Bible narratives as evidence for the resurrection of Jesus
A few months ago I was watching a debate about the resurrection of Jesus between Nathaniel Walters and my colleague Dean Meadows (we are/were both students of the MA program in Christian Apologetics at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University). One part that struck me right in the beginning of Nathaniel’s opening statement was the following: “the Bible is not evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, it is the claim.” [1] It was argued that we should, then, look for contemporary extra-biblical accounts to determine if the claims made in the Bible are historically correct. For example, later when Dean mentions that 1 Corinthians 15 is evidence for the resurrection as it presents a very early creed about its facts, Nathaniel rebuts again by saying the Bible is the claim, but not the evidence (around the 53:00 mark). I will not focus on any other arguments presented by Nathaniel during this debate, but rather if this affirmation makes sense considering aspects of philosophy of history and historiography.
First, we should try to define history or historical enquiry. The Stanford Philosophy Encyclopedia says: “historians are interested in providing conceptualizations and factual descriptions of events and circumstances in the past.” [2] Similar to this, historiography is related to the methods used by those historians in this process, and philosophy of history is related to how do we gain knowledge about these events and circumstances in the past. It is important to acknowledge in our study of the resurrection of Jesus what New Testament scholar Michael Licona notes, and this probably helps us to decide if the Bible narratives are just the claims or the actual evidence:
“There are numerous challenges to knowing the past. Since the past is forever gone, it can neither be viewed directly nor reconstructed precisely or exhaustively. Accordingly historians cannot verify the truth of a hypothesis in an absolute sense. Our knowledge of the past comes exclusively through sources. This means that, to an extent, our only link to the past is through the eyes of someone else, a person who had his or her own opinion and agendas.” [3]
Even with all these problems, it is important to observe that we do think that we know the past in our day-to-day lives. For example, we have no reason to doubt that Aristotle was a Greek philosopher of 4th century BC, or even that he was a tutor to a young Macedonian who would be known as Alexander the Great. If we are too strict in our doubts towards historical knowledge (that is often true when we are talking about Jesus), we must be willing to deny that we can know that Aristotle or Alexander existed: “the inability to obtain absolute certainty does not prohibit historians from having adequate certainty.” [4]
That’s where we get to the discussion about claims and evidence. In order to have confidence that certain events happened, a historian needs to collect evidence from some sources and build up their argument from those. I think the confusion from Nathaniel when he says “the Bible is not evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, it is the claim” starts from treating the Bible as a whole entity, which was not the case in the first century when each of its books were being written. Then, we are suggested to use extra-biblical sources in order to corroborate to what the Bible is saying. In order to avoid the confusion made by Nathaniel, I would try to define our terms in different ways:
- “Jesus rose from the dead” is the hypothesis we are trying to analyze;
- On that debate, the Christian side was also claiming that “Jesus rose from the dead,” and they were using first and second century sources as evidence for this claim.
- At the same time, for example, it is true that the gospel of Matthew claims that Jesus was buried in Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb (Matthew 27:57–61) and the gospel of Mark claims that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome were the first ones to visit the tomb (Mark 16:1–8).
Who was right in the debate discussion, then? Is it correct to affirm that the Bible is not evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, but just the claim? It’s complicated. While you can see each gospel as claiming some things about the death and resurrection of Jesus, it is also true that multiple sources from the first and second century writing that Jesus rose from the dead is evidence to this fact actually happening in the past. In other words, the Bible can be seen as evidence and also as claim that Jesus rose from the dead.
From a philosophy of history and historiography perspective, our final goal is to decide which event from the past actually happened. “What actually happened” can sometimes be called “a historical fact.” One of the main methods used by historians is called “arguments to the best explanation.” In this case, instead of discussing whether the gospel narratives should be considered claims or evidence, we should gather all the narratives from this first and second centuries period, sorted by their reliability, and use some criteria to decide how to best explain them. I really like the criteria suggested by Michael Licona:
“Explanatory scope: This criterion looks at the quantity of facts accounted for by the hypothesis. …
Explanatory power: This criterion looks at the quality of the explanation of the facts. …
Plausibility: The hypothesis must be implied to a greater degree and by a greater variety of accepted truths (or background knowledge) than other hypotheses. …
Less ad hoc: A hypothesis possesses an ad hoc component when it enlists non evidenced assumptions, that is, when it goes beyond what is already known. …
Illumination: Sometimes a hypothesis provides a possible solution to other problems without confusing other areas held with confidence. …” [5]
Given the fact that Matthew wrote about Jesus being buried in Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb; given the fact that Paul wrote about the early church creed in 1 Corinthians 15; given that Luke wrote about the apostles willing to die for their faith; and so on: is the hypothesis that Jesus rose from the dead the best explanation after considering the criteria defined above? That’s the question we should be trying to answer. Unfortunately, most of the debates about the resurrection of Jesus do not define their terms beforehand and both sides are talking different languages the whole time. It would be nice if people could agree on some of these definitions beforehand. I was not trying to convince anyone about the resurrection, but rather trying to help us to have better debates between Christians and skeptics in the future. I hope this can actually help!
So, what did you think about my explanation? This is a different type of post here, i.e. it’s not a book review / summary, but it actually uses as base the book “The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach,” by Michael Licona. I will have two more posts on the topic of the resurrection soon. I hope you have enjoyed reading this and please post your questions below.
[1] “Was the Resurrection of Jesus a Historical Event? A Debate between Nathaniel Walters & Dean Meadows,” accessed Oct 12th, 2019, https://youtu.be/UyynQemKegE?t=1629.
[2] “Philosophy of History,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, accessed Oct 12th, 2019, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/history/.
[3] Michael R. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010), 31.
[4] Ibid, 69.
[5] Ibid, 109–111.
