COL. JESSEP: You want answers?
LT. KAFFEE: I think I’m entitled.
JESSEP: You want answers?
KAFFEE: I want the truth!
JESSEP: You can’t handle the truth!
from the film A Few Good Men
Few scenes are as gripping in the movies — or in real life — as the tenacious and effective cross-examination of a witness in a criminal trial. The prosecution may have presented a persuasive case during the first part of the proceedings, but sometimes the persistent questioning of a witness can reverse the entire outcome of a trial.
That’s what happened in the Broadway play and subsequent film A Few Good Men, in which military attorney Daniel Kaffee was assigned to defend two Marines accused of murdering a problem comrade at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Kaffee was trying to prove that his clients were merely following the orders of the ambitious base commander, Colonel Nathan R. Jessep, who had allegedly ordered a “Code Red” against the victim, which is slang for unsanctioned punishment.1
In the film’s climactic scene, Kaffee (played by Tom Cruise) relentlessly presses Jessep (portrayed by Jack Nicholson) for the truth about what took place. Jessep’s anger was clearly mounting. “Did you order the Code Red?” the lawyer demands. “I did the job I was sent to do,” barks Jessep. With more intensity, Kaffee repeats: “Did you order the Code Red?” That’s when the witness breaks. “You’re——right I did!” Jessep shouts back — and his fate is sealed. He is immediately arrested — his career destroyed — but not before he lunges at Kaffee and threatens to kill him.
That’s great cinema, but in real life witnesses are rarely badgered into confessing to crimes on the witness stand. Skillful and well-prepared attorneys, however, often succeed in casting doubt on a witness’s credibility, poking holes in their opponent’s theories, and generating reasonable doubt in the minds of jurors. I learned quickly as the legal-affairs editor of the Chicago Tribune never to reach conclusions based on hearing only one side of a case.
So far, New Testament historian Michael Licona had presented seemingly conclusive arguments for Jesus’ resurrection by using only five “minimal facts” that are well-evidenced and accepted by the vast majority of critical scholars: Jesus was killed by crucifixion; his disciples believed he rose and appeared to them; the conversion of the church persecutor Paul; the conversion of the skeptic James, who was Jesus’ half-brother; and Jesus’ empty tomb.
Unchallenged, these facts appear to point convincingly toward the verdict that Jesus returned from the dead and thus authenticated his claim to being the unique Son of God. But what happens when these facts are subjected to cross-examination? How would Licona respond to the alternate theories that have been advanced in the last few years by respected scholars, popular authors, and Internet gadflies? Would “the other side of the story” prompt a far different conclusion: That the resurrection is actually more wishful thinking than historic reality?
Licona and I reconvened in my family room. His eyes seemed to take on a heightened intensity as he watched me shuffle through my list of prepared questions. My plan wasn’t to try to provoke, intimidate, or badger him in the style of Tom Cruise’s character; rather, I wanted to test his five facts with the most cogent arguments of critics and see whether Licona’s answers would really hold up. This wasn’t a game of “gotcha”; it was a genuine desire to see how the resurrection would fare against its latest critics.
Since Licona had started his case with the crucifixion of Jesus — confidently declaring that it was “as solid as anything in ancient history” — I decided to begin there too. After all, I mused, the more than one billion Muslims in the world would adamantly dissent from Licona’s assertion.
The Qur’an versus the Bible
I picked up my well-worn copy of the Qur’an from the coffee table. “You say Jesus was killed by crucifixion, but on the contrary, Muslims believe Jesus never really died on the cross,” I said to Licona. Finding the fourth surah, I read aloud verses 157 – 58:
That they said (in boast) “We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah”; — but they did not kill him, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they did not kill him; — Nay, Allah raised him up unto Himself; and Allah is Exalted in Power, Wise . . .2
I closed the book and continued. “There seem to be two possibilities: either someone was made to look like Jesus and the Romans killed that person, or Jesus was on the cross but Allah made it appear he died when he really didn’t. They put him in a tomb, Allah healed him, and he was taken to heaven. Aren’t those possible scenarios?”
Licona’s posture straightened. “Well, anything is possible with God,” Licona said, “but the real question is where does the evidence point? In other words, the question does not concern what God can do, but what God did. And the Qur’an is not a very credible source when it comes to Jesus.”
“You don’t believe the Qur’an has good credentials?”
“The Qur’an provides a test for people to verify its divine origin: gather the wisest people in the world and call upon the jinn, which are similar to demons but without necessarily all the negative connotations, and try to write a surah, or chapter, that’s as good as one in the Qur’an. The implication, of course, is that this can’t be done.”
“Do you think it can be?”
“I think so, rather easily. One person who speaks Arabic wrote what he calls The True Furqan, in which he maintains the style of the Qur’an in Arabic but with a message that’s more Christian than Islamic.3 Some Muslims heard portions of it read and were convinced that it was the Qur’an! One scholar in Arabic dialects told me that some of the classical Arabic in The True Furqan was much more beautiful than anything he had read in the Qur’an. So I guess the test has been passed. For those of us who can’t read Arabic — which, by the way, includes about 80 percent of the Muslim world — we can perform a test by comparing the first surah of the Qur’an to Psalm 19 of the Bible.”
Licona reached over and picked up my Qur’an to read the first surah out loud:
In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
Praise be to Allah, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the Worlds;
Most Gracious, Most Merciful;
Master of the Day of Judgment.
You do we worship, and Your aid do we seek.
Show us the straight way.
The way of those on whom You have bestowed Your Grace, those whose (portion) is not wrath, and who do not go astray.4
Closing the Qur’an, he then used his lap-top computer to access Psalm 19 and read it:
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is hidden from its heat.
The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul.
The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy, making wise the simple.
The precepts of the LORD are right, giving joy to the heart.
The commands of the LORD are radiant, giving light to the eyes.
The fear of the LORD is pure, enduring forever.
The ordinances of the LORD are sure and altogether righteous.
They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold;
they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb.
By them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.
Who can discern his errors? Forgive my hidden faults.
Keep your servant also from willful sins; may they not rule over me.
Then will I be blameless, innocent of great transgression.
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight,
O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.
Licona turned to face me. “Both the surah and the psalm talk about the goodness and holiness of God,” he said. “But when you read them — well, the psalm seems much more pregnant with meaning and much more beautiful to me. Granted, the Arabic surah has a poetic rhythm; however, so does the Hebrew psalm, which is actually a song.”
“But,” I pointed out, “Muslims would say you’ve got to read the surah in Arabic because it’s got a particularly beautiful flow in that language.”
“I’d reply, ‘Can you read Hebrew?’ ” said Licona. “If not, how do you know that the Arabic is better than the Hebrew song, which has a flowing rhythm similar to the surah? It really comes down to what language sounds best to you, sort of like choosing between McDonalds and Burger King. It’s very subjective, don’t you think? That’s why it’s not a good test of the Qur’an’s divine nature.
“In contrast, Jesus provided a historical event — his resurrection — as the test by which we can know his message is true. Now, that’s a good test, because a resurrection isn’t going to happen unless God does it.”
The Credibility of the Qur’an
I agreed with Licona — the supposed lyrical quality of the Qur’an was unavoidably a subjective test. “That’s why you don’t believe the Qur’an is credible?” I asked.
“That’s only the beginning of the Qur’an’s problems when it comes to Jesus,” Licona said. “In addition, the Qur’an is fifth-hand testimony at best — the original Qur’an in heaven allegedly coming to us through an angel, then Muhammad, then those who recorded what Muhammad told them, then what was selected by Uthman. Thus, it’s quite hypocritical of Muslims when they complain that two of the Gospels, Mark and Luke, weren’t written by eyewitnesses. On top of that, you’ve got the Islamic catch-22.”
“The what?”
“Let me explain it,” he replied. “We can establish historically that Jesus predicted his own imminent and violent death.”
“How so?” I asked.
“We find this reported in Mark, which is the earliest Gospel, and it’s multiply attested in different literary forms, which is really strong evidence in the eyes of historians. Also, consider the criterion of embarrassment: A lot of times when Jesus predicts his death, the disciples say, no, this can’t happen, or they don’t understand. This makes them look like knuckleheads, so it’s embarrassing to the disciples who are the leaders of the church to put this in the Gospel. This indicates that this is authentic, because you certainly wouldn’t make up something that puts the apostles in a bad light. Consequently, there are good historical reasons for believing Jesus did actually predict his imminent and violent demise.”
“Okay, I think that’s pretty clear,” I said. “But where does the Islamic catch-22 come in?”
“If Jesus did not die a violent and imminent death, then that makes him a false prophet. But the Qur’an says that he’s a great prophet, and so the Qur’an would be wrong and thus discredited. On the other hand, if Jesus did die a violent and imminent death as he predicted, then he is indeed a great prophet — but this would contradict the Qur’an, which says he didn’t die on the cross. So either way, the Qur’an is discredited.
“The bottom line is this: unless you’re a Muslim who is already committed to the Qur’an, no historian worth his salt would ever place the Qur’an as a more credible source on Jesus over the New Testament, which has four biographies and other writings dated shortly after Jesus and which contains eyewitness testimony. In historical Jesus studies, I don’t know of a single scholar who consults the Qur’an as a source on the historical Jesus.”
“But you have to admit,” I said, “that it would be hard to prove or disprove whether Allah substituted somebody at the last minute on the cross.”
“Listen, I could come up with a theory that says we were all created just five minutes ago with food in our stomachs from meals we never ate and memories in our minds of events that never took place. How would you disprove that? But the question is: Where does the evidence point? What seems to be the most rational belief? Again, unless you’re a Muslim who already is so predisposed to believing Islamic doctrines that you can’t look at the data objectively in any sense, no one would say that the Qur’an is a credible source when it comes to Jesus.”
“When I heard a Muslim debate this issue, he took the approach that Jesus was on the cross and Allah made him appear to be dead, even though he wasn’t,” I said. “Then he claimed Allah healed Jesus.”
“That creates another problem,” Licona replied. “Wouldn’t this make Allah a deceiver? We could understand it if he deceived his enemies who were trying to kill Jesus. But since we can know historically that Jesus’ disciples sincerely believed that he had been killed and then his corpse had been transformed into an immortal body, this makes God a deceiver of his followers as well. If Jesus never clarified matters with his disciples, then he deceived them too. Why would you deceive your followers if you knew this was going to spawn a new but false religion? And if God deceived his first-century followers, whom the Qur’an refers to as ‘Muslims,’ then how can today’s Muslims be confident that he is not deceiving them now?”
I found Licona’s logic convincing. Simply applying the tools of modern historical scholarship quickly disqualifies the Qur’an as a trustworthy text about Jesus, if for no other reason than the book’s late dating. Scholars quibble over a difference of just a few years in the dating of the New Testament, whereas the Qur’an didn’t come until six centuries after the life of Christ. I also knew, however, that the Qur’an isn’t the only book claiming that Jesus didn’t die on the cross.
I picked up a copy of the 2006 New York Times bestseller The Jesus Papers from the couch next to me. Opening it up, I prepared to question Licona about its eye-opening allegations that seek to refute the crucifixion.
Deconstructing Baigent
“Michael Baigent claims in The Jesus Papers that although the Jewish Zealots wanted Jesus crucified, Pontius Plate was conflicted because Jesus had been telling people to pay their taxes to Rome,” I said, flipping to page 125 and reading to Licona the text that I had highlighted with a yellow marker:
Pilate was Rome’s official representative in Judea, and Rome’s main argument with the Jews was that they declined to pay their tax to Caesar. Yet here was a leading Jew — the legitimate king no less — telling his people to pay the tax. How could Pilate try, let alone condemn, such a man who, on the face of it, was supporting Roman policy? Pilate would himself be charged with dereliction of duty should he proceed with the condemnation of such a supporter.5
“And so,” I continued, “Baigent says Pilate decided to condemn Jesus to placate the Zealots, but he took steps to ensure Jesus would survive so he wouldn’t have to report to Rome that he had killed him. After all, Mike, you’ve already conceded that it’s possible to survive a crucifixion, and Baigent speculates that Jesus had been given medication to induce the appearance of death. In fact, the Gospels indicate Jesus died pretty quickly.
“Set aside the issue of Baigent’s credibility for a moment,” I said. “Let’s just deal with the theory he offers. Doesn’t this undermine your claim that Jesus died on the cross?”
Licona sighed. “Honestly, Lee, this is just so weak,” he said. “First, Baigent claims that aloes or myrrh were used to revive Jesus after his ordeal on the cross. If these common herbs could be used to resuscitate and bring back to health a crucified individual who had been horribly scourged, then why in the world aren’t we using them today?” he asked, his tone indignant. “Why aren’t hospitals using them? They would be wonder drugs! Come on — that’s ridiculous!”
Now he was getting on a roll. “And the idea that Rome would never crucify someone who was supporting them just flies in the face of the facts. Look at Paul — he urged people to obey the governing authorities because God has placed them in charge, yet that didn’t stop Rome from executing him!
“Think about it: if Jesus survived the crucifixion, he’d be horribly mutilated and limping. How would that convince the disciples that he’s the risen prince of life? That’s absurd. Baigent has nothing to back up his wild claims. Look at the writings on the resurrection by legitimate scholars over the past twenty years: only about one in a thousand even suggests it’s possible that Jesus survived the crucifixion. There’s a tidal wave of scholarship on the other side. This is almost in the category of denying the Holocaust!”
I jumped in. “Baigent claims the Bible itself backs up his theory,” I pointed out. “He says that in the Gospel of Mark, when Joseph of Arimathea requests Jesus’ body from Pilate, he uses the Greek word soma, which denotes a living body. In reply, Pilate uses the word ptoma for body, which means a corpse. Says Baigent: ‘In other words, the Greek text of Mark’s Gospel is making it clear that while Joseph is asking for the living body of Jesus, Pilate grants him what he believes to be the corpse. Jesus’ survival is revealed right there in the actual Gospel account.’ ”6
Licona shook his head in disbelief. “That’s pure rubbish,” he said with disdain.
I pointed at him. “Prove it,” I said.
“Okay,” he said, picking up the challenge. “The truth is that the word soma makes no distinction between a living or dead body. In fact, in Acts 9:37, Luke talks about the death of Tabitha. After she dies, he says they washed her soma, or her body. Obviously, it’s a corpse. In Luke 17:37, it says, ‘Where there is a dead body, there the vultures will gather.’ Again, the word he uses is soma. There’s example after example, even in Josephus, of soma meaning corpse. So Baigent doesn’t know what he’s talking about here either.
“What’s more, Baigent is ignoring the context in Mark. The Gospel makes it clear that Jesus was dead. Mark 15:37 says Jesus ‘breathed his last’; in Mark 15:45, eyewitnesses confirmed Jesus was dead; and in Mark 15:47 – 16:1, Mary Magdelene and the other women watch Jesus being buried and return Sunday morning to anoint him. They surely thought he was dead. So there’s nothing at all to support Baigent’s claims.”
There was no need to go further: Baigent’s case would be instantly dismissed by any impartial judge. Licona’s first fact — that Jesus was killed by crucifixion — remained unrefuted by any credible counterargument.
Before we moved on, however, I wanted to ask Licona his opinion about popular writers like Baigent, whose authentic-sounding theories often can be confusing to readers unfamiliar with the other side of the story. “Does it bother you that Baigent’s book was a bestseller and that thousands of people may believe it’s true?” I asked.
“What it shows,” said Licona, “is that people are not only credulous toward this sort of nonsense, but Western culture is looking for a justification for an alternative to the traditional view of Christianity.”
“Why do you think that’s so?”
“There are numerous reasons. Sometimes it’s moral issues,” came his response. “They don’t want to be constrained by the traditional Jesus, who calls them to a life of holiness. One friend of mine finally acknowledged that Jesus rose from the dead, but he still won’t become a Christian because he said he wanted to be the master of his own life — that’s the exact way he put it. So in many cases — not all — it’s a heart issue, not a head issue.
“Some people just don’t like what Jesus is demanding of them.”
Psychoanalyzing Paul
The next major category of evidence offered by Licona was the appearances of Jesus to the disciples, Paul, and James. Among the most outspoken skeptics on this issue is historian and philosopher Richard Carrier, who holds two master’s degrees in ancient history from Columbia University and is pursuing a doctorate there.
The son of “freethinking Methodists” — his mom was a church secretary — Carrier became a philosophical Taoist at age fifteen and an atheist at twenty-one. He has become a popular critic of Christianity on the Internet, and I once moderated a debate between him and a Christian on national television.
Carrier seeks to explain away the supposed appearance of Jesus to Paul by saying this was merely a “revelation” induced by Paul’s guilt over persecuting Christians and other psychological factors. Carrier writes:
I can hypothesize four conjoining factors: guilt at persecuting a people he came to admire; subsequent disgust with fellow persecuting Pharisees; and persuasion (beginning to see what the Christians were seeing in scripture, and to worry about his own salvation); coupled with the right physical circumstances (like heat and fatigue on a long, desolate road), could have induced a convincing ecstatic event — his unconscious mind producing what he really wanted: a reason to believe the Christians were right after all and atone for his treatment of them, and a way to give his life meaning, by relocating himself from the lower, even superfluous periphery of Jewish elite society, to a place of power and purpose.7
After reading Carrier’s theory to Licona, I asked for his response. “Doesn’t this account for Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus?” I said.
Licona, who had listened intently as I presented Carrier’s argument, clearly didn’t see any merit in it. “The question should be: Is this the best explanation?” he said. “I could offer another explanation — that there was a gremlin from Saturn who posed as the risen Jesus and appeared to Paul. That’s an explanation, but is it the best? I’d say, no, it’s not a very good historical hypothesis — and neither is Carrier’s.”
“Why not?”
“Because at best it can only account for Paul’s belief that he had seen the risen Jesus. It doesn’t account for the conversion of the skeptic James, and it doesn’t account for the empty tomb. And it doesn’t explain the beliefs of the disciples that they had seen the risen Jesus. You’ve got to account for what changed them to the point where they were willing to suffer continuously and even die for their beliefs that they had seen the risen Jesus. So it’s a bad historical hypothesis.”
“Do you think that any of the psychological factors mentioned by Carrier could explain Paul’s sudden change of mind?”
“Paul himself is crystal clear about why he converted: he says he saw the risen Jesus,” Licona replied. “So we have his eyewitness testimony of what happened. On the other hand, what do we have for Carrier’s view? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it. Paul’s writings don’t indicate that he converted because he felt guilty or that he secretly admired Christians or that he had a disdain for his fellow Pharisees. This is pure conjecture and speculation on Carrier’s part. He’s reading things into the text that simply aren’t there.
“Besides, there’s something else Carrier is forgetting. Luke, who may have been Paul’s traveling companion, reports on Paul’s conversion in Acts 9, 22, and 26. In all three accounts, it says others were present when Paul encountered Jesus, and they either saw the light or heard the voice but didn’t understand it. So this was not merely a subjective experience that occurred in Paul’s head. Others were partakers in the experience, which would indicate it’s not the product of hallucination or some sort of epiphany.”
I jumped in. “Skeptics might object that Luke’s accounts contradict each other.”
“On the contrary, I think they can be harmonized,” he replied, “and don’t forget that Luke wrote all three of them. Why would he knowingly write contradictory accounts in the same book? We have to study how the ancients wrote. There might be different things that Luke was trying to emphasize in each of those passages. Frankly, I don’t think there are any major tensions between the three accounts that are going to call their credibility in question. What is certainly clear in all three accounts is that there were others with Paul at the time he saw Jesus who noted that phenomena too.
“If you accept what Acts says about Paul’s experience, then you can’t simply ignore what else Acts reports. For instance, in Acts 13 Paul says David died and was buried and his body decayed but Jesus died and was buried but his body didn’t decay. He said God raised Jesus. Thus, Paul believed in the bodily resurrection of the corpse of Jesus.”
“Hold on a minute,” I said. Licona’s emphasis on the bodily resurrection of Jesus prompted me to pursue a related line of questioning.
Physical or Spiritual Resurrection?
For years, skeptics and liberal scholars have sought to dilute the impact of the resurrection by attributing it to merely a spiritual experience rather than a physical phenomenon involving the material body of Jesus. For instance, Marcus Borg of the Jesus Seminar said he sees the post-Easter Jesus as “an experiential reality” and not as the “resuscitation” of a corpse.8
“Critics cite some of Paul’s own words to prove he saw an immaterial Jesus who had a spiritual resurrection, not a bodily one,” I said to Licona.
“In 1 Corinthians 15,” I continued, “Paul talks about the resurrection of the dead by saying in verse 44, ‘It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.’ Verse 50 says, ‘I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.’ Tabor says Paul equates his own ‘sighting’ of Jesus, which was ‘clearly visionary,’ with the other apostles — ‘possibly implying that their experiences were much like his.’9 Do these Corinthian passages indicate Paul’s encounter was visionary in nature rather than a bodily, corporeal resurrection?”
Obviously, this was a hot-button issue for Licona. He moved to the edge of the couch and his voice became more animated. “First let’s examine this term ‘flesh and blood,’ ” he said. “For the past thirty years, most experts have concluded that this term was an ancient figure of speech, probably a Semitism, that simply meant ‘a mortal being.’ That’s what it means every time it appears in the New Testament, the Septuagint, and throughout the Rabbinic literature. It’s kind of like when Americans call a person ‘cold blooded,’ ‘hot-blooded,’ or ‘red-blooded.’ They’re not referring to the temperature or color of their blood.
“Now, you can’t equate that with what Luke reports Jesus as saying when he appears to the disciples: ‘Hey, I’m not a ghost, because ghosts don’t have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’10 He said flesh and bones, not flesh and blood.”
“What about the way Paul contrasts the words natural and spiritual?” I asked.
“I recently analyzed each time these words appeared between the eighth century BC through the third century AD. These words have multiple definitions, but what’s really interesting, Lee, is that I never found a single instance in which the Greek word translated ‘natural’ meant ‘material’ or ‘physical.’ Never. Not once.
“It’s also important to see how Paul uses these terms elsewhere, especially in the same letter. A few chapters earlier, in 1 Corinthians 2:14 – 15, referring to spiritual truths, Paul writes that the ‘natural’ man rejects and cannot understand the things of God, because they are ‘spiritually’ discerned. But, he adds, ‘spiritual’ people understand them.
“So when we come to chapter 15, Paul gives a number of differences between our bodies. They’re sown in weakness, they’re raised in power. They’re sown in dishonor, they’re raised in glory. They’re sown perishable, they’re raised imperishable. They’re sown natural — bodies with all their fleshly and sinful desires and with hearts and lungs — but raised and transformed into a new body with spiritual appetites and empowered by God’s Spirit. There’s no thought about a contrast between physical versus spiritual.
“And here’s one other thing: if Paul had meant to draw a comparison between material versus immaterial, he had a better Greek word at his disposal, which he had already used a few chapters earlier with a similar analogy of sowing.11 He doesn’t use that word here, though. That’s more evidence that this has nothing to do with material versus immaterial. So to claim that Paul is saying that Christians will have an immaterial body in heaven is no longer sustainable.”
I raised a related issue. “Paul says in Galatians 1:16 that God was pleased ‘to reveal his Son in me.’12 Doesn’t that suggest that Jesus’ appearance to Paul was an inward or subjective experience rather than an objective reality?”
Licona frowned. “This is a difficult verse, I admit, because Paul doesn’t clarify what he means and the context doesn’t help us,” Licona replied. “And there’s no consensus among experts as to what this means. Some think it’s referring to the Damascus Road experience, and he’s referring to the inward illumination that coincided with the outward experience of encountering Jesus. Still others translate it as ‘to me’ instead of ‘in me.’ The Greek allows this, and this is the way Paul uses the term in 1 Corinthians 14:11. But we really don’t know.”
“In light of that, how do you employ responsible historical methodology here?” I asked.
“When we come across a passage with an ambiguous meaning, we’re required to interpret it according to other passages by the same person that are more clear. So if Paul is referring to a bodily resurrection elsewhere — as he does in at least three other places — then it’s irresponsible to translate this passage in a manner that has Paul contradicting himself.”
“So Paul is not saying this is merely a spiritual resurrection.”
“No, and I think the evidence is so obvious. In 1 Corinthians 15:20, Paul is clear that he regards Jesus’ resurrection as a model for our future resurrection. He says in Romans 8:11 that ‘he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.’ And he stresses in Philippians 3:21 that the Lord Jesus Christ ‘will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.’13
“Moreover, in 1 Corinthians 15:53 – 54, Paul states plainly that in resurrection our present perishable and mortal bodies will ‘put on’ the imperishable and immortal like a person puts on a sweater over clothing. It’s not an abandonment of the body but a further clothing that completely swallows up and transforms. As N. T. Wright shows in his book The Resurrection of the Son of God, when Jews talked about resurrection, they were talking about the resurrection of the corpse. This wasn’t something that happened just as a vision to Paul.
“One more thing,” he said. “We have to keep in mind that Paul’s experience came after Jesus’ ascension into heaven, so it would make sense that he describes it differently than the disciples, who encountered Jesus before he ascended. Even so, he still believed Jesus rose bodily. He makes that quite apparent.”
Hallucinations and Delusions
So far, I felt that Licona had adequately responded to challenges about Jesus’ appearance to Paul. But what about the other appearances of Jesus? As for Carrier, his position is quite forthright:
I believe the best explanation, consistent with both scientific findings and the surviving evidence . . . is that the first Christians experienced hallucinations of the risen Christ, of one form or another. . . . In the ancient world, to experience supernatural manifestations of ghosts, gods and wonders was not only accepted, but often encouraged.14
“Doesn’t this,” I pressed Licona, “neatly account for the appearances of Jesus?”
“First,” responded Licona, “I think we can note that ghosts, wonders, and gods aren’t unique to antiquity. People believe in the supernatural today too. In fact, that’s probably increasing.”
“Maybe that’s so,” I conceded. “But that doesn’t really mean anything in terms of what happened in the first century.”
“I agree,” he said. “Actually, I’d say if all we had was Jesus appearing to Peter, then maybe I’d buy into the hallucination theory.”
That admission startled me. “You would?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Licona stressed. “He’s grieving, he’s full of anxiety — maybe.”
That seemed like a significant concession to me. But Licona wasn’t finished. “But that’s not all we have,” he continued. “We’ve not only got multiple appearances to individuals, but we’ve got at least three appearances to groups of people. And a group of people isn’t going to all hallucinate the same thing at the same time.”
“Can you back that up?”
“I lived in Virginia Beach for fourteen years. Half the Navy Seals are stationed there, and I got to know a number of them. To become a Seal, they have to go through ‘hell week.’ They start Sunday night, and they go through Friday, during which they get maybe three to five hours of sleep the whole time. They’re being barked at continually, there’s high stress, they’re constantly exercising, and inevitably fatigue and sleep deprivation set in.
“About 80 percent of the guys hallucinate due to the lack of sleep. A lot of time they’re out on a raft doing an exercise called ‘around the world,’ where they go out in the ocean, around a buoy, and they come back to shore. They’re trying to be first because then they’ll be rewarded with rest. It’s at this time that many start seeing things.
“One Seal told me he actually believed he saw an octopus come out of the water and wave at him. Another guy believed that a train was coming across the water toward the raft. He’d point to it and the others would say, ‘Are you crazy? There are no trains out here in the ocean.’ He believed it so strongly that before what he perceived as the train hit him, he rolled into the ocean and they had to retrieve him.
“A Seal told me about another guy who was waving his oars wildly in the air. When he was asked what he was doing, he said, ‘I’m trying to hit the dolphins that are jumping over the boat.’ I asked the Seal, ‘Did you see the dolphins?’ He said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Did anyone else see the dolphins?’ He said, ‘No, they were busy having their own hallucinations!’
“You see, hallucinations aren’t contagious. They’re personal. They’re like dreams. I couldn’t wake up my wife in the middle of the night and say, ‘Honey, I’m dreaming of being in Hawaii. Quick, go back to sleep, join me in my dream, and we’ll have a free vacation.’ You can’t do that. Scientists will tell you that hallucinations are the same way.
“We’ve got three group appearances at least, so the hallucination theory doesn’t work. On top of that, hallucinations can’t account for the empty tomb. They can’t account for the appearance to Paul, because he wasn’t grieving — he was occupied with trying to destroy the church. And in the midst of that, he believes he sees the risen Jesus. James was a skeptic; he wasn’t in the frame of mind for hallucinations to occur either.”
I knew that Licona’s analysis of the hallucination theory was solid. According to psychologist Gary Collins, who was a university professor for more than two decades, authored dozens of books on psychology, and was the president of a national association of psychologists and counselors:
Hallucinations are individual occurrences. By their very nature only one person can see a given hallucination at a time. They certainly aren’t something which can be seen by a group of people. Neither is it possible that one person could somehow induce a hallucination in somebody else. Since a hallucination exists only in the subjective, personal sense, it is obvious that others cannot witness it.15
I decided to try another approach. “What about the idea that ‘groupthink’ could have taken over in those groups,” I asked. “Maybe people were suggestible and perhaps talked into seeing a vision.”
“At best, that only would account for the beliefs of the disciples that they had seen the risen Jesus. It would not account for the empty tomb, because then the body should still be in there. It would not account for the conversion of Paul, since it’s unlikely an opponent like him would be susceptible to groupthink. Same with the skeptic James. In fact, with the crucifixion of Jesus, James was probably all the more convinced that he was a failed Messiah, because he was hung on the tree and cursed by God.”16
I wasn’t ready to give up yet. “If these weren’t technically hallucinations, could these people have been deluded?” I asked. “You know — like Marshall Applewhite of the Church of Venus, who committed suicide with more than three dozen of his followers because they believed a spaceship hiding behind the Comet Hale-Bopp would pick them up.”
“You’re right — hallucinations and delusions aren’t the same,” Licona said. “A hallucination is a false perception of something that’s not there; a delusion is when someone persists in a belief after receiving conclusive evidence to the contrary. In the case of Applewhite, his followers were delusional. They persisted in their belief that they were seeing a spaceship behind the comet even after astronomers assured them they were actually seeing Mars.”
“Well, then,” I said, “we could postulate the theory that Peter saw a hallucination of Jesus and then he convinced the other disciples — he deluded them — into believing Jesus had risen from the dead.”
“Sorry,” came the reply. “That doesn’t account for all the facts. For example, it doesn’t account for the empty tomb, because the body would still be there, right? And it wouldn’t account for the conversion of Paul. Listen — you weren’t sucked in by the Church of Venus, were you, Lee? Most people weren’t. Paul, who’s opposing the church, wasn’t going to get sucked into believing Jesus returned from the dead, and neither was James. At best, the delusion theory could only conceivably account for why some of the disciples believed; it doesn’t account for most of the facts. So therefore it’s not a good historical theory.”
Deftly, using evidence and logic, Licona had deflected the biggest objections to the appearances of the risen Jesus that have been promoted by critics in recent years. His “minimal facts” — that Jesus’ disciples, the persecutor Paul, and the skeptic James believed they had encountered the risen Jesus — appeared to survive intact.
Still, there was the remaining issue of the burial place of Jesus: Was his tomb empty on the first Easter — and why?
Paul and the Empty Tomb
I began addressing the issue of the empty tomb by recapping to Licona the way that Carrier and Uta Ranke-Heinemann, a professor of the history of religion at the University of Essen in Germany, try to account for it.
“According to Carrier,” I said, “Paul didn’t believe in an empty tomb, because he believed Jesus had a spiritual body, which is why he never mentions the empty tomb. Later, Mark made up the empty tomb story — for him, it was not historical but symbolic, representing Jesus being freed from his corpse. According to Carrier, Jesus’ body was the empty tomb. Then legendary embellishment took over in Matthew, Luke, and John.17
“As for Ranke-Heinemann, she says the empty tomb’s legendary nature is proven because Paul, ‘the most crucial preacher of Christ’s resurrection and the earliest New Testament writer besides, says nothing about it. As far as Paul is concerned, it doesn’t exist.’ ”18 Lüdemann agrees: “If he had known about the empty tomb, he would certainly have referred to it in order to have an additional argument for the resurrection.”19
With that background, I said to Licona, “You believe the empty tomb is important enough to be included in your five minimal facts, right?”
“That’s right,” he said.
“Then if it’s important in building your case for the resurrection, why wouldn’t it be equally important for Paul in building his case?” I asked. “Why wouldn’t Paul have stressed it every bit as much as you did when he was trying to convince others that the resurrection was true?”
Licona looked a little perplexed that this issue was even coming up. “I don’t think he had to,” came his reply. “It is like when you say a baby died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. No one has to speak about an empty crib. It’s clearly implied.
“The ancient meaning of resurrection was the bringing back of a corpse to life and transforming it into an immortal body. Imagine saying to Paul, ‘If you believed in an empty tomb, why didn’t you mention it?’ Paul would have said, ‘Well, what do you think I meant when I said resurrection? You want me to spell it out for you? Of course, I mean an empty tomb!’
“The New Testament uses two different words for resurrection. One of them means to stand up again. The other means to raise up, and it’s used many times of waking up out of a sleep. Well, when you wake up out of a sleep, it’s not like you wake up into a new body or into no body at all. When you wake up out of a sleep and stand up again, you’re in your body and you stand up using the same body. This is the way it’s used when the synagogue ruler’s daughter was raised from the dead. She left behind an empty bed, not an empty body.”20
“Still,” I pressed, “why didn’t Paul specifically use the words ‘empty tomb’?”
For Licona, the answer was all too obvious. “It was unnecessary,” he said. “It would be redundant after he said, ‘resurrection.’ ”
“But can you blame people today for wishing Paul had been even more explicit?”
Licona shrugged. “Maybe the skeptics want to have it spelled out for them in the twenty-first century, but Paul was writing this in the first century. They all knew what resurrection meant. To them, Paul was plenty explicit. He’s clear in his own letters. Moreover, when Luke reports Paul stating in Acts 13:37 that Jesus’ body ‘did not see decay,’ readers surely understood that his physical body had been raised — and if the body was raised, the tomb was empty. This is early apostolic tradition.”
In the end, I had to admit: this made sense to me too.
The “Relocation Hypothesis”
I moved on to another current objection to the empty tomb: the “relocation hypothesis” championed by both Tabor and Jeffery Jay Lowder, whose attacks on the resurrection have proven popular on the Internet.
According to Lowder, “Jesus’ body was stored (but not buried) in Joseph’s tomb Friday before sunset and moved on Saturday night to a second tomb in the graveyard of the condemned, where Jesus was buried dishonorably.”21 Tabor asserts that someone — probably members of Jesus’ own family — removed the body from this “temporary grave” and reburied him elsewhere. He says the post-resurrection appearances were invented to compensate for the original ending of Mark’s gospel.22
I was curious how Licona would respond. “What’s your reaction?” I asked.
“Notice first that this is in contradiction to what Carrier says,” he replied. “Carrier says you need to account for the appearances, so Mark invented the empty tomb. Other critics are saying you’ve got an empty tomb due to reburial, so you’ve got to account for it by making up the appearances. Apparently, not even the skeptics can agree with each other!”
That was interesting — but it didn’t answer the question. “Yes or no?” I said, trying not to sound too impatient. “Does their theory pass muster as a historical hypothesis?”
“No, it doesn’t,” he answered.
“Why not?”
“Here’s the question we have to ask: Does it account for all the facts and do so without straining? At best, even if the reburial hypothesis were true, all it accounts for is the empty tomb. And interestingly, the empty tomb didn’t convince any of the disciples — possibly with the exception of John — that Jesus had returned from the dead. It was the appearances of Jesus that convinced them, and the reburial theory can’t account for these.
“It’s like with David Koresh in the 1990s. He predicted that when he died he would rise from the dead three years later. Well, he didn’t. But let’s suppose three years after the date of his death at Waco, some Branch Davidians said, ‘Hey, Koresh is back to life again.’ You go and check for his remains at the coroner’s office and they’re missing. Would you, as a Christian, abandon your faith and become a Branch Davidian because of that? Of course not. You’d say, “C’mon, the remains were moved, stolen, or misplaced.’
“Think about it: Why did Paul move from skepticism to faith? He said it was the appearances that led to his faith, not his faith that led to the appearances. The same with James. The appearances were the key — and, again, this theory fails to account for them.
“Besides, on a more mundane note, if the family moved the body, don’t you think somebody would have said something to straighten out the disciples when they were going around proclaiming a resurrection? And remember: the explanation for the empty tomb that was circulating at the time was that the disciples had stolen the body. If the body had merely been relocated, why didn’t somebody in authority point that out so they could squelch the Christian movement in its infancy?”
“What do you think of Tabor’s suggestion that he even knows where Jesus is buried — in the north, in Galilee outside the city of Tsfat?” I asked.
A look of exasperation came over Licona’s face. “First, this is based on his metaphysical naturalism, which says we know people can’t return from the dead and therefore if Jesus’ tomb was empty, the body must have been reburied. That’s the only logical explanation, according to Tabor. Again, that’s a product of his metaphysical assumptions, not because of an open-minded assessment of the historical evidence.
“Second, Tabor gets his information from a sixteenth-century Jewish mystic,” he said, his eyebrows raising. “Think about that! If Christians based their theory on what a sixteenth-century Christian reported, we would laugh at that person — and justifiably so. Now, believe me, I’m not laughing at Tabor — he’s certainly a credentialed scholar. But you can’t blame people for rejecting his theory. It’s just amazing to me that he would disregard the reports of the Gospels, which were all written in the first century, but be credulous of a single source written by a mystic some fifteen hundred years after Jesus.”
Licona’s analysis reminded me of the words of New Testament scholar Craig A. Evans, whom I had interviewed earlier:
I find it ironic that Tabor is willing to give credence to the vision of a sixteenth-century mystic and kabbalist, but is not willing to give credence to the vision of the first-century Saul of Tarsus. Saul did not believe Jesus was the Messiah and certainly did not believe that he had been raised from the dead — tomb or no tomb. Saul was hard at work trying to stamp out the new heresy. Then Saul met the risen Messiah. And we know the rest of the story. I’ll take Saul’s vision any day over [the sixteenth-century mystic’s]. I urge Tabor to do the same.23
The Jesus Tomb
What about another possibility referenced by Tabor in his book — that the “bone boxes” discovered in the Talpiot Tomb south of the old city of Jerusalem in 1980 once contained the skeletal remains of Jesus and his family?
Hollywood director James Cameron and filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici garnered widespread publicity with their 2007 Discovery Channel documentary in which they said archaeologists had found ossuaries etched with the names “Jesus, son of Joseph,” Joseh (or Joseph), Maria (or Mary), Matia (or Matthew), Mariamne Mara (which they claimed was Mary Magdalene), and “Judah, son of Jesus.” DNA tests indicated that the individual buried in the Jesus and Mary Magdalene ossuaries were not related through the same mother; the documentary suggested they had been married and had at least one child — Judah.
In his book, however, even Tabor conceded that Amos Kloner, the archaeologist who oversaw the tomb’s excavation, said that “the possibility of it being Jesus’ family [is] very close to zero,” and that Motti Neiger of the Israeli Antiquities Authority agreed “that chances of these being the actual burials of the holy family are almost nil.”24
I asked Licona whether any of the original archaeologists concluded that these ossuaries belonged to the biblical Jesus and his family.
“No,” came his answer. “They understood that nearly all of the names inscribed on the ossuaries were very common.”
“How common?”
“It appears that Mary was the most popular name during the time of Jesus. It’s estimated that one out of every four or five women in Jerusalem was named Mary. Joseph was the second most common male name in Jesus’ day, with about one out of every seven Jerusalem males being called that. One out of every eleven males was named Jesus, one out of ten was named Judah, and one in every twenty was named Matthew.”
“Still,” I said, “isn’t it significant that ossuaries with the names of Jesus, Joseph, and Mary happened to be found in the same tomb?”
“Well, certainly the potential for significance increases when you place together a specific combination of names, even common ones,” he replied. “As Cameron’s documentary said, finding the names of John, Paul, and George is no big deal, but when you add Ringo to the pool, you may have something. The problem, of course, is that when you really examine things, there’s no equivalent of ‘Ringo’ in the Talpiot tomb.
“According to calculations by physicist Randy Ingermanson,” he continued, “one out of every seventy-nine males in Jerusalem was ‘Jesus, son of Joseph.’25 Hershel Shanks and Ben Witherington III estimate that during the ninety-year period in which ossuaries were used — from 20 BC to AD 70 — there were about 80,000 males in Jerusalem. That means there were approximately 1,000 men named Jesus who had a father named Joseph.26 Ingermanson then considers the other names in the Talpiot tomb and calculates there were probably eleven men in Jerusalem during that period who fit the profile of the Jesus in the Talpiot tomb.
“So without taking anything else into consideration, there’s roughly a one in eleven, or nine percent, chance that the Talpiot tomb contained the biblical Jesus. But there’s a whole lot more to consider. In order for Jesus to qualify as one of the eleven, we must see what evidence there is that Jesus was married and had children or was single. And things get significantly worse for the Talpiot theorists when that is considered.”
“Is there any evidence that Jesus was, indeed, married to Mary Magdalene?”
“The evidence in the documentary starts with the Acts of Philip, which is where Mary is supposedly first referred to as Mariamne. But the text doesn’t actually say ‘Mariamne’ like the ossuary does; it refers to ‘Mariamme.’ Mariamme in the Acts of Philip is only identified as the sister of Philip, and there’s no hint in the text whatsoever that she’s married to Jesus or has a child. In fact, the text seems to demand celibacy. The main character, Philip, tells converts to Christianity to leave their spouses and live a life of sexual abstinence.”27
“In any event,” I said, “nobody thinks the Acts of Philip is historically reliable, do they?”
“The text dates from the fourth century,” Licona said. “Even if some of its traditions go back to the second century, that’s still long after the canonical Gospels. In their book The Jesus Family Tomb, Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino cite both the Gospel of Philip and the Gospel of Mary as suggesting that Jesus may have been romantically involved with Mary Magdalene, but these writings post-date the New Testament. No widely respected scholar holds that they contain any historically reliable information about Jesus or his followers. On top of that, these texts don’t even claim that Jesus and Mary were married or had a child.”
“Is there any evidence that Jesus was single?”
“Absolutely!” he declared. “Even though there’s no obvious reason why the Messiah needed to be single, our four earliest biographies of Jesus, written within seventy years of his life, present him that way. And Paul didn’t mention Jesus as having been married when it certainly would have been to his advantage to do so.”
“For instance . . .,” I prompted him.
“When writing to the church in Corinth, he affirms he has the right to have a Christian wife accompany him, like the rest of the apostles, the Lord’s brothers, and Peter.28 If Jesus had been married, surely Paul would have added his name as his primary example. Paul’s silence is a deafening shout pertaining to Jesus’ marital status.”
“Do you believe the ossuary labeled ‘Mariamne Mara’ belongs to Mary Magdalene?”
“It’s extremely unlikely, since Mary Magdalene doesn’t appear to have been referred to anywhere as ‘Mariamne.’ In addition, while ‘Mara’ could possibly mean ‘the great’ or ‘Lord,’ it could easily be short for ‘Martha.’ Without a Mary Magdalene in the Talpiot tomb, Cameron’s proposal collapses — in short, there’s no ‘Ringo.’ ”
I asked, “How about the DNA evidence that Cameron presented?”
“Something the team neglected to mention is that even though there were ten ossuaries discovered in the tomb back in 1980, as many as thirty-five were buried there. So this tomb probably included extended family members. Mariamne could just as likely have been Jesus’ cousin, aunt, grandmother on his father’s side, half-sister from a previous marriage of his father, niece, or daughter-in-law.”
“So what’s your conclusion about the Jesus tomb?” I asked.
“Cameron’s opening words in The Jesus Family Tomb provide a hint about what we can expect throughout the book: ‘What if Jesus didn’t exist at all? Today many experts are saying exactly that.’29 Well, that’s ridiculous. It merely shows how out of touch Cameron is with scholarship.
“Sure, there are some self-proclaimed experts on the Internet who claim Jesus never existed, but these aren’t scholars with academic credentials. Only a very small handful of legitimate scholars, such as the skeptic Robert Price, suggest they wouldn’t be surprised if Jesus never existed, but even Price falls short of asserting Jesus never lived.
“The arguments that the Talpiot tomb contained the remains of the biblical Jesus are extremely weak. And besides, don’t forget all the persuasive affirmative evidence that I’ve already cited for Jesus rising from the dead.”
Indeed, Cameron’s documentary sparked an onslaught of criticism from knowledgeable scholars. “Almost no one agrees that the name Mariamne refers to Mary Magdalene, or that Mara means ‘Lady’ or ‘Master,’ as though it were a title of honor,” Evans told me in an email. “It is, rather, an abbreviation of Martha, which is attested in other inscriptions.” Given its Greek form, he said the etching on the ossuary could very well be read as: “Mariamne’s (daughter) Mara (or Martha).” Others translate it as: “[Ossuary] of Mariamne (who is also called) Mara.”
As far as the DNA is concerned, Evans said, “Ossuaries often contained more than one skeleton in them, so there is some question whether the tested bone fragments actually match the names inscribed on the ossuaries.”
Historian Paul Maier was blunt in describing the Jesus Tomb: “This is merely naked hype, baseless sensationalism, and nothing less than a media fraud.”30 In the end, the public seemed to agree. A Zogby poll showed that among those with or without knowledge of the documentary, there was absolutely no difference in the percentage who believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus.31
Producing Jesus’ Body
One way Christians often defend the empty tomb is to say that if the grave still contained Jesus’ body, then the authorities could have paraded it down Main Street in Jerusalem and thus killed the incipient Christian movement. In fact, Licona had used a similar argument.
But is that really true? After all, the disciples’ public proclamation about the resurrection came some seven weeks after the crucifixion, when Peter declared to a crowd of several thousand people in Jerusalem: “God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it.”32
Price suggests the disciples were “shrewd enough” to wait this long so that “disconfirmation had become impossible.” He said that after fifty days “it would have been moot to produce the remains of Jesus.”33 Agreed Lowder: “The body would have been far too decomposed to be identified without modern forensics.”34
Licona was incredulous. “Price thinks the disciples were being shrewd to wait until the corpse was unrecognizable?” he asked. “They were laying their lives on the line! Why would they plot and scheme this way so their reward would be continual suffering, even to the point of death? That doesn’t add up.”
“What about recognizing the body?” I asked.
“I talked to three coroners from Louisiana, Virginia, and California about whether a body would be recognizable after fifty days. All agreed that even in a humid climate, you would still be able to recognize a body somewhat — at least in stature, the hair, and possibly the wounds.
“Now, had you been able to go back to Jesus’ tomb after fifty days and seen a severely decomposed body of the same stature as Jesus and with the same hair, and possibly note wounds consistent with scourging and crucifixion, enough doubt would have been put into enough minds that subsequent Christian apologists would have had to address why there was a great exodus of believers at that point. But we have no record of any such thing.
“In other words, if the authorities had claimed this was Jesus, then the burden of proof would have shifted. The onus would have been on the disciples to disprove it. Nobody needed to see all his facial features; merely producing a severely decomposed body from the right tomb and with the right stature and hair type would have put the disciples on the defensive. Their movement would have been greatly undermined. But of course, there’s absolutely no historical evidence to suggest this happened.”
“A Divine Miracle”
Try as they might, the skeptics still couldn’t put Jesus’ body back in his tomb. Time after time, what sounded like a knockout objection had been successfully overcome by Licona’s explanations.
Challenge the post-Easter appearances of Jesus and you’ve still got the empty tomb. Theorize that Jesus’ body was moved to an undisclosed location and you’re still faced with the appearances that revolutionized the disciples, Paul, and James. The hallucination theory might work with Peter, but not Paul, James, or groups of people. Alternate scenarios that seemed credible from a distance unraveled at an alarming rate when examined up close.
The five minimal facts — themselves just a skeleton of an even more robust case that could have been made for the resurrection by using the broader Gospel accounts — remained intact. “The rational man,” said Craig, “can hardly now be blamed if he infers that at the tomb of Jesus on that early Easter morning a divine miracle has occurred.”35
I drained the remainder of my glass of water and settled deeper into the couch. Licona and I had talked for a long time; the sun had shifted so it was no longer flooding the room. He had answered the historical questions well, but there were still a couple of other issues I wanted to cover.
“How would you respond to Carrier when he makes this observation: ‘Why on earth would a God, who wanted to save all mankind, only appear to a few hundred, most unnamed, people and then give up? Wouldn’t it be much more efficient and effective . . . to bypass the apostolate and just appear to everyone?’ ”36
Licona’s eyes narrowed as he thought. “That’s not really a historical issue,” he said.
“I know — but what do you think?”
Licona deliberated a little longer. “Whatever reason God had for doing it that way, it worked,” he said finally. “Nearly a third of the world today claims to be Christian. And I think it’s just like the Christian God to use the weak to trump the strong, and the fools to shame the wise. It would be just like that God to take the few and the obscure to influence the masses. Now, because of that, the world has been turned upside down.”
“What about you personally?” I asked. “Are you at the point where you never doubt anymore?”
Licona’s reply was candid. “Yeah, I still have periods when I experience some doubt — in a way, that’s my personality,” he said. “Sometimes I still wonder, ‘Am I looking at these arguments as objectively as I can?’ I’m always trying to neutralize my biases. When someone raises an objection, most of the time I’m not trying to think of a refutation. I’m trying to understand and internalize the argument — to grant its full weight. I try to feel it as the person who holds it feels it. And that will cause some doubts, because I’m sort of experiencing what they’re experiencing.”
“What do you do then?”
“I look at the data. I try to apply responsible historical methodology,” he said. “And I always come back to the resurrection.”
Over and over, Michael Licona ultimately finds it convincing: a very real event of history that validates the divinity of the real Jesus.
Bridging the Gap
“Nonsense.”
More than any other word, that sums up Lüdemann’s assessment of the bodily resurrection of Jesus. To this spiritually skeptical professor at the University of Göttingen in Germany, it’s outside the realm of possibility. “If you say that Jesus rose from the dead biologically, you would have to presuppose that a decaying corpse — which is already cold and without blood in its brain — could be made alive again,” he said. “I think that is nonsense.”37
Surely it’s not something an elite scientist could embrace — especially one who’s also a physician and thoroughly acquainted with human anatomy. Yet the reality of the resurrection, which transformed skeptics like Paul and James in the first century, continues to radically redirect lives today — even of tough-minded scientists.
For example, few researchers in America have achieved the professional acclaim of Francis S. Collins. As a medical doctor with a doctorate in chemistry, he was appointed by President Clinton to head the Human Genome Project, which successfully decoded the three billion genes of human DNA. He also has helped discover the genetic anomalies that lead to cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis, and Huntington’s disease. I’ve had the pleasure of exchanging emails with him from time to time.
For much of his early life, Collins was an atheist, looking at Jesus as “a myth, a fairy tale, a superhero in a ‘just-so’ bedtime story.” Then the faith of some of his desperately ill patients prompted him to investigate spiritual issues. Eventually, it was the universal existence of right and wrong — the Moral Law — that led him to believe in an ”infinitely good and holy” God — and which, in contrast, brought him face-to-face with his own failings, selfishness, and pride.
Turning to history, he was amazed at the evidence for Jesus of Nazareth. The four Gospels, he found, were written within decades of Jesus’ death. They were clearly rooted in the testimony of eyewitnesses. They had been passed through the centuries with great fidelity. And, of course, they describe Jesus rising bodily from the dead.
Can a rational scientist believe in such “nonsense”? This was, conceded Collins, “difficult stuff.” In the end, though, came this epiphany: “If Christ really was the Son of God, as He explicitly claimed, then surely of all those who had ever walked the earth, He could suspend the laws of nature if He needed to do so to achieve a more important purpose.”
For Collins, this was more than just a historical curiosity. “The crucifixion and resurrection also provided something else,” he said in his 2006 bestseller The Language of God.
“My desire to draw close to God was blocked by my own pride and sinfulness, which in turn was an inevitable consequence of my own selfish desire to be in control,” he said. “Now the crucifixion and resurrection emerged as the compelling solution to the gap that yawned between God and myself, a gap that could now be bridged by the person of Jesus Christ.”38
That is what the real — and resurrected — Jesus does.
For Further Investigation
More Resources on This Topic
Bowman, Robert M., Jr., and J. Ed Komoszewsi. Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel, 2007.
Copan, Paul, and Ronald K. Tacelli, eds. Jesus’ Resurrection: Fact or Figment? Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2000.
Habermas, Gary R., and Antony G. N. Flew. Resurrected? An Atheist and Theist Dialogue. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.
——— , and Michael R. Licona. The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel, 2004.
Licona, Michael R. Paul Meets Muhammad: A Christian-Muslim Debate on the Resurrection. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 2006.
Strobel, Lee. The Case for Christ. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1998.
Swinburne, Richard. The Resurrection of God Incarnate. Oxford: Oxford Press, 2003.
Wright, N. T. The Resurrection of the Son of God. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003.