Rising From The Dead

I might have titled this post “The Practice of Loving” and make it about how to give practical life to the principles of “care, responsibility, respect and knowledge” cited at http://gordon-feil-theology.blogspot.ca/2016/12/love-as-skill-and-attitude.html, but then I realized that I would be drawing on reasoning for which some readers  might not have the background to appreciate it. So I am going to take a large and long digression from my original direction to explain some things. 

I want to explain why I believe what I do about God and the Bible, and I will do it by posing a series of questions over several posts and then answering them.

Some say that Y’shuah (Jesus) was not an historical figure.  How do we know they are wrong?

I don’t recall any historians disputing that the Church was formed in Jerusalem in the decade of the 30s, just after when Y’shuah was supposed to have died.  They all seem to agree that its growth was rapid, even explosive.   These followers were from the same region as he was and were alive when he was supposed to have been alive.  Does it make any sense that they would have taken up the cause if he was imaginary?   There are also several secular authors of that general time who attest to his existence.

This sounds alright, but maybe it is just sophistry.  Can a man rise from the dead?

We can approach the resurrection of Y’shuah, and ought to approach it, as we would any historical event.  We can apply tests to it to determine its historicity.  To disprove this history, you really have to disprove the gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  These are our primary testimonies.  Scoffers want to treat them as a total fable, or perhaps accounts of the life of a man into which mythology has crept.  There are several problems with this view.

1.     The gospel accounts were written before the deaths of many of the people alive at the time of the purported events.   The authors had to stick to the truth or they would have been challenged and exposed.  Suppose I published a book now in 2017 on the riots that took place on the streets of Victoria in 1997 when the government refused to allow scientists to examine the tree in Beacon Hill Park that had started talking.  My book and I would be discredited because everybody who was there and still remembers 1997 would know that these things never happened.  In I Corinthians 15 is a list of several post-resurrection appearances.  Since this was written only about 20 years after the event, many of these witnesses were still around to ask, which is why Paul lists them.

2.     The gospels were written in a hostile environment: the Romans weren’t interested in accrediting such accounts and neither were the Jews. These people would have pounced on obvious fallacies in the accounts, and if the life of Y’shuah or the miraculous events of it were fallacies these people would have ridiculed the accounts and proved them false.  Yes, there is ridicule from these quarters, but it is from later years and from people who were not alive and living in Israel during the years of Y’shuah’s ministry.

3.     If the account of Y’shuah is a developed legend, we would expect that the later Christian literature would have more elements of the miraculous than earlier literature, reflecting the growth of the legend.  This is not what we actually find.  The earliest written Christian works (the gospel according to Mark and some of Paul’s writings) already contain every bit as much of the “unbelievable” as do the later ones.

4.     A big problem for the scoffer’s hypothesis arises in that the gospel accounts bear up well under accepted tests for literary accuracy.

a.     Is the author in a position to know the truth?  Matthew and Mark are written from the viewpoint of eyewitnesses.  Luke is clear with us that he is not an eyewitness, but equally clear that he relied upon the testimony of eyewitnesses (Luke 1:2-3).  John tells us he was an eyewitness.

b.     Does the account contain specific detail?  The more specific the detail, the more readily the account can be held up to scrupulous examination.  Fables tend to be general in their accounting of events.  The gospel accounts are full of detail which many early readers could have checked for themselves.  Luke 3:1 is a good example.

c.     Does the account contain details which are irrelevant?  Authors of true accounts tend to add various details, not sure if they are relevant, and sometimes just because they think of something that seems interesting to them.  An example, based on Dr. Gregory Boyd’s “Letters from a Skeptic” is at John 20:1-8:

Now the first day of the week (why does it matter which day of the week, or what time of day it was) Mary Magdalene (not an irrelevant detail, but one that a fabricator might leave out because she was not held to be a credible witness) went to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. Then she ran and came to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid Him." (Not the kind of detail one would put into a fabrication because it is exactly what the skeptics would claim.) Peter therefore went out, and the other disciple, and were going to the tomb. So they both ran together, and the other disciple outran Peter and came to the tomb first. (Who cares about who got there first?) And he, stooping down (irrelevant to the overall account, but a testimony to the accuracy because that is the only way to get into the tombs of that day and place, and he is writing the event as he remembers it) and looking in, saw the linen cloths lying there; yet he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb; and he saw the linen cloths lying there, and the handkerchief that had been around His head (this detail adds nothing really, but it was something that the author remembered about the occasion), not lying with the linen cloths, but folded together in a place by itself.(What does it matter if it was folded up? It is just a detail he remembered, so he puts it in.) Then the other disciple, who came to the tomb first, went in also; and he saw and believed. (What importance is there to who went in first or last?  The inclusion of these details are earmarks of someone simply recounting what they remember and not what they are making up.)   

                              This account is typical of the gospel accounts.

d.     When a document contains material that puts the author in less than a good light or serves to discredit his argument or his sources, it is usually an indication that the author is not making it up. The writers of the gospel accounts relate much that is like that.   The passage cited at (c) above has the empty tomb discovered by a woman and their testimony was not acceptable in that culture.  Some of the things Y’shuah is reported has having said do not serve the purpose of someone trying to convince people he is the Messiah.  For example, he says “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  Why would somebody report that except for the reason that it is what he said?

e.     The gospel accounts are self-consistent, which means they agree with each other even though they are written from differing viewpoints and accordingly have varying details recorded.  Matthew writes to Jewish people from a Jewish perspective, which is why he alludes to many things recorded in the Epistle of James (who also had such a perspective).  Mark’s focus is on what Y’shuah did.   Luke’s is as a gentile, and John’s aim seems to be to report what Y’shuah taught.

f.      The gospels do not have the hallmark of legends, which is to get more fantastic with time.   If anything, we find that the earliest one, Mark’s, is comparatively full of difficult-to-believe events whereas John’s, the last to be written, doesn’t contain so many miracles.

g.     Motive is an important indication of authenticity.  If the author has nothing to gain by fictionalizing and something to lose by it, we can expect him to tend towards the truth.   Several of Y’shuah’s disciples were martyred for what they taught about him.  Why would they teach a falsehood and willingly die for it?   And we cannot say that they didn’t know any better.  They were on-the-spot witnesses, so they knew if their reports were factual.  

h.     Perhaps a less conclusive proof of the accuracy of the texts (because even fiction can have it) is that archaeology  and secular history has not conclusively contradicted anything reported whereas it has in many points conclusively proven the accuracy of details reported.

i.    An important indicator of the truth of the gospels is that they were written in a culture which was hostile to their message and if they had been false, the enemies of the message would have demonstrated it.  What we find is that these enemies accused Y’shuah of doing miracles by the power of Satan and accused the disciples of stealing his body.  They couldn’t deny that the miracles were performed nor that the tomb was empty because these events were common knowledge.