We can be certain of NO resurrection - A Response

[Ben Davis]

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Earlier this month, atheist blogger Daniel Baxter posted at his site, Aractus Puphlicus, an entry entitled, "We can be certain of NO resurrection", in which he asks a number of questions and raises some objections which he feels are strong reasons to reject the resurrection of Jesus as historical fact.

In this thread, I would like to respond to these questions and objections in order to illustrate their insufficiency for justifying such a conclusion.

Baxter will be quoted and in black; my reply will be in blue.

We Can Be Certain of NO Resurrection
By Daniel Baxter
http://blog.aractus.com/we-can-be-certai...urrection/

The cornerstone of Christianity is the resurrection of their apocalyptic patriarch Jesus. Jesus actually had much less to do with Christianity than you might think. Paul was significantly more influential to the birth and spread of Christianity as we know it than Jesus was. And not Just Paul – John the Baptist, Simeon Peter, and James the Just all may have been more influential than Jesus himself was. Two entries ago I showed you that it was James Peter and Paul who changed the rules in 50AD – 20 years after Jesus had died. Many Christians argue that “Jesus changed the Old Testament order”, but Jesus does no such thing. Jesus in fact says in Matthew 5:17-18 “Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be accomplished.” Most Christians don’t even know what a Jot or Tittle is. Jot is the smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and sometimes you see this translated as ‘iota’ as if Jesus is talking about Greek – when in fact he is clearly talking about Hebrew. Tittles are tiny marks at the ends of Hebrew letters – they aren’t found in Greek or other scripts. So this statement that Jesus gives in Matthew 5:17-18 is very strongly in support of keeping the Law of Moses – it couldn’t be much stronger. It wasn’t Jesus that said you don’t have to keep the covenant of circumcision – that was James 20 years later. It wasn’t Jesus that said you can eat meat with blood in it – that was Paul 25 years later.

“But there was an empty tomb” … seems to be the strongest arguments Christians have for the historicity of the resurrection. The priest at my ex-church would always proclaim that Christians can be certain of the resurrection historically because it was the only logical and sensible explanation for why the tomb was empty three days later. His argument was that if the Romans stole it then they would have displayed it publicly to put an end to the rumours of resurrection and break the spirit of his followers. That argument is probably fair enough. If the Jews stole it they would have done the same thing. And if the disciples stole it then why would they believe in a resurrection? And why would they risk breaking the Roman Seal (an offence punishable by death) to steal the dead body of their saviour? How would they have overcome the Roman guard? They didn’t have the means or the opportunity or the motive to pull off such a stunt. And finally he, and many other Christian leaders and apologists would make the claim that there is overwhelming historical evidence to prove the resurrection of Jesus.

You have laid out the arguments that Christians might make for believing the resurrection reasonably well. The empty tomb is one of five minimal facts that are accepted by nearly all New Testament scholars, and while it may or may not be the strongest of the group, the empty tomb does raise a few questions that must be answered by the skeptics. I’m pleased to see that you agree that the arguments made by believers are “fair enough”. Let’s take a look at the “problems” which you have with these arguments.

Here are the problems. Firstly we know nothing about the man who took the body in the first place and who owned the tomb: Joseph of Arimathea.

Actually, we do know a few things:

1. 1. he was a wealthy man (cf. Mt 27:57)
   
2. 2. he was a member of the Jewish ruling council (Mk 15:43)
   
3. 3. he was a secret disciple of Jesus (cf. Mt 27:57, Jn 19:38)
   
4. 4. he asked Pilate for the body of Jesus (cf. Mt 27:58)
   
5. 5. he buried Jesus by wrapping Jesus’ body in a linen cloth, placing it in his own tomb (caved out of rock) and rolling a stone over the entrance. (Mt 27:59-60)
   

It could simply be that Joseph had the body taken out of his tomb and put elsewhere – in an ossuary, or in a grave, or maybe he had the body embalmed, or perhaps even cremated.

Since Pilate knew that JoA had asked for the body, doesn’t it seem likely that once the disciples began to claim that Jesus was raised from the dead, Joseph, a member of the ruling council, would have been the FIRST person that the Jews and the Romans would have wanted to interrogate? Joseph was a disciple, but what reason would he have had to hide the body from the authorities or to lie about how he disposed of it? The Jews believed in the coming of a messiah—but not one that would be hanged on a tree.

Maybe he handed the body over to the family of Jesus and they did one of those things – on Sunday evening before the morning and before it was “discovered empty”.

I presume you meant Saturday evening (after the Sabbath had ended). If Joseph did give the body to Jesus’ family or hide the body from the authorities, then there is the question of whether a conspiracy of such magnitude could be maintained. This is unlikely.

It’s even possible that the disciples went to the wrong tomb.

Unlikely. Mary Magdalen, Mary the mother of Joses and Nicodemus were all present at the burial. If the disciples HAD gone to the wrong tomb and begun proclaiming that Jesus was alive, the Jewish authorities only had to follow JoA to his own tomb, remove the stone which would still be securely in place, and look in to see the body still inside.

Maybe a grave-robber took the body for the jewellery or other valuables that had been placed in the tomb alongside Jesus. He was buried in a wealthy person’s tomb and the tomb was guarded by the Roman guard – so they must have been guarding it for a good reason.

There is no account of “jewellery (sic) or other valuables” being placed in the tomb. Jesus was buried in haste because the Sabbath was approaching quickly at sunset.

But assuming that the grave robber was unaware of this, how would the robber have slipped past this Roman guard, moved the stone without waking any of them (assuming they were caught napping), and robbed the grave undetected?

Further, if the robber was aware of the fact that someone had been buried in the “wealthy person’s tomb”, would they not also have known that the body belonged to a man crucified that very day? And how much wealth would be expected from a crucified criminal?

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I will continue with the rest of Baxter's blog soon.

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Hi Randy,

I know you're addressing the blog directly but for me it's far more simple: no-one survives total brain death. Never, in recorded medical history, has there been a verifiable case of 'someone coming back from the dead'. In fact, we can demonstrate that the closer a person is to total brain death (i.e. the longer the amount of time spent with no brain activity before resuscitation), the greater the damage done to the brain and the greater the chance of physical & mental handicap when revived. There's no reason to accept the proposition that someone was 'resurrected'.

But let's, for a moment, follow your assumption that Jesus was resurrected. What does that tell us, in the context of the bible as the only 'record' of the event. Well, I like what Chris Hitchens had to say about it:

Nor, if I was to see him executed one day and see him walking the streets the next, would that show that his father was God or his mother was a virgin or that his teachings were true, especially given the commonplace nature of resurrection at that time and place. After all, Lazarus was raised, never said a word about it. The daughter of Jairus was raised, didn’t say a thing about what she’d been through. And the Gospels tell us that at the time of the crucifixion all the graves in Jerusalem opened and their occupants wandered around the streets to greet people. So it seems resurrection was something of a banality at the time. Not all of those people clearly were divinely conceived. So I’ll give you all the miracles and you’ll still be left exactly where you are now, holding an empty sack.