I was browsing on Mike’s web site and found links to these videos.
Here they are:
4 videos in high quality, about 30 minutes each.
If you sometimes have trouble understanding what Habermas and Craig are talking about in their debates, you need to listen to this debate. Licona is taking a much higher-level view. He is basically selecting facts that NO ONE denies and not even talking about the evidence for them – instead he is spending his time arguing why the resurrection is the best hypothesis for explaining the facts, and why the naturalistic hypotheses are not as good. Craig spends more time proving the facts, but virtually no historian denies them.
If you like the debate, you can buy it here from $9.99 on 2 DVDs, with extra content – suitable for showing to larger audiences, like in your church!
Here’s William Lane Craig’s opening speech against Bart: (in 12 parts)
Part 1 of 12:
Part 2 of 12:
Bart’s argument
Bart Ehrman has a standard case based on 1) manuscript variants and 2) David Hume’s argument against miracles. Basically, he says that because the massive number of manuscripts contains a massive number of minor disagreements (see below), that the Bible cannot be trusted and therefore we can’t know whether Jesus rose bodily from the dead.
In Ehrman’s debate with Peter Williams on the UK-based Unbelievable radio show, and in Ehrman’s debate with Dan Wallace, Ehrman lists the 4 worst problems caused by the invariants:
the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53-8:11) is a late addition not present in the earliest manuscripts
the long ending of Mark (Mark 16:9-20) is a late addition not present in the earliest manuscripts
Jesus was angry and not compassionate when he healed the leper (Mark 1:41)
that Jesus died apart from God, and not by the grace of God (Hebrews 2:9)
I personally dislike that story in 1), because I think a lot of feminized Christians like it because they do not want to have their happiness diminished by moral judgments. They misunderstand this passage to support self-serving moral relativism and postmodern hedonism. Or worse, anti-capital-punishment. Eww.
This Bible verse is a favorite of all the liberal “Christian” women I’ve met. I’ve noticed that they are terrified of moral judgments and they don’t like to have to do anything for God, like study apologetics. I don’t like that. So I say: throw the girly-verse out! If you want a good verse that shows that Jesus liked women, you should be reading the woman at the well story. Or the women witnesses to the empty tomb.
Regarding 2), I like that long ending because it’s more useful from an apologetics standpoint. So I do care about this invariant, and I just don’t use that ending when I debate. For 3), I prefer angry Jesus to compassionate Jesus. And for 4) I really don’t care. It’s Hebrews! It’s not like it’s Mark or 1 Corinthians 15.
Ehrman’s argument against miracles is really just David Hume’s argument against miracles, which even non-Christian scholars, like John Earman, have defeated at the highest level here:
So, one can easily see that Bart Ehrman’s case is silly and amounts to nothing in a formal debate on the resurrection. If you want to understand why he is selling so many books, just like Dan Brown, you need to understand that people want space to invent a Jesus that they like. Bart gives them that space by fueling their skepticism of traditional Christianity.
Responding to Bart Ehrman with the minimal facts
Bart seems to be under the misapprehension that Christians argue for the resurrection by assuming the whole Bible is inspired. But we don’t. We use a minimal facts case where each fact had to pass a battery of standard historical tests for the genre of historical biography.
We come up with a list of minimal facts like this list:
the burial narrative
the empty tomb
the appearances
the early belief in a bodily resurrection
We argue that the bodily resurrection is the best explanation of these facts, and we refute all naturalistic explanations of these minimal facts like these:
Jesus wasn’t really dead
Someone stole the body
The appearances were hallucinations
One other thing that may be of interest is British scholar N.T. Wright’s case for the resurrection, based on the changes introduced in the belief and practice of the first Jewish converts to Christianity.
Further study
For further study of Licona and Ehrman, I would recommend the book “The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus”, by Gary Habermas and Mike Licona on the resurrection, which is the best introductory book you can get on how to argue the minimal facts case.
If you like Lee Strobel’s interviewing style, then you can’t go wrong with this book, “The Case for the Real Jesus” and his earlier book “The Case for Christ”. All the Lee Strobel books are excellent, the best books that a beginner can get – the ground floor of apologetics, so to speak.
If you prefer books featuring debates between opposing scholars, check out William Lane Craig against Gerd Ludemann here, (audio of their re-match is here), William Lane Craig against John Dominic Crossan here, (audio of the debate is here), or N. T. Wright against John Dominic Crossan here, (audio of the debate only is here).
Gary Habermas, (has dual doctorates from Oxford and Michigan State) is also a good source.
He debates a Duke University professor here: (one of my favorites)
And he responds to Dan Brown’s fictional novels here:
Cracking the Da Vinci Code PART I (8MB) :|: PART II (8MB) :|: PART III (5MB) :|: PART IV (5MB) [MP3 files]
Lecture given at the 4th Annual Worldview Apologetics Conference
April 21-22, 2006, Seattle, Washington
Here is my summary of the arguments that each of them presented.
Licona opened the debate with a historical argument that goes like this. First, he argued, virtually all historians (close to 100%) agree on three key facts about Jesus:
He died by crucifixion.
His disciples believed they saw Jesus appear several times after he died.
The apostle Paul believed he saw Jesus appear after he died.
Then, Licona explained that the historian’s job was to figure out the best explanation of these three facts. There are four criteria that the professional historian should use to judge possible explanations of the facts:
explanatory scope
explanatory power
plausibility
less ad hoc
I read their post, and it sounds like Bart Ehrman made his standard discredited case based on 1) manuscript variants and 2) David Hume’s argument against miracles. He doesn’t even care that he lost his debate against Craig with these exact same arguments.
In Ehrman’s debate with Peter Williams on the UK-based Unbelievable radio show, and in Ehrman’s debate with Dan Wallace, Ehrman lists the 4 worst problems caused by the invariants:
the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53-8:11) is a late addition not present in the earliest manuscripts
the long ending of Mark (Mark 16:9-20) is a late addition not present in the earliest manuscripts
Jesus was angry and not compassionate when he healed the leper (Mark 1:41)
that Jesus died apart from God, and not by the grace of God (Hebrews 2:9)
Now I have to tell you, these disputes are irrelevant to standard Christian doctrine. Also, I personally prefer the woman at the well story being left out, and I prefer angry Jesus in 3). Why? Because I am snarky. The only variant that bugs me is the ending in Mark, because I liked the long ending. But none of these “worst cases” affects anything that Mike Licona might say on behalf of the resurrection, which is what the debate is supposed to be about, right?
That post also had some links to other debates on the resurrection. Furthermore, in previous debates, Ehrman’s argument against miracles is really just David Hume’s argument against miracles, which even non-Christian scholars, like John Earman, have defeated at the highest level here:
Here is an another interesting part of part one of TQA’s report (part two is forthcoming, they say!):
Interestingly, Ehrman did fully accept Licona’s three facts about Jesus as historically true. He just didn’t accept the explanation of Jesus rising from the dead to explain those facts. His favorite explanation seemed to be hallucinations, so the two debaters spent a lot time discussing hallucinations.
UPDATE: Part 2 of their evaluation has been posted!
Further Reading
Here are some resources related to this debate.
Licona’s first debate with Ehrman, (audio, video) which Licona won easily
William Lane Craig’s debate with Ehrman, which Craig won easily