Brady wrote:

I read your post. However, I could not find a proposition or your position on that proposition. If we are going to have a debate, we need to agree on what we are debating and state our positions and what we plan on demonstrating. If not, then how do we expect to know when our position has been presented?

My proposition is that the historicity of the New Testament cannot be trusted.

For instance, does the historicity of the New Testament logically preclude the following hypothesis?

Fundamentalist Christians claim that there are not any credible alternate hypotheses regarding the New Testament accounts of what happened at the tomb of Jesus. Such is not the case. Here is one possibility: Joseph of Arimathea may have gotten Jesus' body from Pilate. He then may have prepared the body, put it in his tomb, had a large stone put in front of the entrance and went away, just as the texts say. That night, the day before the guards arrived at the tomb, the body may have been stolen and the tomb may have been left open. When the guards arrived at the tomb, they may have seen that the body was gone and immediately went to Pilate to report their findings.

Some Christians will ask who might have stolen the body and why. Fair enough. The people who possibly stole the body may have been a few followers of Jesus who wanted to make it as certain as possible that the body would not be touched by grave robbers. They may have wanted to move it to a secret location other than a cemetery that would not have been subject to grave robbery. Even if grave robbers had no intention of touching the body, their very presence in the tomb might have been objectionable to the followers of Jesus who may have stolen the body.

Regarding the possibility that the body was moved, Dr. Robert Price told me “It is possible they would have been so zealous to take precautions to protect the holy body from defilement from the picking fingers of tomb-robbers, knowing that an opulent tomb like Joseph’s would draw robbers like flies. And that is worth mentioning. But one might also mention J. Duncan M. Derrett’s fascinating suggestion that the disciples might well have wanted to salvage the corpse for the sake of holy relics. Then again, John’s gospel itself supplies perhaps the best of all alternate scenarios when it has Joseph bury Jesus in his tomb, really more like stash it in his tomb, because of the impending Sabbath. It is then to be expected that he will soon have the body moved elsewhere to a place of permanent interment. This is assumed when Mary Magdalene, discovering the tomb open and empty, assumed that the body had been moved.” 

As far as the Christian claim that the disciples, or any other Christians for that matter, would not have stolen the body during the Passover, Matthew 27:62-64 say “Now the next day, that followed the day of the preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate, Saying, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again. Command therefore that the sepulcher be made sure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: so the last error shall be worse than the first.” The chief priests and the Pharisees knew better than anyone the regulations in force regarding the observance of the Passover, and they did not rule out the possibility that the disciples, and by implication some other followers of Jesus, might steal the body. In addition, in the book of John, Mary initially assumed that the body had been moved, giving further weight to the texts that say that the chief priests and the Pharisees did not preclude the possibility that the body might be stolen or moved during Passover.   

Some skeptics argue that even a historical Jesus did not exist, let alone a miracle working Jesus who rose from the dead. They also sometimes argue that the body of Jesus might have been buried somewhere other than in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. However, I have often found that sometimes for the sake of argument it helps to placate Christians to some extent in order get a debate going. I prefer to at least concede that the body of a man named Jesus was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, thereby eliminating a lot of squabbling with Christians up to that point. Then all that is left to argue is one simple possible explanation for what may have happened at the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea.

When Christians get into trouble with my alternate tomb hypothesis, and they always do, in their desperation they sometimes tell me that I am agreeing that the texts are accurate up to a point and then claim that the texts are not valid after all. I am not agreeing to any such thing. If skeptics did not sometimes agree for the sake of argument that intelligent design is possible, there would be nothing left for Christians and skeptics to debate except creation and evolution. In court trials, prosecutors often believe some of defendants claims but reject other claims.

If I were to claim that Jesus was not buried in Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb, then Christians would produce their version of evidence to the contrary and a long debate would follow that would not end up anywhere. If I were to claim that the body was stolen after the guards fell asleep, another long debate would follow that would not end up anywhere. My alternate tomb hypothesis easily bypasses all possible arguments with Christians except the fact that the texts themselves leave open a reasonable possibility that the body was stolen or moved.

Some skeptics actually believe that a man named Jesus was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. As far as that group of people is concerned, an all or nothing approach would not work. Christians could not possibly criticize them for agreeing with the Gospel accounts up to a point and then offering alternative hypotheses from then on. Regarding the contents of this paragraph, amazing as it may seem to some people, some Christians will criticize skeptics when they agree with some of the texts and when they completely disagree with the texts. I’ve had excellent success debating my alternate tomb hypothesis. So far, no Christian has successfully refuted it, and they have all resorted to evasive maneuvers instead of honestly trying to disprove my hypothesis. I am quite certain that you will resort to those same evasive maneuvers. I would never utilize such approach. Rather, I always respond directly and clearly to questions from Christians without resorting to evasive maneuvers. 

Why can’t some parts of the Bible be true and other parts be false?  

Brady wrote:

If your proposition has something to do with the NT not being historically reliable, then state that and what you plan to show. But you will need some sort of methodology to show that the NT does not meet the same criteria that other documents of the period meet.

Although I believe that the New  Testament is not historically reliable, regarding the events at the tomb, the only methodology that I need to use is to state that maybe it is not historically reliable and ask Christians why my alternate tomb hypothesis is not just as valid as their hypotheses. It’s as simple as that. 

Brady wrote:

Johnny, your last post was not much different in method than your previous posts: You find a couple of so-called authorities that agree with you (which is easy to do, because there are authorities that agree with virtually every opinion), then you quote them as if their opinion is the absolute truth and think that is an argument. That is not an argument.

Regarding “you quote them as if their opinion is absolute truth,” I never used the words “absolute truth.” I didn’t say that my alternate tomb hypothesis is absolute truth, only that it may be true. 

Brady wrote:

Additionally, there are a lot of problems with those opinions that should be obvious to the casual observer. Let me point one out:

 “Historian R.G. Collingwood argues that the fundamental attribute of the critical historian is skepticism regarding testimony about the past. All we have are documents and artifacts. Documents can be propaganda, or real evidence but biased, or completely forged in a later century….

“The treatment of Tiberius, emperor from 14 to 37 CE, is an example of the bias of writers. Nearly all ancient writers whose works have survived agree that Tiberius was a monster in human form. They depict him at an age of eighty indulging in a variety of vices that seem even physically impossible, much less likely. What would be our knowledge of Tiberius if other ancient sources had survived.”  

If we are going to be skeptical, are we going to be skeptical about all positions or just the ones we don’t like?

 By “all positions,” does that mean your positions as well? Following your line of reasoning you should be skeptical of your own positions. Does that make any sense? 

Brady wrote:

If so, then, regarding Tiberius, we must be skeptical about any document that would say that Tiberius was a bad guy or a good guy or an in-between guy. Your expert says that all the writers we have show Tiberius as a bad guy, but suggests that is not exactly true. What is his contrary opinion based on? Was he there;………….?”

 Thank you very much for defeating your own argument. Regarding “Was he there?,” following your same line of reasoning, I now ask you “Were you there to witness the events at the tomb?”

 Brady wrote:  

…………..is that how he knows the prime sources are wrong? Is he psychic; did he have an out of body experience and travel back in time?

 Did you? In modern court trials, it is often difficult to determine what might have occurred just weeks before, let alone what might have occurred thousands of years ago, and yet you seem to have no problem with assuming with reasonable certainty what occurred thousands of years ago.

Regarding “…………is that how he knows that the prime sources are wrong?,” your so-called prime sources are flatly rejected by most historians and sociologists. 

 Regarding the consensus of historians and sociologists who disagree with you, is it your contention that their sole purpose in claiming that Nero did not persecute Christians and that during Nero’s reign there were only a few Christians was to deceitfully claim evidence that is contrary to what they actually believe? Let’s get serious. The New Testament can be defended with claiming that Nero persecuted “vast multitudes” of Christians. In addition, for your line of reasoning to be consistent, you would also have to claim that the historians and sociologists deliberately attempt to contest claims made by other religions contrary to what they actually believe. Even if Nero did in fact persecute “vast multitudes” of Christians, do you

think that that fact would reasonably prove that Jesus rose from the dead and that skeptics would give up trying to disprove the New Testament as a result?

 Brady wrote:

 Your expert concludes, “What would be our knowledge of Tiberius if other ancient sources had survived?” If we had other documents that said that Tiberius wasn’t that bad, shouldn’t we be skeptical about them too? Couldn’t they be the propaganda, or biased, or completely forged in a later century?

Regarding “propaganda, biased, or completely forged in a later century,” that is exactly the same approach that skeptics use against Christians. You can’t have it both ways. If propaganda, biases and forgeries and good for the goose, then they are good for the gander as well.

Brady wrote:

Given this approach we can know nothing about any event or person in history.

 Why should that be a problem? For example, some researcher came up with a theory that states that the Chinese were the first people to discover the New World. At first I thought that such a notion was absurd, but after reading that the researcher wrote a book on the subject and has already convinced some historians that his theory is correct, my current opinion is that his theory might be true. Would it bother you if he is right and everyone else has been wrong for centuries? I doubt it.

 Regarding “Given this approach we can know nothing about any event or person in history,” the simple truth is that most people trust a consensus of historical and sociological research to the point where they accept that consensus as being true beyond a reasonable doubt.

Round 2 - From Brady

Hi Johnny,

Johnny wrote:

My proposition is that the historicity of the New Testament cannot be trusted. For instance, does the historicity of the New Testament logically preclude the following hypothesis?

Your problem is that you are not suppose to be finding hypotheses that aren’t precluded by the evidence, but hypotheses that are supported by the evidence. There are all sort of nonsense and meaningless hypotheses that aren’t precluded; such as, leprechauns did it or Jesus was really a space alien. However there is only one hypothesis that fits and is supported by all the evidence: Jesus rose from the dead!     

Johnny wrote:   

Fundamentalist Christians claim that there are not any credible alternate hypotheses regarding the New Testament accounts of what happened at the tomb of Jesus. Such is not the case. Here is one possibility: Joseph of Arimathea may have gotten Jesus' body from Pilate. He then may have prepared the body, put it in his tomb, had a large stone put in front of the entrance and went away, just as the texts say. That night, the day before the guards arrived at the tomb, the body may have been stolen and the tomb may have been left open. When the guards arrived at the tomb, they may have seen that the body was gone and immediately went to Pilate to report their findings.

Nice fable, where is the supporting evidence for, “That night, the day before the guards arrived at the tomb, the body may have been stolen and the tomb may have been left open. When the guards arrived at the tomb, they may have seen that the body was gone and immediately went to Pilate to report their findings”?

Johnny wrote:

Some Christians will ask who might have stolen the body and why. Fair enough. The people who possibly stole the body may have been a few followers of Jesus who wanted to make it as certain as possible that the body would not be touched by grave robbers. They may have wanted to move it to a secret location other than a cemetery that would not have been subject to grave robbery. Even if grave robbers had no intention of touching the body, their very presence in the tomb might have been objectionable to the followers of Jesus who may have stolen the body.

Once again, this is speculation with no supporting evidence. Nice story, but so is the space alien theory. In fact the space alien theory is better than yours. The space alien theory says that everything happened exactly the way the eyewitnesses say it did. It is just that Jesus was a space alien and had all sort of advanced technology that let him heal people and walk on water, etc. Because his anatomy was different that humans, he didn’t die on the cross and his alien anatomy was able to heal itself in three days. His super human strength let him move the stone. And at the ascension he was beamed up to his mother ship. I hope you see how much more advanced this theory is than yours. Where you must add all sort of details, cut-and-paste- pieces of the primary documents and throw out most of it, the space alien theory does none of that. Of course, it does share a couple of things with your theory; neither is supported by any facts and both are entirely ad hoc. In other words, if you put 100 people in separate rooms and gave them the primary evidence and documents, none of them would come to your conclusion or the space alien conclusion based on the evidence.

Johnny wrote:

Why can’t some parts of the Bible be true and other parts be false?  

It could be. But once it is demonstrated that the documents are reliable by running them through a criteria and comparing them to a baseline, the burden shifts to you to demonstrate with positive evidence which parts are false. Just saying something is false is not good enough.

Johnny wrote:

Although I believe that the New  Testament is not historically reliable, regarding the events at the tomb, the only methodology that I need to use is to state that maybe it is not historically reliable and ask Christians why my alternate tomb hypothesis is not just as valid as their hypotheses. It’s as simple as that. 

Your hypothesis is invalid because it is purely ad hoc. The resurrection hypothesis is valid, not because the evidence doesn’t preclude it, but because all the evidence supports it.

You don’t get off that easy with the historical reliability of the NT. Moreland’s argument still stands without refutation by you. As long as his argument stands, your maybe doesn’t stand, let alone your rejection of the NT’s historical reliability.

You quote me in your last post:

If we are going to be skeptical, are we going to be skeptical about all positions or just the ones we don’t like?

Then you reply 

 By “all positions,” does that mean your positions as well? Following your line of reasoning you should be skeptical of your own positions. Does that make any sense? 

I think we should be skeptical of all positions as we begin our research. As we gather evidence in favor of one or more positions, those we hold with less skepticism. Once evidence for a position has reached our baseline, our skepticism is rescinded until other evidence changes the balance. Those positions that remain without supporting evidence, like your tomb raiders theory, remain in utter skepticism; while positions with lots of supporting evidence, like the resurrection, can be affirmed. It’s amazing what you can do when you start using inductive logic rather than speculation and mere opinion.

You wrote:

 In modern court trials, it is often difficult to determine what might have occurred just weeks before, let alone what might have occurred thousands of years ago, and yet you seem to have no problem with assuming with reasonable certainty what occurred thousands of years ago.

This is one of those areas that you totally missed the point. Your historian offered you no sources for his opinion that Tiberius was not such a bad guy. He even admits that all the primary sources are against his mere opinion. What are you defending? Pure speculation! But worse than that it is speculation that stands in direct contradiction to the primary sources. In other words, he is making it up as he goes along and you are eating it up hook, line and sinker. If the sources from the period don’t know what’s going on, what makes you think that some guy two thousand years after the fact has any clue?

Continuing on you quote me in your post:

 If so, then, regarding Tiberius, we must be skeptical about any document that would say that Tiberius was a bad guy or a good guy or an in-between guy. Your expert says that all the writers we have show Tiberius as a bad guy, but suggests that is not exactly true. What is his contrary opinion based on? Was he there;………….?

And you respond:

 Thank you very much for defeating your own argument. Regarding “Was he there?,” following your same line of reasoning, I now ask you “Were you there to witness the events at the tomb?”

Here you think I defeated my own argument because you totally missed the point. Neither he nor I was there, so whatever we know about that time and place must come from the primary sources (i.e. the writings of those who were there). But he rejects the testimony of those primary sources and in their place puts his own speculation.  That was my point. Far from defeating myself, I am simply pointing out the lack of inductive process used by him and you.

Johnny wrote:

Regarding “…………is that how he knows that the prime sources are wrong?,” your so-called prime sources are flatly rejected by most historians and sociologists. 

 Regarding the consensus of historians and sociologists who disagree with you, is it your contention that their sole purpose in claiming that Nero did not persecute Christians and that during Nero’s reign there were only a few Christians was to deceitfully claim evidence that is contrary to what they actually believe? Let’s get serious. The New Testament can be defended with claiming that Nero persecuted “vast multitudes” of Christians. In addition, for your line of reasoning to be consistent, you would also have to claim that the historians and sociologists deliberately attempt to contest claims made by other religions contrary to what they actually believe. Even if Nero did in fact persecute “vast multitudes” of Christians, do you think that that fact would reasonably prove that Jesus rose from the dead and that skeptics would give up trying to disprove the New Testament as a result?

WOW! How many non-sequitors and missed points can a person fit into one paragraph? The point you missed and did not answer is: on what basis did your “consensus of historians” come to the conclusion that all the prime sources are wrong? Besides resorting to mere speculation that is. You have never answered that question. So far all you have given us is, “So many historians say it is so, I believe it and that settles it.” If you can’t answer the question and are just taking their word on blind faith, then just say so and we can move on.

Next, how did Nero get into here again? I thought we left him back in our previous debate. I don’t see how he has anything to do with what we are discussing now. I thought Tiberius was our topic’s example.

Also, if you go back to our other debate you will find that I never used the mass murder of Nero to prove the resurrection, but only to defeat the argument of Stark. You are the one that suggested that a large number of Christians in the first few decades after the Easter event was sufficient proof of the resurrection. I never thought it was a good argument, but you kept trying to bring it up.

And you have brought us back to another question that you did not answer in our last debate. Since you keep bringing this up, I will ask again: Just how many historians would be in that consensus you keep talking about? And who are they? Surely you must know; you wouldn’t be making this up would you? Since you know that they are the consensus, how many historians are there in total and what is the percentage that are on your side? And what are their names? I think we would all like to know. If you don’t know, why don’t you write to Stark or Taylor, maybe one of them has “the list”?

You quote me from my last post:

Your expert concludes, “What would be our knowledge of Tiberius if other ancient sources had survived?” If we had other documents that said that Tiberius wasn’t that bad, shouldn’t we be skeptical about them too? Couldn’t they be the propaganda, or biased, or completely forged in a later century?

Then you responded:

Regarding “propaganda, biased, or completely forged in a later century,” that is exactly the same approach that skeptics use against Christians. You can’t have it both ways. If propaganda, biases and forgeries and good for the goose, then they are good for the gander as well.

Once again, you missed the point, but you also make a point that is very telling about skeptics. My point was that the historian you quoted wanted to label the primary sources he disagreed with as propaganda, biases and forgeries, without providing supporting evidence and by mere speculation. So, why couldn’t anyone else label his fantasized sources, if they ever would appear, as propaganda, biases and forgeries? If merely speculating that a source is propaganda, biases and forgeries makes it so, we can know nothing at all. This is known in logic as Reductio ad Absurdum. It shows that your historian’s position, if universally applied, is fallacious and untenable. But, you seem to embrace the ad absurdum part and insist that is the approach that skeptics use. I couldn’t agree with you more.

You quote me:

Given this approach we can know nothing about any event or person in history.

And then you respond:

 Why should that be a problem?

Well, It has long been my assertion that the only way for the atheist or skeptic to get rid of the Resurrection is to get rid of all history. This is because there is so much more qualitative evidence for the NT and the Resurrection than any other event in ancient history, and any method that allows you to know anything about ancient history is going to have to allow in the fact the Jesus rose from the dead. Now, here you admit that you have no problem getting rid of history. Is it because you have shown the objective, inductive methodologies used in historical research to be faulty or unreliable? No, it not that. It’s because you subjectively just don’t like Jesus or his resurrection and you are willing to throw out anything, even inductive logic, in order to get rid of Jesus.

Think about it.

Brady