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"What evangelical apologists are still trying to show...is that their version of the resurrection was the most compatible with accepting all the details of the gospel Easter narratives as true and non-negotiable...[D]efenders of the resurrection assume that their opponents agree with them that all the details are true, that only the punch line is in question. What they somehow do not see is that to argue thus is like arguing that the Emerald City of Oz must actually exist since, otherwise, where would the Yellow Brick Road lead?....We simply have no reason to assume that anything an ancient narrative tells us is true." The Case Against the Case for Christ
, (pp. 209-210).
17 comments:
It is like proponents of the second gunman theory of the killing of JFK demanding that people explain the second gun.
Paul says Jesus was raised.
That implies an empty tomb.
But surely an empty tomb implies a resurrection?
Some people say a second gunman shot JFK.
But a second gunman implies a second gun.
But surely a second gun implies a second gunman.
The reasoning is as circular as claims that Paul knew all about an empty tomb.
"but what about Biblical archaeolgy"
"We simply have no reason to assume that anything an ancient narrative tells us is true."
Very well, but this also cuts them off from knowing anything at all about ancient history.
Anyway, the claim about what evangelical apologists assume about their opponents is dubious. To act like it has never occurred to defenders of the gospel accounts that their opponents might not agree with all the details is disingenuous and is a straw man.
"What they somehow do not see is that to argue thus is like arguing that the Emerald City of Oz must actually exist since, otherwise, where would the Yellow Brick Road lead?"
This analogy fails because it assumes there is no qualitative difference between a work that has never been claimed to be anything other than a work of fiction and a work that claims to be an historical narrative.
Yes, I see William Lane Craig do this over and over in his debates. His primary tactics is to try and get his opponent to agree to the historical validity of just some of the Easter story events and then assert all the rest must be true as well. The sad thing is that many potential converts actually fall for this and end up repeating it to newly annoyed friends and family...
John, don't you accept that the gospels relate true historical information about Jesus as a human being, contra what Price is saying here?
NEAL
This analogy fails because it assumes there is no qualitative difference between a work that has never been claimed to be anything other than a work of fiction and a work that claims to be an historical narrative.
CARR
The Gospel of Mark never claims to be an historical narrative.
stone, I disagree with nothing that Price has written here.
"The Gospel of Mark never claims to be an historical narrative."
The point is that it is not claiming to be a work of fiction, nor is there any indication that the author has claimed such. It contains historical allusions that would indicate that the author intended for it to be an historical account.
Translation.
The Gospel of Mark gives no indication of author, source or chronology, and so has none of the markers ancient writers used to indicate they were writing history.
Nor has anybody ever found any evidence for most of the characters in the work, such as Judas, Thomas, Joseph of Arimathea, Bartimaeus etc.
John, so did Jesus walk the earth, in your opinion?
stone, I didn't publish your other comment because I don't knowingly publish false accusations. I don't think you're an honest person for that, and so I don't answer disingenuous questions like yours directly above. People know what I think.
Price still can't get over Habermas's minimal facts argument and that's the only reason he wrote his shoddy work.
To make a leap from eyewitness testimony and evidence that even critics claim is reasonable, verifiable and true, into something that is an admitted fantasy like Oz, is sheer fantasy and is only accepted as some type of argument with meaning among the most radical and unreasonable type of biblical critics...
Critics that accept that type of argumentive parallel will accept anything as long as they feel it bolsters their point...that's the futility of radicalism, whether religious or non-religious.
'Price still can't get over Habermas's minimal facts....'
Even apologists like Mike Licona have abandonded trying to show that the empty tomb was a fact.
Habermas can't use *all* the facts, so Habermas cherry picks some claims, points out that a quarter of professional scholars don't agree with him, and then thinks everything is settled.
District Harvey, Bob emailed me a response to what you wrote:
From Dr. Price:
May I invite you to peruse my essay on Habermas in my collection Jesus Is Dead? I am certainly not avoiding Gary's supposedly undeniable facts. Granted, the book is not jumping off the shelves at your local Barnes & Noble, so you might not have seen it.
And when I say we cannot assume anything said in an ancient narrative is true, I am not saying we know it is not true. It is just, as in any history, we must be able to corroborate the assertion from some other evidence, and in Mark's case (with Joseph, etc.) we cannot. Therefore we have no right to set these elements of the story forth as facts upon which we may proceed to base other assertions. I am not trying to prove the resurrection did not occur; rather, merely to show we cannot prove it did, as apologists claim.
John,
Thanks for posting Dr. Price's response to my statement, there are a few things that I don't exactly understand in light of the commentary you quoted and the general gist of his book...
So far as getting the book, Jesus Is Dead? the title itself is kind of deceptive...Robert Price doesn't believe that Jesus ever lived or existed, so posturing or proposing his death (from a Robert Price point of view) is merely a literary invention...to the point however, I'll look for the things that he says regarding Habermas since like himself Habermas was an atheist looked at and assessed the same evidence and came to starkly different conclusions than Price.
He says this:"And when I say we cannot assume anything said in an ancient narrative is true, I am not saying we know it is not true. It is just, as in any history, we must be able to corroborate the assertion from some other evidence, and in Mark's case (with Joseph, etc.) we cannot."
First the birth and resurrection narratives does not hinge on Mark solely and neither does it hinge on our ability to assess Mark's "trueness" as if Mark has a preeminence of truth or a greater truth than other narratives. The fact is that under Habermas's construct he clearly points out that the epistle's of Paul were at least placed in written form earlier than Mark's gospel and clearly Paul's epistles especially 1 Cor. 15 gave the foundational principles of life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. So to apply that because Mark's gospel is lacking in detail as a gospel account is not too good of an argument and I have heard Price argue this similar way in a radio debate with Habermas and Licona.
So far as the birth narrative is concerned, the best position that Price can take is that he doesn't know...Since he readily admits, "I am not saying we know it is not true"
I didn't find Dr. Price's assertions of not being able to come to a conclusion convincing in the Habermas radio discussion neither do I find it convincing here.
see 2
2
I find this interesting:"Therefore we have no right to set these elements of the story forth as facts upon which we may proceed to base other assertions."
If the birth narratives were the only facts upon which to base Jesus life, then I would agree that we are in trouble, but they are not the ONLY facts upon which the life of Jesus can be based nor the mission of Jesus under the construct of the dialogue of faith. Once again, the birth narratives may be confusing and certainly offer their difficulty, but since you cannot factually disprove or dismiss them as facts and since you have no evidence by which they can be controverted, I fail to see how your argument is strengthened or supported. This is a "gap" argument or an argument from "ignorance" at best. The narrative is supported in my opinion because it also presents no evidence by which it should be held in doubt.
Dr. Price said this also:"I am not trying to prove the resurrection did not occur; rather, merely to show we cannot prove it did, as apologists claim"
Well as stated it would be a waste of time for him to try to "prove" that someone who he doesn't believe ever existed wasn't resurrected, so the play on words is a "sucker punch" to them that doesn't know his work. If we confine the resurrection to the literary work of the bible, there is enough corroborating evidence to support the resurrection but it expands when the other layers of evidence is considered. Habermas, does not stop at or on a mere faith basis of resurrection. He adequately deals with 3rd party references, conversions of skeptics such as Paul & James, the 2 Josephus passages that establish not only a Jesus person, but the Jesus of the bible, the historical references from Suetonius, Tacitus, Pliny and others that clearly indicate belief and practice among believers and relates all of these elements back to a extremely close time to the life and death of real physical person called Jesus.
So whatever Dr. Price was trying to do or say with this can only be truly understood in light of his belief in a fictitious or historically amalgamated Jesus to begin with.
Sorry Doc. I just don't buy it. The life of Jesus to me is more simple to affirm than the resurrection. If one can't affirm that, I'm not surprised in any bit that they don't affirm the resurrection.
This is actually something that has been on my mind last few weeks...
The claim is that the empty tomb proves the resurrection... but what is the evidence for the empty tomb in the first place?
Where is Jesus' tomb? Such a place surely would have been venerated in the early church as that is the apologist argument as well as the purported excuses by doubters that the disciples stole the body... okay... so where's the tomb?
John, If you've already wrote something along these lines please link to it, I did a search but couldn't find anything directly.
-Thanks
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