Document Difficulties

Joe Missionary has correctly noted that my arguments against theism "have to do primarily with internal reasons." That is, I tend to focus on the internal consistency and coherence of religion. Joe, however, is curious what I think about the resurrection. He says, "One of the main reasons I am a Christian ... is because I cannot explain away the resurrection." It's a good question. What do I think of the resurrection?

A lot of people disregard the resurrection on the grounds that it's impossible, or at least implausible. "People just don't come back from the dead," they say. "It's unscientific." But the impossibility of the resurrection doesn't stop Christians, because as far as they're concerned, that is precisely what makes the resurrection worthwhile. Of course a resurrection is impossible! Why would God use a resurrection to save all mankind if it was just some ordinary, everyday thing that anyone could see or do? So while I do think a resurrection is impossible or implausible, I find it imprudent to try and argue that with Christians.

For me, the main problem with the resurrection is not the science, but the history. Historians use documents in accordance with their credibility, and certain factors can significantly lower the credibility of a document. For instance, documents that are works of advocacy rank low on the credibility scale. These are often things like memoirs or autobiographies, which are usually written to put the author in a favorable light. This gives those documents a built-in bias that hampers their credibility when it comes to the facts and events they recount. Credibility is also affected by how long after an event the document was composed. Journals and diaries are far more credible than after-the-fact recollections, because human memory just isn't that good. Unfortunately, there is not a single document regarding the resurrection that is not afflicted by both of these factors.

If there were unbiased, contemporaneous accounts of the resurrection, we would be in a different situation. But every account of the resurrection comes from someone who was an advocate for the cause a resurrection would support. Not only that, but they were all written many years after the resurrection is purported to have taken place. Furthermore, the earliest documents in the New Testament, the letters of Paul, say nothing of a bodily resurrection, and speak of the event only in spiritual terms. None of this bodes well for the case for resurrection.

But Christians, despite their allegedly progressive, non-cyclical view of history (which is supposed to make them unique and special), have tended to be extremely poor historians, blatantly interpreting everything through their own theological and ideological lens, with no pretense to objectivity, and apparently oblivious to the fact that all the pertinent documents regarding their defining historical event are internal to their own theological tradition.

On top of that, we get Christians using this bizarre courtroom metaphor, and referring to the gospels as independent "witnesses," as though having four of them saying that Jesus rose from the dead is somehow unassailable proof that it actually happened. Never mind the fact that all the gospel writers were advocates of the same cause (gaining converts to their religious sect), which makes them highly suspicious as "witnesses." It would be like a trial that happened recently near me, where a member of a gang was accused of killing someone, and all his buddies from the gang were brought on the witness stand to say (surprise, surprise!) that their buddy was innocent. You need to have more diversity in your witnesses for them to be credible. It also helps that they not have a vested interest in the outcome of the decision they're influencing. If we had accounts of the resurrection from some neutral bystanders, a diary of a witness, or something more immediate to the event, things would be different. Enormously helpful would be something from from a couple Roman historians, but alas, nothing of note (there are problems with the blurb in Josephus--not only does it read like vague, third-hand information, but there is evidence that it was added later by a sly Christian who understood the problem of the dearth of good historical source material, but who was still not above dishonesty himself).

Of course, the counter-argument from Christians can run that there are no "outside" witnesses to the resurrection because everyone who witnessed it became an insider. Hence, anyone who would have seen Jesus resurrected would have become a Christian, and then I would just disregard that account, too, for the reasons given above. But none of the accounts of the resurrection that purport to be from eyewitnesses are from people who did not previously associate with Jesus in some way. It would be much more impressive if we had an account from one of the Romans who participated in the execution, then witnessed a resurrected Jesus. But we don't.

So regarding the resurrection, I don't think there's anything to "explain away." There isn't even enough evidence for us to be sure that the thing happened in the first place. The only real historical facts we can derive from the biblical literature is that there were some people in the late first and early second centuries who developed a religion based on a resurrection, and they wrote down stories about that resurrection. Was it real? Did it happen like they said? We have no way of knowing, aside from just assuming that we like these people and that we're going to take them at their word. But that would be in contradiction of the basic principles of interpreting historical documents. Hence, the resurrection is still a matter of faith, and there are really no "theories" for or against it.