Welcome! Today we continue our series on the
reliability of the Gospels. Last week we began by explaining that we were
focusing in on the Gospels because they are the most central documents of the
Christian faith; they are “ground zero” for the fundamental claims of
Christianity. If one accepts the Gospels as true accounts, the fact that Jesus
and the Gospel writers clearly believed the Old Testament makes it natural to
trust in the Old Testament as well. Similarly, the other material in the New
Testament can also be believed because the fundamental teachings are clearly
based on the historicity of the Gospels.
Last week we also focused in on atheists’ claims
that the Gospels are fabrications. We addressed this by looking in some detail
at when the Gospels were likely written, as evidenced by early copies of the
Gospels, as evidenced by Gospel fragments, as evidenced by other early letters
by Christians referring to the Gospels, and as evidenced by early letters by
those who were not Christian but who acknowledged some Christian claims
along with some historical events in the life of Christ.
This week I want to discuss claims that the
Gospels must be wrong, must be in error, because of what they say. There are
two common types of arguments along these lines. First, people try to find and
point out specific errors in the details between one gospel and another or
between a gospel and a non-gospel piece of evidence such as an item from
archaeology, another document, geographical data, etc. This category I will
refer to as contradictions, and we will look at this next week.
The other type of argument, and my focus today,
is along the lines that what the Gospels state in general just isn’t
reasonable, that is, it’s just unlikely to be true. Most people who have
studied Christian claims in some depth, even atheists, don’t doubt that there
was a person who went by the name of Jesus of Nazareth, that He went around the
Jewish countryside teaching people and gathering at least a small following,
and even that He died by crucifixion. What they have problems with are the
claims about miracles: that He was
born of a virgin, that He miraculously healed people, that He changed water to
wine, that He fed the multitude, that He walked on water, that He calmed the
storm, that He cast out demons (which atheists would say don’t exist at all),
that He withered a fig tree, that He told people things He could not know (the
woman at the well, the coin in the fish’s mouth), that He raised people from
the dead (Jairus’ daughter, the widow’s son at Nain, and Lazarus), and that He
Himself rose from the dead and on multiple occasions appeared to His
followers after being crucified and
spending three days in a tomb. This doesn’t include the countless “unmentioned”
things Jesus did as it says in John 21:25, including miracles. The point is the
fact that there are miracles in the
Gospels (many miracles) makes many people automatically skeptical of the
Gospels’ reliability. As our atheist friend Christopher Hitchens has said,
Exceptional claims
demand exceptional evidence. – Christopher Hitchens
And so, really, the main question I want to
address today is the following:
Don’t
the miraculous claims in the gospels discredit them as a reliable source?
Critics have answered “Yes” for a long
time. Here are responses along these lines by Thomas Paine and David Hume:
“Is it more probable that nature should go
out of her course or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our
time, nature go out of her course. But we have good reason to believe that
millions of lies have been told in the same time. It is therefore at least
millions to one that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie.” – Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
“When anyone tells me that he saw a dead man restored to
life, I immediately consider with myself whether it be more probable that this
person should either deceive or be deceived or that the fact which he relates
should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other and
according to the superiority which I discover, I pronounce my decision. Always
I reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more
miraculous than the event which he relates, then and not till then, can he
pretend to command my belief or opinion.” – David Hume
Both are saying that they objectively weigh the likelihood
of a claim against the likelihood that the person is wrong/lying/etc. But how
do you do the weighing? The reality
is that your worldview radically affects your beliefs in the likelihood of
miracles. If you believe that there is a Creator who made the universe, who
made the “course” of nature in the first place, then the fact that nature has such a course is no less miraculous
than any other claim of a miracle. Nothing is more miraculous than making
something out of nothing, beginning time, making the astounding complexities
that are in our universe, in our world, among living things, even within you
and me! Changing water into wine or making a blind man see is a pretty small
thing compared to creating man. And this
moves us somewhat off track from the Gospels, but if there is no Creator, then
why is there a creation? Belief that it just always was there, unchanging, is
refuted by science which points to a definite beginning. So, it seems to me,
applying David Hume’s own logic, “weighing one miracle against the other” – the
universe just appeared poof without a cause, or the universe was made by a
Creator, which is really the “greater” miracle?
There is another irony embedded in this discussion of
miracles – the implication by those who reject the Gospels on the basis of the
miracles is that if those miracles weren’t
in the Gospels then they would be more open to its claims. No they wouldn’t!
Maybe they might be open to the claim that Jesus was a good teacher and an
all-around nice guy – well, that might describe Mr. Rogers, but it’s not Jesus.
The miracles are not just an add-on to the Gospel accounts; they are essential.
In Mark, for example, 209 out of the 666 verses (yes, that’s the total number
of verses in Mark) are about miracles, about 30% of the entire gospel.
Excluding the Passion narrative, 200 of 425 verses in Mark (nearly half) are
about miracles. And of course the miracle of Jesus’ resurrection is central to
the entire Gospel message. If the gospels are indeed reliable, the fact that Jesus
did rise from the dead is how we as believers know that everything else that Jesus said was true and
trustworthy.
I should also point out that even if one tried to pull out
the miracles from the gospels and leave the rest (as Thomas Jefferson once attempted),
it is extremely difficult to do so. Usually the miracles are interrelated with
Jesus’ teachings, and quite often, the teachings build upon miracles or the
reaction of the people to the miracles. For just one example, in John 5 Jesus
miraculously heals an invalid at the Pool of Bethesda, doing so on a Sabbath.
Beginning with John 5:16 we have this:
So, because Jesus was
doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute Him. In His defense Jesus said
to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very
day, and I too am working.” For this reason they tried
all the more to kill Him; not only was He breaking the Sabbath, but He was even
calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God. – John 5:16-18
Jesus gave them this
answer: “Very
truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; He can do only what He
sees His Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the
Son and shows Him all He does. Yes, and He will show Him even greater works
than these, so that you will be amazed. – John 5:19-20
Clearly, this passage makes absolutely no sense at all apart
from the miracles! The miracles are what have made the people upset, and
yet Jesus promises to do even greater miracles. Again and again, miracles are
the cause of the Jewish leaders’ animosity towards Jesus; they lead to
continuing and ever-escalating confrontations, and, ultimately, they (along
with Jesus’ teachings) lead to Jesus’ death on the cross. I think it is safe to
say that if Jesus had only spoken controversially and not performed the miracles, He would not have developed the large
following that He had, and as a result, the Jewish leaders wouldn’t have cared
much about Him. I think it’s quite likely that if He hadn’t done the miracles,
Jesus would never have been crucified!
I would also like to point out that miracles do not actually
contradict science; by definition a miracle is an event that occurs beyond or
outside the normal realms of scientific study and “natural” events. Science is
about the study of repeatable rules that the universe follows; miracles are
rare events in which those very rules are temporarily broken. The fact that
there are and have been throughout history scientists who not only had faith
but whose faith motivated their study of science shows that belief in miracles
does not prevent one from accomplishing even great things in the realms of
science.
One argument for the
authenticity of the miracle accounts in the gospels is that they are
surprisingly understated and humble, so unlike
the Greek and Roman tales; they are also quite unlike the later-written fake
gospels about Jesus. Jesus doesn’t heal kings or other leaders, but nobodies,
outcasts, rejects, people out on the margins of society. Most of the time, He
does it by touching them. The gospel writers often simply say He healed them;
there is no description of intense effort, or of abracadabra hocus pocus first.
And as another sign of authenticity, the gospels talk a lot about the effects
of these healings on His ministry – they caused crowds to come, crowds that
wanted healing, wanted to see healing, etc., but whose hearts generally were
not attuned to the things of God, before or after the healings. If the goal of
the miraculous healings was to turn vast crowds to saving faith in Christ, they
were a failure!
As believers we understand that Jesus was both fully human
and fully divine. Another argument for the authenticity of the gospels with
regards to miracles is that they even show Jesus’ humanity, his limitations
while clothed with flesh. This is not something one would make up if the goal
was to just show Jesus’ power. For example, from Mark 5, after the woman
suffering from bleeding for years touched Jesus’ cloak and was healed:
At once Jesus realized
that power had gone out from Him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who
touched My clothes?” “You see the people crowding against You,” His disciples
answered, “and yet You can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ” But Jesus kept looking
around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to
her, came and fell at His feet and, trembling with fear, told Him the whole
truth. – Mark 5:30-33
It is possible that Jesus knew who it was and simply wanted
her to come forward, but my point is that these details do nothing to enhance
the “power theme” about Jesus and instead seem to detract from it.
Here is another example:
Jesus
left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by His disciples. When
the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard Him
were amazed. “Where did this man get these things?” they asked. “What’s this
wisdom that has been given Him? What are these remarkable miracles He is
performing? Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and
the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t His sisters here with
us?” And they took offense at Him. – Mark 6:1-3
Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor
except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.” He could not do any
miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them.
He was amazed at their lack of faith. – Mark 6:4-6
Jesus couldn’t do miracles there – that reveals limits on
power. He was amazed – that reveals limits on knowledge. He was ridiculed by
His hometown acquaintances – this is, well, embarrassing. Why in the world
would you write this – unless it was true? Even if it was true, you might not
want to write it!
I do want to spend a little time talking about one miracle
in particular, the resurrection. On the one hand, it is easily argued as the
“greatest” miracle in the Gospels. Ironically, though, it is the one perhaps
hardest to dismiss. The denier needs a good alternate explanation for the rise
of Christianity. Jesus died an absolutely shameful death, and His death
seemingly proclaimed loud and clear that He was just another pretender, not the
true Messiah. Even though Jesus discussed His imminent death with His
disciples, they just didn’t get it and were absolutely devastated when Jesus
was tried and then crucified.
But then, only a short time later, this small group of
mostly uneducated, unprivileged nobodies became a fearless, excited, bold group
who shared a radical, even crazy, message to all who would listen, and like
wildfire, the message spread beyond them across the entire Roman Empire,
changing the entire world. Their message: that Jesus was indeed the Messiah of
Israel, and that He was no longer dead, but alive, and not just as a revived
man, like Lazarus, but as Lord, Savior, and God.
Nothing explains the unthinkably rapid spread of
Christianity except the resurrection. If you don’t believe the Gospel accounts,
you still have to explain how Christianity spread as it did. The Christian
response is: go read the Book of Acts, for starters. Years ago critics tried to
argue that Jesus didn’t really die on the cross, but instead swooned, only to
rise in the tomb. This argument has been discarded as non-defensible.
In terms of an argument for
the resurrection, William Lane Craig makes the following points:
1. After
His crucifixion, Jesus was buried in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea. Paul quotes
this in I Cor. 15, most likely an even more ancient saying based on the fact
that the Greek uses a highly stylized four-line formula that is foreign to
Paul’s other writings. He also says “For what I received I passed on to
you.” Joseph of Arimathea was a member
of the Jewish leadership, a group resented by the early Christians. There is no
reason to make this fact up given that it is surprising (read: hard to
believe). And there is no competing burial story anywhere, even among the
Jewish literature.
2. On
the Sunday following the crucifixion, Jesus’ tomb was found empty by His women
followers. Again this is mentioned in I Cor. 15, and the fact that women’s
testimony was so worthless that it could not even be admitted into a Jewish
court of law again makes it surprising. If one were making this up, one would
use men. And the fact (Matt. 28:15) that Jews responded from the claim that He
was risen by saying they had stolen the body means that the body really was
missing.
3. There
were multiple experiences of multiple people seeing Jesus alive. The list in I
Cor. 15 is large, including 500 brethren. The appearance to Peter is
independently recorded by Luke, and the appearance to the Twelve is in Luke and
John. The appearance to the women is in Matthew and John. There are independent
witnesses to Galilean appearances in Mark, Matthew, and John. The gospels also make
it clear that neither James nor Jesus’ younger brothers believed in Jesus
during Jesus’ lifetime, yet they became active Christians following Jesus’
death. What caused this radical change? As Paul says in I Cor. 15, He appeared
to James.
4. The
disciples believed Jesus was risen from the dead despite having every
predisposition to the contrary. Their leader was dead and they had no belief in
a dying, much less, rising, Messiah. Messiah was supposed to throw off Rome and
reign, not die the death of one of the worst criminals. According to Jewish
law, Jesus’ execution showed Him as literally under the curse of God (Deut.
21:23). To the Pharisees, it proved they were right all along. And Jewish
beliefs about the afterlife didn’t allow for someone rising from the dead to
immortality before the general resurrection at the end of the world.
5. The
disciples were willing to go to their deaths for the fact of Jesus’
resurrection.
Listen to Hume’s quote again:
“When anyone tells me that he saw a dead man restored to life,
I immediately consider with myself whether it be more probable that this person
should either deceive or be deceived or that the fact which he relates should
really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other and according
to the superiority which I discover, I pronounce my decision. Always I reject
the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous
than the event which he relates, then and not till then, can he pretend to
command my belief or opinion.” – David Hume
So which is the greater miracle?
I want to spend my remaining time discussing 12 questions
related to the reliability of the gospels with regards to miracles. The
questions come from Glenn Miller, on christianthinktank.com/mqx.html. His
answers to each question are massive; I am going to try to summarize each of
them as briefly as I can, but I encourage you to go to the website if you want
to go deeper.
1. Did the authors consciously intend to
create myth in which the miraculous elements were NOT intended to be taken
literally by their readership? No. Myths were always written about a past
time. They also used poetry not prose; prose paraphrase of earlier myths only
began centuries later. And for countless reasons, the gospels don’t remotely
read like a myth; they read exactly like biography, because that is what they
are. And we also have this:
For
we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power
and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of His
majesty. – 2 Pet. 1:16
2. Did the authors consciously intend to
embellish some non-miraculous historical core of tradition with miraculous
stories in honor of their dead leader, in keeping with the general practice of
doing so for ‘divine’ emperors or Greco-Roman heroes? No. This practice
really sprung up later, stories of early omens and signs and portents were
written after a leader’s death (for example Alexander the Great), but that is
entirely different. Even in the following two centuries after Christ’s death
there were only a small number of miracles ascribed to leaders, two indirect
healings (Vespasian) and praying for rain (Marcus Aurelius). Plus, again, the
New Testament letters speak of the truthfulness of the gospels, not
embellishment. For example:
For what I received I passed on to you as of
first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that
He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, He appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers
and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have
fallen asleep. Then He appeared to James, then to all
the apostles, and last of all He appeared to me also… -
I Cor. 15:3-8a
3. Did the authors consciously create miracle
stories like the later rabbis did, in the fashion that is called “midrash”?
No way. The style is totally different. Here is an example of early midrash
(based on Numbers 14:22):
"FROM ABOVE THE ARK-COVER THAT
WAS UPON THE ARK OF THE TESTIMONY (VII, 89). What is the purport of this text?
Since it says elsewhere, ’And the Lord spoke unto him out of the tent of
meeting’ (Lev. I,1) it might appear that He did so from any part of the interior,
hence Scripture explicitly states, FROM ABOVE THE ARK-COVER THAT WAS UPON THE
ARK OF THE TESTIMONY. If the text read simply, FROM ABOVE THE ARK-COVER. it
might have appeared to mean from any part of the ark-cover. Scripture therefore
states, FROM BETWEEN THE TWO CHERUBIM
(ib.). This is the opinion of R. Akiba. Said R. Simeon b. ‘Azzai: I do
not wish to appear as though I were contradicting the words of my teacher, but
only as supplementing his remarks: The All-Glorious is One of whom it says, Do
not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord (Jer. XXIII, 24). Yet see to what
lengths He went in His love of Israel! This same Glory, that was so vast,
compressed itself so as to appear to be speaking from above the ark-cover
between the two cherubim! R. Dosa observed: It says, For man shall not see Me
and live (Ex. XXXIII, 20). This implies that men cannot see God when they are
alive but that they can see Him at their death; in this strain it says, All
they that go down to the dust shall kneel before Him, even he that cannot keep
his soul alive (Ps. XXII, 30). R. Akiba expounds: ’For man shall not see Me and
live (hay)’ implies that even the Hayyoth that bear the Heavenly Throne do not
see the All Glorious. Said R. Simeon b. ‘Azzai: I do not wish to be considered
as though I were contradicting the words of my teacher but as merely
supplementing his remarks: The passage, ’For a man shall not see Me nor the
living’ implies that even the angels whose life is an eternal life do not see
the All- Glorious. AND HE SPOKE UNTO HIM. UNTO HIM, but not unto the
ministering angels who were present. Scripture tells us that the Voice went
from the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He, as through a tube into the ear
of Moses, and the angels who stood midway could not hear. It is in the same
strain that Scripture says, God thundereth marvellously with his voice (Job
XXXVII, 5). This explains the text, AND HE SPOKE UNTO HIM."
4. Did the authors consciously create miracle
stories about Jesus like the later rabbis seemed to do about each other?
No. The rabbi stories really only began in earnest centuries later. There is
one example of a rabbi who prayed for rain and rain came, but this doesn’t even
begin to compare to the miracles of Christ, who just “does” miracles; when He
does pray in the context of a miracle, it is for His disciples’ benefit. For
example:
So
they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you
that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the
benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”
When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The
dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth
around his face. Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him
go.” – John 11:41-44
5. Did the authors consciously create the
gospels to be historical romance or historical fiction, based perhaps on a real
individual, but not necessarily so, and therefore not something to be taken as
real history or real biography? No. Greek romance novels were simple
adventure stories in which a pair of lovers are tossed about by fate as they
travel together or apart. Roman fiction was poetry only. Centuries later Roman
historical fiction did appear – and it appears to have been influenced by the Gospels and Acts, not the other
way around.
“Alternate history” in which facts
of history are altered (apart from time travel stories) is a quite new phenomenon.
6. Did the authors create miracle
stories/accretions about their dead leader that were fashioned and expressed in
ways that would make him look like a miracle-working man to prospective
Greco-Roman converts? No. There were those who wrote fanciful stories of
Moses and other Old Testament men, but the embellishments were along the lines
of being inventors or founders, not miracle men and certainly not divine men.
The Greeks did have some wonder-workers but there are no examples of “new” ones
in the 250 years before Christ. And there are many details in the Gospels that
show they were not catering to a Greek-Roman audience. Jesus’ following of
commoners, His exceptional treatment of women, His exclusive claims to
authority, His being a friend of sinners, His meekness, and especially His
crucifixion would all have been extremely offensive to prospective Greco-Roman
converts.
7. Did the authors create miracle
stories/accretions about their dead leader which were fashioned and expressed
in ways that would make him look like a Jewish wonder-worker? No. It is
true that Jesus did fulfill a second Moses-like role in some ways, but the
miracles are totally unlike Moses’. Elijah did miracles, but the gospel writers
make clear that it is John the Baptist who is the Elijah-like prophet. There
are similarities between the miracles of Jesus and those of Elisha, but Elisha
is never mentioned as a model for understanding Jesus in the Gospels or the
later letters. And Jesus’ claims to divinity would have completely turned off Jewish
readers; if the goal was to manufacture something to appeal to them, they would
have left all that out.
8. Were the authors so influenced by their
mythic ancient near-eastern or Greco-Roman context that they “accidentally”
created miraculous elements to conform the story of Jesus to that
cultural/mythic model of Royal/Divine ancient near-eastern kingship, completely
unaware that they were doing so? No. The portrayal of Jesus as miracle
worker in the gospels is at variance with all other cultural models at that
time. There is no mythos to accidentally fall into.
9. How likely is it that unconscious forces
(from the culture, from Jungian-type archetypes, grief/trauma) modified true
memories of non-miraculous events in the life of Jesus into false memories of
miraculous events, via the creation of “miraculous” additions to the
non-miraculous memories? Not likely at all. Although there were other
messiah-figures, they were military in nature; there was no cultural model of a
miracle-worker like Jesus. The Jungian hero archetype is something popularized
by Joseph Campbell (a major influence of George Lukas and his Star Wars
universe). The claim is that there are common hero types throughout history,
for whatever reason, something maybe built into our DNA. But the miracles of
Jesus do not fit into these hero models. As for grief and trauma, grief leads
to forgetting and ignoring certain memories, and trauma leads to strengthening
certain memories; neither lead to the wholesale invention of new invented
memories. Furthermore, nonconscious memory processing leads to the filling in
of missing details, not the invention of major miraculous events.
10. Later Christians obviously embellished the
gospels with apocryphal stories – why wouldn’t we believe the New Testament authors
didn’t have the same influences or “pressures” on them? There’s no evidence
for either. The Apostolic fathers, 2nd century apologists, and even
the 2nd/3rd century writers of the Aprocryphal gospels
(surprisingly) do not heighten or create new miracle traditions of Jesus. There
were two so-called infancy gospels, the Protovangelium of James and the Gospel
of Thomas, that were written for the purpose of the glorification of Mary and
included stories about Jesus as a child. But these were never recognized as
being “Christian” and were opposed by the early church fathers; they were
primarily vehicles for smuggling in Gnostic teaching. These weren’t really
“later Christians” but people who had the goal of “hijacking” the Christian
faith. This is quite different from “embellishment” by devoted followers.
11. Are there any indications from the miracle
stories themselves that suggest their historicity? Yes! Let me quote by
John Meier, an expert in these things:
"To sum up: the historical fact that Jesus performed
extraordinary deeds deemed by himself and others to be miracles is supported
most impressively by the criterion of multiple attestation of sources and forms
and the criterion of coherence. The miracle traditions about Jesus'
public ministry are already so widely
attested in various sources and literary forms by the end of the first
Christian generation that total fabrication by the early church is, practically
speaking, impossible. Other literary sources from the second and third
generation […] only confirm this impression. The criterion of coherence
likewise supports historicity; the neat fit between the words and deeds of
Jesus emanating from many different sources is striking. […] The curious upshot
of our investigation is that, viewed globally, the tradition of Jesus' miracles is more firmly supported by the criteria of
historicity than are a number of other well-known and often readily accepted
traditions about his life and ministry (e.g., his status as a carpenter,
his use of 'abba' in prayer, his own prayer in Gethsemane before his
arrest). Put dramatically but with not too much exaggeration: if the miracle tradition from Jesus' public
ministry were to be rejected in toto as unhistorical, so should every
other Gospel tradition about him. For if the criteria of historicity do not
work in the case of the miracle tradition, where multiple attestation is so
massive and coherence so impressive, there is no reason to expect them to work
elsewhere. The quest would have to be abandoned. Needless to say, that is not the conclusion we have reached here."
12. Are there any indications from
extra-biblical sources which suggest that (some of) the miracle stories reflect
actual historical events? Yes, plenty. As we talked about last week,
Josephus, someone “neutral” to Christ, affirmed that Jesus worked miracles.
Early hostile Jewish tradition (in a written debate between Justin Martyr and
Trypho) agreed on miracles but disagreed on how they were done –Trypho accused
Jesus of being a false prophet who practiced sorcery. And Rabbinic notes stated
Jesus was “hanged” because He was a sorcerer who led Israel astray. Also,
hostile Greco-Roman writers (Celsus, Porphyry, Hierocles, and Julian) accept that some of Jesus’ miracles actually occurred.
My desire and prayer for you is that this material helps you
to see that when it comes to the miracles in the Gospels, it really is harder
to deny them than to accept them. Our faith is truly reasonable; that is, there are good reasons to believe!
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