I would like to announce a major public debate that I will be having with the well-known conservative evangelical apologist Mike Licona on the resurrection of Jesus. The title is “Did the Resurrection of Jesus Really Happen? Two Bible Scholars Debate the Evidence.” It will be held remotely on April 9th from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 pm EST.
The debate is not directly connected with the blog but is my own thing, done in conjunction with the courses I’ve been recording for the Bart Ehrman Professional Services. There will be a charge for the event. Some of the profits will be redirected to the blog, and blog members will get a discount (see below).
If you have any interest at all, check out the video below.
And if you want to learn more or sign up, here is the link: https://www.bartehrman.com/debate/
For now: more on the debate.
If you are attentive to numbers, you will notice that this debate will be an all-day affair. Seven hours. Pray for my soul! On the upside (for you especially) there will be breaks throughout, including a lunch break.
Debates are almost always frustrating for me, for a number of reasons. One is that it is flat-out *impossible* to build a case for a position in the brief time allotted. If a debate is an hour and a half and I basically have 20 minutes to present my case, ten minutes to give a rebuttal, 20 minutes for Q&A, and then a short closing – it just isn’t enough time. This time there will be enough time to cover LOTS of ground, and I’m not expecting to be repeating myself. Mike and I have debated the topic before, but not like this.
Some of the issues that will come up:
- Did ancient people understand miracles the way we do, as events that violate natural laws — laws that, unlike traffic laws, really cannot be broken? (Think: The laws of thermodynamics)
- If ancient people understood miracles differently, would they have seen anything inherently implausible about a resurrection? Not a Near Death Experience, but a resurrection, where a person is restored to life never to die again?
- Are the Gospel accounts of the resurrection consistent or confused?
- Are these the kinds of accounts (whatever one concludes about their consistency) that historians would typically trust – written decades later by believers who have heard stories about the event told by others who firmly believed in them?
- Are the accounts based on eyewitness testimony? If so, does that mean it can be trusted? If not, where did the information come from?
- Jesus is reported to have been seen by groups of people at once. If these were hallucinations – how does a group have a hallucination?
- If the disciples actually saw Jesus, why do so many of our sources indicate that some (many?) of them doubted? What’s to doubt, if he’s standing right in front of you?
- If Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead, how can we explain the firm conviction of his followers – and then his own brother! – that they saw him alive afterward?
- Is the resurrection the sort of thing that can be proved the way, say, a scientific claim can be?
- Do historians make room for the supernatural in their attempts to reconstruct the past? If not, should we make an exception for religious events since they are by their very nature not natural?
- That is to say, if supernatural events have happened, they would be part of history, no? So shouldn’t they be susceptible to historical demonstration just like everything else in the past?
As you can see, these are different kinds of issues with wide-ranging implications, and many of them are highly significant for the study of Jesus, the New Testament, and the history of early Christianity. Mike and I disagree on all of them.
Interested in seeing us thrash it out? Here again is the link: https://www.bartehrman.com/debate/
To receive $5 off the admission prices as a Blog Member discount, use BLOG5.
For me, there are a few dimentions to this topic which literalists scholars, either they are non theistic or theistic scholars are not able to fully fill.
My mind is less and less foreign for:
* that “I am the way” might mean that it is a way to go, and that the process might mean something
different than apporving/accepting a certain dogma.
* that “I am the door” in a Christ context have a deeper meaning pointing to a direction.
* that “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly”. It is interesting
to note that it is not written “belief in the ressurection but only pointing to the potential of living life fully.
* that the oness in spirit, body, with Christ (1 cor.12) might point to a deeper meaning or a reunion of
ourself.
I just feel a debate over this question,,,,,and at least if there are “evidence”!,,,,,,,,,,yes,,,,,”EVIDENCE” lacks the proper dimentions, at least to me
Love the video! There should be a weigh in the day before for more trash talking. (All in good fun of course)
Really, without any intention of being disrespectful to Mr. Licona (an erudite and well-mannered gentleman), having watched all of your previous debates & having read “How Jesus Became God”, it certainly looks like low hanging fruit for you, Mr. Ehrman. I’m sure you will disagree (you are too polite to admit such a thing, even if you agreed with me), but for me it’s like watching LeBron James going at Kyle Kuzma or something (he did drop 50 on the Wizards just the other day).
Other than that, of course, it will be very exciting to watch you debating again on a large arena, just like in the good old days! I love the way you debate, because I feel it’s 90%+ driven by your honest seek of the truth – in sharp contrast to the vast majority of your opponents, who, at least in my eyes, seem to marshall too contrived arguments, exactly because they typically defend false views. I think the main reason you debate so well is because you defend the truth in most instances. I wish good luck to Mr. Licona – he will definitely need it!
I’ve watched a lot of your debates, and one thing I haven’t yet seen (I’m sure I’m just missing it) is a forceful rebuttal of the claim that biblical inconsistencies about suffering, etc., are not disproofs of inerrancy but rather a reflection of the many aspects of God’s character and teachings. The blind men and the elephant, etc. How do you normally confront this issue? I tend to say the person wants to have it both ways — when there’s consistency, it’s proof of God’s perfection; when there isn’t, it’s proof of God’s multifaceted nature — to make it impossible to find holes. But you probably have a better sense of what tends to work with people.
I’ve never thought different views of suffering were disproofs of inerrancy; that’s probably why I’ve never gotten into that side of the question.
Let me rephrase, with an example. In one of your Colbert segments, he said that when it comes to the conflicting crucifixion narratives, you were “burying the lead” that the stories all make the same basic point, and he used the “blind men and the elephant” analogy to dismiss contradictions between the Luke and Mark narratives. The segment then ended. I’m curious to know how you would have responded to that particular point if you’d had time.
I guess I’d say that many of the major points — including the most important (Jesus was raised!) are in deed in common, as you would expect from authors who believed in teh resurrection, but the differences are not simply different (one author explaining the trunk and the other the tail) but actually contradictory They all are describing a four-legged mammal but one is an elephant and another is an aardvark.
In one of your recent comments, you surprised me by expressing ambivalence about whether Jesus actually had a reputation for healings and other miracles. Why isn’t it safe to assume that the people around Jesus did indeed believe that he was doing such miracles? The stories of healings/exorcisms/miracles feature so prominently in the synoptics that it’s hard to imagine that they all post-dated his death. A reputation for miracles probably would probably have won Jesus more popularity than a reputation for good religious teachings. So why the ambivalence?
I suppose the main reason for ambivalence is that our sources are all based on later oral traditions that and were written decades later; both teh tellers of teh oral tales and the authors were firmly convinced Jesus had been raised from the dead, and so naturally they would be inclined to think of him as superhuman, not only after his death but during his life. And miracles were the sorts of things superhumans did. So I’m just not convinced either way. I give a long discussion and explanation in m book Jesus Before the Gospels.
How exciting! Really looking forward to it!
Will this be recorded? I will, alas, be out of the country when it happens, but I would love love love to see it!
Yup! Those who purchase a ticket will get the recording.
Somehow i get the feeling Mike wont be able to “prove” empirically any of the above. However, in reference to the confused nature of the resurrection accounts in the Synoptics, or any other event they describe, do you feel that any of them were attempting to write “history” in the sense we have it now?
If they had no intention of recording chronologically with exacting attention to detail, but rather intended to weave statements and incidents in Jesus’ life that they had received (in one way or the other) into an account of his life that conveyed their understanding of him to their respective target audiences, arent we asking the wrong question, specifically if the accounts can be “trusted”? Trusted in what way? To criticize them for not being historically “accurate” would be like trying to criticize a prius for not winning the Indianapolis 500. I would hardly say that was intended.
In that respect, questions like did jesus die on the day the Passover lambs were slaughtered, or the day after, are beyond the scope of the writers’ intentions. Is the validity of Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan contingent on whether a man actually went down from Jerusalem to Jericho?
I’d say they were definitely not trained in historiographic methods used by modern biographers, since these developed since the Enlightenment. The only reason to insist that they are not accurate is that so many people claim they are. I agree, it’s an anachronistic claim, and needs to be dealt with as such.
Question: How will the Q&A work? Will Drs Ehrman and Licona only take live questions from attendees? Or will they respond to written questions submitted ahead of time ? Or both?
Looking forward to the debate!
Yup, live questions!
Now that Ehrman has all the time he needs to build a cogent case for the position that the resurrection didn’t happen, what are the odds that Licona will at the end exclaim “Yes! I’m convinced by the arguments! It really didn’t happen!”
Oh, I’m absolutely counting on it. 🙂
Just a question on the resurrection, I had a discussion with an individual who claimed that Paul believed Jesus resurrected only in spiritual form. He mentions 1Cor 15. What is in your opinion the best passage that claims otherwise sir ? (Bodily form) Thank you 🙏
Paul is quite explicit on the point. Paul insists Jesus was raised in a spiritual BODY. it was not as a “Spirit”. For Paul the body of Jesus was transformed into an immortal body that could never get sick or die, made of stuff other than our bodies, because transformed into spirit stuff instead of flesh stuff. But it was still a physical body. I think I”ll post on it, since this passage is one of the most misunderstood in teh entire NT.
Looking forward to the debate! My only question here is at the end of my post.
I went to seminary and I still don’t know what “died” on the cross: Jesus’ body, his human spirit (did he have one?) or his divine nature. Both the Incarnation and the Trinity (or at least for the first 300 years, the pre-existent diety) make this incomprehensible to me and nor do I understand how it achieved anything that the gospels claim it did.
What happened to Jesus’ human body? Where did it go? Where will the atoms of other believers go when they are raised? Why is Jesus still disfigured after resurrection? What happened to the fish Jesus ate? I know these are age-old questions, but they persist because it makes no sense.
My Question is: Wouldn’t the confusion over Christ’s nature, the plan of salvation and his resurrected body be an argument that supports your point that these stories are made up post-hoc?
I think the problem is that questions about Christ’s nature and hsi role in salvation did not arise until *after* his followers said he was raised from the dead, so they couldn’t have been the things that led them to make up his resurrection, if you see what I mean.
I agree. They weren’t things that led them to the beliefs they had. The argument I am considering is that because the results are so confusing or demand faith in unfathomable mystery (the trinity, the incarnation) that it reflects poorly on the veracity of the original testimonies. Do you agree, and do you think that is a useful argument or something apologists can easily waive away?
My sense is that most philosophies and religious views develop out of roots that are then expanded, explicated, nuanced, and so on, and that the final product doesn’t necessarily cast a bad light on the earlier roots of it.
“The debate to end all debates” ……. Seriously 😊. I hope you are not planning for retirement after this debate!
I have just seen your interview with Apostate Prophet. Just a quick comment here: There are Muslims who are really convinced that Jesus was nailed to the cross, but he didn’t die there. This opinion is supported by a legitimate interpretation of the Islamic scripture. Although this opinion is not held by the majority, but it is still recognized. So, there are two camps in this regard: the first says that Jesus wasn’t nailed to the cross, the other says that Jesus was nailed to the cross. But both confirm that he wasn’t killed and he was alive at the end of that Friday.
Dr. Erhman, I have two questions:
1)This is in regards Luke 24:39 when Jesus appears to his followers and says that a spirit does not have flesh nor bones as they see him to have, do you think that these verses were added over the time to the narrative of the resurrection? I ask this because Mark does not have this elaborated account about the resurrection and this appears to be in contradiction with 1 Corinthians 15 when Paul says neither flesh nor blood will inherit the kingdom of god, and this verse kind of shows an apologetic intention.
1. Luke is defending a physical resurrection against the idea that Jesus arose only in the Spirit. Nope, it was his cadaver come to life. Paul’s idea is more nuanced. He definitely thinks Jesus’ body was raised, but it wasn’t simply the resusitated cadaver. It was a *glorified* body. Mark doesn’t say what kind of body came out of the tomb, bbut some kind did, because JEsus wasn’t there any more and was headin’ to Galilee!
Ty! One more question to make sure I understood your statement, do you think that the verses in Luke 24:36 where there are details of scars in hands where added later on to the narrative of Luke or do you think they were originally there?
I think they are original and I don’t know that there’s any debate about it. (They’re in all the mss)
2)The second question has to do with a few more verses below when he said that all that has happened was just to fulfill the prophecies and psalms and Moses and the law, what prophecy or prophecies is the author referring to? I never found a prophecy in the old testament speaking about a messiah dying and rising or anything similar. Could all these be just a pious invention added later on to the narrative of the resurrection? If so, is there any evidence? If not, is there any evidence?
While typing a 3rd question came to my mind and is:
By the way it is presented in John, do you think that Lazarus was a historical person like Jesus or a later and pious invention? There is no mention of resurrection of this guy never in the other gospels not even in the other Jewish sources of the first and second century. Please give me your thoughts on this matter
Later Christians would say that he was referring to passages such as Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 for the crucifixion, and Hosea 6:2 and the book of Jonah for the resurrection None of these mentions the messiah, but Xns took them that way. It’s impossible to know if these are the ones Paul had in mind or not.
I don’t think there was a hisorical Lazarus, no. Some have thought that the story in John 11 has developed out of the parable of Lazarus and the Rich man in Luke 16 (not that the author of John developed it or had read Luke, but that in the oral tradition one arose ultimately from the other)
Thank you so much! Any sources you can provide me with for me to read about your statement? I would like to know more about the authors who think this was took from the rich and Lazarus parable.
Ah, it’s commonly said — so much so that I don’t know a single source for it! I should think any good critical commentary on John would mention the issue; I think the best one available is Raymond Brown’s, but I don’t have it to hand to check whether he deals with it at any length or not.
Thank you! I appreciate it
Dr, there’s another question on the same topic that I find interesting:
Do you think that Jesus was buried by someone else that is not known or that he was really buried by Joseph of Arimathea? It seems to me unlikely since someone on the Sanhedrin would have been a Jesus’ enemy and there is no way that the unknown writers knew he was a believer unless by traditions, Paul never mentions him nor nobody else in the NT.
I don’t think he was buried at all on the day he was crucified. I discuss why in my book How Jesus Became God. Rmans left crucifixion victims on the cross to decay before disposing of their remains.
And there is a second question on the same topic:
On the gospel of Mathew says that there was a saying among Jews on those days and it was that the Sanhedrin bribed the roman soldiers on the tomb to say that Jesus’ followers took his body while they were asleep. Do you think or is there evidence that this was a legitimate saying there was and the Sanhedrin really bribed the soldiers to say this or do you think that this so-called saying was just a tradition or pious invention decades later to add more credibility to the gospels?
No, I think Matthew is aaddressing a rumor in the Jewish community. Jesus’ followers were saying his tomb was empty so he must have been raised, and Jewish opponents replied that if the tomb was empty , the disciples probably stole the body. Matthew’s countering this reply by saying the Sanhedrin bribed the guards to say so.
Again, thank you so much for taking the time to answer my inquiries, I appreciate it! I’ve asked you all those questions is because most likely I’ll be debating a fundamentalist apologist on the topic of the resurrection on next Good Friday, and I need to be ready.
Go for it!
I have another question,I happen to be ready your book of Jesus before the gospels and I’ve learned a lot. I have one question, do you regard the visit of women at the tomb as a historical fact or a later tradition that had nothing to do with what really happen? I ask this because Paul never makes any reference to it when speaking about the apparitions of the risen Jesus which seems to be little weird to me.
Also, the chapter in Matthew 27 when the dead come out of the tomb and appear to many others after Jesus’ resurrection, do you think it was on the original Matthew or was just a pious invention decades later?
1. I don’t think it happened, no – -mainly because I don’t think it’s poausible that Jesus was buried the afternoon he was crucified (contrary to what hte Gospels say). 2. It is original to Matthew.
Thank you! Why do you think it is implausible he was buried the afternoon he died? If you could provide me a good reference or a book that says something about it, it’d be fantastic!
I discuss the matter in my book How Jesus Became God. Romans normally did not allow crucified victims to be buried until they had decomposed on their crosses for days, as part of the shame and punishment. That’s a given in our ancient sources that discuss the matter.
Ty!
How do I access the dedate I paid for? Not seeing a link. Thanks, Todd
You were sent several emails with the link; if you still can’t find one, send me a direct email.
Dr. Ehrman, I just finished watching the debate and found it engaging. A couple of related questions which Dr. Licona was asked but didn’t directly answer: Were there any eyewitness accounts from the “500” the resurrected Jesus is said to have appeared to? Plus, didn’t anyone in Jerusalem notice Jesus during his 40 days in town? Plus how did he get to Galilee or to wherever on the road to Damascus where Paul had his encounter?
Any thoughts?
Thank you for great courses and your podcast and blog!
Don
My only thoughts are that I wish he had answered the questions!
Late subscriber here. Any way to access this debate?
Yes, you’ll find this and all my other online courses at http://www.bartehrman.com