As a writer and a voracious reader, I am always on the lookout for great books for my children. Typically, I will go through the aisles of the bookstore, skip-reading those books that look interesting. I can usually tell by short readings in the beginning, middle and end whether it is a book worthy of my children. Thus, I had encountered The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman several years ago.  I cannot say I’ve actually read the stories, as in, I sat down and read them for pleasure as I did The Chronicles of Narnia or A Wrinkle in Time.  I will be perfectly honest; I don’t have time to read bad writing and I don’t want my children filling their heads with nonsense, especially propaganda.

The Golden Compass starring Nicole Kidman will be coming out December 7 amid the usual media hype for a Christmas movie.  Obviously I haven’t seen it. However, I have some passing familiarity with the books the movie is based upon.  His Dark Materials which is the series the movie is drawn from could be called “Gnosticism for children.”  Call it the anti-Narnia.  In it, children go on a grand adventure that culminates not with helping the central godlike character overcome the ultimate evil, but when they kill the creator of the world – an angelic being who, not unlike Satan, lost the war for control of heaven and is depicted as quite evil. In effect, the heroes of the story kill God as Pullman, and many Gnostics before him, envision Him.

Gnostics believed that the creator of this world is evil and that “salvation” comes from embracing “secret knowledge” about the good force behind the evil. This good force has nothing to do with human beings, who are themselves evil, but if we can become released from this life (suicide would be fine), we will be redeemed from evil.

The author Phillip Pullman is an avowed atheist and member of several humanist societies.  He has voiced his intense distain for the C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia.  Pullman said the Narnia books contained "a peevish blend of racist, misogynistic and reactionary prejudice" and "not a trace" of Christian charity.  That makes me wonder if he’s ever actually read the Narnia series.  "It's not the presence of Christian doctrine I object to so much as the absence of Christian virtue," he added.  "The highest virtue - we have on the authority of the New Testament itself - is love, and yet you find not a trace of that in the books."

Having read his comments on a website, I honestly thought he could not have read the Narnia books. Anyone who has can testify that love is the message of the series – the love of Aslan for those who don’t embrace evil (he’s willing to die for them) and the (eventual) love of the Pevenses children for one another (though sometimes characters must learn love before they can express it). This, in turn, brings love to the love-starved nation of Narnia. Moreover, I wouldn’t think, based upon the above-referenced quote that Pullman has read the New Testament, for the highest virtue listed in the New Testament is to love God, which includes obeying Him and coming to Him, as Jesus required, through faith. From this love of God comes love for your fellow human. Both these virtues illuminate the Narnia series.  I admit I haven’t sat down to read Pullman’s books to the fullest, but in my scans, I did not find within them the love that permeates the Narnia series or, for an additional example, Madeleine L’ Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time.

The series His Dark Material, rather than featuring a battle between good and evil where good overcomes evil against all odds, features a battle against the church and a fight to overthrow God. Adults who resist sin rather than embrace it are depicted as evil or rubes, sometimes both. In an excellent analysis of the books for Touchstone Magazine, Leonie Caldecott contrasted Pullman's works to those of Tolkien, Lewis, and those who "sought to enchant the imagination with new fairy tales built firmly on the foundations of the old stories." She described Pullman as "the anti-Inkling." (This refers to the group of Oxford writers who were the seedbed for the great literary talents of Tolkien and Lewis, as well as other greater thinkers and writers of the 20^th Century. It should be noted that Pullman, over against these noted scholars, admits to earning extremely low grades in English, particularly writing, while he was in school.  His antipathy for written English is notable throughout the series.) Caldecott wrote, “What Pullman cannot seem to abide in Lewis is the hopeful picture of what happens after death: That is to say, the Christian take on life, which, while valuing its beauty and power, nonetheless places it firmly in the context of the next life, the life after death, which is viewed as fuller, more perfect, and thus more important in the final order of things. For Pullman, this is an empty promise—a monumental hoax, almost. For him, death is the end of conscious life.

"And yet the fact of mortality is almost an obsession with Pullman, and death plays a prominent role in his books," Caldecott noted. "He kills off a number of important characters in his books (and not only in this trilogy), including Lyra’s friend and protector Lee Scoresby and Will’s father in The Subtle Knife, and both of Lyra’s parents in The Amber Spyglass.”

As a writer, I personally have no problem with killing off important characters for the sake of the story (think of how effective the “death” of Gandolf was in the Lord of the Rings), but I must admit that I found the “killings” in His Dark Materials to be manipulative and in some cases, unnecessary. I tend to agree with Caldecott that Pullman kills the characters almost as if for obsessive reasons.

“Finally, he fulfils the Nietzschean dream by killing off God, a senile deity who makes a brief appearance before being blown away on a puff of wind when his protective crystal chamber is breached,” Caldecott wrote.  “This God, incidentally, is not the creator of the world, but merely the first angel, who deceived the others into thinking he was the origin of their being. The beneficent and all-powerful deity of the Judeo-Christian tradition is yet another hoax.”

With the "anti-Narnia" about to hit theaters, it seemed important to take a look at it.  I scanned the series last night at Barnes and Noble and I didn’t find anything different from my previous opinion. Rumor in the film industry has it that The Golden Compass will be treated exactly opposite of the Narnia films. The film studio for Narnia perceived a need to downplay elements of the series’ Christian undertones in order to appeal to a wider audience, where as New Line Entertainment asked the director of The Golden Compass to tone down or eliminate the book’s negative references to God.

Typical of many Gnostics, Pullman apparently doesn’t see his writing as anti-God, just anti-organized religion. (I guess he’d like to take a seat next to Dan Brown at the next Academy Awards ceremony). However, the books contain little that would support the idea that faith in God is anything other than a hoax perpetrated on idiots. The whole “God is a con man” theme smacks of anti-God overtones from my point of view.

In some ways, I prefer the filmmakers not  remove the religious references – parents would have forewarning before filling their children’s minds with anti-God propaganda. Most movies are forgettable, but that which we read tends to stay in our minds for a lifetime. I hope parents will use their judgment on this one. Take my advice; scan the series by the fire at Barnes and Noble before you buy it for your children.

Challenge #4 – Christianities beliefs about Jesus were copied from pagan religions.

I stand with Strobel as a journalist who was taught (back in the days when that profession still cared about ethics) that plagiarism cannot be tolerated by professional reporters. So, as a Christian, being accused of plagiarism should bother me.  However, I don’t think we’ve got a case of plagiarism here, but rather a case of libel and the defense of libel is always the truth.

Dan Brown made many of the plagiarism claims popular in The Di Vinci Code and most of America watched the subsequent movie.  So, it’s a salient question – how much of Christianity was borrowed, reinvented or just plain ripped off from pagan religions? Are the libelers smearing Christianity with the truth or are they just liars?

Was paganism historically rife with dying and resurrecting god-men, virgin births, gods dying for the sins of humanity, gods born on December 25, baptisms and communions?  Strobel interviewed Licona briefly on the subject, and then turned to a world-renowned expert on mystery religions for more in-depth discussion.  Edwin M. Yamauchi holds a doctorate in Mediterranean studies from Brandeis University and has taught at Miami University of Ohio for more than 35 years.  He has studied 22 languages, including Akkadian, Aramaic, Greek, Hebrew, Chinese, Comanche, Coptic, Egyptian, Mandaic, Syriac, and Ugaritic.  He has delivered 88 papers on Mithraism, Gnosticism and other topics at scholarly societies, published nearly 200 articles and reviews in professional journals, lectured at more than 100 colleges and universities and participated in archeological expeditions, including the first excavation of the Herodian temple in Jerusalem. He’s written 17 books and in 1975 he was invited to deliver a paper at the Second International Conference of Mithraic Studies in Tehran, Iran. Born into a Japanese Buddhist family, he has been a Christian since 1952. He has a sterling reputation in the academic world.

Mystery religions were a variety of religious movements from the eastern Mediterranean that flourished in the early Roman Empire. “They offered salvation in a tight-knit committee,” Yamauchi explained. Called mystery religions because initiates were sworn to secrecy, they usually revolved around sacred rites, often a common meal, and a special sanctuary. The oldest of them was the Eleusinian cult of Demeter (operating in Greece about 800 to 500 BC). The latest and most popular was Mithraism, which was closely associated with the mysteries of Cybele and Attis. All three were restricted to non-Roman areas until the middle or late first century. Many of the mystery religions were tied to the vegetation cycle. Their gods were fertility gods.

In the early 20^th Century Richard Reitzenstein of the “History of Religions School” in Germany published his theory that the sacrifice of Christ came from the killing of a bull by Mithras.  Sir James Frazer, writing his massive collection The Golden Bough in 1906 saw a common thread of rising and dying fertility gods from Osiris in Egypt, Adonis in Syria, Attis in Asia Minor and Tammuz of Mesopotamia. The popularity of his work helped to introduce these ideas to the general public, but his scholarship was misleading.  In response, Albert Schweitzer said that popular writers made the mistake of taking various fragments of information and manufacturing ‘a kind of universal Mystery-religion which never actually existed, least of all in Paul’s day.’

Yamauchi agreed that while early 20^th century scholars considered all the mystery religions to have common themes, more recent scholarship has shown these cults held quite divergent beliefs. The scholarly community has pretty much agreed that the supposed parallels to Jesus are not based on fact, but there has been a revival among popular writers in recent years.

Yamauchi’s particular area of interest is Mithraism, which was a popular religion among late Roman soldiers and merchants. It became a chief rival of Christianity in the second century and later. All initiates were men (though one of Yamauchi’s former students claims there were some women); they met in a cave-like structure which featured a statue of Mithras stabbing a bull. Information on the cult is sketchy, but it started in Iran in the 14^th Century BC and did not become a Western mystery religion until very late – too late to have influenced the beginnings of Christianity. Rome’s first public recognition of Mithras was during a state visit of the King of Armenia in AD 66, but it doesn’t appear to have developed into a mystery religion until around AD 90. Yamauchi noted there were no Mithraic temples found in Pompeii which was destroy in AD 79. The earliest Mithraic inscription in the West is from AD 101, most of the Mithraic texts date after AD 140.  It is reasonable to argue, as scholars in the field do, that Western Mithraism did not exist prior to mid-second century. Mithraism might have influenced Christianity in the third and fourth centuries, but it simply was not developed in the West until after the close of the New Testament Canon, so was too late to have influenced the development of first-century Christianity.

Ah, but what about the parallels? Aren’t these evidence that Jesus is just Mithras warmed over?

Mithras was not born of a virgin unless somehow a rock could be a virgin. Mithras emerged fully grown and naked (except for a cap and a dagger) from a rock.  He wasn’t born in a cave (for that matter, the stable Jesus was born in has never been definitely proven to be a cave). Early Christians celebrated Jesus’ birth on January 6, not December 25. That date so close to the winter solstice was associated with Sol Invictus, who Mithras was associated with. There was a major celebration at that time. Christians may simply have started using the date in the 4^th Century to celebrate Christ’s birth because they wouldn’t seem out of place (thus cutting down on persecution) or it may be that Constantine appropriated the date since he was a Sol worshipper prior to his conversion. We know that Christian emperors and popes suggested the aligning of Christian ceremonies with pagan holidays so as to ease the transition of pagans into the Church. Mithras did not sacrifice himself for world peace. He killed a bull, which has no parallel to the Christ story. Nothing is known about Mithras’ death, let alone whether he died and came back in three days. Anyone claiming that Mithras was known as the Good Shepherd, the Way, the Truth, etc., is reading Christian theology into pagan myth, not the other way around, according to Yamauchi.  

Mithraism did have a common meal (these were normative in many religions of the day). Justin Martyr and Tertullian noted similarities between Mithraic common meals and the Lord’s Supper, claiming the Mithraic meal were a satanic imitation, but they were writing in the second century, long after the Lord’s Supper was instituted in Christianity. Scholarship has proven their claim wrong as well. The Mithraic common meal existed from early in the religion’s institution. Neither the Mithraic meal nor the Lord’s Supper is drawn from the other. The Christian meal is based upon the Passover, not Mithraism.

Some scholars have asserted that a Mithraic rite involving the killing of a bull is the basis for the Christian belief that people are saved “through the blood” of Jesus as written in Romans 6. These scholars presented evidence that Mithraism believed the same thing. Yamauchi noted that the Mithraic practice of bathing in the blood of a bull didn’t develop until the fourth century. Bruce Metzger has suggested this may be a case of Christianity influencing Mithraism.

Yamauchi, speaking as a foremost expert on Mithraism, saw few parallels between Christianity and Mithraism. They existed at the same time, often with temples right next to one another in Rome, but Christianity had already started by the time Mithraism got there.

“There’s no evidence of Mithraism influencing first-century Christianity,” Yamauchi said. “Far from assimilating Mithraism, the church fathers – from Justin Marty to Tertullian – denounced Mithraism as a satanic imitation. Some scholars have suggested that Christianity may have consciously or unconsciously borrowed minor practices much later, which could be true. This has no impact on Christianity’s foundational beliefs, however.”

So what about the other gods Dan Brown and his merry band of naysayers point to as the prototype for Jesus?

Marduk and Dionysus were never resurrected. Tammuz was a fertility god who died and rose every winter. Adonis’ resurrection stories (believed only by women back in those days) date from the second to fourth centuries AD, long after Jesus. The “resurrection” of Attis didn’t appear until after AD 150, more than a century later than Jesus, and he was also a fertility god tied to the vegetation cycle. Osiris wasn’t resurrected, but was brought back to live as god of the underworld.

“All of these myths are repetitive, symbolic representations of the death and rebirth of vegetation,” Yamauchi said. “These are not historical figures, and none of their deaths were intended to provide salvation. In the case of Jesus, even non-Christian authorities, like Josephus and Tacitus, report that he died under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. The reports of His resurrection were quite early and are rooted in eyewitness accounts. They have the ring of reality, not the ethereal qualities of myth.”

Okay, so a rock isn’t a virgin.  What about the other virgin births?  Let’s be clear from the beginning that a pagan god coming down to have physical coitus with a human woman is not a virgin birth. A virgin hasn’t had sex. The physical union of god and girl eliminates virginity. Zeus was an anthropomorphic god who got a lot of human women pregnant. He was very human. Yahweh, on the other hand, could sometimes be described in human ways, but He was utterly unlike humans and the Bible was always clear about that.  There is, therefore, no parallel between Jesus and Zeus’ many demi-god children. Alexander the Great was supposedly born of a virgin, but his mother Olympias recanted that story on several occasions, usually in response to Alexander’s demands for worship as the son of the gods.  Buddha had no written biography until five centuries after his death. According to legend, his mother dreamed he entered her on a white elephant, fully formed, but she had been married many years prior to his birth, so she was no virgin. Krishna’s mother already had seven sons when Krishna was born. Zoroaster lived before 1000 BC, but the story of his mother’s impregnation by drinking sacred juice appeared in the 9^th Century AD, long after Jesus.

Yamauchi admitted to disgust at the writers who lean upon these theories because they employ very sloppy research.  “They don’t have the languages, they don’t have the sources, they don’t pay attention to the dates, and they frequently quote ideas that were popular in the 19^th and 20^th centuries that have already been refuted,” Yamauchi said. “Reputable and careful scholars like Carsten Colpe of Germany, Gunter Wagner of Switzerland, and Bruce Metzger of the United States have pointed out that, number one, the evidence for these supposed parallels is often very late, and number two, there are too many generalizations being made.”

Yamauchi felt that some people see parallels and jump to conclusions that one religion influenced another, but fail to recognize the differences.

“Christianity is quite distinct in that it rose from a Jewish background, which is monotheistic, and it centers around a historical figure who was put to death in a barbaric manner, which is attested in non-Christian sources,” Yamauchi said. “Jesus’ followers were eyewitnesses …. Paul was converted by encountering the risen Christ and had access to eyewitnesses such as Peter and James. Christianity flourished and expanded in spite of persecution from the Roman authorities. It was a new message of love and God’s intervention in the world, and it incorporated all people, including slaves and women, the educated and non-educated – unlike Mithraism, which was confined mainly to soldiers …. This new message was universal, yet it was rooted in an ancient tradition, fulfilling prophesies that had been foretold for many centuries.  … it was exclusivistic … [not] comfortable, as were the polytheistic pagan religions, in being eclectic or syncretistic …. The mystery religions were inclusive – you could worship the emperor and … adhere to more than one of these at the same time.”

Yamauchi warned that we need to be careful of the free-wheeling, unrestricted “information” on the Internet. Anyone can write anything there and it’s easy to get less than reputation information. Check the credentials of the authors, paying particular attention to their training and accomplishments. Watch for the dates of sources being quoted. Be aware of scholars with biases who may have axes to grind.

There will always be writers who will make irresponsible and sweeping claims in a desire to stir up controversy or win an argument.  There’s nothing new about this. Peter faced the same sort of nonsense in the first century and he answered them in 2 Peter 1:16:

“We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,” he declared, “but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.”

Challenge #3 – New explanations have refuted Jesus’ resurrection

Part 2 – the Challengers

Having built his case for the resurrection being historically plausible, Licona turned his attention to the challenges to this hypothesis.  Strobel chose to present these as a rebuttal, which technique Licona used in one of his books. I’m going to just present the facts as laid out in Strobel’s book.

Muslims claim that Jesus, whom they consider to be a prophet but not God, never died on the cross, but that God only made it seem that way.

“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 until Himself; and Allah is Exalted in Power, Wise ….”  Surah 4, Verse 157-58.

Strobel, playing Devil’s advocate, suggested that either someone was made to look like Jesus and the Romans executed that imposter or Jesus was on the cross, but Allah made it appear that he died when he didn’t. Once in the tomb, Allah healed Jesus and took him to heaven.

Yes, God could have done that. However, the Quran isn’t a very reliable source of information about Jesus. Let’s not get into esoteric tests concerning the beauty of the language in the Quran. I don’t speak Arabic and neither do 80 percent of Muslims. A subjective test doesn’t prove much.

Remember that the Gospel accounts were written in the first century, at the latest 40-70 years after Jesus’ death, still in the lifetime of some witnesses.  The Quran was, generously, written in the 7^th Century. It’s fifth-hand testimony at best, transmitted from heaven via an angel, to Muhammad, then to those who recorded what Muhammad told them, then what was selected by Uthman.  Also, if Jesus didn’t die a violent death, as He prophesied He would, then He is a false prophet. The Quran says Jesus was a great prophet, so either Jesus died a violent death or the Quran is wrong. On the other hand, if Jesus did die a violent death, He is a great prophet, but that would contradict the Quran, which says He didn’t die on the cross. Either way, the Quran is discredited.  Historically speaking, the Quranic account is not reliable.

If we look at it metaphysically, if Allah substituted Jesus for someone else, then Allah deceived the whole world. Now, maybe we could understand it if Allah deceived his enemies about Jesus, but Jesus’ disciples sincerely believed that Jesus died on the cross. The Quran refers to those early believers as Muslims, so if Allah lied to them, why would any Muslim feel confident that Allah wouldn’t like to him?

Michael Baigent claimed in The Jesus Papers that Jewish Zealots wanted Jesus dead, but Pontius Pilate liked Jesus because He supported Jews paying taxes to Rome. Therefore, he arranged for Jesus to survive the crucifixion.  Baigent makes some critical errors in using Greek words to support his case (he doesn’t read Greek) and he ignores the gospel evidence of the admixture of heart fluid and blood coming from Jesus’ side – a sure sign of death used by the Roman soldiers, who knew their jobs.

Richard Carrier, an avowed atheist, tried to psychoanalyze Paul’s encounter with the risen Christ by saying he felt guilty for persecuting Christians and experienced some sort of delusion. He ignores that Paul wasn’t alone on that road; others heard the voice and saw the light, even though they didn’t understand it. Licona acknowledged that the accounts written by Luke somewhat differ, but each telling of Paul’s conversion serves a different purpose in Acts, with a different emphasis on the details, not major divergence on the facts.

There are some skeptics who want to argue that Paul and some of the other apostles didn’t believe that Jesus was resurrected bodily.  The section of the book goes into great detail, but I’ll refer only to 1 Corinthians 15-53-54, where Paul plainly states that in resurrection our mortal bodies will “put on” an imperishable and immortal covering. “It’s not an abandonment of the body,” Licona said, “but a further clothing that completely swallows up and transforms.” Paul believed that Jesus had been physically raised, but what Paul believed is largely immaterial, because the Jews of Jerusalem were pretty well convinced that Jesus had risen from the dead. They couldn’t find His body!

Maybe, some skeptics – particularly Carrier – assert that the apostles were delusional and having hallucinations. I work for community mental health and I side with Licona in saying that I’ve never seen a group hallucination and neither have any of my coworkers.  We have clients experiencing hallucinations all the time. They don’t share them, they aren’t contagious. There are at least three group appearances recorded in the gospels, so the hallucinatory theory doesn’t fly. Nor does it account for the empty tomb. It doesn’t explain Paul’s experience with the risen Christ because he was not in a frame of mind to hallucinate something he didn’t believe.

Hallucinations are not the same as delusions. 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. It is possible for a delusional person to convince others to join him in his delusion. However, Peter being delusional wouldn’t account for an empty tomb or Paul’s conversion (Paul had not yet met Peter) or James’ conversion. It could explain why some of the disciples believed, but not all of them.

So, why was the tomb empty?  There are some explanations other than Jesus rose from the dead. Are these better hypotheses than the resurrection?

Jeffery Jay Lowder suggested that Jesus’ body was stored in Joseph’s tomb through the Passover, but moved Saturday night to the graveyard of the dishonorably condemned.  James Tabor suggested that Jesus’ own family moved His body and asserted that the post-resurrection appearances were invented to compensate for the original end of Mark’s gospel. Licona brought it back once more to the apostles.  What accounts for the conversions of Paul and James, both of whom were martyred for their faith. When James announced that Jesus had appeared to him, doesn’t it seem reasonable that someone in his family would have set him straight? Hey, Jimmy, he’s buried right here. Tabor also asserted that he knew where Jesus’ body really was buried, but he based his theory on a 16^th Century Jewish mystic. Not a very credible eyewitness, but Tabor took his word over that of the first-century Paul.

Ultimately the issue of the resurrection rises and falls on the whereabouts of Jesus’ body. James Cameron tried to prove it was buried in Galilee.  I think he embarrassed himself on film. Other skeptics keep tripping over the empty tomb.  Time and time again, they will assert that it simply is not rational in this day of science to believe in the resurrection.

Francis Collins was the head of the Human Genome Project, which successfully decoded the three billion genes of human DNA. As a young man, he was an atheist, but the demonstrated faith of some of his most desperately ill patients (he started as a medical doctor) prompted him to investigate spiritual issues.  This is what he had to say in his 2006 best-seller 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. 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.”

Challenge #3 – New explanations have refuted Jesus’ resurrection.  Part 1

“Only one conclusion is justified by the evidence: Jesus is dead.” Atheist Richard C. Carrier

Christianity makes the remarkable claim that our God became a human being, died for the sins of all mankind, and rose to life again three days later.  This claim is THE central pillar of Christianity and it is the most unbelievable claim we make.  So it is important that we look at whether the evidence supports our claim.

For decades, atheists have asserted there is no god; therefore, the question of the resurrection doesn’t really need to be considered. Human beings don’t come back from the dead after three days. Argument closed. Muslims, who believe Jesus was a prophet, claim that He never died on the cross, that God substituted Him and only made it look like Jesus died.  Religious studies scholars have asserted that Jesus’ body was moved, that the women who found the empty tomb were confused, that Jesus was buried in another location.

A number of Christian Biblical scholars have also produced evidence supporting the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  N.T. Wright, Gary Habermas, and William Craig Lane are among the Christian apologists who have faced atheists in public debates and provided strong historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.

“If Christ has not been raised,” the Apostle Paul wrote, “your faith is futile.” (1 Corinthians 15:17)

Everything Christians believe rests on the question of the resurrection. If the resurrection can not be historically supported, believers for 2000 years have been deluded and bamboozled.  The cross either unmasks Jesus as a madman or con artist or it proves Him the Son of God and savior of the world.

I’ve met Mike Licona personally when he spoke at a youth conference in Anchorage, Alaska, two years ago and then a couple of weeks ago when he spoke again in Fairbanks. He is considered one of the emerging authorities on the resurrection of Jesus. He’s written some provocative books on the subject and has even answered the Muslim challenge.  A student of Gary Habermas, he holds a BA in History, he wrote his master’s thesis in religious studies on the resurrection and his doctoral dissertation in New Testament studies on the historical methodologies to assess the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection. He is the current director of apologetics and interfaith evangelism for the North American Mission Board (NAMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), which is what brought him to Alaska. Although my own conversation with him was not nearly as probing as Strobels, I found him highly intelligent and very knowledgeable on the subject of the resurrection. He’s also an extremely personable and approachable scholar who knows how to put his arguments into layman’s terms. I don’t need that sort of help, but I appreciate his approachability.

“Isn’t it true that a miracle like the resurrection is actually outside the purview of historians to investigate?” Strobel began his interview with Licona.  Strobel quoted Bart Ehrman, who said ‘because historians can only establish what probably happened, and a miracle of this nature is highly improbable, the historian cannot say it probably occurred.’ Licona totally disagreed with Ehrman’s statement. Historians are not evaluating the likelihood of a natural occurrence when investigating Jesus’ resurrection. They are evaluating the claims for a miracle. Citing Bayes’ Theorem for determining mathematical probability, Licona said “Ehrman has no grounds to claim that the resurrection is ‘highly improbable’.”  Licona felt that Ehrman’s take on the situation is due to his worldview and not in any way based upon historical analysis.

The Gospels fit into the genre of ancient historical biographies. They are early accounts that can’t be explained away by legendary development, there are multiple independent sources, multiple eye witnesses, some corroboration by outsiders and enemy attestation.

Historians can never give us 100 percent of the past. They can use ancient texts and artifacts to give us a fairly good picture of the past, but some gaps will probably always exist. All historical hypotheses are provisional. New evidence might overthrow a theory. However, historians rely on some standards of their profession to determine the probable events in history:  relevant sources, responsible method and restrained results.

The relevant sources for the resurrection of Jesus are the New Testament writings, a few secular sources who mention Jesus (Josephus, Tacitus, and Pliny the Younger), the early apologists, the early Church fathers, and even the Gnostic writings.  Clement of Rome, for example, was a disciple of Peter and Polycarp was a disciple of John. Their writings give us a glimpse into what these two apostles taught. This makes them very relevant resources.

Restrained results prevent honest historians from claiming more than the evidence warrants. Licona cited John Dominic Cross and Elaine Pagels as writers whose imaginations are very good (he said he means this in a positive way), but that their methods are “sometimes questionable” and their results are “unrestrained”.  In the end, “they may experience some embarrassment because their views are founded upon an early dating of the Gospel of Thomas … [which] now appears may very well have been written after AD 170.”

Licona relies on the use of “minimal facts” to in supporting the provisional hypothesis that the resurrection occurred as the Bible claims.  Even skeptical scholars in the field of religious studies accept many of the facts surrounding the resurrection because the evidence is so good as to convince them of its authenticity.

Fact #1 – Jesus was killed by crucifixion.