…[I]t cannot be denied that this work does present serious reasons to doubt the historicity of the Resurrection. The result is unquestionable. Much of what is here demonstrated is not found in any other work, and even when it does occur in other works, it is not in such an easily understood manner. There may be a point or two in favor of those who believe in the Resurrection that may have been overlooked by accident. But even if this is a given, the preponderance of evidence shows that the Resurrection is myth and not history. It is certainly not something one should base a life\u2019s decision on.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Whether you share the Rabbi\u2019s views on the Resurrection or not (and I don\u2019t), reading Alter\u2019s book will make you realize that what historians know<\/i> about Jesus\u2019 crucifixion, burial and post-mortem appearances to his disciples is very little: far too little for a Christian to base their belief in the reality of Jesus\u2019 Resurrection on the historical evidence alone. I now believe that only the grace of God could possibly justify making such an intellectual commitment.<\/p>\n
WARNING:<\/b> This will be a very lengthy review, which few people will have time to read in its entirety. For readers whose time is very limited, here\u2019s a brief, 5,000-word executive summary, which will be followed by a main menu<\/a> that allows readers to navigate their way around the review, as they please, although I would ask serious readers to at least peruse Section A<\/a>. There is no need to rush:<\/b> I don’t mind waiting a few days for people’s comments. If the acerbic tone offends some Christian readers, let me remind them that it is not<\/i> my intent to mock belief in the Resurrection (which I share with them), but to explain why I now regard the enterprise of trying to prove<\/i> it (or at the very least, demonstrate it to be more probable than not) is a doomed one.<\/p>\n Executive Summary<\/b><\/p>\n There are, broadly speaking, two ways of arguing for the Resurrection: first, a \u201cminimal facts\u201d approach<\/b> (developed by Dr. Gary Habermas<\/a> and Dr. Mike Licona<\/a>) which sticks to facts about Jesus and his disciples which are generally accepted by historians, and then proceeds to argue for the Resurrection as the best explanation for those facts; and second, a \u201cmaximal data\u201d approach<\/b> (championed by Drs. Tim<\/a> and Lydia McGrew<\/a>) which first seeks to build a cumulative case for the historical reliability of the four Gospel accounts before attempting to argue for the Resurrection. Although Alter does not explicitly deal with either of these approaches in his book \u2013 he\u2019ll be critiquing Resurrection apologetics in his second<\/i> book on the Resurrection, which is forthcoming \u2013 the importance of this<\/i> book which he has written is that it totally discredits both<\/i> approaches.<\/p>\n The \u201cmaximal data\u201d approach stands or falls on the claim that the New Testament is, if not inerrant, at the very least, historically reliable<\/i>. Alter\u2019s book assembles a mountain of evidence which demonstrates convincingly that it isn\u2019t. In his book, Alter uncovers no less than 120 internal contradictions<\/b> (relating to 113 different issues) in the New Testament accounts of Jesus\u2019 crucifixion, burial and resurrection, as well as scores of historical inaccuracies.<\/p>\n It turns out that the Gospels are not even historically reliable when narrating Jesus\u2019 Crucifixion, let alone his Resurrection. To illustrate my point, try a little thought experiment: close your eyes and try to picture in your mind Jesus\u2019 Crucifixion. Chances are you imagined a scene like the painting below by Veronese, right?<\/p>\n Get ready to revise your picture: Veronese\u2019s painting may be faithful to the Gospels, but for the most part, it\u2019s historically improbable. Nearly everything in the Gospel narratives of the crucifixion turns out to be highly dubious, when judged by the standards which a fair-minded historian would employ. Three of the Gospels tell us that Jesus was crucified on the Passover<\/b>, and that the Last Supper was a Passover meal<\/b> (Matthew 26:17-19<\/a>; Mark 14:12-16<\/a>; Luke 22:7-15<\/a>) during which Jesus took some bread and a cup of wine, and then told his disciples to eat his body and to drink blood<\/b>, which he called \u201cthe blood of the new covenant\u201d (Matthew 26:26-29<\/a>; Mark 14:22-25<\/a>; Luke 22:17-20<\/a>; see also 1 Corinthians 11:23-26<\/a>). Most New Testament historians would consider these claims highly questionable, to say the least. Even former Pope Benedict XVI admits<\/a> that \u201cthe meal that Jesus shared with the Twelve was not a Passover meal according to the ritual prescriptions of Judaism.\u201d To complicate matters, John\u2019s Gospel disagrees<\/i> with the other three Gospels in placing Jesus\u2019 Last Supper and Crucifixion on the eve<\/i> of the Passover (John 19:14<\/a>, 19:31<\/a>; see here<\/a> and here<\/a> below, for more details). Historians generally agree that this is a much more plausible date. So does former Pope Benedict XVI<\/a>: he acknowledges that “one has to choose between the Synoptic and Johannine chronologies,” and he accepts that “the weight of evidence favours John.”<\/p>\n As for what happened at the Last Supper: Dr. Michael Cahill, Professor of Biblical Studies at Duquesne University, freely acknowledges the unlikelihood of a devout Jew such as Jesus instituting a blood-drinking ceremony, in his article, Drinking Blood at a Kosher Eucharist? The Sound of Scholarly Silence<\/a>. He concludes<\/a>: \u201cThose who hold for the literal institution by Jesus have not been able to explain plausibly how the drinking of blood could have arisen in a Jewish setting.\u201d Interestingly, the blood-drinking ceremony at the Last Supper is omitted from John\u2019s Gospel.<\/p>\n All four Gospels agree that Jesus was betrayed by one of his apostles, Judas Iscariot<\/b>. However, they disagree about practically everything else, when it comes to Judas \u2013 in particular, why<\/i> he betrayed Jesus (was it for money, as Matthew<\/a> declares, or because Satan entered into his heart, as Luke<\/a> and John<\/a> maintain?), when<\/i> he turned against Jesus (was it two days before the Passover, as in Matthew<\/a> and Mark<\/a>, or during the Last Supper, as in John<\/a>?), and what happened<\/i> to him after he betrayed Jesus (did he return the money to the chief priests before going out and hanging himself in a fit of remorse<\/a>, as in Matthew, or did he use the money to buy a field, where he suffered the mishap of his bowels suddenly bursting open<\/a>, as in Luke\u2019s Acts of the Apostles?) Matthew even manages to bungle the famous prophecy<\/a> he quotes about the thirty pieces of silver Judas returned to the temple priests: it\u2019s not in Jeremiah, as he claims, but in Zechariah, and it says nothing about Jesus, anyway: the author of the prophecy was writing about the rupture between Israel and Judah<\/a>.<\/p>\n Again: according to the Evangelists, Jesus was condemned of blasphemy by the Jewish Sanhedrin in a hasty night trial<\/b><\/a> at the residence of the high priest, Caiaphas. But something smells very fishy here: even back in the first century A.D., the trial depicted in the Gospels would have broken just about every rule in the book. It shouldn\u2019t have been at Caiaphas\u2019 residence, it shouldn\u2019t have been held at night, and there should have been a 24-hour delay before a death sentence was pronounced. And nothing that Jesus said during his trial would have constituted blasphemy anyway: he didn\u2019t pronounce the Divine name, and he didn\u2019t claim to be equal to God. There was nothing blasphemous about claiming to be the Son of God. Mark records<\/a> Jesus referring to himself as the Son of Man, seated on the right hand of God and coming on the clouds of heaven, but similar claims<\/a> were made by Jews living well before Jesus was born<\/a>, about the Biblical patriarch Enoch<\/a>. So why did the Jewish Sanhedrin (Council) decide that Jesus deserved to die? And was their verdict a unanimous<\/a> one (as in Mark\u2019s Gospel) or were there dissenters<\/a> (as Luke\u2019s Gospel records)?<\/p>\n Later on, in the Gospel accounts of Jesus\u2019 Roman trial before Pontius Pilate, Pilate is depicted as being very reluctant to condemn Jesus to death<\/b>, even washing his hands of the case in Matthew\u2019s Gospel \u2013 but this contradicts everything we know about the man<\/a> from contemporaneous Jewish sources (and from Luke himself<\/a>): in reality, the man was a ruthless, cold-hearted butcher who wouldn\u2019t have had a moment\u2019s hesitation in condemning Jesus to death.<\/p>\n Two of the Gospels (Matthew and Mark) record<\/a> that Jesus was mocked by the chief priests<\/b> while hanging on the Cross: “Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe” (Mark 15:32<\/a>). But that couldn\u2019t have happened if Jesus was crucified on the eve<\/i> of the Passover (as in John\u2019s Gospel) rather than on the Passover itself (as in Matthew, Mark and Luke, who, as we\u2019ve seen, got the date wrong): on Passover eve, the chief priests would have been busy slaughtering lambs in the Temple for the thousands of families in Jerusalem wanting to celebrate Passover that evening. It was their busiest day of the year. They wouldn\u2019t have had time to go out to Golgotha and poke fun at Jesus hanging on the Cross.<\/p>\n And that story<\/a> in Luke\u2019s Gospel about the good thief<\/b>? Probably didn\u2019t happen either: he\u2019d been languishing in jail for weeks, cut off from all news of the outside world, so how would he have known<\/i> that Jesus was innocent of any crime and had done nothing wrong? Doesn\u2019t make sense.<\/p>\n And what about those last words Jesus is supposed to have uttered on the Cross<\/b>? Leaving aside the fact that the Gospels give us three different versions of Jesus\u2019 final words (see Matthew 27:46-50<\/a> and Mark 15:34-37<\/a>; Luke 23:46<\/a>; John 19:30<\/a>), all<\/i> of the words allegedly spoken by Jesus on the Cross are likely to be fictional. The Romans wouldn\u2019t have allowed anyone to stand close enough to the Cross to hear Jesus\u2019 words, in the first place \u2013 especially if he was convicted on a political charge, as Jesus was (Matthew 27:37<\/a>, Mark 15:26<\/a>, Luke 23:38<\/a>, John 19:19<\/a>). And forget about Jesus crying out in a loud voice just before he died: by that time, his voice would have been reduced to a mere whisper by the asphyxiation he suffered while hanging on the Cross. Most ridiculous is the claim, found in Matthew\u2019s<\/a> and Mark\u2019s<\/a> Gospels, that after Jesus uttered his final cry on the Cross (\u201cEli, Eli, lema sabachthani?<\/i>\u201d, or \u201cMy God, my God, why have you abandoned me?\u201d), some of the bystanders thought he was calling on Elijah. As Alter points out, there\u2019s simply no way any Jew would mistake the word \u201cEli\u201d for \u201cElijah.\u201d<\/p>\n John\u2019s Gospel records<\/a> the presence of Jesus\u2019 mother at the foot of the Cross, along with the beloved disciple<\/b> (who is generally presumed to have been the apostle John, although about 20 other individuals have been proposed as candidates), but this, too, is probably fictional: Jesus was crucified as an enemy of the State (\u201cKing of the Jews\u201d), and as such, the Romans would have shown him no quarter \u2013 and they certainly would not have allowed him to enjoy a final conversation with his mother. To quote the words of the late Dr. Maurice Casey (1942-2014), author of Is John\u2019s Gospel True?<\/i> (1996, London: Routledge, p. 188) and a former Professor of New Testament Languages and Literature at the Department of Theology at the University of Nottingham: \u201cThe fourth Gospel\u2019s group of people beside the Cross includes Jesus\u2019 mother and the beloved disciple. It is most unlikely that these people would have been allowed this close to a Roman crucifixion.\u201d As Dr. Bart Ehrman, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has pointed out in an online essay titled, Why Romans crucified people<\/a>, the whole aim of crucifixion was to humiliate the victim as much as possible. And when political criminals like Jesus were crucified, the warning to the public was unmistakably clear: this<\/i> is what happens to you if you mess with Rome. No niceties were observed and no courtesies allowed.<\/p>\n Nor can we trust the beloved disciple\u2019s claim to have witnessed blood and water flowing from Jesus\u2019 side<\/b> after he was pierced with a soldier\u2019s lance (John 19:31-36<\/a>): Jesus\u2019 body had already been heavily scourged<\/a>, so it would have been covered with blood. Consequently, it would have been very difficult to visually distinguish blood and water flowing from Jesus\u2019 side unless the beloved disciple was observing it close-up (which, as we\u2019ve seen, he wasn\u2019t). As Alter points out, the Romans would never have allowed anyone near the Cross while they were breaking the legs of the crucified criminals, in order to make sure they were really dead. Incidentally, the story in John about Jesus managing to avoid having his legs broken<\/a> by the Roman soldiers is also historically suspect: if Pilate had ordered the soldiers to break the legs of all the criminals, then they would have obeyed his orders to the letter. (John\u2019s story appears to have been written in order to serve a theological agenda, portraying Jesus as the Paschal lamb that was slain without any of its bones being broken \u2013 see Exodus 12:46<\/a>.)<\/p>\n How about the Gospel accounts in Matthew<\/a>, Mark<\/a> and Luke<\/a> (but not John) of the three hours of darkness<\/b> preceding Jesus\u2019 death? Unfortunately, there\u2019s no documentation of any such event occurring in Palestine at that time. (And no, Thallus and Phlegon don\u2019t help the Christian apologetic case<\/a>: in fact, they only serve to weaken it, as we\u2019ll see below.) And the earthquake<\/b> that is said to have taken place at Jesus\u2019 death? Only one Evangelist (Matthew) records it \u2013 and he shoots his own credibility in the foot by claiming<\/a> that the tombs of many Jewish saints were opened<\/b>, that their bodies were raised to life again, and that they appeared to many people in Jerusalem after Jesus\u2019 Resurrection (Matthew 27:51-54<\/a>): an astonishing claim which is found in no other Gospel. Even conservative Christian apologists such as Dale Allison, Craig Evans and Mike Licona are highly skeptical of this story.<\/p>\n What about the story<\/a> of the tearing of the veil of the Temple<\/b> immediately following Jesus\u2019 death? Doesn\u2019t add up either: as Alter demonstrates in his book, using maps, the veil of the Temple couldn\u2019t even be seen<\/i> from Golgotha (the place where Jesus was crucified). And while we have accounts<\/a> in the Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud of strange occurrences connected with the Temple around 30 A.D., neither of them mention the veil of the Temple being torn in two. That sounds very suspicious.<\/p>\n A prudent and impartial historian, weighing up all these difficulties, would surely conclude that the foregoing events described in the Gospels probably never happened. And if the Gospels get so many key facts about Jesus\u2019 crucifixion wrong, then they can no longer be seen as historically reliable; instead, they must be regarded as highly embellished accounts. (I am of course aware that certain advocates of the \u201cmaximal data\u201d approach object<\/a> that an incident-by-incident approach to Gospel reliability is fundamentally wrong; I\u2019ll be responding to their arguments in Section A<\/a> below. For now, I\u2019ll just say that when the Gospels narrate more than a dozen<\/i> historically doubtful events during the last 24 hours of Jesus\u2019 life, there\u2019s no way they can be called reliable accounts.) But if the Gospels are not<\/i> historically reliable, then Christian apologists cannot legitimately appeal to episodes recorded in the Gospels (such as Jesus\u2019 appearance to doubting Thomas) in order to establish Jesus\u2019 Resurrection, without providing independent argumentation<\/i> that these episodes actually took place.<\/p>\n So much for the \u201cmaximal data\u201d approach to Resurrection apologetics, then. The \u201cminimal facts\u201d approach<\/b> fares no better. Proponents of this approach usually include the discovery of Jesus\u2019 empty tomb<\/b> on their list of minimal facts, and they proudly cite Professor Gary Habermas\u2019 claim<\/a> that 75% of New Testament scholars accept the reality of the empty tomb. But Habermas hasn\u2019t released his survey data, and in any case, it\u2019s based on a biased sample: most of the scholars surveyed were committed Christians. What\u2019s more, the survey was completed in 2005, so it\u2019s more than a dozen years out-of-date. For a critique of Habermas\u2019 survey, see here<\/a>.<\/p>\n In his book, Alter shows that none of the Gospel accounts of Jesus being buried in a new rock tomb owned by Joseph of Arimathea hold water, and in any case they\u2019re mutually contradictory.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s begin with Mark\u2019s Gospel<\/b>, which depicts Joseph of Arimathea as buying a linen shroud for Jesus on the Passover, a Jewish high holy day (Mark 14:12-16<\/a>, 15:46<\/a>). That was forbidden under Jewish law (Leviticus 23:6-7<\/a>; Nehemiah 10:31<\/a>). Later, after the Sabbath, the women present at Jesus\u2019 burial buy spices to anoint him (Mark 16:1<\/a>). But they couldn\u2019t have done it on Saturday night, as the shops would have been closed (remember: there was no electrical lighting in the first century), and there wouldn\u2019t have been time to buy them on Sunday morning either, as the women arrived at Jesus\u2019 tomb just after sunrise (Mark 16:2<\/a>). Mark\u2019s Gospel also tells us that the tomb was sealed with a large, round stone (Mark 16:3-4<\/a>), but only fabulously rich people owned tombs like that, back in those days. Luke\u2019s Gospel<\/b> fares no better than Mark\u2019s, when it comes to historical accuracy: it depicts the women as preparing spices and ointments on a high holy day (Passover), shortly before the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath on Friday evening (Luke 23:56<\/a>). This, too, would have contravened Jewish law. In any case, Luke\u2019s account of when the spices were purchased contradicts Mark\u2019s: Luke says it was on Friday, while Mark says it was on Sunday morning. Both cannot be right. Luke also tells us that Joseph of Arimathea had not consented to the decision by the council of chief priests and scribes to condemn Jesus to death (Luke 23:51<\/a>), which contradicts Mark\u2019s and Matthew\u2019s express statements that the entire council voted to condemn Jesus (Mark 14:64<\/a>, 15:1<\/a>; Matthew 26:59<\/a>, 27:1<\/a>). Incidentally, Luke\u2019s second book, the Acts of the Apostles, contradicts Luke\u2019s Gospel on the question of who buried Jesus: in Acts 13:27-29<\/a>, it is the rulers of Jerusalem<\/i> (not<\/i> Joseph of Arimathea) who take Jesus down from the Cross and lay him in a tomb. Matthew\u2019s account<\/b> of Jesus\u2019 burial is even more far-fetched than Mark\u2019s and Luke\u2019s: it portrays the chief priests and Pharisees as visiting Pilate on the Jewish Sabbath (Saturday), asking for a guard to be placed over Jesus\u2019 tomb, and personally sealing the stone (Matthew 27:66<\/a>) \u2013 a clear violation of Sabbath law which would have merited the death penalty (Exodus 35:2<\/a>; Numbers 15:32-36<\/a>). Additionally, asking Gentile guards to work on the Sabbath (by guarding the tomb) would have violated the commandments of the Torah (Exodus 20:8-10<\/a>): Jews were forbidden to ask even strangers to work for them on the Sabbath. It\u2019s also preposterous to imagine that Pilate would have agreed to their request on a purely religious<\/i> matter, which did not concern him \u2013 particularly after they had annoyed him the previous day by putting him on the spot and publicly pressuring him to have Jesus put to death (Matthew 27:15-26<\/a>). The account of Jesus\u2019 burial in John\u2019s Gospel<\/b> is also full of difficulties. To begin with, there is a puzzling inconsistency: first, the chief priests of \u201cthe Jews\u201d ask for the legs of the crucified criminals (including Jesus) to be broken so as to hasten death, so that they might be taken away before the Sabbath (John19:31<\/a>; cf. John 19:21<\/a>), which seems to imply that they<\/i> were being granted custody of the body of Jesus, but then<\/i> Joseph of Arimathea secretly (\u201cfor fear of the Jews\u201d) asks Pilate if he<\/i> can take away the body of Jesus, and Pilate allows him to do so (John 19:38<\/a>). This is bizarre: why would Pilate have handed over the body of an enemy of the State to a private individual, anyway? Another man named Nicodemus also comes along to Jesus\u2019 burial, bringing 100 Roman pounds of myrrh and aloes<\/a> (or 75 of our pounds) \u2013 an amount literally fit for a king! In any case, Jesus\u2019 body being packed in spices is historically incongruous, reflecting Egyptian rather than Jewish burial customs. Joseph of Arimathea\u2019s tomb is also said to be situated near the place where Jesus was crucified, but as Alter points out, it is very unlikely that a wealthy man like Joseph would have a tomb in such an undesirable location. Finally, Joseph\u2019s tomb is described in three Gospels (Matthew, Luke and John) as a new<\/i> tomb, in which no-one had been laid. Once again, this is highly improbable: most likely, it would have been a family tomb, in which several generations of Joseph\u2019s family would have been buried. In short: the Gospel accounts of Jesus\u2019 burial are at odds with Jewish customs \u2013 and with each other \u2013 on several key points.<\/p>\n As if that were not bad enough, since the publication of Alter\u2019s book, Professor Bart Ehrman has put forward some very powerful arguments (see here<\/a> and here<\/a>) explaining why Jesus would probably not have been given a proper burial anyway:<\/b> as an enemy of the State, the Romans would have wanted to humiliate him completely, so his body would have been left on the Cross for days and been gnawed at by carrion birds and animals, in full view of the public, before being tossed into a common burial pit for criminals. To be sure, leaving a dead body hanging on a cross after sundown would have upset the Jews, but there\u2019s no record of the Romans ever showing any clemency with the body of a political<\/i> criminal, and allowing it to be given a proper burial.<\/p>\n But even if Jesus had managed to escaped this grisly fate, and the Jewish Sanhedrin had obtained permission to bury Jesus\u2019 body (as suggested by Acts 13:27-29<\/a> and John 19:31<\/a>), it would have been a dishonorable<\/i> burial<\/a>, with no family members present, no funeral procession and no rituals of mourning, where the body was most likely buried in a trench grave<\/a> in a field where the bodies of criminals condemned by Jewish courts were buried, or in a burial cave owned by the Jewish authorities (less likely, as we have no record of any cave being used to bury executed criminals). (The two thieves crucified with Jesus weren\u2019t condemned by a Jewish court but a Roman one, so their bodies wouldn\u2019t have been buried with that of Jesus, if<\/i> the Jewish chief priests managed to get hold of Jesus\u2019 body.) However, Professor Jodi Magness, an archaeologist who works at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has suggested<\/a> that there might not have been enough time to dig a trench grave on Friday afternoon, so the chief priests may have asked Joseph (a wealthy member of the council) to temporarily store Jesus\u2019 body in his grave over the weekend. If Dr. Magness\u2019 proposal is correct, it would certainly account for the mention of Joseph of Arimathea in all of the Gospel accounts (but not in 1 Corinthians 15:4<\/a>, curiously enough). But even on Dr. Magness\u2019 proposal, Jesus\u2019 body wouldn\u2019t have been placed in a new tomb<\/i> where no-one had ever been laid, as the Gospels narrate, but at best, inside a new niche<\/i> within Joseph\u2019s family tomb, which would have already held lots of bodies.<\/p>\n Confronted with this evidence, any prudent and unbiased historian would have to conclude that if<\/i> Jesus was buried at all, it was most likely a dishonorable burial with no mourners<\/a>, in which Jesus\u2019 body was either buried in a trench grave with other criminals, or placed in temporary storage in Joseph of Arimathea\u2019s family tomb, along with the bodies of Joseph\u2019s family members. Not only is this picture at odds with the Gospel accounts of Jesus\u2019 burial, but it also undercuts the apologetic case for the empty tomb<\/b>. In particular, the oft-repeated apologetic argument<\/b> that if Jesus\u2019 tomb wasn\u2019t<\/i> empty, Jesus\u2019 enemies would have had no trouble in producing his body and discrediting the apostles\u2019 claims that Jesus had risen, turns out to be totally bogus:<\/b> according to Jewish religious law, corpses were deemed to be no longer legally identifiable with any certainty if they were more than three days old (see here<\/a>). The apostles didn\u2019t start publicly preaching Jesus\u2019 Resurrection until seven weeks after the Crucifixion<\/a> \u2013 by which time, even if Jesus\u2019 corpse had<\/i> still been lying in a tomb, nobody would have been able to positively identify it, anyway.<\/p>\n That brings us to the New Testament accounts of the risen Jesus\u2019 appearances<\/b> to his disciples, as well as his brother James and Saul of Tarsus, an early persecutor of Christianity. There are about eleven recorded appearances, and in his book, Alter manages to uncover contradictions in nearly all of them, which I\u2019ll discuss in Section D<\/a> below. For the time being, all I\u2019ll say is that Alter\u2019s book uncovers a lot<\/i> more contradictions than one might expect, as well as some gaping holes<\/b> in the Gospel narratives. I would also like to thank Matthew Ferguson<\/b> for his article, Reply to Vincent Torley<\/a> (April 12, 2017), written in response to my OP, Evidence for the Resurrection<\/a> (The Skeptical Zone, April 4, 2017). Ferguson\u2019s article had a strong influence over my thinking, as it made a number of telling points. Ferguson\u2019s and Alter\u2019s most telling points regarding the Resurrection narratives are summarized in Section B<\/a> below, and presented in much greater depth in Section D<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWhoa! Holes in the Resurrection narratives?\u201d the reader may be asking. \u201cWhat holes?\u201d Fair question. How about these ones: first of all, why<\/i> did the women go to Jesus\u2019 tomb on Easter Sunday morning? Was it simply to visit Jesus\u2019 body, as in Matthew and John, or to anoint the body, as in Mark? And why<\/i> did they travel in the dark, before dawn, without a male to accompany them? (Not a wise thing to do, back in the first century A.D.) And how<\/i> did they plan to roll back the \u201cvery large\u201d stone at the entrance to the tomb, recorded by Mark? (Breaking into a private tomb was a crime punishable by exile under Roman law, so no passersby would have helped them.) And why<\/i> would the women have gone to anoint Jesus\u2019 dead body on Easter Sunday morning, as Mark records, if they were then going to rewrap<\/i> it in dirty linen cloths afterwards? That really doesn\u2019t make sense.<\/p>\n But the key point<\/b> that we need to bear in mind here is that in order for an appearance of Jesus to serve as good evidence for his Resurrection, it would have to be multiply attested<\/i> by witnesses whose testimonies were mutually consistent<\/i>, and it would have to involve them not only seeing and hearing Jesus (as one might in a vision) but experiencing physical contact<\/i> with him. As I will demonstrate in detail in Section D<\/a>, the Biblical narratives of Jesus\u2019 Resurrection appearances turn out to be highly inconsistent<\/i>. If we examine the Gospel narratives of Jesus\u2019 appearances to his apostles, for instance, we find that they contradict each other on the most basic details: who<\/i> saw Jesus (was it ten, eleven or twelve apostles?), when<\/i> they first saw him (Easter Sunday evening, as in Luke and John, or a few days later, as in Matthew?), and where<\/i> they saw him (only in Jerusalem, as in Luke, or not until they had returned to Galilee, as in Mark and Matthew?) Additionally, most of the Resurrection appearances recorded in the New Testament fail to meet the criteria of multiple attestation and physical contact: some (like those to James and Paul) were to only one individual, while others fail to record the disciples having any physical contact with Jesus (which would rule out the hypothesis that they were having a vision, say).<\/p>\n To be sure, there are a few accounts in the Gospels, where Jesus appears to and has physical contact with multiple individuals. Unfortunately, however, these Gospel accounts don\u2019t contain any eyewitness interviews, so we have no way of knowing whether the various witnesses to Jesus\u2019 Resurrection all saw, heard and felt the same thing<\/i> on the occasions when they collectively encountered him. Think about it: if a dozen people claimed to have seen a UFO land on Earth, one would surely demand to see transcripts of separate interviews with each witness, and\/or diagrams of what each witness saw, just to make sure that their reports tallied with one another. The same goes for modern-day Marian apparitions, such as Fatima and Medjugorje: as a routine matter, Church-appointed investigators of these visions attempt to establish whether the seers are all seeing and hearing the same thing. (Tactile apparitions are much rarer, but they have occurred<\/a>.)<\/p>\n The best argument that Christian apologists can marshal in response to this objection is that the disciples must have<\/i> all experienced the same thing, or otherwise they wouldn\u2019t have<\/i> all been prepared to die for their faith in Jesus\u2019 Resurrection: only if they had carefully checked out each other\u2019s accounts of what they experienced and found that they all tallied would they have acquired the courage to lay down their lives for their faith in Jesus. But that\u2019s a psychological assumption<\/b>: nowhere does the New Testament claim that the disciples cross-checked their experiences with one another. (Incidentally, the Fatima seers, who remained steadfast even after being threatened with torture and death<\/a> in August 1917, didn\u2019t<\/i> all see or hear the same thing<\/a>, as we can tell by examining Dr. Formigao’s interviews with each of them, regarding what they witnessed at the Fatima miracle of October 13th, 1917: their accounts are quite divergent.) A skeptic might also point out that only two of the twelve apostles are known to have been put to death, and that in any case, we don\u2019t know<\/i> whether they were executed on account of their faith in Jesus\u2019 Resurrection, or for some other theological or political reason, as Michael Alter suggested in a radio debate<\/a> with Jonathan McClatchie (March 28th, 2016) \u2013 see the segment from 1:05:00 to 1:06:20. But even if the apostles were<\/i> martyred for their faith in the Resurrection, the foregoing argument overlooks the possibility that many of the apostles may have only seen<\/i> Jesus, while a smaller number (say, Peter, James, John and Thomas) not only saw but heard him, and an even smaller number (say, Thomas alone) actually touched him. The apostles may have all seen<\/i> the same thing (more or less), but without hearing<\/i> or feeling<\/i> the same thing. We just don\u2019t know. However, in order to prove a resurrection<\/b> (as opposed to an objective vision sent by God), one would need to establish that several of the disciples not only saw and heard Jesus, but made physical contact with him as well. The upshot of all this is that the Resurrection accounts would never<\/i> pass muster in a court of law: there are too many holes in the stories, and they don\u2019t meet standards of good evidence. No impartial historian would find them convincing evidence for Jesus\u2019 Resurrection.<\/p>\n In short: Alter\u2019s book does a brilliant job of eviscerating the apologists\u2019 case for the high probability of the Resurrection. Whether one chooses to continue believing it (as I do) or not, one is forced to accept, after reading the book, that belief in the Resurrection cannot be built on the foundation of historical data, for it is a foundation of sand.<\/p>\n My Executive Summary ends here.<\/b> Some readers may wish to stop at this point, but I would urge those who are not too pressed for time to navigate their way around the main menu<\/b><\/a> below. I would particularly urge readers to peruse Section A<\/a>, which contains my own critical comments on Michael Alter\u2019s book. For those readers who wish to continue beyond that point, there are two options: they may either read Section C<\/a> and Section D<\/a> (which deal in detail with Jesus\u2019 Crucifixion and Resurrection, respectively) or they may read Section B<\/a>, which is a short summary of sections C and D. For those readers who like to explore issues in depth, Section E<\/a> contains three detailed case studies<\/b>, which establish beyond reasonable doubt that the Gospel accounts are mutually contradictory and inconsistent with known facts. Finally, Section F<\/a> traces the history of the passion and resurrection narratives. Interestingly, it turns out that we can reconstruct a \u201ccore narrative\u201d which is mostly accurate.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/0\/08\/Paolo_Veronese_010.jpg\/402px-Paolo_Veronese_010.jpg\")
\nThe Crucifixion<\/i> by Paolo Veronese (1528-1588). The Louvre Museum, Salle des \u00c9tats. Image courtesy of The Yorck Project (2002) and Wikipedia.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/3\/35\/Mosaic_-_Entombment_of_Jesus.JPG\/640px-Mosaic_-_Entombment_of_Jesus.JPG\")
\nWall mosaic of the entombment of Jesus at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Image courtesy of AntanO and Wikipedia.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/8\/82\/Blacktriangle.jpg\")
\nAn artist\u2019s impression of a black triangle<\/a> UFO. Image courtesy of Skeezerpumba and Wikipedia. If several people claimed to have seen an object like this one, investigators would want to verify that their accounts tallied. What if they claimed to have seen a man who had risen from the dead?<\/p>\n
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