Wallace's exercise in futility: An answer to J. Warner Wallace on resurrection contradictions

This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled

How Many Women Visited the Tomb of Jesus?

Posted: 11 Dec 2017 01:05 AM PST

How Many Women Visited the Tomb? 

Many of my articles here at ColdCaseChristianity.com investigate issues and passages commonly offered as examples of “contradictions” between Gospel accounts. One such alleged contradiction seems to exist in the description of the women who discovered the empty tomb of Jesus. How many women visited the tomb? One? Two? Three? It seems to depend on which Gospel you read.

And if you do what a responsible historian would do, and read the gospels as isolated accounts as they were intended to be by their original authors, then a single account gives the impression that this really is how it really was, no exceptions.  John 20, in painting Mary and the other women coming from the tomb as ignorant of what happened to Jesus body, absolutely contradicts the other three gospels which make it clear that before the women left the tomb, they were supernaturally and fearfully educated on what happened to the body:

 7 saying that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again."
 8 And they remembered His words,
 9 and returned from the tomb and reported all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. (Lk. 24:2-9 NAU)

 5 The angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid; for I know that you are looking for Jesus who has been crucified.
 6 "He is not here, for He has risen, just as He said. Come, see the place where He was lying.
 7 "Go quickly and tell His disciples that He has risen from the dead; and behold, He is going ahead of you into Galilee, there you will see Him; behold, I have told you."
 8 And they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy and ran to report it to His disciples. (Matt. 28:5-8 NAU)

Therefore, when John paints Mary and the other women as talking as if they think the body was stolen and they don't know where the movers put the body:

1 Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb, while it was still dark, and saw the stone already taken away from the tomb.
 2 So she ran and came to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid Him." (Jn. 20:1-2 NAU)

That accusation that John's Mary is contradicting the Synoptic-Mary is more plausible than any reconciliation scenario you can pretend.  Archer "explained" Mary's ignorance as her failing to have taken in the "full import" of what the angel told her (Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, pp. 348-349), a solution not all apologists agree with, but regardless, if you read Matthew and no other gospel, the way Matthew's originally intended audience of Aramaic-speaking Jews would have, then Matthew's specifying Mary Magdalene was part of the group that received the angelic explanation AND quickly left in great joy to tell the disciples (Matthew 28:1, 5-8) does not permit the reader to infer that this specific Mary perhaps left the tomb before the angels appeared.  The only way that loophole is opened is by the mere fact that it is required to be opened by inerrantists who desire to combine Matthew's account with the other 3 gospels, as if the correctness of viewing all 4 together was in assured accord with the gospel author's intentions.

Are the Gospel authors confused about this issue or fabricating the story altogether?

They are fabricating altogether.

I don’t think so, but before we investigate the narratives, let’s review the description of the women in each account:
 Matthew 28:1-10
Now after the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to look at the grave. And behold, a severe earthquake had occurred, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled away the stone and sat upon it. And his appearance was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow. The guards shook for fear of him and became like dead men. The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; for I know that you are looking for Jesus who has been crucified. He is not here, for He has risen, just as He said. Come, see the place where He was lying. Go quickly and tell His disciples that He has risen from the dead; and behold, He is going ahead of you into Galilee, there you will see Him; behold, I have told you.” And they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy and ran to report it to His disciples. And behold, Jesus met them and greeted them. And they came up and took hold of His feet and worshiped Him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and take word to My brethren to leave for Galilee, and there they will see Me.”
 Mark 16:1-10
When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, bought spices, so that they might come and anoint Him. Very early on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun had risen. They were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” Looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away, although it was extremely large. Entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting at the right, wearing a white robe; and they were amazed. And he said to them, “Do not be amazed; you are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who has been crucified. He has risen; He is not here; behold, here is the place where they laid Him. But go, tell His disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see Him, just as He told you.’” They went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had gripped them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. 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. She went and reported to those who had been with Him, while they were mourning and weeping.

Sorry, Wallace, but you know perfectly well that the quotation you gave which I emphasized above, is not part of Mark's original.  Most Christian scholars say Mark intended to end the story at the place we now designated as "16:8".

 Luke 23:27
And following Him [on the way to the crucifixion] was a large crowd of the people, and of women who were mourning and lamenting Him. But Jesus turning to them said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.”
 Luke 23:48-49
And all the crowds who came together for this spectacle, when they observed what had happened, began to return, beating their breasts. And all His acquaintances and the women who accompanied Him from Galilee were standing at a distance, seeing these things.
 Luke 23:55-56
Now the women who had come with Him out of Galilee followed, and saw the tomb and how His body was laid. Then they returned and prepared spices and perfumes.
 Luke 24:1-10
But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb bringing the spices which they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men suddenly stood near them in dazzling clothing; and as the women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living One among the dead? He is not here, but He has [a]risen. Remember how He spoke to you while He was still in Galilee, saying that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.” And they remembered His words, and returned from the tomb and reported all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. Now they were Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James; also the other women with them were telling these things to the apostles.
 John 20:1-3
Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb, while it was still dark, and saw the stone already taken away from the tomb. So she ran and came to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid Him.” So Peter and the other disciple went forth, and they were going to the tomb.
 In a very brief reading of these passages, a contradiction seems to emerge. Matthew mentions two women by name.

And if you were limited to just Matthew's version as his originally intended audience likely was, you wouldn't leave the door open for other details from other accounts, you'd have drawn the conclusion that there were not any other women that went to the tomb, except those whom Matthew mentioned.  The idea that Matthew knew about more women going to the tomb than those he mentioned, but "chose to exclude" mention of the others anybody, is total bullshit.

Mark mentions three by name.

And if you were limited to just Mark's version as his originally intended audience likely was, you wouldn't leave the door open for other details from other accounts, you'd have drawn the conclusion that no less than three went to the tomb.

Luke mentions at least three by name but describes more. John only identifies Mary Magdalene. You can see why some skeptics point to these passages in an effort to discredit the narratives. How many women were actually involved at the tomb of Jesus, and why are there variations in these accounts? Before we examine the passages in a more detailed way, let me revisit some of the principles I use to evaluate reliable eyewitness testimony.

And let's remember that there is no indication that the alleged gospel authors accompanied the women to the tomb, so that the gospels do not constitute the ancient equivilent of  eyewitness affidavits, and it is more historically responsible to apply rules for evaluating hearsay first.

Or maybe it would be be more historically responsible to remind you that as you apply modern day American rules of judicial evidence, the fact that these accounts are hearsay means they get excluded and the burden of proof is on you to show that some exception applies.  Given that the gospels fail miserably the ancient documents rule, you are washed up.

Why don't you just consign yourself to a life of creating defamatory cartoons telling the world the intelligence level of the people that follow you, the way James Patrick Holding does?

As I described in prior posts (and in my first book, Cold-Case Christianity), even though I accept and affirm the inerrancy of Scripture, inerrancy is not required of reliable eyewitnesses.

That's right, but you don't get eyewitness testimony out of hearsay either, genius.

In fact, I’ve never had a completely inerrant eyewitness in all my years as a homicide detective. In addition, I’ve never had a case where two witnesses have ever agreed completely on the details of the crime. Eyewitness reliability isn’t dependent upon perfection, but is instead established on the basis of a four part template I’ve described repeatedly in my book and on my website. But beyond these generalities, much can be said specifically about the variations between descriptions of the women at Jesus’ tomb. Let me revisit some of the same principles we used to evaluate the varying accounts related to the sign over Jesus’ cross:
 Identify the Common Details
When interviewing multiple eyewitnesses,

You don't "interview" ancient documents, fool.

I listen carefully for common features in their testimony. In every witness observation, some details are more important than others; some aspects of the event stick out in the mind of the observers more than others. In this case, every author is clear about one thing: women (plural) were the first to find the empty tomb.

And the apologetic argument that says this is likely historically true because women weren't given a say in legal proceedings is total bullshit.  It was women who normally anointed and prepared the body for burial, so women would be the natural choice of a forger trying to conjure up a plausible story.

The women who attended to Jesus during his ministry loved Him enough to attend to his body after the crucifixion.

Despite the fact that if Jesus was indeed crucified as a revolutionary by Pilate doing a favor for Jews, Pilate likely wouldn't have given anybody permission to take the body off the cross for several days, and would have done as normal and required the body be left there as a deterrent, then the body thrown in a common pit to be devoured by wild animals.

According to Mark, they went to the tomb for a purpose: to anoint Jesus with spices. It’s not surprising the women disciples of Jesus would be thoughtful and caring enough to want to do this.

But it's never very consistent with the later gospel legends about guards being posted at the tomb to prevent anybody from handling the body.  And the idea that the women would set out to do this while believing the sealing rock hadn't been rolled away, is stupid.  It would be like a family member today going to place flowers in the coffin of a buried loved one, not knowing who many come along and dig up the buried coffin so they can open it.  Total bullshit.

Every gospel author agrees; the women came to the tomb and were the first to discover it empty. Many Christian Case Makers have noted the importance of this claim. After all, in a culture hesitant to accept the testimony of women in civil and criminal hearings, the authors of the Gospels offered women as the first witnesses of the empty tomb. If this is a late fictional account, one might wonder why the authors didn’t insert Nicodemus or Joseph of Arimathia in this role. They would certainly have made the account more credible to the first hearers. Instead, the authors describe women as the first eyewitnesses. This agreement makes the account all the more credible. Women weren’t described here to make the narrative more convincing (they actually hurt the account), but were instead described because they happen to be the true first witnesses.

But women were the only gender that typically prepared bodies for burial like this, so again, a forger would find it quite reasonable to think having women discover the tomb first would sound most plausible.

Recognize the Perspective of Each Eyewitness
Every witness offers a view of the event from his or her unique perspective. I’m not just talking about geographic or locational perspectives here, but I am also talking about the personal worldview, history and experience every witness brings to the crime. All witness testimony is colored by the personal interests, biases, aspirations, concerns and idiosyncrasies of the eyewitnesses. In this particular case the most glaring exception in the description of the women is from John’s account. John mentions only Mary Magdalene by name. He does, however, tell us this Mary was not alone. When describing her visit to the tomb, Mary later tells Peter, “They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid Him.” So even John’s account acknowledges the presence of additional women. The issue here is not that each author describes a different number of women, but that each author chooses to identify different women by name.

But according to John, they have left the tomb and remain ignorant of what happened to the body, while in the other 3 gospels they leave the tomb having been told in supernatural and fear-inducing way what exactly happened to that body.  No attempt by an apologist to suggest several tomb visits or credulity of the women can overcome this glaring contradiction.

Why is this the case? Once again, it all comes down to the purpose and individuality of each reporter, and as investigators, we may never know precisely why variations of this nature occurred.

But it is highly unlikely that the authors would have "chosen to exclude" the events you think they did, had they believed all events reported in the canonical gospels to be true history.

But John’s Gospel does seem to give us a clue. John appears to be focused on the first male eyewitnesses of the empty tomb. Unlike other authors, John spends much more time and gives much more detail about how he and Peter discovered the empty tomb. As a result, the women are in a secondary role in John’s narrative. Mary Magdalene is mentioned by name simply because she happened to be the woman who first contacted Peter about the tomb. Even though John acknowledges there were other women involved (as seen in Mary’s use of the plural pronoun, “we”), he doesn’t take the time to describe them. John seems to place higher value in his own eyewitness status than in the eyewitness status of the women. He later reinforces his own pedigree by saying “This [John] is the disciple who is testifying to these things and wrote these things, and we know that his testimony is true” (John 21:24).

No, that was written by the "we", not John.  John does not testify for himself that he wrote those things, you only get that by hearsay, to say nothing of the agreement of most scholars that canonical John is a patchwork of different traditions anonymously authored.

Differentiate Between Complimentary and Conflicting Accounts
When comparing two eyewitness accounts, I am more concerned about unresolvable contradictions than complimentary details. In fact, I have come to expect some degree of resolvable variation in true, reliable eyewitness accounts. When examining the number of women present at the tomb of Jesus, the four accounts could all be seen as accurate representations of what really happened if the group of women included the following people: Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary the Mother of James (and Joseph), Salome, and Joanna. This group would account for the women mentioned by all four authors. All the authors speak of a group and some authors identify specific members of this group based on their personal perspective, purposes and audience.

But you still cannot show that your explanation for a Mary remaining ignorant  about what happened to Jesus body (John 20:1-3) despite having been earlier informed by angels on exactly what happened to that body (Mark 16:7-8) is more plausible than the theory that these accounts contradict each other. You are locked in a historical debate, you don't win or save face by merely carping that something is "possible", you need to show that your theory is more "probable" than the contradiction theory.

Assess the Opportunity for Collusion
Whenever I am called to a crime scene as a detective, the first request I make of the dispatcher is to separate the eyewitnesses before I get there.

Something you'll never do in the case of the 4 gospels, especially the Synoptic 3 which are in literary interdependence on each other to some degree.

I request this so the witnesses won’t have the opportunity to talk to one another about what they’ve seen. Witnesses will sometimes try to resolve any variations before I get there. I don’t want them to do this; that’s my job, not theirs.

That opportunity was lost to you 2000 years ago.

Instead, I want the messy, sometimes confusing, apparently contradictory accounts offered by every group of witnesses in such a situation. There have been times, however, when witnesses have the opportunity to consult with one another for several hours before I arrive on scene. When this is the case, and their individual accounts still vary from one another, I usually have even more confidence in the reliability of these accounts. When people have the opportunity to align their statements, yet still refuse to do so, I know I am getting the nuanced observations I need to properly investigate the case. The Gospel authors (and the early Church) certainly had the opportunity to change the descriptions of the women to make sure they matched, but they refused to do so. As a result, we can have even more confidence in the reliability of these accounts. They display the level of variation I would expect to see if they were true, reliable eyewitness descriptions.

There is at least a 30 year gap between the events in 33 a.d and the 63 a.d early date you give all the gospels.  Then there is more than 200 years between this alleged date of original composition and our earliest surviving copies.  Sorry, but I don't have as much faith in darkness as you do.  The textual problems with 4 different endings of Mark ought to have warned you that scribes had no scruples in fabricating history to fix problems.  And Matthew's and Luke's modifying Mark's wording ought to have told you that the gospel authors themselves were not above changing the witness of history to suit their theological agendas.

In my experience as a cold case detective, no two eyewitness accounts ever agree on every detail or every emphasis.This doesn’t shake me as an investigator and it’s never inhibited an investigation. It’s just the nature of eyewitness testimony. Related to the number and identity of the women at the tomb of Jesus, the four gospel accounts demonstrate the same variation I’ve seen in my professional work. How many women were at the tomb? Five, most likely. The Gospels are not contradictory in their description of these five women for the reasons I’ve cited. You can trust the reliability of the New Testament eyewitness Gospels.

You are a fucking fool to draw such a bold sweeping conclusion about the reliability of the NT eyewitness gospels, merely upon the supposition that you cannot detect any lies or contradictions respecting the number of women who went to the tomb.

No wonder you include so many bells and whistles with your dogshit arguments, you market your crap to idiots who are primed and ready to draw equally hasty generalizations.  Apparently the Holy Spirit needs your help, mere preaching the word wouldn't suffice.  One wonders how God got along before you were born.

Don't worry, I launch the same criticisms at Benny Hinn.

Cold Case Christianity: Wallace proves the resurrection of Jesus with blind faith in bible inerrancy.

This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled

Cold Case Christianity: 

A Brief Review of Explanations Offered for the Resurrection (Free Bible Insert)

Posted: 04 May 2018 01:01 AM PDT

 ...The following brief summary of explanatory deficiencies is excerpted from my book, Cold Case Christianity. I’ve omitted larger observations from the book related to my own case work and experience as a detective; this abbreviated list is merely a summary of the historic observations related to each explanation. A more comprehensive examination is included in the chapter explaining the process of abductive reasoning.  If we begin with a minimal list of evidences related to the Resurrection of Jesus (Jesus died on the cross and was buried, Jesus’s tomb was empty and no one ever produced His body, Jesus’s disciples believed that they saw Jesus resurrected from the dead, and Jesus’s disciples were transformed following their alleged resurrection observations), the following explanations, along with their deficiencies, must be evaluated:

...Were the Disciples Lying About the Resurrection?

1. The Jewish authorities took many precautions to make sure the tomb was guarded and sealed, knowing that the removal of the body would allow the disciples to claim that Jesus had risen (Matt. 27:62–66).

 To the contrary, Matthew 27:62 specifies that one day seperated Joseph of Arimathea's acquisition of the body and the time the guards show up at the tomb,thus a day in which anything could have happened to the body:

 57 When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who himself had also become a disciple of Jesus.
 58 This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered it to be given to him.
 59 And Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth,
 60 and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock; and he rolled a large stone against the entrance of the tomb and went away.
 61 And Mary Magdalene was there, and the other Mary, sitting opposite the grave.
 62 Now on the next day, the day after the preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered together with Pilate,
 63 and said, "Sir, we remember that when He was still alive that deceiver said, 'After three days I am to rise again.'
 64 "Therefore, give orders for the grave to be made secure until the third day, otherwise His disciples may come and steal Him away and say to the people, 'He has risen from the dead,' and the last deception will be worse than the first."
 65 Pilate said to them, "You have a guard; go, make it as secure as you know how."
 66 And they went and made the grave secure, and along with the guard they set a seal on the stone.   (Matt. 27:57-66 NAU)

 Wallace continues:

2. The people local to the event would have known it was a lie

Would the people who preserved gospel histories have preserved hostile witness testimony?  Not likely.  Matthew's story about how the Jews bribed the guards to account for the missiing body by saying they were asleep when the disciples stole the body, is not preservation of hostile witnesses, it is fictional propaganda.

(remember that Paul told the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 15:3–8 that there were still five hundred people who could testify to having seen Jesus alive after His resurrection).

remember also that Paul, who said Christ would be of no benefit to those who receive circumcision (Galatians 5:2), was willing to act in defiance of this theological truth whenever he thought lying would make things go easier between him and the Jews (Acts 16:3), despite the fact that in Acts 16:3, Paul surely knew that the Jews there were insisting on circumcision because they thought it was the basis of salvation for the Gentile (Exodus 12:48).  See Paul's willingness to lie about his true theological convictions when in the company of those he knows disagree with him (1st Cor. 9:20-21), a matter that caused Augustine and Jerome to disagree with each other.

3. The disciples lacked the motive to create such a lie (more on this in chapter 14).

 In the context of stealing a physical human body, that might be significant, but I maintain the original reports of Jesus' resurrection consisted solely of visions, which were themselves embellishments upon a gospel whose earlier form said nothing about a risen Christ appearing to anyone (Christian scholarly consensus that Mark 16 ends at v. 8).

4. The disciples’ transformation following the alleged resurrection is inconsistent with the claim that the appearances were only a lie. How could their own lies transform them into courageous evangelists?

The following passage from Acts 9 demonstrates a) after Saul converted and became Paul, he did not face persecution and threats of death fearlessly, he escaped by being lowered in a basket outside the city walls...and we also learn that the original disciples, after their experiences of seeing the risen Christ, would not believe reports that Saul the persecutor had converted, and remained fearful until Barnabas gave them concrete evidence that Saul had really converted, so this is biblical evidence that seeing the risen Christ did not transform them into "courageous evangelists":

 22 But Saul kept increasing in strength and confounding the Jews who lived at Damascus by proving that this Jesus is the Christ.
 23 When many days had elapsed, the Jews plotted together to do away with him,
 24 but their plot became known to Saul. They were also watching the gates day and night so that they might put him to death;
 25 but his disciples took him by night and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a large basket.
 26 When he came to Jerusalem, he was trying to associate with the disciples; but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple.
 27 But Barnabas took hold of him and brought him to the apostles and described to them how he had seen the Lord on the road, and that He had talked to him, and how at Damascus he had spoken out boldly in the name of Jesus.
 28 And he was with them, moving about freely in Jerusalem, speaking out boldly in the name of the Lord. (Acts 9:22-28 NAU)

Wallace continues:

Did the Disciples Hallucinate the Resurrection?

1. While individuals have hallucinations, there are no examples of large groups of people having the exact same hallucination.

But a theory that the apostles experience similar hallucinations in a religiously charged context, is enough to get the cult started, even assuming they didn't share the exact same mental images.

2. While a short, momentary group hallucination may seem reasonable, long, sustained, and detailed hallucinations are unsupported historically and intuitively unreasonable.

Google the Brownsville Revival and Toronto Blessing.  Christians don't even need "visions" to get some bullshit group started.  And the famine of 43 a.d. (Acts 11:28) would motivate many starving individuals to align themselves with groups.   The notion that nothing but true miracles can explain Christianity's start in the first century, is bullshit.

3. The risen Christ was reported seen on more than one occasion and by a number of different groups (and subsets of groups). All of these diverse sightings would have to be additional group hallucinations of one nature or another.

 I don't see the implausibility of one religious fanatic causing others to get caught up in the moment and stand around convincing themselves they are all having the same experience.  Ask any group of fundamentalist Pentecostals to give you the gift and power of the Holy Spirit, and you'll find out rather quickly how 10 different people can falsely convince themselves that they are all having the same religious experience.

4. Not all the disciples were inclined favorably toward such a hallucination. The disciples included people like Thomas, who was skeptical and did not expect Jesus to come back to life.

While such stories might appear to fulfill the criteria of embarrassment, they likely were intended to make the lesson learned, all the more dramatic, and as such, they ARE something a forger would likely invent.  Thomas's doubt gives rise to the "blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed" stuff.  There is literary purpose to stories of apostolic skepticism.

5. If the resurrection was simply a hallucination, what became of Jesus’s corpse?

 It was buried in a common graveyard with other criminals' corpses.  Once again, the lack of a physical body for the early Christians wouldn't prevent them from seeing Jesus in visions (see Revelation 1:1-4).

The absence of the body is unexplainable under this scenario.

On the contrary, the hallucination hypothesis seeks only to explain the sightings.  There's plenty of historical evidence to warrant the other conclusion that the body of Jesus was disposed of in a common graveyard.

Were the Disciples Fooled by an Imposter?

1. The impersonator would have to be familiar enough with Jesus’s mannerisms and statements to convince the disciples. The disciples knew the topic of the con better than anyone who might con them.

2. Many of the disciples were skeptical and displayed none of the necessary naïveté that would be required for the con artist to succeed.

3. The impersonator would need to possess miraculous powers; the disciples reported that the resurrected Jesus performed many miracles and “convincing proofs” (Acts 1:2–3).

4. Who would seek to start a world religious movement if not one of the hopeful disciples? This theory requires someone to be motivated to impersonate Jesus other than the disciples themselves.

5. This explanation also fails to account for the empty tomb or missing body of Jesus.

I'm a skeptic, but I don't put any stock in any imposter-theory.

Were the Disciples Influenced by Limited Spiritual Sightings?

1. The theory fails to account for the numerous, divergent, and separate group sightings of Jesus that are recorded in the Gospels.

No, the theory simply doesn't believe that eveyrthing stated in the bible is true.  We don't need to "account" for all NT evidence anymore than Christians need to "account" for the lost origins of popular fairy tales, to know that they are false.

These sightings are described specifically with great detail.

The gospel authors were good storytellers.

It’s not reasonable to believe that all these disciples could provide such specified detail if they were simply repeating something they didn’t see for themselves.

But its reasonable once you remember that the problematic details were happening in 33 a.d., and had until 50 a.d. to work out the bugs and kinks before putting anything down in writing.

2. As many as five hundred people were said to be available to testify to their observations of the risen Christ (1 Cor. 15:3–8).

You don't have the first clue as to whether Paul knew this by experience or hearsay, yet you continue talking of these "500 witnesses" as if they and what they saw was gospel truth.

Could all of these people have been influenced to imagine their own observations of Jesus?

Yes, read about how 120 people can experience delusions in groups, in Acts 2.

It’s not reasonable to believe that a persuader equally persuaded all these disciples even though they didn’t actually see anything that was recorded.

Let's first establish the veracity of these "500 witnesses" before we start pretending they are the crossbeam holding everything together.

3. This explanation also fails to account for the empty tomb or the missing corpse.

The hallucination hypothesis explains the sightings, not the empty tomb or missing corpse.  Those matters are answered under the theories of embellishment, since by Christian scholarly consensus, Mark is the earliest gospel and he stopped at 16:8, thus the original form of the gospel didn't tell about Jesus "appearing" to anyone, that crap was created later.

Were the Disciples’ Observations Were Distorted Later?

1. In the earliest accounts of the disciples’ activity after the crucifixion, they are seen citing the resurrection of Jesus as their primary piece of evidence that Jesus was God.

That's what they do in the Book of Acts, but this wasn't written until at least 62 a.d., at the earliest, and so the stories of the initial preaching had time to be embellished. 

From the earliest days of the Christian movement, eyewitnesses were making this claim.

Eyewitness also routinely provide alibis for their friends who are in court facing criminal charges.  You never suspected until just now that eyewitnesses might actually lie about something.  You gain nearly nothing by merely pointing out that eyewitnesses preached the resurrection at an early period.  Hell, the gnostics were early too (1st John 4:3), so what?

2. The students of the disciples also recorded that the resurrection was a key component of the disciples’ eyewitness testimony (more on this in chapter 13).

No, Mark was traditionally a student of Peter, and Mark's gospel ends at 16:8 by Christian scholarly consensus.  Apparently, when Peter was preaching in Rome with Mark walking behind him, Peter did not say anything about witnesses actually seeing a risen Christ, since otherwise Mark would surely have recorded such a thing.

3. The earliest known Christian creed or oral record (as described by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15) includes the resurrection as a key component.

 But the risen Christ himself makes his pre-crucifixion teachings the key component, Matthew 28:20.

4. This explanation also fails to account for the fact that the tomb and body of Jesus have not been exposed to demonstrate that this late legend was false.

You also fail to demonstrate that skeptics of Christianity in the days immediately following Jesus' death would have given two shits about the Christian claims enough to bother "exposing" it as false.  You also wrongfully trivialize the possibility that there was criticism, but like much else in early Christianity, records of such have disappeared.  I don't care of Acts has the disciples preaching the bodily resurrection of Jesus within two months after he died, Luke is a liar who embellishes details.

Were the Disciples Simply Telling the Truth?

1. This explanation has only one liability: It requires a belief in the supernatural; a belief that Jesus had the supernatural power to rise from the dead in the first place.

Wrong, that explanation has another liability, that those who believe it, accept as true that which was written by religious fanatics 2,000 years ago, whose identities cannot be established sufficiently to justify trusting them.

Every explanation offered for a particular set of facts has its own set of unique deficiencies. Even a true explanation will suffer from some apparent liability. As a cold-case detective, my cases (even those in which the defendant confessed to the crime following his conviction) have always presented unanswered questions and apparent deficiencies. Jurors were encouraged to make a decision in spite of these deficiencies by selecting the best inference from the evidence: the explanation that best explains the facts of the case while possessing the fewest liabilities.

 This juror gives the following explanation:  Most Christian scholars agree that Mark ends at 16:8, and if true, it means the the original Christian preaching did not say a risen Jesus was seen by anybody.  Christian scholars also agree in majority that Matthew and Luke borrowed substantial amounts of text from Mark, and its no coincidence that these later gospels suddenly come up with richly detailed resurrection narratives.  They certainly didn't get that shit from their source material (Mark).  They were making it up.

With that in mind, it’s important to recognize the deficiency of the Christian explanation: It requires a belief in the supernatural.

 And "supernatural" implies the existence of something whose location constitutes an incoherency: "above" nature, "beyond" nature, or "outside" of time.

For many people, this is a deal killer; this is the reason they simply cannot accept the Christian account.

For this skeptic, the incoherence of religious language is just one reason among many that break the Christian deal with me.  The others are the failure of Christians to make a good case for apostolic authorship of the gospels and the biblical silence toward most of the original 11 disciples of Jesus, when under Christian assumptions, they likely conducted ministries just as successful as Paul's.  I say Luke didn't give a shit about most of the apostles because he knew they left the faith.

But as I’ve written in the past, we cannot begin our investigation of supernatural claims (like the Resurrection) by rejecting supernaturalism from the onset.

 That's your problem:  you claim to be able to make a historical case that Jesus rose from the dead, then you admit that the case cannot be made if the investigator doesn't believe in magic.  FUCK YOU.

We cannot start with our conclusions predetermined.

Then you must have been irrational everytime you strongly suspected, but couldn't immediately prove, that somebody was lying to do.

While the Christian explanation does present a deficiency of sorts, this liability is actually a matter of presupposition rather than evidential sufficiency.

 So let's debate the presupposition.  Before we ask whether God exists, we need a working definition.  You have none.  Your bible says God is inscrutible, you describe him as filling up the universe, that he is "outside of time", that he hears your prayers but doesn't have ears, he speaks without vocal cords, he causes things to happen inside time meaning he somehow transfers back and forth between the dimension of time and the dimension of eternity.  Sorry, you lose.

Yes, Bill, extraordinary claims do require extraordinary evidence: a response to William Lane Craig's strawman attack

When miracle skeptics say "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" (ECREE), they are not saying miraculous claims require miraculous evidence.  They are also not saying normative types of evidence such as testimony, documents, photos, video footage, can never suffice to establish an extraordinary claim.

That would be stupid.  NO fool says impossible claims require impossible evidence.  But many Christian apologists are fond of mischaracterizing ECREE in their desperation to avoid admitting how rational it is to dismiss biblical miracle claims.

Instead, the miracle skeptic merely means the more one's claim about reality depart from those experiences that we can agree all humans commonly share ( flames burn skin, money doesn't grow on trees, kittens don't massacre adult pit bulls, etc), the greater quality and quantity of evidence will be required before the hearer can be intellectually obligated to believe the claim. 

Yet there is no mechanical test for exactly how much or what type of evidence is minimally necessary to rationally justify rejecting or accepting any claim.

In light of this, by "greater quantity of evidence" we mean that the more a claim runs contrary to our perception of what's physically possible, the greater number of independently corroborative evidences will be needed.  Absent evidence that you are lying, I'd likely believe your claim to have won the lottery if I find that after you made that claim, you started buying expensive cars and homes.  However that type of corroboration is not conclusive, you could be claiming a lottery win merely to cover up a huge profit you made shipping illegal drugs.  ECREE is not about absolute verification or falsification, it's only about how to increase the odds that your rejection or acceptance of somebody else's claim will be reasonable and rational.  ECREE does not pretend to guarantee to show the truth to a person investigating a very deceptive scam or fraud.

Likewise "greater quality of evidence" simply means your corroborating evidences have a stronger ring of truth about them and are less susceptible to skepticism than other types of corroboration.  A person without any known ties to you emotionally, financially or socially, corroborating your claim of winning the lottery, would be a bit more objective of a proof than if the same testimony came from a family member or friend.

It's real easy:  When total strangers tell us they bought groceries at the store last week, we usually don't remain skeptical until they can corroborate their claim, because purchasing groceries at the store happens with routine regularity.  That is, most rational mature adults do in fact more readily believe claims that cohere perfectly with their own ideas of what's physically possible/likely.

When total strangers tell us they won the lottery for $45 million dollars, the greater unlikelihood in this example makes us slightly more hesitant to believe the story absent some type of corroboration.  It is highly unlikely for any certain person to win the lottery.  That is, most rational adults do in fact remain skeptical, in absence of corroborating evidence otherwise, of claims that substantially depart from their own ideas of what's possible/likely.  If anybody retains the least bit of skepticism toward a total stranger's claim of winning the lottery until some type of corroborating evidence has been disclosed, they are employing ECREE.

When total strangers tell us they can levitate their bodies using nothing more than their non-physical mental powers alone, we are very hesitant to believe such a claim.  Why?  For the same reason YOU are skeptical of such a claim, it's never happened to you before, you've never seen genuine levitation happen, there's no science to show it's possible and there's plenty of personal experience and science saying only some type of physical countering force (magnets, support beam, etc) can free you from gravity's influence.

Ok...suppose one friend of the stranger corroborates the stranger's grocery-store claim.  Is that a sufficient basis upon which to believe her claim that she bought groceries at the store?  If so, how do you know?  If not, why not?

Suppose one friend of the stranger corroborates the stranger's levitation claim.  Is that a sufficient basis upon which to believe her claim of levitation?  If so, how do you know?  If not, why not?

----------------

With that preamble, let's dive into Craig's errors on ECREE:

First, Craig at :30 ff says this aphorism of ECREE is "demonstrably false".  That's his first error:  ECREE is not a mechanical test that produces a definite result of "believable" or "not believable".  It is a general rule of thumb intended to help a person properly decide whether any given claim is likely true or false.  Saying ECREE is demonstrably false is about as muddled as saying "interviewing witnesses is false".

Second, at :40 ff, he claims ECREE fails to take into account all the factors that play into assessing the probability of an event.  This too is an outrageously false strawman, since ECREE is a generalized rule of thumb and just what level of quantity and quality of evidence would be required to justify belief in a claim would possibly radically differ from case to case. 

Third, at :45 ff, Craig says if ECREE were true, we could never have adequate evidence for extraordinarily improbable events, and appeals to somebody winning the lottery.  But the reason we know people have won the lottery before is for reasons for more substantial than their own testimony.  We can obtain state records showing big payments to lottery winners, we can see claimants suddenly quitting their jobs and purchasing very expensive items for themselves, and the idea that winning the lottery is all mere "fake news" is contradicted by a great quantity and quality of objective reports from disinterested parties, which would thus qualify as the "extraordinary evidence" (i.e., evidence of greater quality and quantity than we normally demand for claims of routine everyday events).

Third, at 1:00, he says the evidence for the reliability of the evening news would be swamped by the improbability of the event reported.  But this is a weak argument simply because reporting something through the evening news does not more of less obligate a person to believe it truly happened. Again, when the evening news reports that somebody picked all the right numbers and won the lottery, they are not reporting something that runs afoul of what our everyday experience tells us is physically possible.

Fourth, at 1:17 ff, Craig says ECREE would lead to skepticism toward non-supernatural claims.  Yeah, so?  The alibi witness on the stand stand corroborating the murder-suspects alibi, is his mother, and since mothers have an obvious natural instinct to protect their children, the mother's credibility does not become trustworthy or believable merely because she causes her vocal cords to do something that can be percieved by the human ear, and jurors would naturally require her credibility be established a bit more objectively than they would if it was a cop on the stand corroborating the alibi, who otherwise was biased against the suspect by arresting him for the crime.  IF ECREE would justified skepticism of non-supernatural claims, that would be a good thing.

Fifth, at 1:25, Craig says probability theorists concluded that we have to consider how likely the evidence would be if the event had not occurred.  Since the question concerned Jesus's resurrection being extraordinary, Craig likely means skeptics needs to explain how the resurrection evidence came about at all, if in fact the resurrection claim is false.  Fair enough, and hardly anything that sends skeptics running in fear.

Religious people are known to be delusional, Pentecostals have individual experiences at church, but the collective nature of their corporate worship encourages them to insist that they all had the same experience, the first 100 years after Jesus died are the textually dark period of the NT where we don't have the first fucking clue just how close the original versions of the gospels mirrored the canonical form they take today, John the apostle was prone to visions anyway, Apostle Paul was a self-confessed liar, the last 100 years shows how true Paul's claim was that some can peddle the gospel solely for money, Mark's gospel was eariliest and contains no resurrection appearance stories like we normally expect if Mark or Peter had believed such reports were true. 

But let's also not lose sight of the fact that the claimant is the one with the burden of proof.  There is no general rule of evidence or reasoning that says the skeptic is required to come up with reasons to reject the claim (because the logical opposite of that would be a requirement that byou believe every claim you hear until you have reasons to reject it, which is the very definition of gullibility.  We don't just believe everything we hear).  The skeptic's goal is successfully completed if he can show enough legitimate evidentiary shortcomings in your evidence that it becomes rational to be suspicious of your claim.  The idea that we are obligated to provide the actual naturalistic truth behind the claim is total bullshit, since many fake religious claims arise in private circumstances that can never be fully debunked, such as the kids pretending to see visions of Mary at Fatima.  Nobody can go back and perfectly reconstruct all the realities that led up to this alleged vision to show that the vision claim is false.


Sixth, Craig at 1:55 ff asks how probable would be the Empty Tomb, the post mortem appearances, and origin of the disciples' resurrection belief, if Jesus hadn't rose from the dead.  Again, this is old hat:  Craig's  belief in the Empty Tomb draws from the minimal facts argument of Gary Habermas, and I'll soon be explaining why independent evaluation of each piece of NT evidence overthrows the idea that the empty tomb is a reasonably certain fact of history.  How likely true the post-mortem appearances are, depends in part on how early they are, which depends in part on how early one dates the gospel reports of such resurrection appearances.  And Gospel dating itself arises from other presuppositions that could be debated.  One thing appears reasonably certain, it doesn't matter if the alleged hymn of resurrection Paul repeats in 1st Corinthians 15 started the third day after Jesus died, that hymn is not a resurrection appearance story, and carries no more weight than when today's Christians recite John 3:16.  They don't say this because they have empriical evidence that God loves the world, they say it as a mere matter of theological devotion, nothing more.  As far as origin of the disciple's resurrection belief, this too is hazy:  therer were allegedly 12 disciples, with Matthias replacing Judas in Acts 1.  We don't have a clue just how strongly the majority of these twelve held to a belief that Jesus rose from the dead, and one could plausibly argue that the reason only Peter, James, John and Paul far overshadow the others in the NT is because a substantial number of original disciples stopped believing Jesus rose from the dead.  That becomes worse when we remember it isn't just some of the 12 that never left any surviving records of resurrection preaching, in Acts 1 there are about 120 people who are intimately associated with the apostles, likely including the 70 otherwise unnamed disciples.  There's an awful lot of allegedly amazingly transformed Christians in league with the original apostles, whose preaching activity was apparently not extreme enough to protect it from destruction by the passing of time.

Seventh, Craig at 2:12 boasts that we'd agree that if Jesus didn't rise, these "facts" would be enormously improbable, but he is just talking crazy at this point.  Even if we grant yes they would be improbable, so what?  ECREE neither expresses nor implies that if some claimed event has any degree of improbability, then it must be false.

Eighth, Craig at 2:25 ff says we don't need to have extraordinary evidence to establish extraordinary claims, but he fails to define "extraordinary evidence" here, which is why I took the time to do so in this blog post, supra.  The sad truth for apologists is that ECREE is not just reasonable and rational, but is so precisely because it is how everybody including Christians, decide which types of claims in the real world they will believe, reject, or remain undecided about.  ECREE does not assert that a claim should always be capable of meeting the demands of greater quality and quantity of evidence.  It is not unreasonable to suppose that evidence for improbable events is lost or destroyed.  It may be true that byour dad told you orally, before he died, that he is leaving his entire estate to you, but if you didn't record it or otherwise have other people hear your dad say such a thing, and if what he said is contrary to what he stated in his will, then the truth doesn't matter, the administrator will still be reasonable and rational to insist that the written will constitutes the more objective evidence of what dad wished.  Even so, it doesn't matter if Jesus really did rise from the dead, the issue is whether you can demonstrate this contention to another person with such force that a reasonable person would feel compelled to agree that the claim is true.  You can't.

Craig's response here was little more than a desperate strawman; ECREE is the type of reasons that Christians themselves employ when they attempt to evaluate ANY truth-claim, even truth-claims of other competing religions.  Indeed, it is what we employ when making ANY decision about whether a given claim is likely true or false.

My Resurrection Challenge to Apologist Evan Minton

Here is my challenge to Apologist Evan Minton.  It was posted to his blog, but since I don't know whether he will delete it, the text is pasted below:

----beginquote

Mr. Minton,

I find it reasonable to accept the Christian scholarly majority view which says Mark 3:21, 6:3-4 and John 7:5 are teaching that Jesus' own family rejected his claims before Jesus was crucified.

I also find it reasonable to deny that Galatians 1:19 and anything else in the NT expresses or implies that James the Lord's brother ever converted to the faith.

I also find it reasonable to say that among the various extra-biblical accounts about James the Lord's brother, the one we get from Josephus, ie., the one that attributes no specifically Christian faith to this James, to be the most historically reliable version.

I also find it reasonable to say that the other similar accounts about this James as supplied by Hegesippus, Eusebius and Jerome, which sometimes make it seem James was a Christian, are less historically reliable, so that not even the extra-biblical information about James which seems to impart Christian faith to him, is sufficiently historically reliable as to compel an objective person to accept it...leaving me with no good reason to think this skeptical brother of Jesus EVER converted to the faith...implying that he found nothing too compelling in the reports of his contemporary Christian friends about Jesus rising from the dead.

I also find that because the Christian scholarly majority translation/interpretation of Mark 3:21, 6:3-4 and John 7:5 give skeptics a certain bit of ammo, these passages are thus "embarrassing" and thus pass a criteria of embarrassment which other NT texts, which say Jesus did real miracles, don't pass...so that it is reasonable to say these particular passages have greater claim to historical truth than those which say Jesus did real miracles. That is, the NT stories which say Jesus did miracles, are trumped by these three passages.

I have considered the various ways Christian apologists might try to "reconcile" or “harmonize” the biblical truth that James was skeptical of his brother Jesus, with the other biblical truth that Jesus surely did rise from the dead (i.e., maybe James was always out of town when Jesus did a magic show, or maybe James was always drunk, stupid, looking the other way, etc, etc), and I find all such attempts to be purely speculative, far more lacking in historical support than my own theory that says James was skeptical because Jesus' miracles really were fake.

I therefore conclude, reasonably, even if not infallibly, that Jesus was nothing more than the first-century equivalent of Benny Hinn, i.e., long on whipping people up into a religious frenzy, but short on actually delivering the miraculous goods).

It's a very small conjectural leap from "the miracles Jesus did were fake" to "God likely would not premise his Second Covenant on the words and works of a deluded deceiver (i.e., the God of the OT likely wouldn't raise a deluded trickster from the dead for the purpose of ratifying or promoting the Second Covenant)."

My main contention is that if a person can be reasonable to "accept Christ" and thus conclude the bible is the word of God, at a time in their life before they know how to refute the skeptical arguments of bible critics, then fairness and consistency dicatate that you extend that courtesy to skeptics, and acknowledge that they likewise can also possibly be reasonable to conclude that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, at a time in their life before they know how to refute the arguments set forth by Christian apologists. Reasonable requires neither confirmed accuracy nor exhaustive comprehensiveness.

If you would be willing to challenge the thesis that says the skepticism toward Jesus by his brother James reasonably justifies denying that Jesus rose from the dead, I'd be willing to dialogue with you about it, either by private email, or by responding through whatever blog or website you wish.

Sincerely,

Barry Jones
barryjoneswhat@gmail.com

----endquote

 screenshot:

 

===============================

 Update: November 27, 2018.

Evan responded and I now reply in point by point fashion.  Since I didn't want to be falsely accused of "flaming" merely because I reply in comprehensive fashion, my full reply is here, and I only posted a short summary reply at Evan's blog.

----------beginquote

 I find this position you take on James to be strange.

I'll take that as a compliment.  Indeed, my argument from James' lifetime skepticism of Jesus is not exactly easy to find addressed in apologetic literature. And as the merits of my argument show, this isn't beause the argument is specious.

You say "I also find it reasonable to deny that Galatians 1:19 and anything else in the NT expresses or implies that James the Lord's brother ever converted to the faith." -- but Galatians 1:9 says "I saw none of the other apostles-only James, the LORD's brother." The meaning of this verse is obvious, The Lord's brother James was an apostle.

You say the meaning of Galatians 1:19 is obvious, that James the Lord’s brother was an apostle.  First, this is not the case, as in 1975 bible scholars were admitting that a large number of other scholars don’t think Paul is calling James an apostle here.  See L. Paul Trudinger, Ἕτερον δε των αποστολων ουκ ειδον, ει μη ιακωβον: A Note on Galatians I 19, Novum Testamentum, Vol. 17, (Jul., 1975), p. 200, fn. 3.

Furthermore, not much has changed since 1975, apparently, as even Christian scholars who adopt inerrancy (i.e., scholars who have the most motive of all Christian scholars to interpret ambiguous biblical data in a pro-Christian way) admit 20 years later that the meaning of Galatians 1:19 in the Greek cannot be definitively resolved:

1:19 Paul claimed that he saw none of the other apostles except James, the brother of Jesus. The expression is ambiguous in Greek, so we cannot be sure whether Paul meant to include James among the other apostles. Did he mean: “The only other apostle I saw was James,” or “I saw no other apostle, although I did see James”? Probably he meant something like this: “During my sojourn with Peter, I saw none of the other apostles, unless you count James, the Lord’s brother.”

George, T. (2001, c1994). Vol. 30: Galatians (electronic ed.). Logos Library System;

The New American Commentary (Page 74). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

T. George said this in 1994, about 100 years after J.B. Lightfoot dogmatized about how clearly this passage said James was an apostle…and it is furiously unlikely that George would be unaware of the conservative scholarly attempts to justify the view you take.  That should be quite enough to refute your contention that the meaning of that verse is "obvious".  But if it isn't obvious, then you run the risk of discovering that Galatians 1:19 doesn't imply James' specifically Christian faith as much as you think, and therefore, that verse really isn't a substantive defeater of my hypothesis that this particular James maintained skepticism toward Jesus even after others began to say Jesus rose from the dead.

Second, Peter’s criteria for apostleship was that the candidate had to have followed Jesus since the time Jesus was baptized by John up until He ascended (Acts 1:20-21), and while Jesus’ “brothers” are present in this context (Acts 1:14), it is interesting that neither James nor any other brother of Jesus is one of the two men the church put forward as possible replacements for apostle # 12.   

This would confirm, at least for inerrantist, that yes, James the Lord's brother indeed remained skeptical of Jesus' claims for the entire duration of Jesus' public ministry.

Thus Peter's conditions for apostleship were criteria that Paul obviously disagrees with, since he considers himself an apostle (1^st Cor. 9:1) despite the fact that he failed Peter's condition that an apostle be somebody who was a follower of Jesus from the beginning of the earthly public ministry.  The point is that since Paul’s ideas of apostleship are radically different than those held by Peter, it is not reasonable to pretend that Paul’s assertion that James was an "apostle", has an obvious meaning. 

Third, generically, “apostle” doesn’t mean “faith in Christ”, but “sent one”.  Whether an apostle has faith in Christ is no more ridiculous than asking whether a church pastor has faith in Christ.  We might expect the man in that office to have such faith, but in fact there are so many cases where the answer is "no" (i.e., prosperity gospel preachers whose heresy is so bad it makes them appear more as intentional deceivers than as innocently mislead leaders).  

Even assuming James was placed into leadership over the Jerusalem faction of the church, are you quite sure the only reasonable implication is that they must have thought James converted to the Christian faith?  Not so.  For example, assuming Paul is calling James an apostle in Gal. 1:19, and assuming the James of Galatians 2 is the same guy, notice that Paul flippantly dismisses the authority of James that others viewed him as having (2:6).  Since this flies directly in face of the fact that Jesus gave earthly authority to the apostles (Matthew 10:1, Luke 10:16, John 20:22-23, i.e., Jesus wanted others to recognize that these original apostles carried special authority on earth), it is reasonable, even if contrary to conservative Christian sentiment, to classify Paul as the kind of guy who would call another Christian leader an “apostle” while not intending to say anything good about their level of faith or authority.  Hence, even if Paul was calling James “apostle” in Galatians 1:19, it can be reasonable to say that this falls far short of implying Paul thought James converted to the faith. 

Fourth, I can also mount a persuasive case that even if James told others he had a Christian faith, he was lying, and likely only said such things for the sake of keeping peace.

I am reasonable therefore to insist that you are wrong for saying the meaning of Galatians 1:19 is “obvious”.    If you would “refute” my contention that there is no good historical evidence that James the Lord’s brother converted to Christian faith, you cannot do so by simply pointing to Galatians 1:19…unless you provide specific grammatical argument that the scholars who disagree with you on the meaning of that verse, are unreasonable.  Until that day, I can hardly be considered unreasonable to view Galatians 1:19 as too ambiguous to draw definitive conclusions from.

Now, since you conceded "the Christian scholarly majority view which says Mark 3:21, 6:3-4 and John 7:5 are teaching that Jesus' own family rejected his claims before Jesus was crucified." on what grounds do you say that we "no good reason to think this skeptical brother of Jesus EVER converted to the faith"?

As I said, any NT statements to that effect either don't exist are sufficiently ambiguous as to allow my skeptical interpretation to be equally as reasonable as the conservative Christian view.   This, and the fact that Josephus' account on James is more historically reliable than the accounts of Eusebius Hegesippus and Jerome, leaves you without a reasonable historical basis for alleging that this James converted to the faith.

If Galatians 1:9 says James was an apostle and Mark 3 and John 7 say that he was an unbeliever in his brother during his brother's lifetime, then it entails that James went from unbeliever to believer at some point for some reason.

 That's good logic, but the entailment cannot be borne out by the available evidence.  yes, I contend that Christians who think the NT says James converted to the faith, have made an unjustifiable leap that they cannot provide NT support for.  And I say that after having reviewed several apologists contentions otherwise, such as Licona in Historiographical Approach (2010).

The only way to deny this conclusion is to say that Mark and John independently fabricated the embarrassing detail of James' skepticism or say that Paul has a completely different James in mind in Galatians 1; a proposal I have not heard from either Christian or non-Christian scholars. Or you could say that James was lying about his conversion, but his martyrdom at the hands of the sanhedrin make this option untenable.

What historical evidence says James the Lord's brother was "martyred". Nothing in the NT and the accounts from  Eusebius, Hegesippus and Jerome concerning James' execution are not as reliable as Josephus' version, the version that suspiciously doesn't ever express or imply that this James was a Christian.  And I say that after having reviewed Licona's attempt to deduce from the "law-breaker" term common to Acts and Josephus that Josephus was saying James was killed for being a Christian.  Licona is wrong.

You said that the historical attestation for James' martyrdom is less reliable in Hegessipus and Clement. Fine. You still find Josephus a reliable source, right? Okay, so perhaps if you're right, Jame's martyordom isn't multply attested.

 Well, I wasn't trying to justify skepticism on the basis of singular attestation.  

But it is still, even by your reckoning, found in a source very close to the execution (i.e Josephus) which makes it pass the criterion of early attestation. Why not just trust what Josephus has to say?

I do.  He says nothing that expresses or implies that James had a Christian faith.  The fact that the more scrupulous of the non-Christian Jews opposed this execution and appealed to higher authority is not consistent with the assumption YOU must make (i.e., that as a Christian, James had been telling all the Jews that Jesus was God manifest in the flesh). Apparently, whatever James was preaching to them, it wasn't the same thing Jesus did.

Moreover, what exactly is the issue with saying "maybe James was always out of town when Jesus did a magic show, or maybe James was always drunk, stupid, looking the other way, etc, etc"? From my reading of the gospels, I get the impression that while Jesus was doing a lot of traveling, his family for the most part stayed at home.

 Then read John 2.  Jesus' mother is present for his first miracle of changing water into wine (v. 1-2), then afteward his disciples and his brother join him in his travels for a while (v. 12).   Sorry, but you cannot reasonably pretend that James was somehow just "never there" when Jesus did a magic show, in order to "explain" how James could remain skeptical of Jesus' claims for so long.

James probably didn't witness a good majority of the miracles, but only heard reports of them.

 If you heard reports that your brother was raising the dead and curing incurable diseases, wouldn't you put forth an effort to check out these claims for yourself?  Yes, and yet you say that as a western individualist.  But James and Jesus lived in a collectivist honor/shame society, where criticism of a person didn't end with them but was viewed as criticism of the family as well.  So in that society, the safer presumption is that the more Jesus was crticized by the Pharisees and other Jewish leaders, the more effort his family would put toward investigating his claims for themselves in first-hand fashion.  Again, I'm sorry, but you will only die a quick intellectual death if you try to pretend that James just didn't happen to be around that much whenever Jesus did a magic show.  My hypothesis that the whole family would have put forth an effort to witness Jesus in action for themselves to decide whether the rumors were true, is far more reasonable and accords more smoothly with the foregone conclusion that these things happened in an honor/shame society.

In fact, the text even says that most of Jesus' miracles weren't done in his home town (see Mark 6).

...because the people of his hometown refused to believe in him, to the extent that Jesus "wondered" at their unbelief (Mark 6:6).  Those people of his hometown knew of reports that he had done miracles (v. 3), so if they still persist in unbelief, and are even "offended" at him (Id) to the point that nobody in his hometown, including his own relatives wish to honor him (6:4), you might be open to the possibility that the only way Jesus could do miracles is if the people viewing him first "believed" that he could.  After all, Mark admits that it was their unbelief that prevented Jesus from doing as many miracles there was he would have wished (6:5).  That "could not" was indeed a low-Christology that means what I think it means, is clear from the fact that Matthew was motivated to change it in just the right way (from "could not" to "did not")  so that the reference to Jesus inability was deleted (Matthew 13:58).  Inerrantist scholars admit Matthew here was "toning down" Mark's wording

Mark 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 ed.).
Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 100).
Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

Matthew would hardly be motivated to "tone down" Mark's wording if Matthew saw nothing objectionable therein. 

In any case, you should take into account ALL of the minimal facts; Jesus' death by crucifixion,

 Irrelevant, I agree he was crucified.

His empty tomb,

Legendary embellishment.  I agree with the conservative Christian scholarly consensus that Mark was the earliest gospel, and that Mark originally ended at 16:8 n9i.e., the earliest form of the gospel did not say anybody actually saw the risen Christ).  Since I deny apostle Paul's credibility, for many good reasons, I find the original ending of Mark to be an earlier form of the gospel than the "creed" of 1st Corinthians 15:3-8.  And I am quite aware of the efforts of Snapp, Lund, N.T. Wright and others to avoid admitting 16:8 was where Mark stopped writing.  Mark did not end on a sour note, the women's "fear" was reverential awe, and they are rushing to tell the others the good news that Jesus has risen from the dead.  So there's no "sour ending" and thus nothing in the endinig rendering it sufficiently unlikely as to justify trying to make it sound better.

His postmortem appearances to the disciples and Paul.

 Sorry, but many Christian scholars take the 40-days of resurrection appearances of Acts 1:3 literally, which implies an awful lot of instruction from the risen Christ during that period on the Kingdom of God...yet Matthew, allegedly one of the 11 present for those 40 days, thinks the reader worthy of not more of such teaching than a snippet that could be spoken in less than 15 seconds.  I'm sorry, but it just rings hollow to say Matthew might have good reasons for wish to telescope down 40-days worth of risen Christ teachings into 15 seconds.  Amazingly transformed, Matthew was not.  My skepticism on this basis will always be at least as justifiable as any what-if scenario that apologists can conjure up.  Which means you cannot deduce my skepticism unreasonable merely because you can drum up a logically possible scenario that can also account for the data.  Your religion doesn't just say we are wrong, it says we are "foolish", so because my skepticism of Jesus' resurrection isn't foolish, your religion takes a direct hit.  That epithet might be true if the atheist you are dealing with just runs away from the evidence, but that isn't the case here.

Even if you were skeptical of the appearance to James, these would still be historical facts in need of an explanation. And I have found no naturalistic explanation that satisfactorily explain even just those 4.

 Then apparently you've never dialogued with me before.  I have naturalistic explanations that DO sufficiently account for each "minimal fact". What I've relayed so far isn't even the tip of the ice-box.  But whether you ever hear my full arguments depends on how long you are willing to discuss the issues. 

As further reason to believe that "skepticism toward Jesus by his brother James [[does not]] reasonably justiy denying that Jesus rose from the dead" consider the fact that there have been times that I haven't even mentioned this minimal fact, mostly due to time constraints in dialogue, instead opting to mention the empty tomb and appearances to The Twelve and Paul. Take away the appearance to James if you want. The case only loses one line of evidence.

 Technically correct, but that's not the only line of minimal-fact evidence that gets lost when you consider my arguments.

I look forward to further dialogue.
-------------

Evan replied:

Evan MintonNovember 29, 2018 at 8:50 AM

First, which scholars are you referring to. Of all of the scholars I've read, Christian and non-Christian, I haven't found one who doesn't think Galatians 1:19 isn't referring to the same James mentioned in John 7. Moreover, who do you think Galatians 1:19 is about if not James? What do you think is meant by "James, the LORD's brother."? Or do you even think that's what the verse is supposed to say? If it isn't meant to refer to "James, The LORD's Brother", then who is it about? I asked this question before, but you didn't answer it.

Secondly, John 2 gives no indication that Jesus' family traveled with him as he walked all over preaching, performing miracles, etc. John 2 only says Jesus's family went with him to the wedding held at Cana. To extrapolate from this that therefore Jesus' family frequently went where He went is an unjustified assumption. It's quite a leap to go from "Jesus' family went with him to Cana" to "Jesus' family went with him on most of his journey". The burden of proof is on you to prove the latter.

And if Jesus' family did accompany him on most of his journey's, why are they never mentioned? You get the impression that it was only he and his disciples that were there.

Jesus performed one miracle at the wedding at Cana; the turning of water into wine. This is, perhaps, Jesus' most subtle miracle. All he does is command servants to pour the water into jars and take them to the guests. The guests taste it and declare it to be the best tasting wine. We have no idea if James even knew his mother had run out of wine, or whether he was in the room when Mary made the request of Jesus. If you want to say that he was, again the burden is on you to back that up.

You wrote \\"And there is good NT precedent for saying that calling somebody insane meant they were demon possessed, so that the Christian scholarly majority translation and interpretation of Mark 3:21 has Jesus’ family and thus James committing the unpardonable blasphemy of the Holy Spirit."\\ -- but there isn't a universal consensus on what the unpardonable sin is. The majority of Christian preachers, theologians, and scholars think that the blasphemy of The Holy Spirit is resisting The Holy Spirit until death. James didn't deny Christ or The Holy Spirit until the day he died. Neither did Paul, whom we have much better evidence for his conversion from an anti-Christian mindset than we do with even James.

Finally, as I said before, In any case, you should take into account ALL of the minimal facts; Jesus' death by crucifixion, His empty tomb, His postmortem appearances to the disciples and Paul. You don't like the 5th minimal fact. Fine, let's throw it out. How do you account for Jesus' empty tomb, and the experiences of the 12 disciples and Paul that they had seen Jesus risen from the dead? If these historical facts aren't best explained by a miraculous resurrection, what would you suppose we put in its place?

--------------------------

I replied:

barryNovember 29, 2018 at 3:44 PM

Evan,

I can answer all of your concerns, but experience tells me that point-by-point replies often become so large so quickly that it becomes nearly impossible to continuing to answer everything. Therefore, while I plan to answer all of your concerns, I think the goal of scholarly objectivity would be best achieved if I limit my replies to singular issues.

The first issue I'll limit myself to was that Christian scholar whom I said admitted Galatians 1:19 was fatally ambiguous. You asked who he was, but I quoted him in the link I provided at the end of my prior post, George, T. (2001, c1994). New American Commentary, Vol. 30: Galatians. On p. 74 he says:

1:19 Paul claimed that he saw none of the other apostles except James, the brother of Jesus. The expression is ambiguous in Greek, so we cannot be sure whether Paul meant to include James among the other apostles. Did he mean: “The only other apostle I saw was James,” or “I saw no other apostle, although I did see James”? Probably he meant something like this: “During my sojourn with Peter, I saw none of the other apostles, unless you count James, the Lord’s brother.”

You said the meaning of that verse was "obvious", so I think I am reasonable to focus attention exclusively on the following question: "If an inerrantist Christian scholar can be reasonable to claim Galatians 1:19 to be problematically ambiguous, and do this without giving the reader a monograph addressing contrary arguments provided by other scholars, can an atheist bible critic be reasonable to accept what this Christian scholar says as true, without examining the contrary arguments offered by other bible scholars?"

Of course, I'm aware of the other arguments, but I claim that because even Christians can feel reasonable to draw conclusions before considering what the other side has to say (i.e., they routinely accept Jesus before they know about the arguments atheists can throw at them), then you are going to have to admit that an atheist bible critic can possibly be reasonable to accept the findings of a conservative Christian bible scholar, and refuse to pursue the matter further.

That is, reasonableness doesn't require comprehensive knowledge, perfect accuracy, or a mind-set that automatically shifts into neutral on an opinion every time contrary evidence shows up.

-----------------------

Evan replied:

Evan MintonNovember 30, 2018 at 6:55 AM

Okay, so what you're saying is that multiple interpretations are available for Galatians 1:19. Those interpretations are

1: “The only other apostle I saw was James,”
2: “I saw no other apostle, although I did see James”
3: “During my sojourn with Peter, I saw none of the other apostles, unless you count James, the Lord’s brother.”

Each one of these says that Paul saw James, Jesus' brother. So what would be the issue with saying any one of these is correct? No matter which translation you take, you end up saying that Paul met with James, so what is supposed to be the problem?

And again, I still think you're missing the forest for the trees by focusing on the legitimacy of one minimal fact in The Minimal Facts case. As I said before, if you don't think we can establish the postmortem appearance to James with historical certainty, fine. Throw it out. Let's look at the other minimal facts and how to account for them.

---------My response:

Well first, you started out saying that the meaning of Galatians 1:19 was 'obvious'.   But having discovered the negative comments admitted by T. George, can you agree with me that the meaning of that verse is something less than "obvious"?

Second, not sure why you are asking me what would be wrong with the truth that emerges from all of the possible interpretations, i.e., that Paul went to see a brother of Jesus whose name was James.   I see nothing wrong with that truth.  My argument doesn't say James wasn't an apostle or wasn't a brother to Jesus, only that there is no good historical evidence that James the brother of Jesus ever came to Christian faith.

My "problem" is that Galatians 1:19 cannot be reasonably considered a good rebuttal to me if the only part that might imply he had a Christian faith (i.e., the part that says he was an apostle) is considered ambiguous by even conservative inerrantist Christian scholars, who otherwise have every motive to view the biblical evidence in light most favorable to their conservative Christian belief that James came to believe Jesus rose from the dead.

You say I'm missing the forest for the trees by focusing so much on the legitimacy of one minimal fact.  There are two problems with this:

1 - I've refuted ALL of Habermas' "minimal facts", you just haven't seen these arguments of mine yet.   

2 - The statements supporting James' skepticism toward Jesus (Mark 3:21, 6:4, John 7:5) are more historically likely than other biblical statements that Jesus did real miracles, because these three passages fulfill a historical criterion that the others don't; the criterion of embarrassment.  That is, James probably REALLY WAS skeptical of Jesus' claims at all points between the start of Jesus' public ministry and the crucifixion...because this is not the type of claim that a forger would likely invent...while the claim that Jesus did miracles clearly IS something a forger would find useful to invent. 

I maintain that the contention that Jesus' family saw nothing supernatural about Jesus' miracles, will always have at least a bit more historical plausibility than any excuse apologists can come up with to reconcile their belief that Jesus' miracles were real, with the undeniable NT fact that his own family found nothing about his miracle-ministry very convincing.

Please clarify:

Can an atheist bible critic's belief that Galatians 1:19 is fatally ambiguous about James' apostolic status, be rendered reasonable in light of conservative inerrantist Christian scholars who admit the meaning of this verse cannot be determined with any degree of confidence?  If so, then kindly move away from that verse and give me another piece of historical information that you think reasonably shows that the specific James known as "the Lord's brother" ever came to adopt the Christian faith at any time in his life.

How *DO* you explain the undeniable NT fact that Jesus' own family maintained skepticism toward him throughout the duration of his earthly miracle ministry?  You don't want to say they caught him deluding gullible crowds with purely naturalistic tricks...so your options are quite limited, choose wisely:

"Jesus' family was skeptical of him throughout the duration of his miracle-ministry because whenever Jesus was doing miracles..."

-they were out of town
-they were always looking the other way
-they were always drunk
-they were mentally disabled
-they were too jealous of Jesus' popularity to reason correctly
-Mark 3:21, 6:4 and John 7:5 are textual corruptions
-the majority Christian scholarly translation/interpretation of Mark 3:21, 6:4 and John 7:5 is incorrect, the NT never says anybody in Jesus' family were ever skeptical toward him
-something else?

I will be happy to comment on any other "minimal fact" you think is a powerful support for Jesus' resurrection, but I maintain that the James-problem I've brought to your attention cannot be reasonably resolved by apologists in way that will harmonize with their trusting acceptance of everything in the bible as historically reliable.

You mention the empty tomb, but the majority scholarly opinion is that Mark was the earliest gospel, and the resurrection appearance stories in ch. 16 are a late corruption, so that the earliest gospel did not assert anybody actually saw the risen Christ.  Because the traditions in Mark reach back earlier than the date of composition, those traditions, which lack resurrection-appearance stories, are just as likely to go all the way back to 37 a.d., as you think the resurrection-appearance "creed" in 1st Cor. 15 does.  Hence, there exists even at the earliest historical point the sources will allow, a tradition conspicuously lacking resurrection appearance stories, a lacunae that is unexpected if in fact those appearances really happened.
 -----------------

 Evan replies:

        Evan MintonDecember 1, 2018 at 10:24 AM

        So you concede the following historical statements

        1: James' brother was a hardened skeptic of His brother during His ministry.

        2: James had Christian faith after the crucifixion of Jesus.

        You concede that both of these historical facts? Am I correct?

        Also, whether a **person** is reasonable to adopt a certain proposition or hypothesis is irrelevant. I'm more concerned about whether the evidence favors more strongly a given hypothesis than another, and what is more reasonable in light of that evidence.

        You want other evidence that James was a Christian? He's called one of the "pillars" of the Jerusalem church. This is mentioned in both the book of Acts (21:17-20) as well as by Paul in his letter to the Galatians (2:9). Paul and Luke are independently reporting this. Thus, we know this on the principle of multiple attestations.

        From the criterion of embarrassment, as you yourself said, we saw that he was a skeptic prior to the death of Jesus. Yet from the independent attestation of Acts and Galatians that James converted after the death of Jesus. This prompts the question: WHAT HAPPENED to James to cause him to go from thinking Jesus was an insane con to the risen Lord of Lords? I would argue that what happened was that he saw His brother alive after His death. Now, we can debate the nature of this postmortem appearance experience if you want to. We can debate whether it really was a miraculous resurrection or whether it was a hallucination, a dream, a Twin of Jesus, or whatever. But that James had an experience which he at least believed was the resurrection of his brother is the best explanation for why he went from skeptic (Mark 3, John 7) to pastor of the Jerusalem church (Galatians 2, Acts 21).

        Also, notice that I made this argument tossing Galatians 1:19 completely to the side. That's the beauty of the minimal facts method. I can concede so much and yet still make my point.

        "How *DO* you explain the undeniable NT fact that Jesus' own family maintained skepticism toward him throughout the duration of his earthly miracle ministry?"

        Simple: Jesus traveled. His family didn't. James had better things to do than follow his brother around like a lost puppy. He had a job. He had bills to pay. And we're explicitly told that Jesus didn't do miracles in his home town (see Mark 6). You seem to be under the impression that Jesus did all of his miraculous feats in his own backyard. But if Jesus were in other towns and villages (and he was) and James and his family stayed at home (which is never explicitly said in the text but is a likely inference), then the reason they would be skeptical is that they simply didn't witness the miracles firsthand. Why? Because they weren't even in the same town.

        If you want to contest this, you need to produce some good evidence that James and his brothers did accompany Him on all, most, or many of his travels. You cited John 2 as one example, but as I said, that miracle was so subtle that it could have easily been missed. It was perhaps the most quiet miracle Jesus ever performed.

 ------------------

 I respond:

 You raise too many points to justify trying to answer them all, so let's just focus for now on your belief that the Christian faith of James the brother of Jesus is proven from the fact that you think this is the specific James who is being called a "pillar" in Galatians 2:9.

Since you admit you can still prove your case even by forgetting about Galatians 1:19, ok...but even assuming James the brother of the Lord is the pillar-James Gal. 2:9 is talking about (a possible but by no means necessary inference), you are still inferring "Christian faith" from "pillar".  I don't think that is necessarily inconsistent or wrong, but because Josephus says the more scrupulous Jews objected to the execution of this James, this tells me that the kind of "faith" James went around preaching, did not offend the more scrupulous Jews at all...which is a shocking departure from Jesus and Paul, whose preaching was highly offensive to the more scrupulous Jews. 

And I have good reasons to be suspicious of Paul's credibility, so I wouldn't find it very compelling if indeed Paul meant to say James the Lord's brother was an apostle with true Christian faith.  That's just Paul saying something, hardly the end of the debate, and this would justify an inquiry into his general credibility, since such a statement cannot be independently corroborated and thus it's truth turns exclusively on Paul's credibility.

Notice:  Paul curses the Judaizers in Gal. 1:8.  Then he calls Peter a pillar in 2:9, then he gloats that this pillar and two others gave him the right hand of fellowship (2:9), then he describes Peter as a hypocritical Judaizer in 2:14.  The issue then is how smart it is to suppose that Paul's choice of description of other people is sufficient to establish historical likelihood where his assertions are without independent corroboration.  As you probably know, conservative 19th century Christian scholar J. B. Lightfoot famously remarked that the beginning few verses of Gal. 2 are a "shipwreck of grammar"

So my theory about Paul's confusing of concepts could indeed be correct; that is, when Paul says somebody is an "x", it is legitimately debatable whether he would agree to all the implications of his chosen wording that a reader might normally draw.

        Evan MintonDecember 3, 2018 at 5:17 PM

        So how could you be a "pillar" of the Jerusalem church, (alongside which Paul mentions Cephas/Peter and John) without being in the Christian faith. Let's look at what the verse actually says

        "James, Cephas and John, those esteemed as pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcised. "

        And look at the entire context. What did Paul go to James, Cephas, and John to talk about? Whether or not he and they were preaching the same gospel (see Galatians 2:1-2). Paul wanted to make sure he and the other apostles were preaching the same message. What was the result of such an inquiry? Paul says "They added nothing to me." (verse 6). Now, this seems very indicative that James was a believer in Christ. Not only the does the context seem to demand this, but if James wasn't preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ whereas Paul clearly was, he couldn't say that he and James were on the same page.

        "And I have good reasons to be suspicious of Paul's credibility" -- Why would you? Don't you think a man who endured as much hardship for preaching as he did (as his multiply attested by himself and Luke in the book of Acts) would make sure he got his info correctly? I know that if I went through as much turmoil as Paul did, I would want to make darn sure my credibility didn't suffer in the course of my preaching.

        As for Paul calling Peter a hypocritical Judaizer, I'm looking at the passage right now on BibleStudyTools.com and I don't see that anywhere even hinted at the text. Rather, what I see (and this is the interpretation I've heard the majority of the commentators that I have read make) is that Peter trying to compromising with the Judaisers to get on their good side, not that Peter was a Judaiser himself. Paul says Peter ate with the Gentiles, but when the Judaizers came, he stopped.

        "For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray. " (2:12-13).

    

 barry
December 4, 2018 at 5:02 PM

    Are you going to answer my prior question? Was I reasonable to use an inerrantist Christian scholar’s admission that Galatians 1:19 is fatally ambiguous, to justify disagreeing with your belief that the meaning of that verse was ‘obvious’?

    Also, the debate we’re having might need to take a different turn, since you are assuming the truth of various Pauline statements, while I don’t find Paul very credible. Of course, I’ve done a massive amount of research on that single topic, and I cannot give you all the reasons here and then go back to discussing the issue of James.

    When I said my theory of Jesus not rising from the dead because James’ lifetime skepticism cannot be more reasonably accounted for by any other theory, I did not express or imply that I could reconcile my theory with every statement made by anybody in the NT. All I committed to was the premise that I can show that my theory to explain the biblical data has stronger epistemic warrant, than any Christian theory.

    Would you like me to justify my contention that it is reasonable for a modern day person to be suspicious of Paul’s uncorroborated assertions? That's a whole 'nother discussion.

    For now, Acts 15 and 21 do not show James the brother of Jesus to be a pillar, only that a “James” was, and once again, there were two fully qualifying “Jameses” among the original 12 apostles, who were not the brother of Jesus. Things are NOT as simple and straightforward as your bible-believing faith makes it seem.

    You puzzle over how James could be a “pillar” in the church if in fact he didn’t have Christian. But the early church’s beliefs and the degree to which they cared about Jesus are plagued with mystery. For example, the gospels all attest that Jesus had just as big of a ministry to Gentiles as he had to Jews, which would make it reasonable to infer that the post-resurrection church was quite aware of the reality of Gentile salvation.

    And that would be a reasonable deduction if the NT contained nothing beyond the 4 gospels. But in Acts 11, they only learn such truth from Peter and his “vision”, and in v. 18 they respond as if Gentile salvation was some new shocking unexpected theological development they’d never have guessed was true unless Peter reported that vision.

    One apologist has tried to get around this rather unexpected bit of ignorance in the early church by trifling that the church was only marveling that Gentile salvation was a one-step process instead of a two-step process, but that’s foolish. The words of the church in 11:18 are “God has granted to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life”. They are marveling that God has granted REPENTANCE to Gentiles, i.e., they marvel that God has enabled the Gentiles to take that very first step toward salvation, thus implying they never previously believed God had ever done this. They would hardly marvel about the “repentance” being granted, if they believed Gentile repentance was made possible by God previously. If that early church was so unexpectedly ignorant of something the gospels present as almost a daily reality (Gentile salvation), the door opens to the possibility that the early church's "pillars" were less compliant with the gospels that one might otherwise expect.

    In other words, we engage in unreasonable error if we simply read common Christian presuppositions back into the early post-resurrection church.