Eyewitnesses and the Resurrection

KEVIN HARRIS: Bill, this atheist blogger has apparently been reading up on Christian apologetics. In fact, he interacts with your work quite a bit. I find myself reading his articles and bringing them to the podcast because he really tries to interact with your work. His objections are, in this article^[1], (1) he claims the Gospel writers were not eyewitnesses and (2) the women at the tomb story is problematic. First he says,

Many Christian apologists insist that the resurrection was documented by eyewitnesses. Their motivation makes sense—the resurrection is the punch line of the Jesus story, and the authors can’t simply be passing along a popular yarn. Only eyewitness authors could be credible.

We must start by agreeing on what it means to witness a man’s resurrection from the dead. You must (1) see him alive, then (2) see him dead, then (3) see him alive again. This is obvious, I realize, but you’ll soon see where this is missing in the gospels.

What do you think about his requirements here for being an eyewitness of Jesus’ resurrection?

DR. CRAIG: Let me say first of all that Bob Seidensticker (I love that last name – such a good German name!) has a very naive understanding of the case for the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. I don't know of any prominent exponent of the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection who would base it upon the Gospel writers being eyewitnesses to these events. Bob's statement “Only eyewitness authors could be credible” is outrageously naive and patently false. Just to give one example Arrian and Plutarch are ancient historians who wrote The Life of Alexander the Great, and they did so hundreds of years after Alexander's death. And yet classical scholars regard these biographies of the life of Alexander as largely credible historically accurate accounts of the life of Alexander the Great. So it's just patently false what Bob says that only eyewitness authors are credible. But having said that, what about his conditions to being an eyewitness in this peculiar sense? He says you've got to see the person alive then you've got to see him dead then you've got to see him alive again. I don't think condition one is necessary. To be a witness of a resurrection all you have to do is to see the person dead and then see him alive again and that would be sufficient for being a witness of his resurrection. But I would go even further than that. I don't think it's even enough or required to see him dead if you see him alive again and you know that he was dead. If you have good grounds for thinking that this person was killed or died and then you see him alive again that would give you good grounds for thinking he's risen from the dead. And that would be enough to say that you're an eyewitness of his resurrection.

KEVIN HARRIS: OK. Next he quotes the Gospel of Matthew. Quoting,

. . . “Then all the disciples deserted him and fled” (Matthew 26:56b). The next day Jesus was crucified, and “Many women were there, watching from a distance” (Matt. 27:55) including Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph. There were men present—Roman guards and passersby who insulted Jesus—but no disciples.

With no male disciples to observe the crucifixion, this eyewitness claim fails in point 2 above: you must see him dead if you want to later claim a resurrection. Matthew doesn’t even claim any disciples at the empty tomb. Note also that it’s modern Christians who claim that Matthew was an eyewitness; that gospel never makes that claim.

Your response?

DR. CRAIG: Well, I would say that disciples did see the crucifixion and burial and resurrection of Jesus. They were female disciples of Jesus. When Bob speaks of “the disciples” he means members of the group of the twelve who had fled from the Garden of Gethsemane. But even the twelve had every reason to think that Jesus was dead. The Romans could be relied upon to crucify a person and ensure that he was dead especially with the Jewish Sabbath looming. The Jewish sensibility would not allow people to remain on the cross alive on the Sabbath and therefore the legs of the victims would be broken so that they would expire quickly. So the disciples, I think, had every reason in the world to think that Jesus had perished. I wonder if Bob is trying to resuscitate the apparent death theory here. Is he saying, no, Jesus only apparently died? Maybe the disciples were wrong? As long as Jesus really died on the cross and the disciples had good grounds for thinking so then their seeing him alive later on would be evidence that he was resurrected.

KEVIN HARRIS: He continues,

But what about the women? They were there. The two Marys saw the crucifixion, they saw Jesus die, they saw the burial in the stone tomb, they saw the empty tomb, and they saw the risen Jesus. They were part of the inner circle, and surely their word was good enough.

He refers to you, Gary Habermas, Greg Koukl, and Frank Turek all using the criterion of embarrassment; that is,

why say something embarrassing about yourself unless it’s true? If women witnessing the empty tomb is embarrassing (because they’re unreliable) but that story element is still in each gospel, doesn’t that point to it being true?

This is a criterion that professional historians recognize, right?

DR. CRAIG: Right. This point isn't original with me. I got it from the scholar E. L. Bode in his work on the empty tomb where he pointed out that in a patriarchal culture the witness of women was not highly regarded. They weren't permitted to serve as witnesses in a Jewish court of law according to Josephus. So any later legendary account or fabrication would certainly make male disciples discover the tomb of Jesus empty. It would have Peter or John perhaps go to the tomb and find the tomb empty. But not women whose witness would be discounted in that patriarchal Jewish culture. I have to say that this argument more than I think any other has caused a reversal of opinion among New Testament scholars with respect to the facticity of the empty tomb. Compared to back in the 1940s when skepticism about the empty tomb was rampant, by far and away the majority of historical Jesus scholars today would affirm the historicity of the empty tomb, and they would do so on the basis of this criterion of embarrassment and the role of the women in discovering the tomb empty. So Bob is quite wrong when he portrays this as the conclusion of naive apologists. This is the widespread majority view of professional New Testament historians today.

KEVIN HARRIS: This seems to be his chief claim in the article. Bob says,

It turns out that women being the sole witnesses at the tomb is not at all embarrassing. In fact, it’s the only way discovering the empty tomb makes sense in a culture where caring for the dead was women’s work, but let’s ignore that as well and watch the apologists dig their hole deeper.

DR. CRAIG: Now, if I might interrupt at this point. What he just said is false. It is not true that Jewish culture was one where caring for the dead was women's work particularly for the disposal of criminals’ bodies. Notice that it is a delegate of the Sanhedrin (the Jewish court), Joseph of Arimathea, who takes charge of the disposal of Jesus’ body. This is in common practice with the Jewish treatment of condemned criminals. They would needed to have been buried and interred before nightfall. So the account is very credible with respect to how the body of Jesus was treated. And anyone could come then later to the gravesite and visit it. Women, or especially family members of the deceased, could come and view the body, anoint it with oils. This wasn't something that was reserved just for women.

KEVIN HARRIS: He continues,

These apologists insist that women were seen as unreliable witnesses. This means that they can’t argue that while the author of Matthew wasn’t technically an eyewitness, that’s unimportant because he trusted the women’s report. They’ve left Matthew with no authority from which to document the most important (and least believable) part of the gospel.

DR. CRAIG: I don't think that Bob understands how the criterion of embarrassment works. We today can regard the women's witness as reliable even if people in that patriarchal Jewish culture did not. We see now in hindsight that in fact this is a credible report. As I say, any legendary report or fabrication would make male disciples play this critical role of being the chief witnesses to the fact of the empty tomb. So, as I say, this has shifted the opinion among historical Jesus scholars today because of the key role played by the women in the discovery of the empty tomb.

KEVIN HARRIS: Finally, Bob writes,

Another reason to discount Matthew as an eyewitness is that that book liberally copies from Mark, the first gospel. More than half of Matthew comes from Mark. Why would an eyewitness account copy from someone else rather than give his own version . . . unless it wasn’t an eyewitness account?

. . .

Mark also shares the problems of Matthew. The author wasn’t an eyewitness to the death or resurrection, and the apologists’ own “women are unreliable” argument prevents the author from using them as reliable sources. Mark adds a unique problem: with its abrupt ending, how did anyone learn of the story since the women kept it to themselves?

A couple of things to respond to there.

DR. CRAIG: Yeah. First of all, I've already emphasized that the argument for the historicity of the empty tomb or Jesus’ resurrection doesn't depend on Matthew's being an eyewitness. Rather, it depends upon the reliability of the traditions that Matthew hands on. And one of the most important criteria for historicity is to have multiple independent attestation of a fact. With respect to the empty tomb, as I've shown, we have in the traditions behind the Gospels (which these authors mediate) multiple independent attestation to the fact of the empty tomb. Now, as for Mark's account, the fact that the Gospel ends as we have it today with verse 8 – that they ran from the tomb in fear and trembling and said nothing to anyone – doesn't mean, I think, obviously that the women never, ever told anybody about what happened when they visited the tomb that Sunday morning. The knowledge of Jesus’ empty tomb was a publicly inspectable fact in Jerusalem after this. It simply meant that the women didn't tell anybody as they fled to return to the disciples where they were staying and to tell them what they had experienced just as we read in the other Gospels. So I think that Bob has seriously misunderstood Mark's intent here.

KEVIN HARRIS: As we conclude, Bob just wants to find some glitches in the story. He wants to eliminate the resurrection of Jesus which, as he says, is the punchline of the Jesus story. I would encourage him to read your work, Gary Habermas’ work, and the work on it. He's got his work cut out for him and a lot of material to cover to deal with his work. But don't just go with these little superficial things. If you want to know about it (the criterion of embarrassment and these things), dig into the work.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. I think you're absolutely right. When I went off to Germany to do my doctoral studies under Wolfhart Pannenberg I had some basic knowledge of what I would call a sort of Josh McDowell apologetic for the resurrection. Who stole the body? I had no idea of the depth of the historical evidence for the facts of the empty tomb, the post-mortem appearances, and the transformation of the first disciples. Nor did I have any idea that this was in fact the widespread majority opinion of New Testament scholars today whether liberal or conservative, Jewish or Christian, or secular. The case for the resurrection of Jesus is much, much stronger than Bob imagines, and he needs to do himself a favor and acquaint himself with the work of people like those you mentioned as well as N. T. Wright, Dale Allison, Michael Licona, and others rather than offer these sort of sophomoric refutations.

KEVIN HARRIS: Thank you, Bill. See you on the next podcast.^[2]