Loading...When I was in high school I was active on the debate team, and really loved it. The team as a whole was really good, but I was nowhere near being the best member. My colleague and another fellow on the team ended up debating together in college and won the national championship as sophomores. These guys were terrific.
One of the decisions we constantly had to make when arguing the negative side of a resolution was how to go about attacking the claims of the affirmative side. There were two general approaches: one was what we called the “shotgun” approach. This involved leveling lots and lots of arguments (like buckshot) and hoping that the other side could not respond to them all, thereby making the judge of the debate think that some of the arguments stuck, even if not all of them were that good. The problem with the shotgun approach was that if a bunch of the arguments weren’t very good, the affirmative side could knock them down fairly easily, and by the end, it looked like just about everything they said showed that our arguments weren’t very good.
And so we usually opted to take the other approach, which was to develop two or three arguments at length that were very difficult indeed to refute. If the affirmative side couldn’t win, say, two of the three arguments (as opposed to successfully answering 10), then the debate was in the bag for us.
Another way of looking at this is to say that a cumulative argument – lots of little arguments adding up to one big argument — can be seen as an effective mode of refutation, but ONLY if each one of the little arguments itself carries weight. If each of the little arguments don’t carry any weight at all, then the cumulative effect also doesn’t carry weight. You can accumulate all the zeros you want, and they’ll still add up to zero.
If I had been Craig and wanted to attack the views that I set forth in How Jesus Became God, I think I would not have taken the shotgun approach. The accumulation of arguments that individually don’t carry much weight just ends up not being very convincing. My view is that most of his arguments really don’t carry any weight – the “evidence” from Philo, the “evidence” that Roman governors sometimes showed clemency to convicted criminals, the claim that Romans allowed executed criminals decent burial, and – the evidence I’ll cite now.
One of the principal arguments that I advance to show that Jesus was probably not given a decent burial is that the Roman governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate, in particular, could not be expected to have
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My question regarding this thread involves the timing of the belief in the resurrection. I don’t see how anyone would believe in the resurrection while Jesus’s body remained hanging on the cross. At some point Jesus’ body would need to be removed from public view.
And you have stated, regarding the belief in the resurrection, that about twenty people initially believed in the resurrection. In so stating, you seem to suggest that those twenty people believed in the resurrection shortly after Jesus’ death on the cross.
But in order for those twenty people to have believed in Jesus’ resurrection shortly after his death on the cross, Jesus would have needed to be taken down from the cross relatively soon.
How would Jesus’ body have been removed from the cross relatively soon without Pilate’s approval?
Martin – My thought is this: the standard story has his followers knowing he is dead, then seeing him later “obviously alive” and therefore knowing that he had been bodily resurrected. Whether the time between his death and their experiences of him being alive again was a couple days or a couple weeks would make no material difference. In the one case, he was dead; in the other very, very dead. Among the many fictional aspects of the passion, death, and resurrection stories, “on the third day” is a small change to make when remembering and telling of the events they believe they experienced.
Good points ! Furthermore how many people would have seen Jesus decaying corpse hanging on the cross ? Quite a few i reckon. This would certainly quickly spread and it would have made the claims of a resurrection much more absurd. The people who saw him in appalling state of decomposition vastly outnumber those initially claiming he was somehow raised from the dead. With a buried Jesus the latter story is easier to proclaim i think.
Since anyone but his own followrs would have known who he wsa, I imagine those seeing him would have thought he was one of the three who got crucified that morning, along with all the others on crosses near by.
Bart, I think you meant to type “no one” instead of “anyone” in your reply.
What a difference a word makes. That’s why I’m always amused if someone says that 99% of the words in a passage are accurate. What if the 1% involves a negative?
Depending on how the entrance (riding in on a donkey/colt), temple table turning and trial (‘large’ crowd demanding crucifixion) stories are considered, is it possible that many non-followers in Jerusalem may have recognized Jesus. Jesus’ death was evidently well enough known to be worthy of mention by Josephus. Regardless, I agree that if Jesus was kept on the cross for days, the resurrection story would have greater difficulty in gaining acceptance. How James the brother of Jesus, Peter and the other disciples dealt with the situation and somehow held the ministry together is quite a mystery.
Josephus almost certainly knew about it through the Christian tradition, I should think. There’d be no reason for Jews to be talking about it widely. Most would not have even known anything about Jesus or that he was killed. My view is that the stories of the triumphal entry and Jesus shutting down the temple can’t be historical (I explain at some length in my book Jesus Before the Gospels)
Any idea of why Josephus included the passage about Jesus?
Do you agree with Kohanski that it was to show Pilate’s cruelty?
Josephus discusses hundreds of figures of historical interest, including a number of people named Jesus (some at greater length than our Jesus). He seems to ahve wanted to talk about people he had heard of.
“The people who saw him in appalling state of decomposition vastly outnumber those initially claiming he was somehow raised from the dead.”
” and that he was buried and that he was raised on the 3rd day in accordance with the scriptures”
if paul were worried about a decomposed body , why wouldn’t he say that he was raised 3 days after death? if isaiah 53 is his source , then the servant is mistreated by the people. there is nothing in isaiah 53 which says that jewish customs and traditions would be respected.
the whole point of isaiah 53 is to show that injustice is going on
Dr Ehrman , is this correct?
It’s interesting that neither Paul nor any other NT author invokes Isaiah 53 (i.e. quote it) to explain Jesus’ death; the Gospels do appear to pick up on some of the themes of the passage (Jesus being silent, being crucified between two criminals; being buried by a rich man), but never quote it in support. Either does Paul. Seems odd to most modern day folk.
Shouldn’t student Saul have seen or heard of the crucifixion? Also he was studying under Gamaliel. For him not to recall those times is utterly baffling
The book of Acts does indicate that Paul was in Jerusalem and studied with Gamaliel, but as with so much of waht Acts says about Paul that Paul himself is silent about, I don’t think it can be historically accurate. Paul not only says nothing about it but shows no evidence of it (or even of knowing Aramaic).
Good point.
Not only did the first believers in Jesus’s resurrection take for granted that he was buried in a tomb, but the Jews contending with them apparently said :
‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away.’ (Matthew 28:13)
As early as in Mark’s gospel, we have the strange story of the ‘stone rolled against the entrance of the tomb’ (Mark 15:46). Not stopping there, Matthew added a seal to the stone and stationed some guards (Matthew 27:62-65).
These stories were probably introduced as counterarguments to the version of the stolen body. The body could not have been stolen because the Jews, with Pilate’s help, ‘made the tomb SECURE by putting a SEAL on the STONE and posting GUARDS.’ (Matthew 27:66).
The fact that Mark mentions only women (Mark 15:40-41), assuming that no male disciples remained in Jerusalem after Jesus’s killing, was likely an effort to root out the idea of disciple involvement in the theft of the body.
All of this shows that both the early Christians and their Jewish opponents, at a very early date, never doubted the story of Jesus’s burial in a tomb.
Yes, sometime before the writing of the Gospels, 40-60 years later.
Yup, but it’s odd that in those less than 40 years the Jews that were well aware of ” Roman policies of crucifixion” would invent the story of the stolen body instead of saying that Jesus’s corpse was “left to the elements and the scavenging animals.”
We don’t know who invented the story or where or when. It is found in Matthew which is focused on post-resurrection traditoins connected with Galilee, where Jews would not have ever seen Roman crucifixions, unless they were living in one of the major cities possibly. And possibly not even there. The story would have been invented in response to Christians insisting there was an empty tomb — i.e. in response to a Christian claim; unfortunately, we don’t know exactly what hte claim was (e.g., whether it involved Jesus being buried that afternoon)
A story invented by Jews from rural Galilee that had no idea about crucifixion because none of them ever lived in a major city nor ever heard about the standard practice of leaving the corpse to the elements and the scavenging animals?
By the time Paul converted the apostles already were in Jerusalem (Gal 1:17) , so the story was invented back in Galilee in the time after Jesus’ killing and before the return of the apostles to Jerusalem and was spread till the times Matthew was written (Matthew 28:15)?
Well, as you explained to Fellows, we can always find a way out !!
I think your argument about Jesus not having a proper burial is valid, but not sound.
I would like to write a Platinum post about all this , but my first one has not been published, any idea about why?
Paul met them in Jerusalem three years later — not, say, a week or two after the events. It would have taken them more than a week just to *get* to Galilee….
Send me an email about your platinum post so we can figure it out.
Very interesting question.
It’s interesting, but for me I doubt the resurrection happen, and story was of the resurrection was added later. Im not scholar like Bart but wasn’t it awhile after Jesus died before the followers even started preaching? Maybe Bart can give us his thoughts.
My view is that the disciples fled to Galilee as suggested by mark and indicated by Matthew (it certainly makes sense; they probably were scared to death). They came to believe in Jesus’s resurrection whem some of them claimed to have seen him later, presumably en route or in Galilee (among the Synoptics only the latest Luke indicates they saw him in Jerusalem, since they never left there, in contradiction to Matthew)
I would guess that since the disciples fled, they wouldn’t even be aware that he was rotting on the cross. They had their grieving visions of him without ever having to face the reality of the corpse.
Yup, that’s my view too.
Hi Bart,
Still, the Burial-Same-Day claim has strong data:
# Multiple attestations in the NT.
# Josephus (IV-314), first highlighted here by Blackwell.
# My argument in 2023-July-25, which in a nutshell: the idea of Jesus being buried in the same day was widespread at a time that the people who witnessed the crucifixion were still alive, and normal people don’t normally believe in bold-faced lies (this is in line with Martin’s comment above).
Furthermore, how do we know that Pilate was ruthless? He was ruthless against armed rebellious but so the others. Did he employ secret police that they tortured people to death? Did he collect the people from the street on suspicions and send them to cross in and around the city?
I assume the contrary, I think he did have a good relationship with the liberal Jews and with many (if not most) of the religious leadership. His problem was with the fundamentalists, who I don’t think they formed the majority there at that time.
If we want to take the available accounts at face value and put a label of ruthlessness around Pilate’s neck, then it would only be against the fundamentalists and only on the street.
If I’m understanding correctly, nothing you are saying would conflict with what Paul wrote. Jesus died, was eventually buried and about 3 days later some of his followers believed that he had been resurrected. Later Christians created elaborate stories around the basic death, burial and resurrection sequence.
I must admit I have trouble accepting that a scholar of Evans’s experience and reputation would take a quote so out of context as this.
Bart,
To accurately describe Evans’ position, I think you need to add the following bracketed words to three of your statements:
1) “Pilate was known for being unusually ruthless and brutal in his dealings with the Jewish people. Craig wants to insist that since this was a time of peace, things would have been different, and Pilate would have been generous [with religious sensitivities to keep the peace].”
2) “Pilate was not at all sensitive to Jewish culture and law – a view almost precisely opposite to Craig’s, who sees him as a competent governor who would back down whenever he realized that he had made a mistake [if that’s what it took to keep the peace].”
3) “The Emperor thought that Pilate was being unnecessarily provocative [i.e., he might break the peace]; he wrote Pilate and told him to get the shields out of Jerusalem and to take them back to Caesarea instead. Pilate’s hand was forced, not by the Jews but by the emperor himself [from which Pilate could have learned to be less provocative to keep the peace or lose his job].
Pilate could be ruthless and brutal (you) AND respect Jewish sensitivities when needed to *keep the peace* (Evans)…right?
Dr.BE, thank you for taking my two previous questions. I just now tonight finished your course on Mark, and I am still reeling from all the complexities I now have to think about.
If possible, having a discussion group with other members who are interested in exchanging ideas about Mark would be helpful to me. Using the “Questions For Reflection” at the end of each lesson would be a good starting place. Perhaps one of the long-term members would be willing to facilitate such a group.
Great! Glad you liked it. Have you seen the Forum on the blog. Click on it and you can find others to chat with about whatever strikes your fancy.
It would be helpful to say who Craig is for those that don’t happen to have the full context at our fingertips.
You can look him up on the Internet. He’s an established evangelical scholar of the NT who has written and, especially edited, many books.
Is this William Lane Craig you refer to or another scholar with the name Craig (perhaps as their first name)?
We are talking about Craig Evans (see my posts)
Martin Brody, I tend to be on the side of NT historians who think that Roman officials, especially someone as ruthless as Pilate, would not have allowed any crucified person to be removed until dead and utterly ravaged by scavengers. They probably, as Dom Crossan has argued, then summarily deposited in the Gehenna trash heap. I think Prof. Ehrman is pretty much in agreement with this.
I love debating and debates in general, but in the context of a noble pursuit of the truth. I get that debating evolves intellectual capacities of young people, but I feel it also nurtures a vanity that manifests itself in those who debate only to win the debate. I mean, OK, I am human, I take pleasure in crushing the occasional smug, but, apart from such exceptions to the rule, I genuinely engage in conversations in order to reach the truth. This debate culture in Britain and the US feels a bit misaligned.
Yup, it certainly can be. I don’t recall ever convincing a public debate opponent about a single point. (Or they me, I suppose!) But when NOT in the debate itself, I’m always open to alternative views. Not everyone is. That’s harder to do on the spot in a debate. On the other hand, I almost never hear an argument in a debate that I haven’t heard a hundred times before, and when I do hear it, it’s usually pretty obvious to me why it’s a really weird argument (as when Dinesh D’Souza wanted to argue that there has to be suffering in the world because God could not create life without shifting tectonic plates….)
At that point, your prior anxiety for him as a potentially dangerous opponent in the debate surely evaporated.
The problem in a debate is when someone asks a question you can’t answer or makes an argument you can’t respond to. That can be very bad (publicly).
Is it not the case that Imperial Rome’s provincial governors usually left standing orders for the commanders of local cohorts to arrest and execute all those they deemed insurrectionists? Furthermore, is it the case that the actual executioners determined the level of torture and defilement rendered in any form of capital punishment, and even managed the disposal of remains on what were very busy killing fields? If so, this leads me to believe that Pilate was not overly involve in either Jesus’s death or the disposition of his remains.
Two more concerns:
First, what Jewish leaders would have objected so vociferously to the Sabbath crucifixion of Jesus’s corpse, especially after they demanded his crucifixion? Did these Jews have no understanding of the lengthy process or intended deterrence of crucifixion? This seems to me to be a possible inconsistency in the Gospel stories.
Second, do Near Eastern resurrection stories necessitate burials, or exclude cremations or extensive mutilations? If not, then it doesn’t seem unlikely that Paul and the Evangelists could have been misinformed about Jesus’s burial, while still promoting a resurrection story.
1. Commanders of local cohorts: I don’t know. is there some ancient evidence that suggests this? I don’t recall ever seeing any. 2. Yup, I agree. Doesn’t make much sense. 3. We don’t have Near Eastern resurrection stories of divine humans who are killed and buried.
Regarding commanders of local cohorts independently arresting possible insurrectionists was a claim or conjecture I snatched up from Crossan, but cannot point to his quotation or sources, or even if I found this notion in his books, or heard it in one of his lectures or off-the-hand interview comments. I just don’t remember or have the time to chase it down. Whether more of a guess by him or based on ancient texts, I would have to contact him at some point. While scholarship may not have the supportive evidence, it does sound like a reasonable possibility given the time constraints on a busy governor and the massive amount of crucifixions taking place at the time, don’t you think? Would a contemporary and popular up-date of Hengel’s work be within your reach, given the effort you’ve made and continue to make in these blogs? What do think about that?
Ah, Hengel and I would not see eye to eye on most things. I met him only once, when I was a young grad student, and he took th etime to sit down and talk with me about all sorts of esoteric stuff that I was intersted that most NT scholars knew nothing about. The man was a walking encyclopedia. But his factual knowledge, for me, was always far more impressive than his arguments and conclusions, whiuch almost always ended up being the traditional view no matter what… I’m not aware of commanders of local cohorts being given judicial (as opposed to military) authority; and the reality is that there *weren’t* cohorts in Galilee/Samaria/Judea, apart from the troops with the governor himself, so far as I’m aware.
The troops and their leaders were up in Syria protecting the borders. disabledupes{17ea7a8d37a017f0d9009a9e2b024f81}disabledupes
Dr. Ehrman,
With regard to the “invented stories” my question would be what are the “predicates” for the invented stories?
Precisely, do you think that the disciples came to understand Jesus as the suffering Messiah AFTER they believed they saw him at or en route to Galilee. Namely, BECAUSE they believed they saw him alive, they understood his power and authority. Or do you think that AFTER the theology of the suffering Messiah began to gain traction, the believers invented the entire sequence of events from Jesus’ triumphant entry to his ascension at Pentecost?
I think the moment they came to believe God raised Jesus from the dead, they came to think that, since he wsa obviously favored by God, the death itself must have been part of the divie plan. And at that point they started thinking that Jesus’ death must have been predicted in Scripture, and they turned to passages that talks about the righteous one who suffers. And that begins Christianity.