Tim lawsonThe historical reliability of the New Testament
March 31st 2010 16:37
The purpose of this blog entry is to outline the different positions put forth by William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan in their debate regarding the identity of Jesus and the historical reliability of the New Testament. After the positions of each man have been outlined I will then argue that the position advanced by Craig is the most compelling based on two main points.
William Lane Craig begins the debate by explaining that Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is fundamental to answering the question of who the real Jesus is. “Jesus’ radical personal claims are blasphemous if they are not true. But the earliest followers of Jesus gave a good reason for thinking his claims to be true - namely, his resurrection from the dead...Thus the key to answering the question of who the real Jesus is lies in how we assess the resurrection of Jesus” (Copan 1998, p.26).
Craig goes on to list four facts which he claims are established by the majority of scholars today; he claims that “these provide adequate inductive grounds for inferring Jesus’ resurrection” (Copan 1998, p.26). In other words, these facts provide us with enough information to accept the resurrection as a historical truth. Craig’s first fact is that, after his crucifixion Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea in his personal tomb (Copan 1998, p.26). Craig explains that this fact is of the utmost significance as it shows that the location of Jesus’ tomb was known. Craig then lists five types of evidence that researchers have established this fact upon: that Jesus’ burial is attested in the very old tradition quoted by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 15:4); that the burial story is part of very old source material used by Mark in writing his Gospel; that as a member of the Jewish court that sentenced Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea is unlikely to be a Christian invention; that the burial story itself does not have any traces of legendary development; that there are no competing burial stories that exist (Copan 1998, p.27).
Craig’s second fact is that on the Sunday following the crucifixion, the tomb of Jesus was found empty by a group of his women followers (Copan 1998, p.27). Craig then states five reasons why most scholars have come to this conclusion: that the empty-tomb story is part of the very old source material used by Mark; that the old tradition cited by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:3-5 implies the empty tomb; that the story is simple and lacks signs of legendary embellishment; the fact that the testimony of the women was considered worthless in first-century Palestine counts in favour of the historicity of the women’s discovering the empty tomb; that the early Jewish allegation that the disciples had stolen Jesus’ body presupposes that the body was in fact missing from the tomb.
Craig’s third fact states that “on multiple occasions and under various circumstances different individuals and groups of people experienced appearances of Jesus alive from the dead” (Copan 1998, p.28). Craig then lists three reasons, which he claims are acknowledged by the majority of New Testament scholars today. He states that: the list of eyewitnesses to Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances , which is quoted by Paul (1 Cor. 15:5-7) and vouchsafed by his personal acquaintance with the people involved, guarantees that these appearances occurred, also that post-resurrection appearances were experienced by Peter, the twelve apostles, the five hundred brethren, and James; that the Gospel traditions provide multiple, independent attestations of these appearances; that researchers have acknowledged signs of historical credibility in particular experiences such as the unexpected activity of the disciples’ fishing prior to Jesus’ appearance by the Lake of Tiberius, and the otherwise unexplainable conversion of Jesus’ younger brother, James (Copan 1998, p.28).
Craigs fourth fact states that “the original disciples believed that Jesus was risen from the dead despite their having every reason not to” (Copan 1998, p.28). Craig then explains the situation the disciples faced following the crucifixion: their leader was dead and Jews had no belief in a dying, or rising, Messiah; according to Jewish law, Jesus’ execution as a criminal showed him to be a heretic; Jewish beliefs about the afterlife precluded anyone’s rising from the dead before the general resurrection at the end of the world (Copan 1998, p.28). Craig also states that regardless of these facts, the original disciples were prepared to go to their deaths for the fact of Jesus’ resurrection.
The two main contentions of Craig’s viewpoint are, firstly: that his four ‘facts’ are good historical grounds for ascertaining that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead as a confirmation of his radical personal claims. And secondly: that if the historical Jesus didn’t rise from the dead in confirmation of these claims, then Christianity is nothing but a fairy tale which no rational person should believe. Craig then quotes the apostle Paul who wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (Copan 1998, p.31).
John Dominic Crossan starts with two presuppositions that he claims are supported by a massive consensus of scholarship also. Firstly, that the Gospel of Mark was a major source for the Gospels of Mathew and Luke. Secondly, that there are three ‘layers’ in the data of the New Testament that cover Jesus’ words and deeds: the original layer that goes back to Jesus; the tradition that creatively changed or adapted the sayings and actions of Jesus; and the contribution of the authors of the Gospels themselves.
Based on these presuppositions, which Crossan openly admits could very well be incorrect. Crossan has two major points, one concerning history and one concerning language. The first point, concerning history, makes a distinction between the ‘real Jesus’ and the ‘historical Jesus’. In this sense the historical Jesus, as opposed to the Christ of Faith or the Jesus of 2000 years of Christian faith, is the man that lived in Palestine in the first quarter of the of the first century. Crossan explains “the way I formulate the question is this: if we were neutral observers in Palestine in the first quarter of the first century, what would we have seen? What would explain to us why some people said, ‘This man is divine. Let’s follow him,’ and why other people said, ‘This man is a criminal. Let’s execute him’? We know for a fact that both groups were there. How would we explain the two- not just the Christian point of view, but the pagan point of view as well? I am totally on the Christian side, but I have to ask myself, ‘What were the pagans seeing that they found criminal?” (Copan 1998, p.35).
Crossan’s second major point, which he explains is of much more importance to him than the first, is to do with language: specifically, the distinction between literal and metaphorical language, which he insists are crucial to correctly understanding the Gospels. Crossan explains these two distinctions saying, “Most of us understand completely that the sentence ‘Jesus lived at Nazerath’ is actual, factual, historical, biographical – whatever you would call it. The sentence ‘Jesus is the lamb of God’ we know immediately is not the same type of language. It is symbolic and we have to ask what it means. It is figurative; it is metaphorical. Now stories are like that – some stories are literal and others are symbolic, and of course, either can be true or false” (Copan 1998, p.35).
Crossan uses an example from the Bible to illustrate this differentiation. “I open my Bible to Genesis 1, and I find that God created the world in six days of labour (or six days of command) and one day of rest. I immediately ask myself, ‘is this information about the beginning of the world? It certainly reads that way’. But two factors come together to push me not to read it that way. One comes from reason, and the other comes from revelation. And reason and revelation are, for me, gifts from God. (As an aside, I reject absolutely the naturalist position that Dr. Craig attributed to me). Reason comes from God to all of us; revelation comes from God to some of us. Reason tells us about evolution, and it sounds reasonable that instant six-day creation is not the way in which the world came to be” (Copan 1998, p.37).
Crossan goes on to state that a crucial question for him is “is the biblical story of creation trying to tell us something else? Is it a metaphorical story that we read literally before the enlightenment and consequently got it all wrong?” (Copan 1998, p.28). Crossan then applies this reasoning to another beginning, the beginning of Jesus. He explains that when he reads the gospels of Luke and Mathew he reads about the Immaculate Conception and the concept that Jesus is divine and the son of God; upon this reading immediately he asks himself do these things really happen? Following this line of thought he draws parallels with other similar stories such as that of Suetonius, the Roman historian, who tells that the night Augustus (the Roman emperor at the time of Jesus’ birth) was conceived, his mother Atia was impregnated by the God Apollo and bore a divine child. “‘Agustus is the Son of God and divine,’ says the pagan Roman. ‘Jesus is the son of God and divine,’ the Christian believes.” (Copan 1998, p.38). Crossan then questions whether Mathew and Luke intend their accounts literally or metaphorically, as many would argue that the pagan story of Augustus’ divinity is metaphorical. This leads him to question whether we are misreading or misinterpreting the story of Jesus’ divine birth by Mary.
Crossan ends by claiming that, based on his presuppositions the historical Jesus’ story remains crucial for Christianity because we must in each generation redo our historical and theological work.
Crossan then examines the story of Jesus’ divine birth against the Buddhist story which tells that the Buddha came out of his mother’s womb walking, talking, preaching and teaching. He then says that to tell the Buddhists who believe this story (or the similar stories of other religions, such as the Night Journey in Islamic tradition, in which the prophet Muhammed travelled from Mecca to Jerusalem with the aid of a Buraq – a mythological steed bought to the prophet by the archangel Gabriel, that their faith is a lie and to maintain that our story and our faith as Christians is a truth is “a cancer that eats at the heart of Christianity” (Copan 1998, p.39).
Overall I find the position advanced by Craig to be the most convincing. Two main points made by Craig standout as being the most astute examples for me. Firstly, in Craig’s rebuttal he acknowledges that Crossan is correct in his thinking that Aesop’s fables and the parables of Jesus are metaphorical and not used to express literal truths. Craig then argues that the literary genre of the Gospels are not that of mythology, but rather, they are of the genre of historical writing. I find the evidence in support of the historical nature of Luke’s writing advanced by Craig to be quite compelling. He states that, “this has been excellently demonstrated by Colin Hemer in his recent volume The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History. Combing through the Book of Acts, Hemer finds a wealth of historical detail that has been verified by archeological and papyrological findings. These findings show that Luke is a consummate historian in the Book of Acts (and I believe also in the Gospel of Luke) (Copan 1998, p.41).
Another argument advanced by Craig that I find compelling is in his rebuttal of Crossan’s view that the resurrection is just a metaphor for Jesus’ continuing presence. Craig answers this notion by saying “the early Christians could have expressed the continuing presence of Jesus without recourse to a misleading metaphor like the resurrection. For example, in 1 Corinthians 5:3 Paul says, ‘Though absent in body I am present in spirit’. Now they could have said exactly the same thing about the deceased Jesus, that he was still present in spirit among them. In fact, in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit of Christ they had a theologically rich and profound way of talking about Christ’s continuing without all this misleading terminology of resurrection from the dead.
References
Will the Real Jesus Please stand Up? A Debate Between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan, ed. Paul Copan (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1998, pp.9
William Lane Craig begins the debate by explaining that Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is fundamental to answering the question of who the real Jesus is. “Jesus’ radical personal claims are blasphemous if they are not true. But the earliest followers of Jesus gave a good reason for thinking his claims to be true - namely, his resurrection from the dead...Thus the key to answering the question of who the real Jesus is lies in how we assess the resurrection of Jesus” (Copan 1998, p.26).
Craig goes on to list four facts which he claims are established by the majority of scholars today; he claims that “these provide adequate inductive grounds for inferring Jesus’ resurrection” (Copan 1998, p.26). In other words, these facts provide us with enough information to accept the resurrection as a historical truth. Craig’s first fact is that, after his crucifixion Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea in his personal tomb (Copan 1998, p.26). Craig explains that this fact is of the utmost significance as it shows that the location of Jesus’ tomb was known. Craig then lists five types of evidence that researchers have established this fact upon: that Jesus’ burial is attested in the very old tradition quoted by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 15:4); that the burial story is part of very old source material used by Mark in writing his Gospel; that as a member of the Jewish court that sentenced Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea is unlikely to be a Christian invention; that the burial story itself does not have any traces of legendary development; that there are no competing burial stories that exist (Copan 1998, p.27).
Craig’s second fact is that on the Sunday following the crucifixion, the tomb of Jesus was found empty by a group of his women followers (Copan 1998, p.27). Craig then states five reasons why most scholars have come to this conclusion: that the empty-tomb story is part of the very old source material used by Mark; that the old tradition cited by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:3-5 implies the empty tomb; that the story is simple and lacks signs of legendary embellishment; the fact that the testimony of the women was considered worthless in first-century Palestine counts in favour of the historicity of the women’s discovering the empty tomb; that the early Jewish allegation that the disciples had stolen Jesus’ body presupposes that the body was in fact missing from the tomb.
Craig’s third fact states that “on multiple occasions and under various circumstances different individuals and groups of people experienced appearances of Jesus alive from the dead” (Copan 1998, p.28). Craig then lists three reasons, which he claims are acknowledged by the majority of New Testament scholars today. He states that: the list of eyewitnesses to Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances , which is quoted by Paul (1 Cor. 15:5-7) and vouchsafed by his personal acquaintance with the people involved, guarantees that these appearances occurred, also that post-resurrection appearances were experienced by Peter, the twelve apostles, the five hundred brethren, and James; that the Gospel traditions provide multiple, independent attestations of these appearances; that researchers have acknowledged signs of historical credibility in particular experiences such as the unexpected activity of the disciples’ fishing prior to Jesus’ appearance by the Lake of Tiberius, and the otherwise unexplainable conversion of Jesus’ younger brother, James (Copan 1998, p.28).
Craigs fourth fact states that “the original disciples believed that Jesus was risen from the dead despite their having every reason not to” (Copan 1998, p.28). Craig then explains the situation the disciples faced following the crucifixion: their leader was dead and Jews had no belief in a dying, or rising, Messiah; according to Jewish law, Jesus’ execution as a criminal showed him to be a heretic; Jewish beliefs about the afterlife precluded anyone’s rising from the dead before the general resurrection at the end of the world (Copan 1998, p.28). Craig also states that regardless of these facts, the original disciples were prepared to go to their deaths for the fact of Jesus’ resurrection.
The two main contentions of Craig’s viewpoint are, firstly: that his four ‘facts’ are good historical grounds for ascertaining that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead as a confirmation of his radical personal claims. And secondly: that if the historical Jesus didn’t rise from the dead in confirmation of these claims, then Christianity is nothing but a fairy tale which no rational person should believe. Craig then quotes the apostle Paul who wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (Copan 1998, p.31).
John Dominic Crossan starts with two presuppositions that he claims are supported by a massive consensus of scholarship also. Firstly, that the Gospel of Mark was a major source for the Gospels of Mathew and Luke. Secondly, that there are three ‘layers’ in the data of the New Testament that cover Jesus’ words and deeds: the original layer that goes back to Jesus; the tradition that creatively changed or adapted the sayings and actions of Jesus; and the contribution of the authors of the Gospels themselves.
Based on these presuppositions, which Crossan openly admits could very well be incorrect. Crossan has two major points, one concerning history and one concerning language. The first point, concerning history, makes a distinction between the ‘real Jesus’ and the ‘historical Jesus’. In this sense the historical Jesus, as opposed to the Christ of Faith or the Jesus of 2000 years of Christian faith, is the man that lived in Palestine in the first quarter of the of the first century. Crossan explains “the way I formulate the question is this: if we were neutral observers in Palestine in the first quarter of the first century, what would we have seen? What would explain to us why some people said, ‘This man is divine. Let’s follow him,’ and why other people said, ‘This man is a criminal. Let’s execute him’? We know for a fact that both groups were there. How would we explain the two- not just the Christian point of view, but the pagan point of view as well? I am totally on the Christian side, but I have to ask myself, ‘What were the pagans seeing that they found criminal?” (Copan 1998, p.35).
Crossan’s second major point, which he explains is of much more importance to him than the first, is to do with language: specifically, the distinction between literal and metaphorical language, which he insists are crucial to correctly understanding the Gospels. Crossan explains these two distinctions saying, “Most of us understand completely that the sentence ‘Jesus lived at Nazerath’ is actual, factual, historical, biographical – whatever you would call it. The sentence ‘Jesus is the lamb of God’ we know immediately is not the same type of language. It is symbolic and we have to ask what it means. It is figurative; it is metaphorical. Now stories are like that – some stories are literal and others are symbolic, and of course, either can be true or false” (Copan 1998, p.35).
Crossan uses an example from the Bible to illustrate this differentiation. “I open my Bible to Genesis 1, and I find that God created the world in six days of labour (or six days of command) and one day of rest. I immediately ask myself, ‘is this information about the beginning of the world? It certainly reads that way’. But two factors come together to push me not to read it that way. One comes from reason, and the other comes from revelation. And reason and revelation are, for me, gifts from God. (As an aside, I reject absolutely the naturalist position that Dr. Craig attributed to me). Reason comes from God to all of us; revelation comes from God to some of us. Reason tells us about evolution, and it sounds reasonable that instant six-day creation is not the way in which the world came to be” (Copan 1998, p.37).
Crossan goes on to state that a crucial question for him is “is the biblical story of creation trying to tell us something else? Is it a metaphorical story that we read literally before the enlightenment and consequently got it all wrong?” (Copan 1998, p.28). Crossan then applies this reasoning to another beginning, the beginning of Jesus. He explains that when he reads the gospels of Luke and Mathew he reads about the Immaculate Conception and the concept that Jesus is divine and the son of God; upon this reading immediately he asks himself do these things really happen? Following this line of thought he draws parallels with other similar stories such as that of Suetonius, the Roman historian, who tells that the night Augustus (the Roman emperor at the time of Jesus’ birth) was conceived, his mother Atia was impregnated by the God Apollo and bore a divine child. “‘Agustus is the Son of God and divine,’ says the pagan Roman. ‘Jesus is the son of God and divine,’ the Christian believes.” (Copan 1998, p.38). Crossan then questions whether Mathew and Luke intend their accounts literally or metaphorically, as many would argue that the pagan story of Augustus’ divinity is metaphorical. This leads him to question whether we are misreading or misinterpreting the story of Jesus’ divine birth by Mary.
Crossan ends by claiming that, based on his presuppositions the historical Jesus’ story remains crucial for Christianity because we must in each generation redo our historical and theological work.
Crossan then examines the story of Jesus’ divine birth against the Buddhist story which tells that the Buddha came out of his mother’s womb walking, talking, preaching and teaching. He then says that to tell the Buddhists who believe this story (or the similar stories of other religions, such as the Night Journey in Islamic tradition, in which the prophet Muhammed travelled from Mecca to Jerusalem with the aid of a Buraq – a mythological steed bought to the prophet by the archangel Gabriel, that their faith is a lie and to maintain that our story and our faith as Christians is a truth is “a cancer that eats at the heart of Christianity” (Copan 1998, p.39).
Overall I find the position advanced by Craig to be the most convincing. Two main points made by Craig standout as being the most astute examples for me. Firstly, in Craig’s rebuttal he acknowledges that Crossan is correct in his thinking that Aesop’s fables and the parables of Jesus are metaphorical and not used to express literal truths. Craig then argues that the literary genre of the Gospels are not that of mythology, but rather, they are of the genre of historical writing. I find the evidence in support of the historical nature of Luke’s writing advanced by Craig to be quite compelling. He states that, “this has been excellently demonstrated by Colin Hemer in his recent volume The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History. Combing through the Book of Acts, Hemer finds a wealth of historical detail that has been verified by archeological and papyrological findings. These findings show that Luke is a consummate historian in the Book of Acts (and I believe also in the Gospel of Luke) (Copan 1998, p.41).
Another argument advanced by Craig that I find compelling is in his rebuttal of Crossan’s view that the resurrection is just a metaphor for Jesus’ continuing presence. Craig answers this notion by saying “the early Christians could have expressed the continuing presence of Jesus without recourse to a misleading metaphor like the resurrection. For example, in 1 Corinthians 5:3 Paul says, ‘Though absent in body I am present in spirit’. Now they could have said exactly the same thing about the deceased Jesus, that he was still present in spirit among them. In fact, in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit of Christ they had a theologically rich and profound way of talking about Christ’s continuing without all this misleading terminology of resurrection from the dead.
References
Will the Real Jesus Please stand Up? A Debate Between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan, ed. Paul Copan (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1998, pp.9
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