Robert said

vergari said

 

This ** you do not have permission to see this link ** from Dr. Ehrman quite nicely exemplifies his rather strident position here — one that I think it’s fair to say is not open to contrary arguments or even evidence. He performs intellectual gymnastics to interpret all historical information, no matter how contrary to his view, in such a way so as to align with his pre-existing opinion about burial.  In this sense, it’s rather absurd for Dr. Ehrman to be soliciting argumentation to change his views — “am completely open to being persuaded otherwise” — when they are so clearly not susceptible to change on this issue.

How can you say he’s not open to contrary arguments or evidence when he literally says, “I am completely open to being persuaded otherwise!” and “unless someone knows of more evidence that is escaping me?” Are you accusing him of lying or dishonesty? Or just engaging in exaggerated rhetorical criticism because you do not like his opinion?

  

I’m accusing him of giving lip service to being open to evidence, while simultaneously demonstrating that he’s not open to evidence.

Robert said
OK so you are accusing him of lying about being open to evidence, but where do you think you have demonstrated that he is not open to evidence? 

  

There are three major sources of evidence for the burial of Jews in Palestine: Josephus; the ossuary of Yehohanan; and the Digesta. The former two easily form the best evidence outside the NT for the treatment of the remains of a First Century Palestinian Jews following crucifixion by the Roman Empire.  Note, here, I am not arguing that these data are dispositive on the issue, only that they are the best data we have on the subject.  Indeed, they are uniquely strong data.

Dr. Ehrman brushes this evidence aside with a rather naked attempt at special pleading, to wit: the evidence we have from Josephus and ossuary of Yehohanan should be ignored because of a special exception to the general rule. The special exception invoked by Dr Ehrman is that Jesus was not permitted a decent burial because he was an enemy of the State — and not just any enemy of the State, but an enemy of the State somehow worse than the rebel leaders in active revolt against and war with the Roman Empire, who Josephus refers to as καταδικη.

Is this special exception justified? Dr Ehrman’s only source for Jesus being an enemy of the State at all is Jesus being referred to as “King of the Jews” in Mark.  Dr Ehrman offers nothing really beyond this as to whether Jesus arguedo claiming the title of King of the Jews amounts to insurrection or being an enemy of the State.  Mark’s gospel, for what it’s worth, implicitly rejects this characterization by contrasting the charges against Jesus with those against Barabbas, who it says committed insurrection.  Beyond this, Dr Ehrman offers nothing to justify how the charges against Jesus were somehow more repellent to Roman authorities than the charges described by Josephus of those he labels καταδικη.

I will only mention the Digesta briefly, because it certainly does not carry the power of Josephus or ossuary of Yehohanan.  Dr Ehrman brushes aside the evidence from the Digesta chiefly on the basis that it is a historical compilation published centuries after the use of the laws it describes.  In a vacuum, this makes for a decent argument.  The problem is that the evidence Dr Ehrman relies on suffers from the exact same type of centuries-later re-publication problem, and is not nearly as directly on point.  So, it’s fine to criticize the Digesta; but it’s an incredible double-standard to simultaneously brush aside the Digesta for reliability issues, while simultaneously relying on weaker evidence, which suffer the same problems. 

Back to why I said that Dr Ehrman is giving lip service to being open to evidence.  On this particular issue — whether a First Century Palestinian Jew would have received a decent burial following crucifixion by the Roman Empire — we have uniquely strong evidence for what should have happened.  That evidence strongly points in the direction indicating a decent burial.  Dr Ehrman looks at that evidence, dismisses it using special pleading, and then relies on far weaker evidence to deny the conclusion the strongest evidence indicates.  That is why I say he is not open to evidence.

Robert said
All you’ve demonstrated is that you and he interpret and weigh the evidence differently. He says he’s open to the evidence and I see no reason to doubt his honesty here. 

  

You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t find this post meaningfully responsive to the points and arguments I made.

JAS said
I presume that Dr. Ehrman is at least as confident in his positions as those who disagree with him are in theirs.

  

The only thing I’d say on this point is that Dr Ehrman flip-flopped on his position, did so while already being a preeminent biblical scholar, and possibly in response to arguments being raised by certain Christian apologists who were using Dr Ehrman’s position on burial in support of their arguments against new atheists.

Stephen said

vergari said

Steefen said 

 

Is there a gospel that says Jesus was left on the cross until he was eaten off of the cross?  

There is no source from antiquity of any kind stating or implying this. It’s a hypothesis of entirely modern origins.

  

No there is no ancient source claiming specifically that Jesus’ body was left on the cross to rot but that is only because all of our ancient sources about Jesus’ fate were written by Christians.  There is a clear association in the classical tradition between crucifixion and bodily desecration.  It was part of the punishment.  I can cite multiple sources from the classical world testifying to this association.  We have no idea what happened to Jesus’ body.  But we know what usually happened to victims of crucifixion.  And in a case where we have no hard and fast evidence either way it is best to assume what actually happened is what usually happened.

Some general objections to the historicity of the Empty Tomb.

As I hinted above the story of Empty Tomb requires that the fate of Jesus’ body be privileged.   It is expected that Christians would privilege the fate of their master but what reason would the Romans have for doing so?  From what we know about the historical Pilate he was brutal and showed absolutely no interest in Jewish sensibilities.

Who is this mysterious figure, Joseph of Arimathea, who suddenly appears out of nowhere?  A fellow traveler on the Sanhedrin seems awfully unlikely given the synoptic chronology.  He couldn’t simply have been an especially pious Jew because he shows no interest in the fate of Jesus’ doomed companions.  It’s easy enough to see the germination of the story in Isaiah 53:9-

They made his grave with the wicked

    and his tomb with the rich…   

Then another less obvious objection is that this was a culture that paid especial attention to tomb veneration.  Why was there no tomb veneration for at least three hundred years if the early Christians knew where Jesus’ body had been disposed?  Even with the belief that Jesus had been resurrected surely someone would have considered the spot holy enough to be honored as is done now with the tourist spots.  The simplest explanation is that they didn’t know where Jesus had been buried.

The fate of Jesus was terrible.  But there is real reason to question the historicity of the Empty Tomb.  Actually I’ve always thought that one of the reasons for the origin of the Empty Tomb tradition is horror at the actual fate of Jesus’ body.  

  

This is a frustrating post.

“all of our ancient sources about Jesus’ fate were written by Christians”

Is this true?  I will steelman your argument here by positing that you mean the fate of Jesus’s body, not the fate of Jesus; obviously, we have sufficient non-Christian sources for the fate of Jesus.  But what about his body post-crucifixion?  The earliest hint of a non-Christian tradition comes from the gospel of Matthew, which contains a polemic against Jews for inventing a post-burial stolen body fiction.  Matthew 28:11–15.  It is more likely than not that the author of Matthew was responding to an actual tradition/rumor that Jesus’s body was stolen; and a stolen body necessitates a post-crucifixion burial. The Qu’ran, which is largely based on 2nd and 3rd Century apocryphal and legendary sources, states that Jesus was not crucified, but that Christians were made to think he was crucified, and thus he was never resurrected prior to ascending to heaven; the made to think language quite obviously implies a burial.

“There is a clear association in the classical tradition between crucifixion and bodily desecration.  It was part of the punishment.  I can cite multiple sources from the classical world testifying to this association.  We have no idea what happened to Jesus’ body.  But we know what usually happened to victims of crucifixion.”

The claims here are that we have reliable information about the fate of tens of thousands of victims of crucifixion, but “no idea” about the fate of Jesus’s body.  I would argue that, in fact, it is just the opposite.  We have more information about the crucifixion of Jesus than of any other single individual from antiquity; whereas we don’t have reliable information about the fate of the “what usually happened” to the tens of thousands of people who were crucified in antiquity spread over hundreds of thousands of square miles over more than a millennium; we have kernels of data points which give us a picture of what was happening in certain places at certain times. 

The most complete, integrated document we have on Roman crucifixion practices is the Digesta, which expressly permits post-crucifixion burial, upon familial request, for condemned criminals in most cases.  But as to the crucifixion practices applicable to Jews in First Century Palestine, our two best sources of information are Josephus and archeological evidence from the ossuary of Yehohanan; and those two sources provide better detail about crucifixion practices applicable to First Century Jews than really all of our other surviving sources provide for crucifixion practices in discrete geographical regions at certain intervals of time.

It’s also probably worth noting that the very oldest source for the crucifixion of Jesus (the creed contained in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7) dates to probably within 5 years of execution.  That account expressly states Jesus was buried.

“Some general objections to the historicity of the Empty Tomb.”

Just a general point here that, up until now, I have not made any arguments about the empty tomb in this thread. That’s a big topic for another day.