Tag Archives: History

Polemics

Answering 9 objections to the resurrection of Jesus

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I found this post on Eric Chabot’s Think Apologetics blog.

Here is his list of objections:

  1. The Legends Hypothesis
  2. The Naturalistic Objection
  3. We Can’t Use the Historical Method to Determine Whether A Resurrection Took Place
  4. False Testimonies Hypothesis
  5. The Resurrection Story Was Invented From Other Dying and Rising God Stories
  6. The Intramental/Hallucination Hypothesis Objection
  7. The Analogical Objection
  8. The Genre of the Gospels Are Historical Fiction!
  9. The Faulty Sources Objection

Here’s the detail on #4:

There is no reason to distrust the conviction of those that testified to having seen the risen Jesus. As James Warner Wallace points out in his latest book people lie or have an ulterior motive for three reasons:

1.Financial Gain: In this case, we don’t see any evidence for this. The NT shows the disciples/apostles being chased from location to location, leaving their home and families and abandoning their property and what they owned.

2. Sexual or Relational Desire: The NT does not say much about their “love lives.” There are Scriptures that speak to sexual purity and chastity.

3. Pursuit of Power: While Christianity became a state sponsored religion in the 4th century and the Popes became powerful both politically and religiously, there is no evidence (pre 70 AD), for the early disciples pursuing power as they proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus. Just look at Paul’s testimony here:

“I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. 24 Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, 26 I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers. 27 I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked.” – 2 Cor. 11: 23-27

There are lots of useful links to answer many of the objections. It’s worth reading because Eric is used to having to deal with these objections in his daily work. What you see on the list is what he sees on the ground, dealing with the questions of skeptical students at a major university.

News

Reza Aslan’s new book on the historical Jesus gets celebrated by left-wing media

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Fox News reports. (H/T Melissa P.M.)

Excerpt

Reza Aslan, author of the new book, “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth” has been interviewed on a host of media outlets in the last week. Riding a publicity wave, the book has surged to #2 on Amazon’s list.

Media reports have introduced Aslan as a “religion scholar” but have failed to mention that he is a devout Muslim.

His book is not a historian’s report on Jesus. It is an educated Muslim’s opinion about Jesus — yet the book is being peddled as objective history on national TV and radio.

Aslan is not a trained historian. Like tens of thousands of us he has been formally educated in theology and New Testament Greek.

He is a bright man with every right to hold his own opinion about Jesus—and to proselytize his opinion.

As a sincere man, Aslan’s Muslim beliefs affect his entire life, including his conclusions about Jesus. But this is not being disclosed. “Zealot” is being presented as objective and scholarly history, not as it actually is—an educated Muslim’s opinions about Jesus and the ancient Near East.

“Zealot” is a fast-paced demolition of the core beliefs that Christianity has taught about Jesus for 2,000 years. Its conclusions are long-held Islamic claims—namely, that Jesus was a zealous prophet type who didn’t claim to be God, that Christians have misunderstood him, and that the Christian Gospels are not the actual words or life of Jesus but “myth.”

These claims are not new or unique. They are hundreds of years old among Muslims. Sadly, readers who have listened to interviews on NPR, “The Daily Show,” Huffington Post or MSNBC may pick up the book expecting an unbiased and historic report on Jesus and first century Jewish culture. (I will let my Jewish friends address Aslan’s statement on MSNBC that, “there were certainly a lot of Jewish terrorists in first century Palestine.”)

I took a look at the  author’s CV and I don’t see a single degree in ancient history on it. He is a professor of creative writing, though. Studying “religion” is not the same thing as studying ancient history, by the way.

Here is his faculty page at UC Riverside:

Professor Aslan joins UCR from the Center of Public Diplomacy at University of Southern California. He has Degrees in Religions from Harvard University, and the University of California, Santa Barbara, as well as a Masters in Fine Arts from the University of Iowa, where he was named the Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction. He is currently working on his Ph.D. at University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of the New York Times Bestseller, No god but God: The origins, Evolution, and the future of Islam which has been translated into half a dozen languages, short-listed for the Guardian (UK) First Book Award, and nominated for a PEN USA award for research Non-Fiction.

He has a PhD in sociology of religions. SOCIOLOGY. Not history.

A search of publications on Google Scholar turns up no academic articles on the historical Jesus.

Here are his recent non-academic publications from his web site – see if you see any in academic history journals:

The Devastating Consequences of the anti-Morsi Revolution
Vocative, July 2, 2013

Bahrain’s Fake Sectarian War
Foreign Affairs, June 30, 2013

Missing Mahmoud
Foreign Policy, June 12, 2013

The impact of the Arab Spring on the Palestinian Authority’s foreign policy.
Council on Foreign Relations, April 24, 2013

Israel risks its place in America’s affections by its tone-deaf policy
The National, February 4, 2013

Divided by the Same Father
Tony Blair Faith Foundation, November 30, 2012

Rejected by Religions, but Not by Believers
New York Times, October 4, 2012

Political Islam in the Middle East
Council on Foreign Relations, December 7, 2012

Grand Ayatollah or Grand Old Party?
Foreign Policy, February 29, 2012

Fire This Time
Los Angeles Review of Books, September 11, 2011

Ibn Battuta: World Wanderer
Time Magazine, July 21, 2011

Backward Glances: Islamic Erotica, Then and Now
Playboy Magazine, January 2011

Now, I do think it’s possible for someone without formal training to write a book on the historical Jesus. But I would regard such books with skepticism. Especially when he dates the Gospel of Mark to later than 70 A.D. – definitely not a mainstream view. The atheist scholar James Crossley dates Mark to the late 30s to early 40s, for example. But a plausible case can be made (by an actual historian) that the Gospel of Mark is dated sometime in the mid-50s.

The real story here though is media bias. Why is the liberal media so interested in promoting a book about the historical Jesus which questions the orthodox view of Jesus, whereas they were not doing anything to promote Darwin’s Doubt, which questioned the orthodox view of Darwinism? I think there is a double standard here. Meyer did his PhD work on these issues and has the relevant academic publications in science journals. (Here is one that was published in a peer-reviewed journal) And Meyer has actually debated his thesis with his opponents.

My previous post on media bias explains a bit more about what the left-wing media is really like.

UPDATE: Mathetes posted a link to this article on First Things.

Excerpt:

Aslan does have four degrees… a 1995 B.A. in religion from Santa Clara University, where he was Phi Beta Kappa and wrote his senior thesis on “The Messianic Secret in the Gospel of Mark”; a 1999 Master of Theological Studies from Harvard; a 2002 Master of Fine Arts in Fiction from the University of Iowa; and a 2009 Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

None of these degrees is in history, so Aslan’s repeated claims that he has “a Ph.D. in the history of religions” and that he is “a historian” are false.  Nor is “professor of religions” what he does “for a living.” He is an associate professor in the Creative Writing program at the University of California, Riverside, where his terminal MFA in fiction from Iowa is his relevant academic credential. It appears he has taught some courses on Islam in the past, and he may do so now, moonlighting from his creative writing duties at Riverside. Aslan has been a busy popular writer, and he is certainly a tireless self-promoter, but he is nowhere known in the academic world as a scholar of the history of religion. And a scholarly historian of early Christianity? Nope.

What about that Ph.D.? As already noted, it was in sociology. I have his dissertation in front of me. It is a 140-page work titled “Global Jihadism as a Transnational Social Movement: A Theoretical Framework.” If Aslan’s Ph.D. is the basis of a claim to scholarly credentials, he could plausibly claim to be an expert on social movements in twentieth-century Islam. He cannot plausibly claim, as he did to Lauren Green, that he is a “historian,” or is a “professor of religions” “for a living.”

Well that settles it. His PhD has nothing to do with the historical Jesus. He’s unqualified.

Commentary

Why do younger evangelicals put happiness and popularity over morality and truth?

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Here’s an interesting post by Mark Tooley in the American Spectator.

Excerpt:

A new generation of evangelical elites is imploring evangelicals to step back from the culture wars. Mostly they want to escape polarizing strong stances on same-sex marriage and abortion, and perhaps also contentious church-state issues, like the Obamacare contraceptive mandate.

Purportedly the evangelical church is failing to reach young, upwardly mobile professionals because evangelicals, who now broadly comprise perhaps one third of all Americans, are seen as reactionary and hateful. On their college campuses, at their coffee shops, and in their yoga classes, among other venues, some outspoken hip young evangelicals want a new public image for their faith.

[…]A popular young evangelical blogger echoing Merritt’s theme is Rachel Evans, who conveniently grew up in the Tennessee small town famous for the Scopes Monkey Trial. Her 2010 book was Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions. “We are tired of the culture wars,” she explained in a recent interview. “We are tired of politics.” Lamenting the church’s preoccupation with “shame and guilt,” she urged evangelicals to reconsider their opposition to same-sex unions.

The post has a nice history of how evangelicals have always been involved in moral and political issues, and it’s worth reading. But I want to make a different point below.

What’s at the root of this movement to back away from moral issues? Here’s what I think is the problem. When you advocate for moral causes like protecting the unborn, or school choice, or freeing the slaves, a bunch of people are not going to like you. Christians in the time of Jesus knew that being bold about their Christian convictions would make a lot of people think bad things about them – they expected it. But young evangelicals have gotten the idea that being a Christian should not involve any sort of unhappiness and unpopularity. They wouldn’t have learned this from the Bible, because the Bible emphasizes suffering and unpopularity as part of the normal Christian life. It is their experience of church (and the hedonistic culture around them) that is likely to reinforce that view.

What young evangelicals learn in many churches is that religion is something that is centered on the Bible and the church building – it is not something that flows into real life. They learn that you can’t find out anything about God from the Big Bang, the DNA, the fossil record, or even from the peer-reviewed research on abortion, divorce, or gay marriage. They learn from the Bible that helping the poor is good, but then they never pick up an economic textbook to see which economic system really helps the poor. What you learn about in church is that religion is private and has no connection to reality whatsoever. This fits in with their view that Christianity should make them happy, because they’ve learned that it doesn’t involve any studying to connect the Bible to the real world.

What follows from having a view that Christianity only lives in the Bible and church, and not out there in the real world of telescopes and microscopes? Well, most young evangelicals interpret what their pastor is telling them as “our flavor of ice cream” or “our cultural preference”. They don’t link Christianity to the real world, they don’t think that it’s true for everyone. They think that you just accept what the Bible says on faith, and that’s all. No reasons can be given to non-Christians outside of just asking them to accept the Bible. Younger evangelicals believe that there are no facts that confirm or disprove Christianity – it’s just a blind belief. Young evangelicals think that their faith doesn’t have to be complemented with careful study of how things work in the real world.

What is the result of this anti-intellectual compartmentalization of faith? The result is that young evangelicals will balk at the idea of telling someone that they are going to Hell if they don’t believe in Jesus. They will balk at the idea that feminism is to blame for the destruction of the family. They will balk at the idea that the best way to help the poor is to push for free market capitalism. They will balk at the idea that it is wrong to kill unborn children. They will balk at the idea that disarmament and pacifism embolden terrorists and tyrants to attack peace-loving people. They will balk at the idea that traditional marriage is better for society and children. They will balk at the idea that man-made catastrophic global warming is not supported by science. They lack courage because they first lack knowledge. They don’t know how to make the case using hard evidence. They don’t learn that hard evidence is important in church.

If the purpose of religion is to have happy feelings and be liked, then studying the real world to find out whether the Bible is true is bad religion. If religion is divorced from reality, then it’s just a personal preference influenced by how a person was raised. No young evangelical is going to lift a finger to take bold moral stands if they think their worldview is just one option among many – like the flavors of ice cream in the frozen section of the grocery store. They have to know that what they are saying is true – then they will be bold. An example: there was a time when people believed that God did not create the first living cell, because it was just a simple lump of protoplasm that could easily come about by accident. Now we know better, and we can boldly make the case for intelligent design based on hard evidence – if we put in the time to study the evidence. And it is the same for everything – from theological claims, to moral claims, to social claims, to economic claims, to foreign policy claims. It doesn’t matter if people call you names when you have the facts to support unpopular claims, and that’s why public, authentic Christianity is built on facts. Non-Christians being offended by your claims doesn’t change the way the world is.

We have to turn away from our own ignorance, laziness and cowardice if we hope to have the ability to stand up for our beliefs in public. Christianity is not about being happy and feeling good and being liked by others. In a society that is increasingly secular and relativistic, studying outside the Bible necessarily precedes an authentic Christian life. There is no shortcut. We might have been able to get away with fideism 50 years ago, but not anymore. Not now.