(10 votes, average: 4.60 out of 5)
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Last week (March 2) I did a two and a half hour debate on whether Jesus was raised from the dead with Jonathan Sheffield, who is not a scholar but a self-professed “Anglican Autodidact.” (He works in some kind of legal field but I don’t believe he’s a lawyer.) He debates a lot of people (someone provides funding for it I suppose): Mark Goodacre, Richard Carrier and others. I debated him some months ago on whether Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John actually wrote the Gospels. You can find the debate on YouTube.
You can find last week’s as well. I’m afraid that I was a bit forceful at times and I hope he didn’t find me somewhat belligerent or rude, but, well, I can see why he might have. He is a good guy and we have some laughs together, but I don’t find his argument convincing. But it certainly was unusual.
I’d never heard THAT one before! It took me about fifteen minutes before I understood what it was.
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Here I’ll describe it. I’d love to know what you make of it and how you yourself would respond. (If you listen to the debate, maybe do it after you think the issue over first) (and if you do listen to it and think I’m misrepresenting the argument here, let me and everyone else know.)
The question we were asking was the historical one: is there compelling historical evidence to show that Jesus really came back from the dead?
The line I took in my opening remarks was nothing unusual – pretty much what I’ve said for years. Historians can only establish what most likely happened in the past, based on the material and literary evidence we have. We don’t have any material evidence for the resurrection, but we do have early Christian accounts: comments of Paul and the narratives of the Gospels (we have later Christian accounts too, but they are all dependent on one way or another on these canonical versions).
Regrettably, these canonical accounts come many years (decades) after the events described and are written by people who were not there, who lived in different parts of the world, and did not speak Aramaic. They based their stories on oral reports that had been in circulation for all that time, principally among people who also lived in different places and spoke different languages; the New Testament accounts, of course, are not “disinterested” – the authors are deeply committed to the belief Jesus was raised. And even though they agree with much of the gist of the story, they contradict each other repeatedly, in detail after detail.
These are not the kinds of sources that historians normally find reliable.
But the bigger problem is that to say that the historical evidence shows Jesus was probably raised from the dead means all other historical explanations are *less* probable. Is that really the case – not for “belief” but for straight-up regular ole “historical investigation”? Is a one-time act of God more probable than the possibility that people made up parts of the stories, or that people who said the saw Jesus were mistaken, or that rumors were started and then widely spread, exaggerated in one way or the other? Just in terms of probability – is there anything inherently improbable about people making up stories, misunderstanding what they saw, repeating rumors? Not really. It happens all the time. On the other hand, how often does it happen that someone is truly dead (not in a coma etc.) and is actually restored to life days later.
Well, of the 115 billion homo sapiens who have lived over the past 300 millennia of our species, if it did happen this time it was the only time.
Is that MORE likely than that someone like Paul mistook what he saw when he thought he saw Jesus; or that someone claiming to be Jesus introduced himself to Paul (Paul of course would have had no idea what Jesus even looked like); or that … pick your other option. Weird things happen, yes. Weird things do happen, all the time. Laws of nature do not get broken all the time. Or, as a bumper sticker I once saw said (with reference to highway signs): “186,000 miles per second is not a good idea. It’s the LAW.”
At the outset I stated that I was not arguing Jesus was not raised from the dead. I was arguing that believing he was is a matter of faith, not of historical demonstration. If you could demonstrate it (the way you could establish what happened at the last UNC-Duke basketball game, e.g.) then it’s not a matter of faith.
OK, that was my position. I EXPECTED Jonathan to appeal to legal proof (since he’s trained in something connected with the law) and set up a court case scenario with the kind of evidence you’d find in a criminal procedure (“eyewitnesses” “empty tomb” “impact of Christianity on the world” etc.). Nope. His argument came right outta left field!
Jonathan began by arguing that Roman and Greeks were very good at exposing religious hoaxes and excesses. He cited the case of the Roman exposure and suppression of an allegedly insidious Bacchanalia cult in 125 BCE, as described by the historian Livy, and the exposure and attack of Alexander the False Prophet by Lucian of Samosata in the second century CE; etc.). Whenever there were wild and socially threatening religious claims, Jonathan argued, the Greeks and Romans would dig in to reveal its fallacy, expose it, and suppress it.
That didn’t happen with early Christianity.
The Christian church, he argued, was growing at a fantastic rate in Judea after Jesus’ death and burial. The Roman governor Pilate must have been concerned and he would have been required to report the problem to his emperor Tiberias. More important, he would have been obliged to investigate the Christian claim that Jesus had been raised from the dead, for example, by checking to see if the tomb really was empty. Pilate would also then have have been obliged to report his findings to the Roman emperor.
We do have indications that Pilate communicated with his emperor about Jesus, as found in Justin Martyr and Tertullian, along with a set of non-canonical writings.
Even so, there is no indication that he had uncovered the hoax, that he had shown it was false, that he therefore went after the Christians. Since he must have investigated, but didn’t report a hoax, that must mean Pilate realized the claims were true. Jesus was raised from the dead. Moreover, since he reported his findings to the Tiberias back in Rome, and since the emperor also didn’t take any further action, he too must have believed it.
Yet more, the Jewish historian Josephus as well as such Roman authors as Tacitus, Suetonius, Plutarch, would also have felt compelled to investigate and uncover the hoax. But they too make no report on it. Their investigations must have convinced them too that the tomb was empty and that there was no hoax. If it was no hoax, as obvious from the fact we hear of no counter-demonstration, it must have been historically true.
These authors all agreed: Jesus really was raised from the dead. Pilate believed it; Tiberias believed it; Josephus, Suetonius, Tacitus, and Plutarch believed it. It must be historical then.
That was the view I had to address in my rebuttal and cross-examinations (we had two).
How would YOU respond?
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My first question would be “Where is the evidence that these Romans (Tacitus etc.) actually investigated the claims?” Second would be “How trustworthy are comments by Justin or Tertullian, written over 100 years after the events?” [I don’t know what either actually said about Pilate.]
I would say that parts of Mr Sheffield’s arguments are flawed. The incident in Livy to which he refers was more a public order issue. The cult of Dionysus was not something that the Romans thought was a hoax, it was just that the wild orgiastic partying that accompanied some of the Rites were seen as disruptive. And the false prophet Alexander incident might well have been atypical. The Romans were as gullible or sceptical as anyone else. They accepted the proclaimed divinity of various emperors when it was advisable to do so. I’d say that at the time of Jesus’s death, no-one in authority probably cared, least of all Pilate. And on a point of detail, if he had gone up the chain of command, it would have been to his immediate superior, the Governor of Syria. He was too low ranking to approach Tiberius direct.
I don’t know how to address a question to you, so I just add it here. I was listening to the misquoting Jesus podcast Feb 24 where you stated that Jesus’ innovation was to love the stranger without regard to anything, among others without regard to religion. I find that claim truly exaggerated. The commandment of Exodus 22:21 does not distinguish between jews and non-jews, i.e. religion. The term “ger” might imply residency limitations, but its is open to the usual dynamic interpretations of the oral law. (Similar to Makkot 7a in a different case, meaning the case of the death penalty.) Due to the “you were strangers in Egypt.”
Now Christianity turned out to be supranational, due to the work of Paul, not the teachings of Jesus. But that Christianity would have been loving to non-christians is a little bit pushing it. Jesus obviously continued the Jewish law. Historical development expanded it in one respect, and restricted it in another. (Supranational the one, religious intolerance the other)
It’s just a guess, but the enlightenment may have more to do with today’s universal tolerance, than Christianity.
First time in 10+ years, and 15+ books of yours thatIfeel Ihaveto disagree.
Exodus 22 is referring to resident aliens — those who immigrate into Israel. They are not to be abused or treated differently from other Israelites. It is not an instruction to take care of the needs of non-Israelites.
This is becoming one of the common objections to my book, and I probably need to post on it to clarify matters. I apparently didn’t do it well enough in the book!
A ger doesn’t have to be a convert to Judaism, (but of course they have to be present).
Christianity is of course supranational, but Christians did discriminate by faith throughout history. You stated that they did not.
Religious tolerance is a product of modernity.
I’d say the Roman world and most cultures from activity were highly tolerant, and that Christianity by its very nature from the outset was, almost uniquely, intolerant.
As to Exodus 22, I don’t see how it can be talking about how an Israelity should treat someone outside of Israel, given its immediate context, its relationship with other laws with the same idea expressed slightly differently, and the entire tenor of the law itself and its focus on what it meant to be among the people of God.
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I have not yet viewed the video of the debate. That said, my thoughts are that Pilate would have viewed Jesus’s claim of “King of the Jews” as a threat to Rome. Therefore, he ordered Jesus’s execution.
Claims from his followers that he had been raised from the dead, and had ascended to heaven would have been seen as little or no threat to Rome.
By the time that the Christian movement did start to pose a threat, it would have been to late to invesigate an empty tomb.
My first issue is with him calling it a “hoax”, as a false dichotomy with regards to it either being true or a “hoax”. A cheap shot.
Secondly, the assumption that Pilate must have investigated it and found the tomb empty. Which tomb? And did Pilate really hear about the claims that Jesus was raised from the dead? How do we know that?
Maybe I’ll take a look at that video… 🙂
I would tag onto seahawk41’s questions the point that there are multiple middle alternatives, so we should be on the lookout for a false dichotomy fallacy, For example, if the claims being made at the time were of a spiritual ascendance to heaven, and claims of a bodily resurrection and an empty tomb emerged later, the claim being made wouldn’t be the kind that can be debunked. Also, an unsuccessful effort to find evidence to debunk a claim doesn’t automatically mean that the investigator believes the claim … between “proven true” and “proven false” lies “neither proven true nor false.”
This type of appeal reminds me of what I’ve heard so often about the Exodus. To the argument that it (meaning the plagues, destruction of Pharaoh’s army, escape of the Hebrews, etc.) can’t have happened because no Egyptian records reflect it, believers love to say “Sure they didn’t record it! It was an embarrassing disaster for them, you’d expect they wouldn’t want to remember it!” Because the Egyptians completely avoided the subject, all of it must have happened as described in the Old Testament! Or so the conclusion goes.
Anyway, this guy predicates his argument, similarly, on what the ancients “would have done.” Since we have no reports from this “investigation” that they “would have done,” (and somehow we “know” they absolutely “*must* have done it”) we can logically (as he sees it!) conclude Jesus was resurrected.
But back in the real world, it’s almost impossible to say with certainty what an entire people, or society, “would have done” or “wouldn’t have done.” To base a conclusion on a raw assertion like that is absurd. That’s what I think.
Bart: As a competent debater , you explained his divergent thinking process quit effectively even better than he did in the debate. I see very little logical reasoning for his argument, but perhaps that is why I struggle to understand why there has never been a definitive understanding of the NT.
I was impressed with your compassion, clarification of views and ability to explain important highlights to us neophytes .
Please continue with your research, book publishing efforts and your extra kindness shown to the poor!
Thanks. It took me a long while to figure out where he was going as well!
I consider myself something of an evangelical (though I hold views that people in my camp might find uncomfortable.) I maintain a high view of Scripture, believe God can/has performed miracles, and Jesus truly rose from the dead.
That said, I found this debate deeply embarrassing for Christians. It’s frustrating to watch Christians show up to discussions like this so poorly prepared and ill-equipped. The claim that Pilate and even the Roman Emperor must have accepted the resurrection because if they hadn’t, they would have published a refutation exposing it as a hoax, and the absence of such a record somehow proves the resurrection is so blatantly implausible that it does a disservice to Christianity to present it as an argument.
Christians need to do their homework and come to these conversations prepared. I’m not pretending I’m anywhere near ready to debate a scholar of your caliber, but I am doing the work. If I ever did step into a debate like that, I would come ready. At the very least, I would have friends review my arguments beforehand to make sure I wasn’t embarrassing the cause of Christ!
You weren’t harsh enough. Whoever is funding him- please stop!
Thanks! I believe he went on podcasts after the first debate to explain why he won it; I wonder if he’s doing that this time too…
Well put, kirbinator5000.
I think his argument is assuming that Jesus was entombed (which Bart has covered) and that he appeared back 3 days later, but our two earliest sources (Paul & “Mark”) don’t make that claim. Paul saw Jesus years after while Mark has Mary, Mary, and Salome find the empty tomb but don’t actually see a risen Jesus or even tell anyone.
So, if reports of Jesus reappearing didn’t happen immediately and there was no formal tomb then it would be rather hard for Roman authorities to go look at decomposed bodies trying to ID Jesus in a mass grave
???? The earliest sources say what???
Mark 16:6
1 Corinthians 15:4
My problem with his argument is that his method is not something you could reliably apply to other investigations as it’s all based on assumptions in favour of his position.
Imagine someone in the future trying to figure out what Bart thought about Mormonism applying Jonathan’s reasoning:
– Bart has argued against the reliability of mainstream Christian dogmas, virgin birth, resurrection, biblical innerancy.
– Bart must be familiar with Mormonism but he has never written about Joseph Smith or debated Mormons
– The fact that Bart did not publicly denounce Joseph Smith and his discovery of the golden tablets must be because he investigated it thoroughly and found there must be something in it!
Good one!
This guy should compete in the Olympics in the LONG JUMP!!!
The borderline incoherence of Mr. Sheffield’s presentation made this painful to watch. I guess he’s saying that the absence of a concerted Roman attempt to squelch the spread of stories claiming the resurrection (or only the empty tomb?–it’s hard to say) means that the would-be squelchers accepted those stories as true. If that is in fact what he’s saying, it makes little sense. A better hypothesis might be that those would-be squelchers didn’t think those claims worth bothering with.
If it is the case that there was, at the time, a practice of debunking (some) religious claims the most likely explanation for a lack of investigation is that the investigators did not take the claim seriously. That is, while they may have observed an expression of belief in the resurrection by Christians, the belief was so obviously impossible that an investigation was not needed.
That’s exactly how I would respond as well. When someone, or some religious group, puts forward a claim that is obviously completely impossible, why would a government take the time to investigate and disprove it? (Even assuming that the Roman government did investigate and debunk religious claims in that sense — which it didn’t.)
When 39 Heaven’s Gate cultists committed suicide in 1997, the FBI did not open an investigation to see if there really was a spaceship following the Hale-Bopp comet and if those cult members really were taken onto that spaceship as they had believed they would be. But the FBI’s silence on that matter doesn’t mean that every member of the government “knows” that the spaceship story was true. It means the opposite; they know it was false. The cultists believed it so whole-heartedly that they voluntarily died for that belief. But the rest of us are as certain as it is possible to be about anything that the cultists were deluded.
Ha! Great parallel!
Too easy for a debate. There is no evidence that any of these non Christian writers wrote that they investigated the claims, or wrote about their “investigations”, esp not Josephus. There are many versions of Christianity that scholars such as Dr Ehrman has not written about. A lack of analysis about the Yellow Deli Cult by Dr Ehrman is not evidence of belief. Our debater must present the evidence that such investigations did in fact occur, and that such writings exist.
Saw the debate and had a hard time at first figuring out what his argument was. Then I realized that he’s arguing that there must have been an official investigation of the resurrection by the Romans, and because we don’t have reports detailing fraud, they must have concluded that the resurrection was genuine. So what do I think? Too stupid for words. The evidence is that the early Christians were barely on Rome’s radar.
In addition to a big “ditto” to the comment made by seahawk41, I would also ask where exactly can it be shown that 1st century Christianity was growing at such a robust rate that rulers/thinkers must have taken an interest in a crucified messianic pretender? Aren’t the Christian communities described by Paul small-ish house churches? Like the ministry of Jesus, didn’t earliest Christianity kind of fly under the Roman radar since, if they cared at all, those Romans would have seen this sect as a Jewish offshoot, hardly worthy of official notice?
Yup. I talk about the rates of growth in my book Triumph of Christianity. But it is certainly telling that Christians are not mentioned in any Roman source until 80 years after Jesus’ death.
Tacitus thought Christianity was a superstition and an evil, and he groups it with things hideous and shameful. Doesn’t sound like he gave it much credit.
1. The Romans (and really most humans) believe all kinds of things your debate partner knows are false. Even if they *did* investigate, on matters of religion he would not trust their investigation on myriad other issues, why would he trust it on the resurrection?
2. We have zero evidence that any such “investigations” were undertaken. Certainly if the likes of Josephus had believed in the resurrection he would have emphatically told us so, and likely converted!
3. Even today, most historians do not actively investigate or rebut the religious claims of others that are incidental to their writing or topic. They just present them and move on. There is a sense in which they (really all of us) tacitly understand all religious claims are inherently faith claims and that there is no historical evidence sufficient to justify them. They all require faith commitments.
4. Especially in the case of Pilate, had he become a believer/convert, it seems likely Paul and/or the gospel writers would have mentioned it.
Just a few thoughts… I’m sure there are many more.
Having talked to dozens of people who believe that some of their dreams are true and with the Biblical emphasis on the importance of dreams, I think it is possible that some disciples and some followers of Jesus dreamed that Jesus had been resurrected and then believed their dreams were true. Then, “group think” influenced many just as it does today.
I’m thinking that even if Pilate took the resurrection claim seriously and wanted to debunk it, he would have had to dig the body up from the mass grave. Even if he could have distinguished which remains were Jesus’, it would have been too decomposed for positive identification to be possible.
That was not a fair debate. The poor guy was way outmatched and never had a chance. Why do these apologists keep trying to prove the resurrection on historical grounds? They’d be way better off to appeal to spiritual arguments like “I prayed about it and God gave me the faith to believe in something that can’t be explained by ordinary human reasoning.” Nobody could refute that.
Yeah but then there could be no argument, since it will be an unfalsifiable claim. The whole point is to try and bring it to the level of rational argument and gain credibility in terms of rational/scientific inquiry.
Seems to me like an argument from silence… if there is no report of an investigation probably means there wasn’t one. Because there was nothing to investigate. If there was no resurrection then there is no investigation to be made.
I think there is a category error here. There is the belief that Jesus actually was resurrected, appeared to Paul and that was consistant with the religious narrative and that (and this) time. It was necessary.
Secondly I have no problem with dead appearing and speaking to relatives and friends. Cases are well documented eg WW2 reports, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, David Fontana. So Jesus’s appearance could be factual but doesn’t prove resurrection,
What an extraordinary performance. Sheffield’s straw-man argument was quite remarkably weak, in my opinion—”Livy (I think that’s who he referenced; one lost track…) analysed the ascension of Romulus [a likely mythical figure…], so this clearly means that Roman authorities always analysed resurrection stories; they didn’t question the stories claiming Jesus’ resurrection, so they clearly believed them” is a rough paraphrase.
And so Bart’s patience was quite remarkable. It went from “seriously, what the…?” to “professor patiently dismantling a rather slow-learning first-year undergrad.” Bart, you’re to be commended, mate, for not simply going straight to “What utter nonsense.” Not sure I’d have had quite that much forebearance.
Seriously, Sheffield’s whole argument was weak. “I’ve decided the Romans should have done The Thing. Because they didn’t do The Thing, that proves that my conclusion is ipso facto correct. I shall present, having no need to present any further argument, any further argument.” Endless namedropping of Tacitus and Celsus and various Plinys (Plinies? Plinii? Plinoi?) might sound ever so clever to other first-year undergraduates, but I’m afraid it failed to impress.
(Also, saddened to see the name “Sheffield” sullied in the world of biblical studies. But that’s a very niche personal aside from me…)
To quote Kevin Carnahan (my current fav BibStuds influencer; sorry, Dan McC), “Jesus is disappointed. Do better.”
Sheffield is arguing that *IF* the Roman government had heard about claims of Jesus’s resurrection, then they *PROBABLY* would have tried to rebut it, and *IF* they had tried to rebut it, then *PROBABLY* their rebuttal, or a record of it, would have survived 2000 years.
That’s too many ifs and probablies for my taste.
“Roman authors as Tacitus, Suetonius, Plutarch, would also have felt compelled to investigate and uncover the hoax. But they too make no report on it”
Does he not know what Tacitus and Suetonius actually said about Jesus snd Christians? And that Plutarch was silent if I recall correctly.
It’s a bit difficult to figure out what he does know and not know!
Why do we (as historians) need to invoke the supernatural at all when dealing with mere events? We know of verifiable stories in which patients (cancer, coma etc.) rebound and some doctors say “it’s a miracle.” Whether it is a miracle or not is a matter of faith; what is not a matter of faith is the physical transition from x to y.
Perhaps Yeshua of Naz. was truly dead and then was truly alive and appeared to some of his followers. If historical analysis forces us to rule out theories involving conspiracy or pathology, well, why should the historian not say, “there was a “Jesus” who was quite dead and then wasn’t”?
The route I see currently taking place on this blog is overly “religious”: it is a battle “against” Christianity. But that surely is not what true historians are about. Why not allow an historian to say “Yes, it seems there was once a dead man who came alive” and THEN allow him to leave it at that? No “theological” inferences which cannot be historically assessed?
Yes, a historian could say something like that. But I dopn’t think we could say that a person was really dead and came alive All we could say is that a person was thought to be dead who turned out later to be alive. We have no historical grounds for knowing the person was actually dead (since that’s a medical/scientific conclusion, not a historical one. )
I just listened to that train wreck for the fourth time. I don’t know how you do it Bart. The guy is well read but clearly cannot think or debate. His rebuttal was pre written like his last debate, and every single time you pressed him on something he side stepped and back stepped. He provided no positive evidence for his case. He was incredibly painful to listen to.
I want to know how you’re such a good debater .You do this to everyone. Butt, licona, Craig those reason and theology guys etc….You’re as good as Hitchens. That’s why I listen to this over and over- to learn how to respond to arguments . How can I get better at debates? Please don’t say practice. (Hope this Bart responding)
I wish to the gods I was as good as Hitchens. Now THAT was a smart guy….
I got highly involved in debate in high school so it’s more or less in my blood. The key is to figure out good arguments and ways to attack bad arguments. I often think of the BEST responses when it’s too late (as is true for most of us I guess…)
This topic reminds me of a few groups I’m in on Facebook about strange phenomena that happens to people, and it’s a lot! Of course, many people have seen their dead loved ones after they’ve died, but I did not know until after joining these groups that people see their family and friends—who are still alive—in places where they weren’t actually there.
One example—this lady’s husband was getting ready for work around 6:30am as he always did and closed the door to leave. About a minute later, he opened the door and walked into the living room. She said he started searching through a basket on the end table. She was about to say something when he gave her a “horrible” look then turned around and walked out the door. After he came home she asked him if he’d forgotten something that morning. He said, “What do you mean?” She said, “You came back in and started searching through the basket. I thought you forgot your keys.” He said, “No, I went to work. I never came back in.” She said that has disturbed her for many years, especially the look he gave her.
One more example regarding my previous comment—
This guy who was in college at the time told his mom he’d be gone all day at the library studying for a major exam coming up. He’d been there for several hours and around 5:30pm his mother sent him a text that read—Where are you? Where did you go? He called her back and said, “I told you this morning I’d be at that library all day.” She said, “I know that, but your sister and I just went into the living room and you were sitting at your desk doing work on your computer. You turned around and said hello. We went to the kitchen to start dinner and when I walked back in the living room, you were gone.” Of course, he told her hadn’t been home since that morning. His mother and sister accused him of lying.
This sort of thing happens more often than you’d think. Not only this, but so many other strange experiences people have causes me to believe the functioning of the universe cannot always be explained and very mysterious.
I have no doubt in the resurrection itself. It’s the conclusions made afterward I question.
Dr. Ehrman,
If the Romans who crucified Jesus believed he was resurrected, were they saved as Paul said?
Good point. And good on ’em!!
Others would certainly know more about ancient sources than me. But my impression is that although Christians think Jesus was very significant at the time, the Romans just considered him a local nobody. Wasn’t he just one if many people running around claiming to be prophets? Anyway:
Why would the Romans at the time of Jesus’ death care enough to investigate?
Even just days later, how would they have been able to identify his body to prove he wasn’t alive?
If the Romans thought he had risen from the dead, wouldn’t they have considered him at least another god to add to their others? If you accept his argument it seems to imply Romans thought he rose from the dead, “but, oh well who cares…”
Question: The Acts of Pilate or the Report of Pilate to Tiberius that claim Pilate reported the resurrection to the Emperor, could be considered in this conversation? Could it be a legit document to be considered as something of important historical validation?
Thanks Dr. Ehrman, I appreciate your insights!
He actually referred to these in the debate, but I didn’t have a sense he had read them. I produced a new translation of them a few years ago in my book The Other Gospels, and in the Introductions to them I show why no one considers them historicaly documents. That are later Christian fabrications.
A Roman investigation is not a new idea. In “The Resurrection: A Criminal Investigation of the Mysterious Disappearance of the Body of the Crucified Criminal Jesus of Nazareth” (2013), a novel by Rocco Martino, Tiberius sends an investigator to Jerusalem who interviews the apostles and Pilate, and has his secretary, Marcus (!), write a report.
Our problem is lack of knowledge, not so much of the scriptures, but of the Jewish and Pagan attitudes regarding the events. One of the speakers at Bart’s conference (Robyn Walsh?), suggested that the empty tomb and theophanies (if not bodily resurrection) were common pagan themes. Maybe stories of a resurrected god would be a source of lively interest. You could turn the argument on its head and say that, yes, there may have been an investigation but it obviously turned up nothing.
And to be fair, Mark’s gospel has a peculiarly deadpan and non-committal feel about it. Could it derive from reports of Pilate’s spies that fell into Christian hands during the Jewish occupation of Jerusalem? As others have pointed out above, this is all speculation – but then, as James Tabor might say, sure, I am speculative but so is much of more mainstream theory.
I think a more strictly historical and the least speculative approaxch would involve examining what we know about all related issues (as Robyn was suggesting): Roman burial practices, empty tomb stories, resuscitation accounts, Pilate’s proclimities, Tiberius’s rule and policies, etc. etc. Novels can be great, and it’s always worth while considering new hypotheses and guesses. But they need to be checked against what we know and historical judgments then need to be based on the probabilities….
His argument strikes me as firstly a type of argument from silence. We have no record of their complaining that these false Christian claims were being made, so therefore they must have believed the claims were true. But we are missing a great many records from antiquity, so their absence in the historical record is insufficient to establish that they never existed at all.
Secondly, his argument that the Greeks and Romans were very good at “exposing religious hoaxes and excesses” in no way implies that they were always successful at it. I think Mr. Sheffield would probably agree that the entire Greek/Roman pantheon constituted an untrue belief system, yet we don’t see Imperial Rome even having tried to stamp it out. On the contrary, the Roman government was entwined with it.
Finally, I’ve frequently heard it said that Rome probably took little notice of nascent Christianity, if at all. So why would Rome have expended any effort to expose religious hoaxes and excesses which had not even risen to the level of their awareness?
I did not watch the debate, but when I read Bart’s description of Sheffield’s argument, I had a John McEnroe “Are you SERIOUS???” moment! OK, let’s assume an official “investigation” took place and the resurrection was deemed historical. The resurrection is paramount to Paul’s message…would not such a vindication by Rome be trumpeted by Paul in his letters? Would not it have been mentioned by any of the Gospel/Acts authors? In fact, no such thing is written in the canonical NT! Furthermore, I suspect Rome would have had a sea change of attitude towards Christians if the leader they executed returned from the dead with resolution of all wounds, walked through closed doors and ascended into the sky. Feverish attempts at reconciliation, (as opposed to martyrdom of Peter & Paul, or Nero’s indictment of Christians) would have been the response to such a formidable power. If, however, the above “investigation” determined the resurrection WAS a hoax, the NT would be silent, and Christians would continue to suffer (as was the case). This is an example of an argument that becomes more absurd the longer it is contemplated.
North Carolina jury instructions state that eyewitness testimony is “DIRECT EVIDENCE” and should be evaluated based on “credibility, opportunity and corroboration.” Credibility: The eyewitnesses taught and lived the 9th commandment; no lying/exaggeration/fabrication/dishonesty. Opportunity to witness? Yes.
Corroboration? Yes. John(20:1-9,21:7,24) claimed to be an eyewitness(to the ***bodily*** resurrection), Peter(Acts 2:31,32, 4:10, 5:29-32, 10:39-41, 1st Peter 1:3….etc) claimed that he and ALL of the apostles were eyewitnesses. Luke and Paul corroborate the eyewitness’s account(Luke 24:3-7, 1st Corinthians 15:3-8). According to probability science, this *historical* corroborated eyewitness evidence makes the bodily resurrection of Jesus a mathematical certainty.
Post resurrection Jesus said, “I am not a spirit[apparition] handle me and see for a spirit does not have flesh and bones like I have.” and He ate with them(Luke 24:34-46). In the post last week you said as your defense, “the Gospels contain sayings of Jesus that are not historical—things he didn’t really say.” Please give *evidence* to present to the jury to support that.
Both arguments in the debate are solely based on philosophical conjecture not evidence(as defined by the courts)IMO.
1st Corinthians 15:14-19 says, If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead then we Christians are false witnesses and most miserable of all people.
It is an interesting argument. A possible counterargument might be that we would probably not have any of these records unless they had been copied by Medieval monks, and such monks would have been happy to copy ancient authors debunking non-Christian religions, but reluctant to copy ancient authors debunking Christianity.
I can see why no investigation was made at the time if there was no actual “there” there. When did the first “empty tomb” claims occur and when did they first reach the ears of anyone in authority? If Monday of the first day of the week, maybe an investigation. If much later as the result of a tale that grew in the telling (“did Peter really see Jesus in the flesh? Yes! I’m told the tomb was empty and he saw it!”), then there was nothing for Pilate et al to hear at the time. By the time you get to the Gospel writers, the empty tomb is becoming established history, so it makes sense for “Matthew” to insert an account of Pilate ordering soldiers to circulate false information. By the time you get to Justin, the empty tomb has been obvious and settled “truth” for over a Century, so it would make even more perfect sense for him to claim there must be official Pilate records in the Roman archives!
When I first began to read Bart’s Blog, he was just pointing out textual errors. Now it seems he is trying to destroy Christianity. Christianity lives or dies by the resurrection. That is our hope. Without the resurrection of Jesus Christ we have no hope. In those days, history and events were passed down verbally and by the written word. What was the incentive to pass down a bunch of hoaxes? I can’t think of any, maybe some of the readers can.
I’m afraid you misunderstand me. I am not saying Jesus was or was not raised from the dead. I’m saying the Christian claim that he was raised from the dead is a matter of faith, not historical demonstration. That’s very different from trying to disprove the resurrection. I firmly believe it cannot be “proved,” but the necessarily corrollary of that is that it cannot be disproved. (And I have NEVER talked about the claim that Jesus was raised was a hoax)
Dr. Ehrman, thank you for replying to me and setting the record straight for me. There are a few things about modern Christianity that I don’t like also. Firstly, I believe that it was the Emperor Constantine that changed the Sabbath to Sunday. Secondly, his regime incorporated Easter and Christmas from the pagans to get them to convert. Easter has roots with a Babylonian fertility goddess (easter eggs, rabbits) and Christmas was a winter solstice holiday that worshipped the son god. I appreciate that you corrected me on my previous post and please correct me on the above post if I have misstated the facts.
Christians were celebrating Sunday as the day of worship already in the New Testament period (which is why they called it “the Lord’s Day”– it was the day of the resurrection; most Christians even in NT times did not honor the Jewish Sabbath. And Constantine, to most people’s surprise, did very little to try to convert pagans. He was in favor of freedom of religion, even though he had his preferences. I devote a coule of chapters to him and his impact on Xty in my book Triumph of Xty.
@ 1.44:44 in the debate, Bart you asked, “how can anyone know where the tomb of Jesus was?” As though people of ancient time didn’t know. Matthew(27:61-66) has a garrison of soldiers at the tomb. They weren’t at the wrong tomb. The woman who went to the tomb Sunday morning knew where it was(Mark 16:1-6). John and Peter went to the tomb and saw the burial cloths and the head-dress set aside(John 20:1-8).
James(the 1st bishop in Jerusalem) knew where the tomb was. Through the succession of bishops in Jerusalem the location would have been known. History confirms the story that Macarius, bishop of Jerusalem got word to Constantine through Helana, that Hadrian had built a temple/shrine to Venus over the tomb of Jesus in an effort to squash Christianity. Constantine directed the temple to be destroyed/excavated and the tomb of Jesus was revealed. The Church of the Sepulchre was built in its place which has been subsequently destroyed and rebuilt numerous times(Eusebius:Life of Constantine,Bk.III,25-40).
In 2016 an archaeological team from Athens uncovered beneath the existing Edicule….the tomb. They dated the grout to the time of Jesus and Constantine(NationalGeographic11-28-2017). This is confirmation not proof. What do you think Doctor? 😉
Yes, if the New Testament is accurate, they would have known where the tomb was. But if the New Testament is accurate, there would be no reason tohave the debate. We have no record of anyone having any idea where the tome wsa until the early fourth century, so I don’t think it’s very useful to say they “would” have known. Ohe of the most striking things is that no one even mentions knowing until later, and by the time of Constantine it wsa simply guesswork. There’s not a lot of debate about that among Constantine scholars. I deal with this in my book The Triumph of Christianity. (The fact you can date a tomb to the time of Jesus is decidedly not evidence that it was the tomb Jesus was place into!!)
Just another example of someone pretending Ancient History could get us to believe outlandish things.
This also has nothing to do with Atheism. If I ran up to a Christian today claiming that Gandalf appeared to me & ordered me to travel across the world to destroy the One Ring, they would know I was insane. The same would happen if someone claimed ghosts delivered commandments or aliens revealed cosmic instructions for humanity. In everyday life we all use “spam filters” for such claims. Such claims are not made stronger by being written down.
Ancient history can never establish miracles. Not now, not ever. History is not a time machine. Historians can analyze authorship, dates, transmission, and cultural context, but a document describing a miracle only proves that (maybe) someone claimed it happened.
Apologists treat the surviving texts like a strange game of Clue, forcing conclusions from the few “cards” we possess. But real investigation does not work that way.
Ancient history only hints at what some people believed or, in the case of Jesus, what some believed about what others believed. Studying Ancient texts may be interesting, but it never justifies belief in magic.
It’s difficult to imagine, not just why, but how, Cicero would investigate claims scored Jesus. He died half a century before Jesus was born.
It’s difficult to imagine, not just why, but how, Cicero would investigate claims about Jesus. He died half a century before Jesus was born.
I haven’t time to review all the previous comments, so please excuse overlaps. I did understand S’s argument right away. It is a kind of inversion of the arg. from embarrassment, and it is evidential. S got killed on the details. Second, we actually have no idea whatsoever whether the resurrection was a one-time act of God. ‘People don’t get resurrected’ is not a law of nature – and may be possible someday. Application of Hume’s “Of miracles” – or rather an updated/corrected Bayesian reformulation of it – would have to be quite nuanced, imo. You are correct about the pre-history of the canonical sources we have. But it belies the evidential deployment of the criterion of multiple attestation to reconstructing the existence of a real Jesus. You are also correct about the issue of relative probabilities, though in this case its application would be challenging, given the sparsity of relevant evidence and the complexity of reversing death. Anyway, what is a spiritual body?
Well, I suppose an actual resurrection (someone whose literally dead with brain flat lined and cells no longer living, coming back to life) would violate the second law of thermodynamics, no?
Not necessarily, just like a shattered cup wouldn’t come back together by itself, but thermodynamics doesn’t per se prevent someone from putting it back together. It would not prevent a reversal from disorder to order in a localized system, it only says that globally disorder is ever increasing overall. So a resurrection in the sense of putting back together the structure and memories an overall ‘state’ of the brain back together, not to mention the physical restructuring, would require an overwhelmingly powerful outside presence doing it. It is just incompatible with known biology but not necessarily with thermodynamics according to me.
Yup, that’s right, and pretty much my point. It needs agency. The second law is not that entropy can be decreased; It is that it cannot be decreased in a closed system without intervention. With cups, human agency works just fine for the intervention (though the cup is still not the same as it was). It happens all the time. It never happens for dead humans, though; that would take non-human agency. So, to say it’s “possible” would be to say it requires a superhuman force. But then it’s a tautology, to say that a force that transcends laws of nature is not bound by the laws of nature. If you presuppose there is a God active in teh world, there is no reason to questoin whether a miracle could have happened. But that presupposition is theological, not one available to the historian doing history.
I watched a few minutes of this “autodidact” and did not bother to go further or listen to the refutations. It was obvious that he was exercising a common methodology of crackpots and/or attention-seekers. The fact that he read his entire presentation was a hint. The method is to emit a firehose of weak assumptions and suppositions (which he hopes remain unexamined), with the occasional fact sprinkled in. The objective is not to clarify arguments in people’s minds, but confuse and overwhelm them. I myself lost the thread within seconds. A fellow physicist friend of mine once called it “argument by exhaustion”.
The argument that the Roman emperor cared whether some slobs in the empire believed in a human’s resurrection has been effectively quashed by previous smart commenters.
No offense intended, but I think Dr. Ehrman’s time was wasted in this whole exercise, unless there is value in exposing the methods of intellectual charlatans, which is arguably true.
Yup, it’s always a question of whether there’s value in attacking disinformation. These days, it does seem there’s some utility in it. But still, I know what you mean…
You are correct. The judgement to be made is whether you’re doing more harm by opening a platform for someone who is well under the world’s radar or more good by reducing the influence of someone who has the ear of a significant number of people.
I’m about a third of the way through L. Michael White’s Scripting Jesus: The Gospels in Rewrite, 2010. He presents the ancient world having a ‘…broad cultural acceptance of the magical worldview and the divine-man within it.’ However, exposes existed. One is the satire by Lucian of Samosata (180 CE) of a well known figure of the day: Alexander of Aboneuteichos, the prophet of the oracle cult of Glykon. Lucian’s “Life of a Divine Man” unmasks Alexander as a charlatan. Interesting story that I won’t spoil telling now. Point is that magic and supernatural acceptance was widespread; that con-artists existed to profit from this acceptance; that some people did expose the frauds. Seems exposing fraudsters was not government policy, as Lucian was a private individual.
If a government policy I think investigating the many ‘zombies’ [my term] who returned to life after Jesus’s resurrection, went into the city and appeared to many (Matthew 27: 52-53), would have occurred. Or raising of Jairus’ daughter or Lazarus or the legion which killed a pig flock, etc. That there is no conclusion to each of these indicates they are ahistorical stories, e.g. what happened ultimately to those who rose from their graves?
The singular focus on Jesus adds strength to those with a Christian faith—he healed the sick, he walked on water, he arose from the dead, etc. A study of other faiths and traditions will show a world awash in such stories, even up to the current time with living witnesses said to exist. Most Christians have only heard the Christian “miracle” stories, but such stories are really quite common.
Jesus was a Jewish millennialist, who claimed to be the Messiah. If he was to fulfill the particular viewpoint of believers, it seems he would have to lead the way into the millennium and be resurrected from the dead ahead of the other righteous departed—especially after an untimely death at the hands of the oppressors. That the millennium was not “at hand” then becomes its own problem, but Jesus rose from the dead because he had to. I’m not too sure about arising from the dead, but numerous others were said to just physically ascended into the heavens at the end, also in support of transformation religions and philosophies.
Off the top of my head:
1. Assuming it was a hoax if it didn’t happen is unnecessary. It could have been sincerely believed, based on reasonable experiences, but mistaken. So it’s not necessarily relevant if Romans were great at detecting hoaxes per se. We know there were a lot of miraculous claims involving new religious sects or holy people which were not treated as hoaxes, but which few today would treat as historical. Christianity could be one of those.
2. We don’t have a non-Christian record of Pilate communicating anything about Jesus, and no particular reason to think Christian figures had access to the actual communication if he did. So it is not appropriate to conclude much from their reports.
3. Assuming Christianity was initially hugely successful is not necessary for its later success, as Bart has written about. It’s not clear that Pilate would have noticed or cared about their true numbers.
4. Finally, we expect to have no record of any response by Roman authorities. We have no record of most things. What records we do have, slightly later, about dealing with Christians does not reveal any Roman acknowledgement that the resurrection happened.
Bart, for Christianity of course Jesus’ crucifixion was world changing. In your opinion, how big of a deal would it have been to the Romans or even the Jewish leadership of the day?
On the same note, weren’t claims of resurrection from the dead at least not unusual?
Sorry if this is redundant.
I think no one would have remembered it among Jews or Romans even a week or so later. And yes, claims of resurrection were unusual, but not unheard of; usually, though, they referred to people being taken straight up to heaven at or just before death, rather than coming back to earth for a while first.
to Housworth: To presuppose that the alternatives are ‘really happened’ or ‘fraud and folly’ surely leaves out a third (and imo correct in the NT cases) possibility: that these stories were not intended to or believed by educated contemporaries to present literal or fictional stories at all, but were to be understood symbolically and didactically, as the parables were. Surely, e.g., in the story of the Garesene/Gadarene demonaic the demons (Mt. 8, Mk. 5, Lk. 8) who collectively identify themselves ‘legion’ should be more than just a little suggestive in First Century Judea, together with the fact that the demonaic is himself described as violating just about every norm for Jewish ritual purity, should be suggestive? I will go further: i think that probably all of the Gospel miracle stories can be understood in this way. And the intended messages are not stupid but wise and penetrating.
Is there any evidence at all to support the underlying premise of Sheffield’s argument, namely “The Christian church … was growing at a fantastic rate in Judea after Jesus’ death and burial”?
Lynn Howell
That’s what hte book of Acts says, but it’s not really credible. In acts some 10,000 Jews convert just in Jerusalem within a couple of months of Jesus’ death. No way that happened. I deal with how quickly Xty was actually growing over the years, starting in the earliest period, at some lengthy in my book Triumph of Christianity, in case you’re interested.
Just finished watching the debate on the resurrection. Intellectually stimulating to say the least!
I characterize Sheffield’s argument as speculation, within surmise, wrapped in conjecture bound by the illogical. In other words, without a rational basis he went nowhere with his thesis. It came across as attempting to argue silence implies consent. That is since some early Roman writers did not fashion an argument against the resurrection of Jesus, their silence must be taken as “consent” that it was an historical fact. He assumed facts not in evidence, indeed assume facts that were never established. He ignored the very likely possibility that the writers he was relying on knew nothing about Jesus, and if they did, would have cared less about what his followers did or did not believe. The Ehrman cross-examination was excellent and continually poked holes and tore apart the postulations that were offered. It was clear from early on in Ehrman’s cross-ex that Sheffield was out of his element and not equipped to defend the case which he had attempted, but failed to demonstrate was a substantial and persuasive case. Time well spent watching the exchange.
Thanks!
I think the premise of the argument, that the new religion was growing at a fantastic rate in Judea, is demonstrably false, or at the very least unsupported by any data. I think his argument on silence really just refutes his premise. I have not seen the debate, but I would presume that if you didn’t start your rebuttal there, you at least made the point.
Dear Dr Ehrman:
thank you for your tremendous & constant laboring over improving education of the NT to the masses! I have for the past 6 years undergone immense hostility from this society.
greatly appreciated & very comforting!
death be not proud!
Sam
Hello Bart, i am from germany and my englisch is not so well 🙂 For me Pilatus Tiberias Josephus Suetonius, Tacitus und Plutarch are evidences against the reseruction becuase they never mentioned that Jesus was risen from the dead. That is why there was no need to handle with this in thier texts. What do you think about that ?
I think there is no reason they would have investigated the matter, and if they did there would have been no evidence for them to find one way or the other.