Hi Johnny,

You discuss several different issues in your last post. As each of these may take a while to go through, I think we should take them one by one, as not to get to spread out.

Johnny wrote:

Even if we had the originals perfectly preserved in our possession, there would be at least one major question for us to consider: What would have been the best evidence possible that initially, New Testament claims of miracles, including the physical resurrection Jesus, were true? The answer is, a substantial reasonably provable positive aftermath.

I agree that may be one criterion that would give us some insight and Moreland covers this in chapter 6. But before we get there let’s go through the criteria that we have set before us in chapter 5. Now, if you would like to proceed to chapter 6 we can easily do so if you are will to stipulate to the points Moreland makes in chapter 5. Are you willing at this point to stipulate that we are in good shape textually with the NT documents? And are will you stipulate that the NT is substantially a historically reliable document? If so, we can move to Chapter 6.

Johnny wrote:

I don’t at all object to Moreland picking his own criteria. All I am doing is disagreeing with his conclusions that are based upon those criteria.

The problem is you’re not showing how the evidence Moreland presents doesn’t meet the criteria he chose and you agreed to. You need to identify which criterion you think has not been met and show why it has not been met. It is only then that we can see that the criterion has not been met. Here is your problem: Moreland is using the same criteria that are used by many secular historians. He is supplying the same kind and amount of evidence that secular historians use to verify other documents (actually, in most case, he provides more than for other documents. See the Bibliographical chart for an example). What you have been doing is disagreeing with the conclusions as you have said, but you have not been disagreeing with them because the criteria he and you chose has not been met, but based on other criteria that have not been presented by Moreland. What is worse, is when we apply your other criteria to other documents that are already considered reliable by historians, we will come to the conclusion that those documents are also unreliable.

Concerning the cannon and Gnostic writings, I come back to them at a latter time since they do not deal with the criteria we are talking about.

Round 8 - From Johnny

Hi Brady,

You quote me from my previous post:

Even if we had the originals perfectly preserved in our possession, there would be at least one major question for us to consider: What would have been the best evidence possible that initially, New Testament claims of miracles, including the physical resurrection Jesus, were true? The answer is, a substantial reasonably provable positive aftermath.

Then you respond:

 I agree that may be one criterion that would give us some insight and Moreland covers this in chapter 6. But before we get there let’s go through the criteria that we have set before us in chapter 5. Now, if you would like to proceed to chapter 6 we can easily do so if you are will to stipulate to the points Moreland makes in chapter 5. Are you willing at this point to stipulate that we are in good shape textually with the NT documents? And are will you stipulate that the NT is substantially a historically reliable document? If so, we can move to Chapter 6.

Even though many skeptic Bible scholars will not make such a stipulation, I will for the sake of argument make such a stipulation so that we can move on to chapter 6. Chapter 6 is actually the chapter that I should have recommended in the first place. 

Item 1 in chapter 6 is titled ‘The Empty Tomb.’ Item 2 is titled ‘The Resurrection Appearances.’   Regardless of what the Gospels claim, if very few people living during the first few decades following the Resurrection believed that the Resurrection was physical as opposed to being spiritual, Moreland has no intelligent case to make whatsoever regarding items 1 and 2. What we have here is a numbers game, and the New Testament is good at playing such a game, i.e. its reference to the feeding of the 5,000, a number of people who saw the empty tomb, over 500 eyewitnesses who saw Jesus after he rose from the dead and the brief sermon that Peter preached where about 3,000 people got saved. The very best evidence that such claims were true would have been reasonable proof of a positive, substantial aftermath during the first few decades following the Resurrection. However, there is no such proof. As far as I know, there is no credible secular historical evidence that states that there was a positive, substantial aftermath during the first few decades following the Resurrection. 

Regarding item 1, if you like, I can easily give you a credible alternative hypothesis why the tomb was found empty. If over 500 people actually saw Jesus after he rose from the dead, then that many eyewitnesses would have gone a long way towards building an early Christian Church that was much larger than the estimates of Rodney Stark, Ph.D., sociology. In Stark’s book titled ‘The Rise of Christianity,’ he estimates the approximate size of the early Christian Church during various stages of its growth. In 100 A.D., he estimates that the Christian Church comprised 7,530 believers, or in my words, less than the size of four good size U.S. high schools. 

Christians enjoy bringing up extra-Biblical evidence whenever possible, but I haven’t yet seen any reliable secular extra-Biblical research that states that during the first few decades following the Resurrection, there was a positive, substantial aftermath that included rapid growth.

Sincerely,

Johnny Skeptic