RIP Neil Peart

Heard on the radio this morning about the death of Rush drummer Neil Peart.  Since nobody can imagine a Rush concert with another drummer, I'm thinking this is the end of Rush as a band.  See here for more.

Very sad, as I was a drummer back in the 80's and wore out my "Exit Stage Left" tape for 4 years every day after school, trying to be a Peart-clone.  Peart had a full life and made a positive impact on others, and an existentialist farewell is exactly what he would have wanted.  "we're only immortal, for a limited time".

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

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

A Bad Argument Against The Resurrection That's Often Repeated

Monday, January 26, 2009

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

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

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

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

To me, “special effects” is a more plausible understanding of how Matthew likely intended for his readers to interpret the saints raised at Jesus's death. (in answer to Bart Ehrman, see here)

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

Two pages later Licona revealingly admits:

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

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

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

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

Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Engwer continues, saying Michael Bird was:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I wouldn't argue that.

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

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

 1 In the year that the commander came to Ashdod, when Sargon the king of Assyria sent him and he fought against Ashdod and captured it,
 2 at that time the LORD spoke through Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying, "Go and loosen the sackcloth from your hips and take your shoes off your feet." And he did so, going naked and barefoot.
 3 And the LORD said, "Even as My servant Isaiah has gone naked and barefoot three years as a sign and token against Egypt and Cush,
 4 so the king of Assyria will lead away the captives of Egypt and the exiles of Cush, young and old, naked and barefoot with buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.
 5 "Then they will be dismayed and ashamed because of Cush their hope and Egypt their boast.
 6 "So the inhabitants of this coastland will say in that day, 'Behold, such is our hope, where we fled for help to be delivered from the king of Assyria; and we, how shall we escape?'" (Isa. 20:1-6 NAU)

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

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

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

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

A question obviously not directed to skeptics but only Christians.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We know what they thought of public nudity.

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

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

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

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

Mike Licona would agree.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ignatius says:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quadratus says:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Irrelevant to me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mike Licona said that problem arises naturally, see above.

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

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

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

come from more sources,

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

and are more detailed.

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

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

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

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

Agreed.

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

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

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

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

Attacking the Historical Reliability of John's gospel: the Christian scholars who help the cause

Agnostic New Testament scholar and historian Bart Ehrman caused a storm of controversy in publishing How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher From Galilee (HarperCollins, 2014).  Therein he essentially argues that the higher Christology in the gospels did not exist in the earliest strata, citing John, which all acknowledge to be the latest of the 4, as having the highest Christology.

Conservatives were not slow to provide scholarly response, see How God Became Jesus: The Real Origins of Belief in Jesus' Divine Nature-A Response to Bart Ehrman, Michael F. Bird, Dr. Craig A. Evans, Simon Gathercole, Charles E. Hill, Chris Tilling (Zondervan Academic; 2014).

Michael Bird's chapter includes a revealing admission, given that he is trying to defend the historical reliability of the gospel of John from scholarly attack:  From pp. 67-68

Bird is admitting that what we get in John's gospel are traditions that have been "truly interpreted through a pronounced theological lens".  Notice the underlined portion too.

Bird makes a similar but slightly more revealing claim at Patheos:

The Johannine Gospel yields a creative blend of memory, mystery, and midrash.

See here.

Exactly where does the skeptic become "unreasonable" in arguing that conservative Christian scholars, while in the process of defending John's historical reliability from scholarly attack, would never made such admissions about John unless they felt the typical fundamentalist "gospels = videotape" viewpoint was false?

What did we skeptics miss?  Maybe Michael Bird doesn't know what he's talking about, or is just a liberal wolf among conservative sheep?  No, you can get his bio and more from the video wherein he debates Bart Ehrman on the subject "How Jesus Became God". See here.  Wikipedia refers to Eternity Magazine calling him a "heavy-hitter" and says Bird is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society, Society of Biblical Literature, and Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas.  Clearly he has no other interest except to serve the devil.

This post does not pretend to delve into the myriad scholarly justifications for tossing John's resurrection testimony in the trash, it is simply to correct a profound misunderstanding that most Christians have, namely, that you can never be "reasonable" to believe position X merely because your opponent admits it is true.

In a court of law, this is called "admission of party opponent" and is particularly devastating where admissible, as common sense says your opponent would never admit to any truth-claim you also believe in, unless they seriously thought the claim had a lot of merit.

I'm not saying Bird admitted Jesus didn't rise from the dead.  I'm merely saying Bird's admissions about the non-historical elements in John justify the skeptic to conclude that not even "accepting Jesus" , becoming "born again", and obtaining one's Ph.d in a gospel-related field, will do anything to help keep alive the simpleminded fundie view that Jesus actually spoke every statement placed in his mouth by John.

If a skeptic is an amateur, they are reasonable to simply accept such concessions from the likes of Bird, Evans, etc, and conclude personally that John's gospel offers nearly nothing of serious historical value to help in the problem of Jesus' resurrection.

That would not be sufficient for the skeptic who knows their bible very well and goes around making scholarly claims in opposition to Christianity...like me.  We know about the more detailed arguments conservatives make in the effort to make John's gospel appear as much like a verbatim transcript of a video as possible.  Skeptics like us would a greater duty than the amateur skeptic to answer such arguments.  I have, but I haven't posted most online because I disagree with other authors who make their book content available for free in various posts online.

You would figure that if the historical reliability of John and his Christ-sayings were such an obvious fact of reality, we wouldn't be finding conservative evangelical Christian scholars making the opposite claim as they go about defending John's historical reliability from Ehman's attacks.

Sorry, Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes: Isaiah 7:14 is not a prediction about Jesus

This is my reply to the Christian interpretation of Isaiah 7:14 as found in Geisler & Rhodes, "Conviction Without Compromise" (Harvest House Publishers, 2008).

(Triablogue published its own defense of the Christian interpretation of Isaiah 7:14, and my reply to that is here)

Geisler and Rhodes argue:



See here.

First, none of this matters: Paul says the resurrection of Jesus is the Achilles' Heel of Christianity:

 12 Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?
 13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised;
 14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain.
 15 Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised.
 16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised;
 17 and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.
 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
 19 If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied. (1 Cor. 15:12-19 NAU)

I have extensively rebutted the arguments of Licona, Habermas and W.C. Craig for the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus.  So under Paul's logic, keeping Jesus in the ground after death would override whatever benefit you thought you could obtain by "proving" that Isaiah 7:14 was a prediction of Jesus.

Apologists will say Isaiah's ability to predict Jesus 700 years in advance still proves god's existence so atheism is still wrong.  But even supposing atheism to be wrong, Paul warns that Christians would be false witnesses of God if Jesus didn't rise from the dead.  If the atheist rebuttal to the resurrection arguments are solid, there is a corresponding rise in the likelihood that any "god" that is still there, will be more pissed off at the Christians for false witness, than he would be at those who simply deny his basic existence.  See Deut. 13.  If Galatians 1:8-9 is true, then apparently MISrepresenting God is far worse than simply refusing to believe he exists.  What the apologist never bothers with is why the alleged wrongness of atheism should be of any concern.  Being wrong cannot be a rational basis for concern to correct oneself, unless the wrong can be shown to increase the  probability that one will endure disaster.

Second, the late Geisler's promoters admit elsewhere that fulfillment of this prophecy "may be" two-fold (i.e., double-fulfillment, the last desperate exegetical acrobatic left to the fundie when you prove the immediate context isn't talking about Jesus). See here.

Third, Evangelical Christian scholars disagree about what is happening in Isaiah 7:14, which would hardly be the case if the "predictive" view espoused by Geisler and Rhodes, supra, was the only "reasonable" one. Apparently, some genuine Christian scholars don't think we should read the bible as if it was yesterday's headline in the New York Times. They are fearful that there are subtleties that will be easily missed by the childish fundamentalist method. The Christian scholars who see Isaiah 7:14 as not predictive, but merely typological are found contrasted with the fundamentalist views in David L. Turner's Matthew, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Baker Academic, 2008), pp. 69-73.

The apologists at "Triablogue" offer a bit more about this tendency among Christian scholars to doubt whether Isaiah 7:14 refers to the virgin conception of Jesus:

Wegner states, "There is little doubt that Isa. 7:14 and its reuse in Matt. 1:23 is one of the most difficult problems for modern scholars."⁶⁷ This stems from a growing amount of evangelicals who question whether Isaiah 7:14 prophesies about a virgin birth. To be clear, these scholars acknowledges that Jesus was certainly born of a virgin as Matthew states (1:23). However, did Isaiah intend for that idea originally? Is there any movement from Old Testament to New Testament in this case?

See here.  Christian scholars who are "evangelical" and thus have a higher view of the bible than "liberals" therefore have strong predisposition to just blindly insist that Matthew's use of Isaiah 7:14 is correct.  So when "evangelical" Christian scholars become disenchanted with this fundamentalist view, its probably because they sense serious scholarly reasons for doing so, not because they are being used by Satan as wolves among the sheep...or any other scare-analogy to keep the blindly ignorant fearful of God's wrath upon heretics.

How probable is it that the simple-minded fundamentalist "read-the-bible-like-a-newspaper" interpretation of Isaiah 7:14 is the only "reasonable" one?

No student of the Old Testament need apologize for a treatment of Isaiah 7:14 in relation to the doctrine of the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. From earliest times to the present the discussions which have centered about this theme have been both interesting, varied, and at times even heated. Lindblom characterizes Isaiah 7:14 as “the endlessly discussed passage of the Immanuel sign.” Rawlinson maintains: “Few prophecies have been the subject of so much controversy, or called forth such a variety of exegesis, as this prophecy of Immanuel. Rosenmueller gives a list of twenty-eight authors who have written dissertations on it, and himself adds a twenty-ninth. Yet the subject is far from being exhausted.” Barnes emphasizes the obscurity of the passage: “Who this virgin was, and what is the precise meaning of this prediction, has given, perhaps, more perplexity to commentators than almost any other portion of the Bible.” Again, he insists, “Perhaps there is no prophecy in the Old Testament on which more has been written, and which has produced more perplexity among commentators than this. And after all, it still remains, in many respects, very obscure.” Skinner seeks in a general way to pinpoint the source of the difficulties. He states: “Probably no single passage of the Old Testament has been so variously interpreted or has given rise to so much controversy as the prophecy contained in these verses.

Charles Lee Feinberg, The Virgin Birth in the Old Testament and Isaiah 7:14,

BSac—V119 #475—Jul 62—251

One Evangelical Christian scholar, J.D.W. Watts, explains Matthew's use of Isaiah 7:14 as the result of taking OT passages out of context, a disaster-prone hermeneutic that nevertheless enjoyed wide popularity in 1st century Judaism:

A second factor facilitated the use of Isa 7:14 in Matthew. A hermeneutical method was in general use which allowed verses to be separated from their contexts. Verses or individual words were understood to have esoteric meanings whose significance could be revealed to an inspired teacher or writer. Thus the entire Scripture was viewed as a prophecy intended to interpret the moment in which the reader lived. Verses were abstracted from both the historical and literary setting in which they originally appeared. They were then identified with an event or a doctrine which was altogether extraneous to the original context or intention. This kind of interpretation presumes a view of inspiration and of history in which God moves in all ages mysteriously to plant his secrets so that later ages may put the puzzle together and thus reveal his purposes and the direction of his intention....This kind of interpretation is subject to the criticism that it ignores the rightful demands of contextual and historical exegesis which call for a meaning related to the end of the Syro-Ephraimite War in terms of v 16.

Watts, J. D. W. (2002). Vol. 24: Word Biblical Commentary : Isaiah 1-33. 

Word Biblical Commentary (pp.103-104). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

So, just in case you might have thought that Isaiah 7:14 causes any atheist bible critic to lose any sleep at night, think again.  Your own Christian evangelical scholars refuse to push that verse as much as the fundies do when in fact by being "evangelical" and "Christian" those scholars know they stand much to gain by pretending that this verse is straight up predictive prophecy.  Seems reasonable to infer that the scholars are aware there's a hell of lot more complexity going on here than what we get with Geisler's "read the bible like a newspaper" crap.

Fourth, Giesler admits in his "Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics" (Baker Books, 1999)

"Single Reference to a Natural Birth. Liberal scholars and some conservatives view Isaiah
7:14 as having reference only to the natural conception and birth of the son of the prophetess." (entry for "Virgin Birth in Isaiah 7:14").

We would not expect any "conservative" bible scholars to limit Isaiah 7:14 to an unknown boy born naturally in 700 b.c., unless what the text really means is far less clear than Geisler pretends.

Fifth, the "sign" is not the fact that the woman who conceives is a "virgin". The "sign" is the timing between when the boy learns to distinguish good and evil, and the fall of the two other kingdoms which Ahaz feared. This is clear from the immediate context, for which the following quote is longer than normal:

3 Then the LORD said to Isaiah, "Go out now to meet Ahaz, you and your son Shear-jashub, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool, on the highway to the fuller's field,
4 and say to him, 'Take care and be calm, have no fear and do not be fainthearted because of these two stubs of smoldering firebrands, on account of the fierce anger of Rezin and Aram and the son of Remaliah.
5 'Because Aram, with Ephraim and the son of Remaliah, has planned evil against you, saying,
6 "Let us go up against Judah and terrorize it, and make for ourselves a breach in its walls and set up the son of Tabeel as king in the midst of it,"
7 thus says the Lord GOD: "It shall not stand nor shall it come to pass.
8 "For the head of Aram is Damascus and the head of Damascus is Rezin (now within another 65 years Ephraim will be shattered, so that it is no longer a people),
9 and the head of Ephraim is Samaria and the head of Samaria is the son of Remaliah. If you will not believe, you surely shall not last."'"
10 Then the LORD spoke again to Ahaz, saying,
11 "Ask a sign for yourself from the LORD your God; make it deep as Sheol or high as heaven."
12 But Ahaz said, "I will not ask, nor will I test the LORD!"
13 Then he said, "Listen now, O house of David! Is it too slight a thing for you to try the patience of men, that you will try the patience of my God as well?
14 "Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel.
15 "He will eat curds and honey at the time He knows enough to refuse evil and choose good.
16 "For before the boy will know enough to refuse evil and choose good, the land whose two kings you dread will be forsaken.
17 "The LORD will bring on you, on your people, and on your father's house such days as have never come since the day that Ephraim separated from Judah, the king of Assyria."
18 In that day the LORD will whistle for the fly that is in the remotest part of the rivers of Egypt and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria. (Isa. 7:3-18 NAU)

As is clear from the preceding context, the subject is King Ahaz's fear of other kingdoms, so we would only expect that the "sign" for him would consist of something to do with his safety or the defeat of those other kingdoms. "Look at that woman over there, her hymen is still intact, but she is pregnant anyway, what a miracle!" wouldn't fit the context as part of the "sign".

Sixth, the context makes clear that the words of encouragement are for Ahaz to find relief in. He lived in 700 b.c. He could hardly find relief in a prediction that some virgin would get pregnant 700 years after he died. That would be like some dipshit saying "don't worry about the gang-members plotting to kill you next year, because 700 years from now a woman will get pregnant from god in a way that doesn't rupture her hymen..." (!?). Evangelical Christian scholars agree:

14–16 The “sign” is revealed anyway. A young woman who is apparently present or contemporary, but not yet married (i.e., a virgin) will in due course bear a child and call his name Immanuel meaning God-(is)-With-Us. By the time the child is old enough to make decisions, the land of the two opposing kings will be devastated. The sign is simple. It has to do with a period by which time the present crisis will no longer be acute or relevant. This is parallel to the statement in v 8b but indicates a much shorter period. The shorter period accords with history. Tiglath-Pileser’s reactions to Rezin and the son of Remaliah came in 733 b.c. when he reduced most of Israel to the status of an Assyrian province.

Watts, J. D. W. (2002). Vol. 24: Word Biblical Commentary : Isaiah 1-33. 

Word Biblical Commentary (Page 97). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

Seventh, the conception/birth of Jesus have precisely nothing to do with the fall of the two kingdoms Isaiah predicts in 7:16.

Eighth, there is no historical evidence that the Jews, expectant as they were of a coming messiah, ever thought Isaiah 7:14 was a prediction of any such messiah.

Giesler and Rhodes continue:




The argument is that the woman is described as still having her hymen intact, despite the fact that she is pregnant, hence, a conception-miracle that could only have been caused by God.  There are numerous powerful objections:

a)  Once again, the born child in question must have something to do with giving King Ahaz relief from his fear of other kingdoms.  Telling him to take courage because a virgin will give birth to a son 700 years later doesn't exactly make "sense".  You don't change this contextual constraint by pointing out that almah in Hebrew always means woman with hymen intact.

b) The context does not support the premise that the "sign" is the pregnant woman still being a virgin, rather, again, the "sign" is the timing of the child's learning good/evil, and the fall of the other kingdoms Ahaz feared.  You don't change this contextual constraint by pointing out that almah in Hebrew always means woman with hymen intact.

c) According to the NRS, Isaiah uses the present tense (i.e., the young woman IS pregnant), which translation, if accurate, is a rather forceful proof that the child in question would be born in 700 b.c. and thus could not possibly be Jesus.  This is probably why die-hard fundamentalists blindly insist in "double-fulfillment" (i.e., when they cannot overcome the contextual constraints that show the child in question cannot possibly be Jesus, they suddenly discover that there can be a "primary" fulfillment and a "secondary" fulfillment...but such double-fulfillment fancy runs contrary to the standard rule of context, which says the subject IS about what the context says.

d) "But what is the precise meaning of ’almah? There are numerous scholars who are noncommittal as to whether the term signifies a virgin or a married woman. Rogers states his position clearly: “First of all, it must be said that the Hebrew word almah may mean ‘virgin,’ but does not necessarily mean anything more than a young woman of marriageable age. Had the prophet intended specifically and precisely to say ‘virgin,’ he must have used the word bethulah, though even then there would be a faint shade of uncertainty.” From BSac—V119 #475—Jul 62—255, supra.

e) "If one looks to Isaiah 7 and reads this passage in its context, he will see that the prophet was not primarily speaking of the birth of Christ…There is really no way that one can make this prophecy apply exclusively to the birth of Christ without totally disregarding the context of Isaiah 7…Nothing in the context of Isaiah 7 would demand a virgin birth."  Biblical Interpretation, Principles and Practice: Studies in Honor of Jack Pearl Lewis. Kearly, Myers, Hadley, editors, Baker Books, third printing, 1987, p. 279

Geisler and Rhodes continue:

Joel 1:8 doesn't say the girl is married.

 6 For a nation has invaded my land, Mighty and without number; Its teeth are the teeth of a lion, And it has the fangs of a lioness.
 7 It has made my vine a waste And my fig tree splinters. It has stripped them bare and cast them away; Their branches have become white.
 8 Wail like a virgin girded with sackcloth For the bridegroom of her youth.
 9 The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off From the house of the LORD. The priests mourn, The ministers of the LORD. (Joel 1:6-9 NAU)

The NET and NIV reflect this subtlety, thus proving such understanding is not "unreasonable":

NET  Joel 1:8 Wail like a young virgin clothed in sackcloth, lamenting the death of her husband-to-be.

NIV  Joel 1:8 Mourn like a virgin in sackcloth grieving for the betrothed of her youth.

Geisler and Rhodes  continue:

"The upshot of all of this is the conclusion that there is no defensible linguistic logic for suggesting the meaning “virgin” for the Hebrew almâ. Exegetical methods lead us to the meaning “youth” or adolescent.” It is only hermeneutical considerations, or should we say theological considerations, that would demand that the issue be pushed further than linguistic analysis could support."

John H. Walton, Isa 7:14: What’s In A Name? JETS 30/3 (September 1987) 293

Geisler and Rhodes continue:

But I don't believe the NT is inspired by God, since there is no way to "show" such a thing except by demanding that the historical happenstance that ended up giving us a NT was something guided by "god", which is not going to sound persuasive to anybody except those who already believe.

I also have no reason to think Matthew himself was inspired by God since nothing in the book now bearing his name indicates he claimed any such thing.  When your witness refuses to admit something that you need to help your argument, that means you lose.  What else are you going to say about Matthew that you don't know the first fucking thing about?  That he liked pizza more than cake?  he didn't say shit about that either, but don't let a lack of factual detail prevent your brain from conjuring up whatever you need to make you feel better.

Geisler and Rhodes continue:

Doesn't matter if the woman in question was a virgin at the time of the statement, saying she would conceive a child isn't the same as saying she would conceive a child without sexual union.   Especially if Isaiah is speaking prophetically, he could just as easily be referring to the fact that a woman who is now a virgin, will in the future conceive a child.  That doesn't necessarily mean her hymen will remain intact during conception.

And this interpretation violates the rule of context, since as demonstrated earlier, the idea that Isaiah might think King Ahaz could take comfort in the "fact" that a miraculous birth would occur 700 years after he dies, is just stupid, but set forth aggressively by apologists anyway in their inerrant quest to messianic prophecy while not being too forthright about what it means to let the immediate context determine meaning.

Geisler and Rhodes continue:

No, Isaiah in chapter 8 explains what he means by Immanuel, and it isn't a child born 700 years into the future, and the "god with us" ironically means that Ahaz shall not see political deliverance but only defeat and battle, because he rejected the message of Isaiah, whom the Lord was with:

5 Again the LORD spoke to me further, saying,
 6 "Inasmuch as these people have rejected the gently flowing waters of Shiloah And rejoice in Rezin and the son of Remaliah;
 7 "Now therefore, behold, the Lord is about to bring on them the strong and abundant waters of the Euphrates, Even the king of Assyria and all his glory; And it will rise up over all its channels and go over all its banks.
 8 "Then it will sweep on into Judah, it will overflow and pass through, It will reach even to the neck; And the spread of its wings will fill the breadth of your land, O Immanuel. 9 "Be broken, O peoples, and be shattered; And give ear, all remote places of the earth. Gird yourselves, yet be shattered; Gird yourselves, yet be shattered.
 10 "Devise a plan, but it will be thwarted; State a proposal, but it will not stand, For God is with us." 11 For thus the LORD spoke to me with mighty power and instructed me not to walk in the way of this people, saying, (Isa. 8:5-11 NAU)

Geisler and Rhodes continue:

That's just stupidity gone to seed:   The natural interpretation is that the speaker now wants all other Jews to hear his message, not merely Ahaz.  So all that is implied is an expansion of the message to other contemporaries of Ahaz.  The burden is on the apologist to show that "house of David" is meant to elicit the attention of future Jews, and despite Isaiah's ability to speak about future people, he indicates no such thing here.

Geisler and Rhodes continue:

The extraordinary nature of the sign is simply Isaiah's alleged ability to predict that before the boy in question learns to distinguish good from evil, the land of the two kings Ahaz feared would be abandoned.  Once again, there is no contextual justification for pretending that the pregnancy of the virgin was itself the "sign".  The sign had to be relevant to Ahaz.  Jesus being born to the virgin Mary 700 years after Ahaz and all his generation died off wold hardly qualify, except in the eyes of desperate apologists who will abandon the constraints of context anytime they feel the interests of apologetics would be served in doing so.

Geisler and Rhodes continue:

No, as explained above, Isaiah 8 shows that the "Immanual" refers to God being with those who are on Isaiah's side of the debate, a contextual clue that forces the child who is called by this name, to be a boy born in the days of Isaiah.  There is no fucking way any apologist is going to apply the events in Isaiah 8:8 to Jesus' day, except by the wild esoteric bullshit that favors mysticism over well-settled principles of interpretation.

Geisler and Rhodes continue:

Irrelevant, we've shown that applying Isaiah 7:14 to Jesus is to take Isaiah 7 out of context.

Geisler and Rhodes continue:

What do you mean the same verse cannot refer to opposing things?  I'm not an inerrantist, I don't automatically assume an ancient religious author was consistent in everything he said, especially in the case of Isaiah where it is likely there were at least 3 different authors and what we now have also went through textual modification for centuries before it came to us. 1QIsa only gets you back to about 100  b.c., when in fact Isaiah himself lived 600 years earlier.  Then you are going to tell me 500 years of textual darkness means nothing?

Geisler and Rhodes continue:

Jesus was never called "Immanuel" in the NT, and the fact that the angel of the Lord can speak as god without being god means in OT Judaism there was a doctrine that suffered from cognitive dissonance...the person doing the speaking wasn't himself god, but it was still appropriate to react toward him as if he was.

 11 The angel of the LORD said to her further, "Behold, you are with child, And you will bear a son; And you shall call his name Ishmael, Because the LORD has given heed to your affliction.
 12 "He will be a wild donkey of a man, His hand will be against everyone, And everyone's hand will be against him; And he will live to the east of all his brothers."
 13 Then she called the name of the LORD who spoke to her, "You are a God who sees"; for she said, "Have I even remained alive here after seeing Him?" (Gen. 16:11-13 NAU)
 11 But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am."
 12 He said, "Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me." (Gen. 22:11-12 NAU) 

 2 The angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed.
 3 So Moses said, "I must turn aside now and see this marvelous sight, why the bush is not burned up."
 4 When the LORD saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, "Moses, Moses!" And he said, "Here I am."
 5 Then He said, "Do not come near here; remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground."
 6 He said also, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." Then Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. (Exod. 3:2-6 NAU) 

 19 The angel of God, who had been going before the camp of Israel, moved and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud moved from before them and stood behind them. (Exod. 14:19 NAU) 

20 "Behold, I am going to send an angel before you to guard you along the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared.
 21 "Be on your guard before him and obey his voice; do not be rebellious toward him, for he will not pardon your transgression, since My name is in him.
 (Exod. 23:20-21 NAU) 

 31 Then the LORD opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the LORD standing in the way with his drawn sword in his hand; and he bowed all the way to the ground.
 32 The angel of the LORD said to him, "Why have you struck your donkey these three times? Behold, I have come out as an adversary, because your way was contrary to me. (Num. 22:31-32 NAU) 

 1 Now the angel of the LORD came up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said, "I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land which I have sworn to your fathers; and I said, 'I will never break My covenant with you, (Jdg. 2:1 NAU) 

 12 The angel of the LORD appeared to him and said to him, "The LORD is with you, O valiant warrior."
 13 Then Gideon said to him, "O my lord, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, 'Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?' But now the LORD has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian."
 14 The LORD looked at him and said, "Go in this your strength and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian. Have I not sent you?" (Jdg. 6:12-14 NAU) 

Better is Judges 6, where seeing the angel of the Lord face to face is considered equally as deadly as seeing the Lord face to face:
 21 Then the angel of the LORD put out the end of the staff that was in his hand and touched the meat and the unleavened bread; and fire sprang up from the rock and consumed the meat and the unleavened bread. Then the angel of the LORD vanished from his sight.
 22 When Gideon saw that he was the angel of the LORD, he said, "Alas, O Lord GOD! For now I have seen the angel of the LORD face to face."
 23 The LORD said to him, "Peace to you, do not fear; you shall not die." (Jdg. 6:21-23 NAU) 

 9 In all their affliction He was afflicted, And the angel of His presence saved them; In His love and in His mercy He redeemed them, And He lifted them and carried them all the days of old. (Isa. 63:9 NAU) 

 6 And the angel of the LORD admonished Joshua, saying,
 7 "Thus says the LORD of hosts, 'If you will walk in My ways and if you will perform My service, then you will also govern My house and also have charge of My courts, and I will grant you free access among these who are standing here. (Zech. 3:6-7 NAU)

The issue is not "can Christians be reasonable to view Isaiah 7:14 as a prediction of Jesus?".

The issue is "can a person be reasonable to deny that Isaiah 7:14 is a prediction of Jesus?"

Yes, obviously.