Scientific and Historical Critical Challenges

Question 1

The Holy Sepulchre

Answer 1

• there is dispute about where Jesus was buried because the walls of the city are now different to the time of Jesus
• the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is in the Christian quarter and is allegedly the site of Jesus’ death (because Helen the mother of Constantine believed that she found remnants of the cross there)
• She was not there for the excavation

Question 2

The Dome of the Rock

Answer 2

• a mosque built on the site of the temple
• controversial because the site has significance for Jews and Christians too

Question 3

The Garden Tomb

Answer 3

• Gordon believed this is where Jesus was buried
• a tomb, in a garden, like in the Gospel account
• has the features of a Jewish tomb: burial benches

Question 4

(Morrison) Evidence that Joseph of Arimathea moved the body

Answer 4

Bodies could not be moved on the sabbath, which was quickly approaching after Jesus’ death. It was necessary for Jesus to have a resting place during the Sabbath.

Joseph may have moved the body before dawn to avoid drawing crowds. This would be consistent with the Gospel narratives.

He may have worked on behalf of the Sanhedrin to ensure Jewish burial laws were upheld.

Question 5

(Morrison) Evidence against Joseph of Arimathea moving the body

Answer 5

Joseph and the women both would have wanted access to the tomb at the earliest possible point after the Sabbath.
For Joseph to have moved it before they arrived, he would have had to have done it very early before dawn. This operation would have been totally legitimate and made very difficult by the dark, so why not do it later?
If he had done it later, at the soonest possible point after the Sabbath, surely he and the women would have come into contact.

If he acted for the Sahedrin, why did he not do the same for the criminals? Joseph obtained Jesus’ body by personal request for his own tomb, unlike the criminals who were likely chucked into a common tomb.

Joseph was damaging his standing with the
Jewish authorities by taking Jesus’ body. Seems that he did this because he was an admirer and follower of Jesus, not acting on behalf of the Sanhedrin.

Had Joseph moved the body for the Sanhedrin, to avoid the tomb becoming a shrine, this would have been used as evidence against the resurrection claims

Question 6

Morrison’s conclusion on the theory that Joseph of Arimathea moved the body

Answer 6

“…the only way in which we can account for the absence of this phenomenon [pilgrimages to an actual tomb with Jesus’ body] is the explanation offered in the Gospels”

“Overwhelmingly psychology is against it [obtaining Jesus’ body if he was not a follower]”

“It is extremely unlikely that in such circumstances Joseph would have wished to remove the body of Jesus”

Question 7

(Morison) Evidence that the Romans or the Jews moved the body

Answer 7

There is a tradition in the Gospels and in apocryphal writings that the Jews went to Pilate with a request.

Question 8

(Morison) evidence against the body being moved by the Romans or the Jews

Answer 8

This would require them knowing where the body eventually was put, meaning they would have been able to refute the claims of a resurrection. There would never have been a need to claim that the disciples stole the body.

They also would have wanted to leave the body in place so as to show that Jesus was dead and not the Messiah.

Question 9

Morison’s conclusion on the theory that the body was moved by the Romans or the Jews

Answer 9

“…the intrinsic probability of such a proceeding seems to be slight”

“But the whole case for the supposed official removal of the body really breaks down when we confront it by the admitted facts of the after-situation”

Question 10

(Morison) evidence that Jesus did not die and recovered in the tomb

Answer 10

Venturini: Jesus only ever fainted on the cross and then made a recovery in the cool of the grave, after which he appeared to his disciples.

Question 11

(Morison) Evidence against Jesus surviving the crucifixion and recovering in the tomb

Answer 11

Jesus’ wounds were too deadly for this to be plausible. He would have lost much blood, had his legs broken (as the Romans would do during crucifixion), and his hands and feet were pierced with nails.

Jesus’ wounds would have been untended while he lay alone in the tomb, making it seem very unlikely that he would survive the Sabbath even if he had survived the crucifixion.

Question 12

Morison’s conclusion on the theory that Jesus never died and recovered in the tomb

Answer 12

“This suggestion, while attempting to produce a strictly rational explanation of the post-Crucifixion phenomena, is surely the least rational of all”

Question 13

(Morison) Evidence that the women were confused

Answer 13

The women, because it would still have been somewhat dark, went to the wrong tomb and misunderstood the gardener who told them that Jesus was not there (he meant that he was in another tomb, not that he was gone altogether).

Kirsopp Lake: begins by assuming that the story of the women’s visit to the tomb was historical, seeing as it was in the earliest Gospel document (Mark), the other synoptics, John and Apocryphal writings. If they had visited the wrong tomb, the following account seems to fall into place.

The women would have found an empty tomb; a young man telling them Jesus was not there, and them trying to tell them where they laid Jesus, but the women were spooked and left, not understanding that he was pointing to another tomb; the disciples had fled Jerusalem earlier and returned later upon Christ’s appearance to Peter.

The women told them that the resurrection occurred on the third day, in their minds fulfilling prophecy.

Question 14

(Morison) Evidence against the theory that the women were confused

Answer 14

Had it still been dark, no gardener would have been at work at all. Had it been late enough for the gardener to be at work, the women probably would not have gone to the wrong tomb.

There is no strong evidence to suggest the 11 had fled Jerusalem; “the whole Synoptic tradition asserts and implies” that they were there on that Sunday.

The story of Peter’s fall and repentance seems much like a real story, and there would be no incentive to present Peter in such a negative way had it not been true.

If the disciples needed to flee from Jerusalem to avoid prosecution, then the same would have applied to the women who had allegedly been mistaken about the tomb. If the disciples were in danger, the women were too.

The Sanhedrin would have used the gardener to refute the claims of a resurrection. They would have shown believers the actual corpse in the other tomb had this been the case.

The gardener was not called as a witness against the resurrection claim because: he was probably not the gardener at all and his presence at the cave had another explanation, the physical vacancy of the actual tomb was not open to doubt.

Question 15

Morison’s conclusion on the theory that the women were confused

Answer 15

“The theory thus rests upon the synchronization of two very doubtful contingencies!”

“Neither Prof. Lake nor the Rev. P. Gardner-Smith…seem to have realised the annihilating character of the evidential case which their theory, if true, would have placed within reach of the Priests”

Question 16

(Morison) evidence that the grave was never visited

Answer 16

This is the only logical alternative to the Gospel account. Removes the need for the other suggestions and the issues with them. The Priests would not have needed to refute Christian claims and Jerusalem would largely have gone back to normal.

Question 17

(Morison) evidence against the grave having never been visited

Answer 17

The following history invalidates this.

Question 18

Morison’s conclusion on the theory that the grave was never visited

Answer 18

“…none of the six hypotheses which we have been considering falls in greater or completer intellectual ruin than this”

Question 19

William Lane Craig

Answer 19

“That Jesus rose naturally from the dead is fantastically improbable. But I see no reason whatsoever to think that it is
improbable that God raised Jesus from the dead”

Question 20

Enlightenment

Answer 20

building from Newton’s laws of motion, it begun to be accepted that the universe operated according to unvarying laws. Seems to
discount miracles
* enlightenment deism: a God created the universe but does not intervene in it. Miracles are simply impossible
* Hermann Reimarus: “miracles contradict the order of creation and that therefore it is impossible for a rational man to believe in them”

Question 21

David Hume’s ‘of miracles’

Answer 21

• we don’ regard all unusual events as miracles because sometimes we observe these to happen, but “it is a miracle, that a dead man should
  come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country”
• a miracle is improbable by definition, so other explanations are always more likely: “I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more
  probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived”
• a rational person should always prefer a naturalistic explanation
• Why would the disciples die for a lie: “he may know his narrative to be false, and yet persevere with it, with the best intentions in the world,
  for the sake of promoting so holy a cause”- religious fanatics would not care if they were wrong

Question 22

Criticisms of Hume on miracles

Answer 22

• N.T. Wright: “The discovery that dead people stay dead was not first made by the philosophers of the Enlightenment” (1st century
  Palestinians would have sought other explanations also)
• Circular Argument: Hume starts by assuming the laws of nature are unvarying , but this is only true if we reject all reports of miracles, so
  Hume assumes that miracles cannot happen on the grounds that miracles cannot happen
• it is open to doubt that the disciples were real fanatics: they ran away when Jesus was arrested and they did not believe in the resurrection at
  first

Question 23

The Swoon hypothesis general

Answer 23

• Justus Lipsius (1692) Jesus died after 6 hours on the cross whereas most healthy adults would last 2-4 days
• Mark 15:44, Pilate was surprised that Jesus had died so quickly
• Karl Friedrich Bahrdt: Jesus’ followers gave him a drug (via the sponge) so he would appear to die. Jesus only ever pretended to be a
  spiritual Messiah so Jews would abandon their belief in a violent kingly one, the creation of Christianity was an accident. Jesus may have
  been part of a secret society and the men who appeared in white were conspirators who opened the tomb and helped Jesus survive. The
  Essenes wore white, so perhaps Jesus was taken to recover in a desert monastery
• Heinrich Paulus: Jesus went into a coma on the cross but woke up because of the cold air in the tomb

Question 24

Criticisms of the Swoon Hypothesis

Answer 24

• Jesus was so weak even before being crucified that Simon of Cyrene was made to carry the cross for him
• Bruce Chilton: “These executioners knew what they were doing, and theories that Jesus somehow physically survived the cross represent a
  combination of fantasy, revisionism, and half-baked science”

Question 25

Celsus

Answer 25

* in the 2nd century, noticed the similarity between Jesus’ death and resurrection with the character of certain pagan gods * for example, the Egyptian god Osiris was heralded by a star in the heavens, he was a healer and a prophet but was betrayed by someone close to him and murdered. His body was hidden and he resurrected to reign in heaven as a judge * anthropologists have recognised a pattern of dying-and-rising gods in various mythologies * closest equivalent in Judaism was the suffering servant

Question 26

Mythicist Theory

Answer 26

* after Jesus’ death, pagan myths were mixed into Jesus’ story and Jesus was presented as the suffering servant * this occurred through development in oral tradition * is believed that the disciples originally believed only in a spiritual resurrection but this developed into a physical one: Paul’s writings include what reads as a spiritual vision, the later written Gospel of Mark included no post resurrection appearances, yet the later Gospels do

Question 27

David Strauss in 'The Life of Jesus Critically Examined'

Answer 27

* proposed the resurrection was a myth, the disciples attributed Jewish myths about the messiah’s miracles to Jesus * defines myths as “the expression of primitive Christian ideas formulated in unintentionally poeticising sagas and looking very like history” * there would still be spiritual truth in these myths, thought they are not historically true

Question 28

Arguments against the Mythicist Theory

Answer 28

if myths around Jesus were constructed to argue his messiahship, why not change his being from Galilee to being from Judea * Julius Muller argued that real myths take place in “the mysterious gloom of grey antiquity” but the gospels are set in times that believers would remember with specific information about times and places * Muller- “One cannot imagine how such a series of legends could arise...if eyewitnesses were still at hand who could be questioned respecting the truth” * some argue there was not enough time in 30 years for myths to develop

Question 29

The resurrection was only in the experience of the disciples

Answer 29

* David Strauss: “incapable of thinking of Jesus as dead, they were deluded into thinking that he had risen and appeared to them” * suggested by Celsus in the second century but rejected by Origen who claimed the disciples were “neither mentally unbalanced nor delirious”, though psychology has shown that otherwise ‘normal’ seeming people can develop psychotic symptoms * Singapore General Hospital following the tsunami of 2004 reported accounts of ghost sightings among those who had lost loved ones * the disciples, under emotional stress, may have hallucinated the resurrection, perhaps with Mary Magalene passing a mass hysteria onto the disciples: (Ernest Renan) “the little Christian society...resuscitated Jesus in their hearts by the intense love which they bore toward him”

Question 30

Jack Kent- 'The Psychological Origins of the Resurrection Myth'

Answer 30

* disciples and the women experienced “normal grief-related hallucinations” * Peter experienced addition guilt over denying Jesus before the crucifixion * Paul experienced inner conflict over his part in the stoning of Stephen and the persecution of other Christians * they suffered a “conversion disorder”, Paul’s blindness after his vision of Jesus might have been psychosomatic * However: Gary Habermas: conversion disorder usually occurs in women, adolescents and people with poor education or low socioeconomic status, none of which applied to Paul, though could apply to other disciples, the women were wealthy enough to be able to fund Jesus’ ministry * however, visions stopped after the ascension, raising the question of why they wouldn’t continue and spread * also, everyone had the same hallucinations whereas hallucinatino s are normally subjective and vary

Question 31

The Objective Vision Hypothesis

Answer 31

* Hans Grass (1964) claimed Jesus’ body remained dead whilst his disciples were given visions by God, Theodor Keim called this a “telegram from heaven” * William Lane Craig: God “would have no conceivable reason for skipping the physical miracle of a resurrection and befuddling his earnest followers into the bargain”

Question 32

Morison's approach

Answer 32

* rationalist: he ignores miraculous elements of the story, such as the healing of Malchus’ ear in Luke 22:51 * historical: he applies knowledge of the Jewish and Roman legal processes and the archaeological layout of Jerusalem

Question 33

Thomas Woolston

Answer 33

“criminals and cheats have gone to their death proclaiming their innocence” * also suggests the Essenes took the body of Jesus

Question 34

Evaluation of Morison on the Burial

Answer 34

* he assumes Joseph providing a tomb was historical * Bart Ehrman argues standard practice for the Romans was to bury crucified convicts together in an unmarked shallow grace to be dug up by animals * it is improbable that Pilate would have made an exception to Roman practice for Jesus * Joseph of Arimathea is never previously or later mentioned and Arimathea is not a known place and could be fictional; Paul says Jesus was buried in 1 Corinthians never mentions Joseph * Joseph could be an invention of Mark’s Gospel

Question 35

Evaluation of Morison on the Removal of the Body

Answer 35

* if the authorities had taken the body, it would not have been easy to produce it to refute Christians: Acts states the disciples didn’t preach the resurrection until after the ascension (40 days later), so the body of Jesus would probably not be recognisable * the authorities would also have to admit to having moved the body, and desecrating a grave is sinful in Judaism

Question 36

Evaluation of Morison on the 'Swoon'

Answer 36

* Christopher Bryan: “Anyone who imagines that the survivor of a crucifixion would be in a state to convince anyone that he has the victorious conqueror of death clearly has very little idea what a crucifixion was like” * the theory receives little support anyway

Question 37

Evaluation of Morison on the Women being confused

Answer 37

* Paul Gwynne supports Morison: “the mistaken tomb theory has very few serious supporters these days” * C.E.B. Cranfield: “it is difficult to imagine how [a wrong tomb] mistake would not have been quickly corrected”

Question 38

Evaluation of Morison on the tomb not being visited

Answer 38

* Morison only explains that this theory doesn’t account for “what happens afterwards”, as in, the disciples becoming convinced of the resurrection and preaching about it * in Jerusalem, “anybody could go and see the tomb between supper and bed time” to see for themselves that Jesus was absent * how could the disciples have preached the resurrection if Jesus’ body was there * it seems more likely that the women genuinely found an empty tomb

Question 39

Evaluation of Morison's conclusions

Answer 39

* fails to consider that a spiritual resurrection was preached before myths of physical resurrection occurred much later, when it was too late to track down the tomb (because the romans had raised Jerusalem) * Paul’s encounter with Jesus seems to be with a spiritual rather than a physical being, other encounters in the gospels read mostly as spiritual (with Jesus disappearing and reappearing) and Luke and John’s inclusion of the disciples touching him could have been redactions * However, the Jews, particularly the Pharisees, expected physical resurrection and only Hellenes believed in a spiritual one, so, as the first Christians were Jewish, it would be expected that physical resurrection myths develop earlier and spiritual later (like the 2nd Century Gospel of Thomas) * as a rationalist, he ignores passages such as Matthew 28:2 where an angel rolls away the stone- inconsistency between gospels ignored as he merges them into one narrative * he searches for rationalist explanations until his only option is to accept the resurrection * possibility that not all of the disciples or Jewish leaders were in on stealing the body is ignored

Question 40

Wilson on the tomb

Answer 40

John 19:41: “in which no one had yet been buried”. It was the norm in gentile cultures to cremate. Each tomb could contain thirty or more people, many of them in ossuaries (boxes in which bones of decomposed bodies are kept) It was strange that no one had yet been buried there

Question 41

Wilson on the Holy Sepulchre

Answer 41

Socrates Scholasticus: “those who hated Christianity covered the spot with a mound of earth, built a temple of Aphrodite on it…[Helena] had the statue thrown down, the earth removed and the site cleared, and found three crosses in the tomb” The crosses are allegedly made from fragments of the actual cross The Church would have been outside of the city walls in Jesus’ times and would seem to have been in a quarry used for burials The rock around the alleged tomb had been cut away so that only the benches remained, meaning that these were ground down over the centuries.

Question 42

Wilson on each of the Gospel accounts

Answer 42

John: Mary Magdalene saw two angels in the tomb and then Jesus Matthew: the two Mary’s saw a seated angel in the tomb and then Jesus Mark: three women saw a young man in a white robe and only Mary Magdalene saw Jesus Luke: the women saw two men in white clothes who suddenly appeared next to them, but not Jesus

Question 43

Wilson on the women going to the wrong tomb

Answer 43

The synoptics emphasise how “the women had carefully taken note of where Jesus was laid” It would have been easy to refute the resurrection by showing them the real tomb

Question 44

Wilson on some independent person removing the body

Answer 44

John: Mary Magdalene supposed that the man she mistook for a gardener (who was, unbeknownst to her, Jesus) had taken the body away Surely someone would eventually produce the body

Question 45

Wilson on the disciples removing the body

Answer 45

Matthew: acknowledges that there was a story in circulation that the disciples had stolen the body, “He accused ‘the Jews’ of having bribed the guards posted at Jesus’ tomb to say this” Surely somebody would eventually produce the body

Question 46

Wilson on the disciples hallucinating

Answer 46

Luke 24:43: “they offered him a piece of fish which he took and ate before their eyes” “this still totally fails to account for the reportedly very real emptiness of Jesus’ tomb”

Question 47

Wilson on Jesus surviving the crucifixion (EVIDENCE FOR)

Answer 47

Hugh J. Schonfield: the sponge offered to Jesus was not soaked in vinegar but a drug which induced the appearance of death, so he could be taken to the tomb by Joseph of Arimathea and resuscitated. This went wrong when Jesus’ side was pierced, so Jesus did in fact die, though the man seen by Mary Magdalene was someone who had been hired to revive Jesus, and the supposed resurrection was “a case of mistaken identity” (Wilson) D.H. Lawrence: Jesus was taken down from the cross too early, recovered in the tomb, spoke to his followers and then ran off to Egypt to live with a Priestess of Isis. Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln: Jesus and Mary Magdalene escaped to France and started a family. Kersten and Gruber: the Vatican conspired with radiocarbon dating scientists to have the Turin shroud dated to the middle ages to keep secret that Jesus was alive when he wore it

Question 48

Wilson on Jesus surviving the crucifixion (EVIDENCE AGAINST)

Answer 48

David Strauss: “It is impossible that a being who had stolen half dead out of the sepulchre, who crept about weak and ill…could have given the disciples the impression that he was a Conqueror over death…Such a resuscitation…could by no possibility have changed their sorrow into enthusiasm” The confidence about Jesus’ resurrection from the previously doubtful Simon Peter: “Jesus the Nazarene was a man commended to you by God…You killed him, but God raised him to life…and all of us are witnesses to that” (Acts 2:22-32) ; “three days afterwards God raised him to life and allowed him to be seen, not by the whole people, but by certain witnesses…we are those witnesses” (Acts 10:39-42) Dr Edwin M. Yamauchi: “What gives special authority to…[Paul’s] list as historical evidence is the reference to most of the five hundred brethren being still alive…an admitted genuine letter written within thirty years of the event is almost as strong evidence as one could hope to get for something that happened nearly two thousand years ago” Wilson: “the evidence that something like it actually happened is rather better than sceptics care to admit”

Question 49

Wilson on Jesus actually rising from the dead

Answer 49

“Stephen then went on fearlessly to accuse the Jerusalem Temple authorities of having, in executing Jesus, murdered the great prophet foretold by Moses…those whom Stephen had attacked peremptorily stoned him to death”. “those who made such claims had absolutely no expectation of any material gain for their outspokenness” “time after time they accepted such terrors with an astonishing cheerfulness, totally confident that what they professed was truth”

Question 50

Wilson and discrepancies

Answer 50

* lists the resurrection appearances, distinguishing those that seem spiritual to those that seem bodily * Matthew: Mary Magdalene and another Mary, an angel opens the tomb, the women tell the eleven that Jesus has risen and are believed, Jesus appears to the disciples in Galilee * Mark: Mary M, other Mary and Salome, the tomb is and a young man is inside, the women tell no one, Mary Magdalene meets Jesus but isn’t believed by the eleven, Jesus appears to the disciples in Galilee * Luke: Mary M, other Mary, Joanna, the tomb is open and two men/angels appear, the women tell the eleven and are not believed, Jesus appears on the road to Emmaus, Jesus appears to the disciples in Jerusalem * John: Mary M alone, the tomb is open and empty, Mary tells Peter and the Beloved disciple the body was removed, back at the tomb Mary sees two angels then meets with Jesus whom she mistakes for a gardener, Jesus appears to the disciples in Jerusalem * Wilson adds Mary M was a poor witness having been cured by Jesus of madness and that Pauls account in 1 Corinthians 15 has a different order of appearances with no mention of women * admits two things in favour of the accounts: they possess “the same quality as the memories of witnesses after a road accident...highly confused versions of the same story” ; had the accounts been forged, why would they include women? “women’s testimony carried a particularly low weight in Jewish law”

Question 51

Evaluating Wilson on discrepancies

Answer 51

* speeches in Acts are evidence that early Christians believed in a bodily resurrection, though Acts was not composed until 70-90 CE according to estimates, so the speeches by Peter may not be authentic * Pauls epistles, written earlier and more likely to be authentic accounts of what disciples said, describe Jesus appearing to Peter as a vision/ spirit * if the gospel was forged, it would be strange to include women, increasing the likelihood that the accounts are true * Wilson implies Paul missed out women in his account out of sexism, but that contradicts his dealing with Christian leaders Lydia and Chloe, and his entrusting his Epistle to the Romans with Phoebe * Morison explained the women’s omission from Paul’s writing differently: disciples were initially accused of stealing the body, so they would not have claimed that women had found it missing because this would strengthen claims against them. This was omitted until the gospel writings, but by this point details were confused

Question 52

Evaluating Wilson on the six basic hypotheses

Answer 52

* it would not have been possible to identify Jesus’ body 7 weeks after burial, so it would have been impossible to refute claims of resurrection thusly * it is possible that one or only some disciples went to the grace without telling anyone to steal the body * Barbara Thiering: in ‘Jesus, the Man’ (1992), thinks Jesus was an Essene and the Gospels are written in code. As Thiering decodes the NT, Jesus married twice, had four children and died of old age in Rome * we don’t know what Peter was like before the resurrection, so it cannot reasonably argued that his change in character affirms the resurrection, even if his character changed * it can be suggested that features of the gospels were only redactions to counter arguments against the resurrection, but surely then all criticisms would have been accounted for (the substitution hypothesis was proposed in the 2nd century; that Jesus was replaced by a twin on the cross) * Christianity spread rapidly despite opposition, suggesting “something very powerful had fired them into such resoluteness of belief”

Question 53

J. Rowe on identifying the tomb

Answer 53

* there is nothing left on the alleged original site of the tomb but the church of the holy sepulchre * there are 60 examples of rock tombs in Jerusalem, the ‘Garden Tomb’ being a popular site for pilgrims for its location outside of the Damascus Gate, well preserved structure, and beautiful surroundings * it is strange that Jesus’ tomb was supposed to be empty as rock tombs were used by several generations of a family * the garden tomb was dated to 800 BCE, meaning it couldn’t have been unused by Jesus’ time * the sepulchre is unlikely to be the real location and the cross fragments found there are likely fake