that God had abandoned him, only a fool would say this was a prediction of a godman's theologically confused worry that his other self was abandoning him.  The suffering servant in Isaiah is spoken of in past tense terms which is a rather confused way of predicting the future. 53:7 says the servant didn't open his mouth while his executors were slaughtering him, but Jesus obviously does plenty of talking during his execution, John 19:11, Luke 23:28.  Also the Hebrew word for death in 53:9 is a plural, so in your quest to show this stuff literally applies to Jesus, be sure you cite the evidence showing that he died several times.

On the other hand, you have multiple texts about the Davidic messiah's triumphant, everlasting reign. But in terms of relative chronology, the messiah can't reign forever before he reigns ends in death.

An unfortunate complication that is not the skeptic's problem to smooth out.

That would be contradictory. So that implies a messianic resurrection.
 To be sure, an apologist would have to defend the messianic interpretation of Ps 22, Isa 52-53, and Zech 12:10.
 For further reading:
 Paul Barnett, Finding the Historical Christ (Eerdmans, 2009)
 Richard Bauckham, Jesus: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2011), 104-09.
 C. E. B. Cranfield, "The Resurrection of Jesus Christ," On Romans and Other New Testament Essays (T&T Clark, 1998), chap. 11.
 William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics (Crossway, 3rd ed., 2008), chap. 8.
 Gary Habermas & Michael Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Kregel, 2004).
 Craig Keener, The Historical Jesus of the Gospels (Eerdmans, 2009), chap. 22.
 Michael Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (IVP, 2010).
 Lydia & Timothy McGrew, "The Argument from Miracles: A Cumulative Case for the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth"
 http://www.lydiamcgrew.com/Resurrectionarticlesinglefile.pdf
 John Warwick Montgomery, "A New Approach to the Apologetic for Christ's Resurrection 13 by Way of Wigmore 's Juridician Analysis of Evidence" Journal of the International Society of Christian Apologetics, 3/1 (2010):
 http://www.isca-apologetics.org/sites/default/files/JISCA-2010-volume-3_1.pdf
 Richard Swinburne, The Resurrection of God Incarnate (Clarendon Press, 2003)
 N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Fortress, 2003).
Posted by steve at 10:07 AM   

No thanks, I've already decided for much more solid reasons that God doesn't exist, so I only trifle about the details when and if I decide to do so.

James Patrick Holding fails to properly define the resurrection

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

The Resurrection Series, 

Part 1A: Defining the Resurrection

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ezekiel - thought God wanted him to eat paper:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4 Ezra 7:32

1 Enoch 51:1

Sib. Or. IV

2 Baruch 50:2ff

Pseudo-Phocylides 103-4

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

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

Socraticknight's bio is as follows:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In summary,

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

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

A fine example of why James Patrick Holding uses cartoons to teach his supporters

Apparently some follower of James Patrick Holding, using the pseudonym "Victor Polk" just can't stand the heat, and is now following me around the web replying to my posts about James Patrick Holding.

Polk's latest was in reply to what I said at another Christian webpage entitled Apologetics Harms and Offends People.

Here's what I argued there, and how Polk replied:

barry says:  Thanks for the reply.Mr. Holding attempts to show biblical justification for his insulting style, with the article at the link i provided, www.tektonics.org/lp/madmad.... Since you clearly disagree with Holding's conclusions, I was wondering what flaws you believe are present in the arguments he sets forth in said article to support his vitriolic name-calling. What I'm still trying to process is that the Context Group scholar he cites most there, Richard Rohrbaugh, has already read the article and told me it is an "obvious perversion" of Context Group work (personal email to me), and although I've been repeatedly reminding Mr. Holding of that criticism for more than a year, he has refused to change the article!

Victor Polk
He insults others who were either mean to him or showing some intellectual dishonesty towards theology. While he may uses some attacks to call out their misinformation, he is still what I call a gifted apologist.
 Wouldn’t that be ironic to say that he insults others while you basically insulted him? Whoops.

As usual, there are multiple problems with Polk's attempt to save Holding's reputation:

First, the only reason I mentioned something about Holding at that webpage, was because that was the writing of another Christian whose view was directly opposite to Holding's, and I was seeking another Christian opinion.  Polk found that post and now apparently wants to soil that webpage with his own faulty arguments that he is apparently hoping I will reply to there.  I won't participate in helping Polk throw his shit around on other people's websites, so instead I answer him here.

Second, like most of Holding's minions, Polk's attempted defense of Holding's integrity involves no scripture quotes.  I sued Holding for libel, twice.  One would expect that if a supporter of Holding wished to defend his reputation this late in the game, one would show Holding's conduct didn't violate the many NT commands against slander.  Nope, as predicted, Holding panders to intellectual lowlifes who seek him out for a verbal thrill-fest, not because they give two-shits about their alleged faith.

For these losers, Christianity is not reality, it is instead a fun game to enter so as to give them something to bitch about, not too different from football or wrestling.  For obvious reasons, there are no spiritually mature people who give the least fuck about Holding's ministry, the only people who donate their cash to him are immature juvenile delinquent "20-something-going-on-12" types who get a psychological high from his cocky confidence, nothing more.

Third, Jesus said slander is among the evils that proceed from the heart,

 18 "But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man.

 19 "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders.

 20 "These are the things which defile the man; but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile the man." (Matt. 15:18-20 NAU)

and there is nothing in the context to limit it to slanders against other Christians (that wouldn't matter anyway, as Holding slanders his Christian opponents like Hays and White no less than he slanders unbelievers, see here).  and nothing in the context allowing an exemption for slanders based on "truth".

And you cannot use other parts of the bible as an interpretive lens through which to see this verse since

a) Jesus apparently gave that saying orally before the NT was written, so what it meant to the original hearers its original context form is a more objective way to exegete, and

b) bible inerracy is hotly debated by Christians themselves, from what its scope and extent are, to outright denial of the doctrine (i.e., the position taken by most Christian scholars on it).  Because bible inerrancy has nowhere near the universal acclaim that other tools of interpretation have, such as "grammar" and "context" and "genre" (i.e., tools that everybody agree are valid), using bible inerrancy to get away from what Jesus said (i.e., limiting the scope of his slander-prohibition in Matthew 15 by merely running away to some other bible verse you think justifies Christians in slandering others) is nothing short of dishonest.

Third, at least one of those defamation prohibitions was interpreted by Holding's favorite scholars, the Context Group, as forbidding Christians from engaging in verbal insult-for-insult even when talking with unbelievers.  As I pointed out in another blog piece:

Holding lauds the Context Group (or did before he found out they think he is a dishonest immoral perverter of basic biblical morality, and yet the Context Group thinks Peter requires modern Christians to avoid insulting the unbelievers who insult them:
... this is what John H. Elliott, chair of the Context Group, had to say about riposte when discussing the instruction given by Peter to the addressees of 1 Peter.

First, the addressees are warned not to engage in the usual spitting match of riposte and retaliation. They are not to return "injury for injury" or "insult for insult" (3:9; see also the proscription of slander in 2:1), just as Jesus when insulted did not retaliate (2:23, echoing Isa 52:7and details of the passion narrative [Mark 14:61//Matt 26:63; Mark 15:5//Matt 27:12-14; Luke 23:9; John 19:9]). Rather, they are urged to bless their insulters (3:9c) and to disprove their slanderers with honorable and irreproachable modes of behavior within and beyond the community (2:12), for actions speak louder than words (3:1-2).

See here for this quote from the original source. 

Jesus' slanderers were unbelievers, yet he still did not return insult-for-insult.  Yet Holding's 20-year history of internet-based slanders is too well known, as I document extensively here, and as documented even more extensively in my First Amended Complaint from my federal lawsuit against Holding, a full copy of which I will gladly give to anybody who asks, you can contact me by reply to this blog or request by email to barryjoneswhat@gmail.com

I'll now answer Polk point by point:

He insults others who were either mean to him or showing some intellectual dishonesty towards theology. 

-------------The problem is
a) there is no biblical justification for Christians to do this,
b) the bible clearly prohibits Christians from insulting others,
c) as documented extensively here, every Christian scholar with a Ph.d that I've been able to contact (including Blomberg), thinks Holding's slanders violate basic NT ethics,  and
d) as documented extensively here the Context Group said the same and worse, specifically, Dr. Richard Rohrbaugh, who said Holding's magnum opus argument to justify vicious insults (which Holding has changed about 10 times following my lawsuits against him), constituted an "obvious perversion" of all Context Group scholarship as well as the NT itself.

So merely pointing out that Holding insults critics who were mean or dishonest with him, proves nothing, except perhaps that Holding never graduated from Christian kindergarten.

Also, Holding's illegal slanders of me in 2015-16 did not arise from me being mean to him or me showing any intellectual dishonesty toward him.  They arose solely from my making sure plenty of Holding's supporters at theologyweb knew that the scholar Holding relied on the most to justify insults, said Holding gives Christianity a bad name, deserves no respect, and that nobody should pay any attention to him.

As I said in another piece:

The first disowning

----In 2008, I had a debate with Holding at Tweb, in which he engaged is his usual unnecessary amounts of spite and invective.  I emailed Dr. Rohrbaugh in 2008, sent him a sample of Holding's highly insulting unnecessarily vituperative language toward me, and asked him in several different ways whether a modern-day Christian could justify using that kind of language from the bible.  Rohrbaugh replied that such words indicate Holding gives Christianity a bad name, he needs serious psychological help, he has no manners, and neither Rohrbaugh nor any other scholar he could think of, would wish to be associated with Holding.

----I posted Rohrbaugh's answer to Tweb in my defense.  As predicted, Tweb, like any jailhouse lawyer or politician, invoked the trifling technicality that I didn't first get Rohrbaugh's permission, and thereby deleted the post (as if violation of their rule was more frightful to them than the obvious truth that their faith-hero Holding was proven to be a dishonest scumbag). But, asshole that I am, I knew that would happen, so I posted the same to the old FRDB boards, and it is thankfully still preserved in full.  Check it out.

 THAT is what made Holding go crazy with his "Internet predator alert" obsession, which he was forced to take down because his lawyer told him it constituted genuine libel.  Holding is a fucking asshole in every way, he doesn't extend mercy to his critics, especially those he considers the most vile, like me.  So when you ask Holding why he took down his Internet Predator Alert on me despite believing sincerely that it was factually and legally justified, you can be sure that "I wanted to extend barry some mercy" won't be one of his excuses.  He got slapped in the head with a legal 2x4, that's the only reason an obsessed know-it-all asshole like Holding would ever back down from any verbal assault.  

While he may uses some attacks to call out their misinformation, he is still what I call a gifted apologist.

Holding didn't insult me in that limited way, he spread provably false lies about me and my history with other people, even saying 7 police reports showed I had definitely not been a good boy, when in fact those 7 police reports never expressed or implied that I was accused of, arrested for or convicted of any crime or civil infractions.

And you'll be horrified to learn that under NT criteria, Holding's intentional sins of slander and homosexuality would continue disqualifying him from any "teaching" position even if one could prove Holding was a super smart scholar of the bible.  Apparently, you supporters of Holding have not much more than a cartoon-level understanding of the bible (which might explain why Holding tries to teach you theology by means of cartoons).  A teacher's level of smarts cannot ever trump his moral failings.  But you blind bats apparently don't give a fuck, Holding is fun to read and watch, thus testifying to the unspeakably shallow nature of your "faith".  

Wouldn’t that be ironic to say that he insults others while you basically insulted him? Whoops.

-------Is there no end to your thickheadedness?

a) I never subscribed to a bible or ethical system that identifies slander as sin or always immoral.  Holding did. America forbids slander and libel, that's why lawsuits for such are allowed.  And since these laws of America don't contradict anything in the bible, Holding's profession of "biblical" faith requires him to obey Romans 13 and thus obey all civil authorities where they don't conflict with the bible, such as America's laws against libel.

So either find those bible verses that allow Christians to spread lies about unbelievers (the way Holding spread lies about me, justifying my two lawsuits against him) or admit that Holding not only sinned against me, but did so willfully (the smarter he is, the less excuse he has spreading lies about me).  No, blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is not the only unforgivable sin, any sin that is done intentionally is also unforgivable, Hebrews 10:26.

No, Holding has never apologized for telling such lies about me.  Gee, maybe there's a bible verse in your head that says Christians who spread lies about others, don't have to apologize to the victim?  But Paul said the Christian teacher was to do all that is possible to live peaceably among all men (Romans 12:18), and that would obviously include the peace-making gesture of apologizing for his wrongs,  a thing most mature adults require their small children to do.

And my lawsuits documented multiple times in which Holding intentionally lied in circumstances where any reasonable person with even half of his professed intellect would have known the truth.  But you won't be asking me for a copy of those Complaints, because of how scared you are of the truth yourself.  Just keeping telling yourself that Holding is a gifted apologist, while carefully turning away from any evidence to the contrary.  That's how battered women convince themselves to stay in situations to stay with men who are obviously no good to them.

b) You aren't taking any of the heat off of Holding by pointing at your enemy and telling the teacher "but he does it too!?"  Holding is still a foul-mouthed hypocritical asshole.  What other people do doesn't change the facts about Holding.

c) My insults of Holding do not rise to the level of defamation or libel that is actionable in a lawsuit, while Holding's insults toward me did.  Be sure to ask him why he didn't seek to have my lawsuits dismissed on the merits with a motion to dismiss, if he seriously believed, as he publicly asserted so many times, that his words about me were factually and legally justified truth.  Motioning to dismiss on the merits (i.e., proving his words about me were truthful and thus not defamatory) could have been accomplished within one month of his receiving the Complaint in each case, especially given Holding's boast at Tweb in 2015 that my lawsuits against him were as frivolous as if somebody sued Colorado merely because it looked like Wyoming.

Yet Holding didn't dare attempt dismissal on the merits.  That's because he is a lying conniving pig, more worried to escape justice by means of dishonest technicalities invented by non-Christian Pharisee-types,  than in doing the morally right thing.

The facts are not on your side, and if you support Holding, you deserve to be fleeced and fucked accordingly.