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Chapter 4: The Corroborating Evidence After building up the gospels as believable eyewitness accounts, Strobel at last turns to the testimony of the historical record to try and further establish the reliability of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. His third interview is with Edwin Yamauchi, a scholar of biblical languages and Mediterranean studies. For the first extra-biblical evidence of the New Testament, Yamauchi brings up the two passages in Josephus, one known as the Testimonium Flavianum, and the other an alleged reference to James the brother of Jesus (p. 79-80). I have discussed these accounts at length in my article, Did Jesus Really Exist?, and although my conclusion on the historicity of Jesus has changed, as I mentioned before, the arguments against the Josephan passages have not. Yamauchi freely concedes that the Testimonium has been interpolated, as the vast majority of scholars believe, but Strobel does not bother to interview or quote any of the scholars who argue against partial authenticity. The most he gives is a statement by Michael Martin, who questions why Josephus would go into such detail on John the Baptist and not Jesus (p. 81). Yamauchi dismisses the Jesus myth theory as "a lost cause," "vacuous and fallacious," and claims that Josephus reported more of John because he was considered a bigger threat to Rome than Jesus was (p. 81). Josephus does state that Herod Antipas had John executed because "he feared John's teachings could lead to unrest" [1], however, there is another facet to the Jesus passages to be contemplated. The Testimonium breaks into the text amidst discussion of Pontius Pilate's unfavorable interactions with the Jews. According to the New Testament, the Jews were not so receptive of Jesus' teachings, and even appealed to Pilate for him to be executed. This is an unusual shift in tone in the interaction between Pilate and the Jews in Josephus' writing, which may point to the entire Testimonium being an interpolation, as some skeptics have claimed. But if authentic, it seems to indicate that Jesus was enough of a trouble-maker among the Jews to be considered a political threat, making Yamauchi's response on John the Baptist look like a weak excuse. Tacitus, Pliny, and Thallus are raised as extra-biblical evidence for the gospels too (p. 82-85). Again, I cover each of these accounts in my article mentioned above, so they will not be scrutinized here. What is worth saying is that all of the passages cited by Yamauchi may be mere commentaries on the early Christian sect and its beliefs, not necessarily testaments to the historical person named Jesus. This seems to be true especially in the case of Tacitus, where Pilate is incorrectly labeled a "procurator," when he was actually Prefect of Judea [2]. Tacitus, as a historian and member of the senate, would have known the difference, and so it is likely that his account relies on reports other than Roman records, possibly even the Christians' own legends. At this point, it's important to note that Yamauchi and Strobel have introduced nothing to corroborate the central theological claims about Jesus, like his divinity, miracles, or resurrection. The most that the 'corroborating evidence' can offer is support for the historicity of a Jesus who had disciples and was crucified. Whether or not this Jesus was the same one as we find in the gospels is not discernible from these extra-biblical sources.
No attempt is made to demonstrate the weakness of these alternative explanations, but Yamauchi's question is phrased to mislead. The death of Jesus may not have been appealing in itself, yet the promise of eternal life, the notion of equality in the eyes of god, and other factors would certainly have drawn interest. The Greeks had the idea of the noble death long before Jesus, and Jews did not seem to mind their heroes having flaws (David being an adulterer and murderer, for example), so it is not necessarily true that the Jesus' death would have put off people in the first century. The "alternative explanations" are backed by the experiences of many, the evidence of the historical record, and basic logic. Christianity spread by missionary work at first, but it really began to grow when Constantine adopted it as the official religion of the empire. There is nothing supernatural about a message spreading by preaching and spreading by imperial endorsement and conquest. Chapter 5: The Scientific Evidence Finally, after four chapters of analyzing the gospels, we get to learn the archaeological evidence. But don't expect this to be evidence for Christ, despite the book title. What we get instead is more 'confirmation' of the gospels, in background areas that bear extremely little relation to Jesus. Nonetheless, John McRay, Strobel's fourth interviewee, starts off on a good foot. "Spiritual truths," he states, "cannot be proved or disproved by archaeological discoveries" (p. 95). Unfortunately, Strobel insinuates the exact opposite only four pages later, asking, "[i]f Luke was so painstakingly accurate in his historical reporting, on what logical basis may we assume he was credulous or inaccurate in his reporting of matters that were far more important" (p. 99). As previously noted, a claim needs to be evaluated on its own merit, not assumed true on the basis of other claims. The time to believe in something is when the evidence supports it, not before. If we grant Strobel his insinuation, then the supernatural claims of Islam could be trusted based on the historical accuracy of trivial details in Muslim scriptures, and somehow I doubt Strobel or McRay would appreciate such a conclusion. As the first bit of archaeological evidence, McRay points to Lysanias the tetrarch mentioned in Luke 3:1. According to McRay, scholars initially balked at this passage - because the only Lysanias known at the time was the ruler of Chalcis from half a century prior - until it was later discovered that there were two government officials named Lysanias (p. 97). McRay is not providing the full story, though. Josephus speaks of a Lysanias that ruled a tetrarchy centered on a town called Abila [3], yet the dating of his reign is 40-36 B.C.E., decades before the Lysanias in Luke's gospel, who is a contemporary of Herod the tetrarch. The discovery McRay refers to is a temple inscription naming "Lysanias the tetrarch," and some have dated it to the time of Tiberius (14-29 C.E.) because of the title "August lords" in the inscription. However, this title, or a similar one, seems to have also been used to refer to Augustus and Livia, as a coin from 10 B.C.E. indicates [4]. Thus, this 'discovery' of a second Lysanias that vindicates Luke's gospel is a hasty conclusion that is still open to debate. Moving on, McRay cites the term "politarchs" in Acts 17:6 as another case of an unsupported assertion that was initially doubted by scholars (p. 98). But, as I've said, the time to believe a claim is when there is evidence for it, not before, and an inscription using the term "politarchs" was found in the 19th century. The evidence McRay and Strobel cite is quite outdated. How many skeptics were challenging the bible on this point prior to the discovery? It's hard to say, since archaeology of the 1800s was very different from modern archaeology, and the early days of the field were plagued with Christian adventurers like William F. Albright, rather than liberal skeptics, like Strobel and McRay imagine. This contention is, therefore, another suspect one, not in the corroboration, but in the implications it is framed with. Next, Strobel prods McRay to defend the historical reliability of John's gospel, specifically against the charge that "John must not have been close to the events of Jesus' life" (p. 99). McRay names the Pool of Bethesda, the Pool of Siloam, Jacob's Well, and other historical sites to counter this charge, but I fail to see how this accomplishes anything. That archaeologists have found these sites still in existence today means that they were certainly around in the late 1st and early 2nd centuries, when John's gospel is thought to have been written. The author of the text could have been writing a hundred years or more after the death of Jesus and still reported accurately on these artifacts! If McRay wants to argue for an earlier dating of John's gospel using archaeology, he should at least find examples that were no longer existing after a given time, like by the end of the first century. To top off the investigation of the 'scientific evidence,' Strobel and McRay look at three significant challenges to the historical credibility of the gospels: (i) the census of Quirinius found in Luke; (ii) the absence of Nazareth from early sources; and (iii) Herod's massacre of the innocents in Matthew. Regarding (i), McRay produces a document from 104 C.E. to argue that Roman censuses required citizens to return to their ancestral homes. The document reads:
This does not say what McRay wants it to say, however. The document encourages citizens "residing out of their provinces to return to their own homes" for the census, where they can also "attend diligently to the cultivation of their allotments." The Prefect of Egypt is not ordering a citizen to return to his/her birthplace, but only to return to where they currently live, if they are not residing there at the time. Further indication of this is observed in the remark about tending to land and allotments. What would Egyptian citizens have had to cultivate in their ancestral home of Macedonia, for example? That neither Strobel nor McRay pick up on this is evidence of either dumbfounding ignorance or an agenda to mislead. In an attempt to resolve the dating conflict between Matthew's birth of Jesus during the reign of Herod (died in 4 B.C.E.) and Luke's birth of Jesus during the census of Quirinius (taken in 6/7 C.E.), McRay claims that an archaeologist named Jerry Vardaman discovered "micrographic letters" on Roman coins that speak of a census of Quirinius from 11 B.C.E. until after the death of Herod (p. 101). At the outset, this should raise suspicion, because microscopic lettering has never been found on any Roman coinage and seems out of place for minting practices of the time. Richard Carrier, a historian well versed in ancient studies, has exposed the bizarre claims of Vardaman and thoroughly disputed his micrographic letter theory in an article in The Skeptical Inquirer [5], available online. Going on to (ii), McRay mentions a list of various towns that Jerusalem priests relocated to after the fall of the temple, and among this list is allegedly Nazareth (p. 103). But unfortunately, no source is given for this information, and neither is any date attached to the mysterious list. Strobel and McRay are well aware that there is no mention of Nazareth before the 4th century C.E., not in the Old Testament, not in the Talmud, and not in Josephus. Yet all we get in response is a non-descript reference to a list that does mention Nazareth, without any comment on the antiquity of the list itself. This makes it quite comical when McRay says that the burden of proof "ought to be on those who dispute [Nazareth's] existence" (p. 103). Nazareth has no more met its burden of proof than Atlantis has. Finally, for (iii) McRay tries to argue for the historicity of Herod's slaughter of the infants in Bethlehem. That the majority of biographies on Herod the Great reject this myth [6] does not seem to matter to McRay. No one would've seen the use in reporting the murder of a few babies in a small town by a bloodthirsty king, he suggests (p. 104). Silence in the historical record is no argument for the historicity of something, though, so at most McRay's theory serves as speculation on the possibility of the massacre. But even Strobel finds it "difficult to imagine" that Herod sanctioning the mass murder of infants would've slipped the interest of historians and writers of the time (p. 105). Indeed, if Josephus saw fit to report on Herod's murder of his own two sons, it seems that McRay's explanation won't suffice. As important as these challenges to gospel historicity are, I would've liked to see Strobel include a few more that pack a bigger theological punch. In a chapter on biblical archaeology, it's disappointing (but not so surprising) to see that no attention is given to the fact that we still have not found the tomb of Jesus. The opening of the graves during Jesus' crucifixion (Matthew 27:52-53) is also not covered, nor is the global darkness, the casting out of the money lenders from the temple, and other details. Most of what McRay and Strobel discuss as archaeological evidence is very loosely related to Jesus. As such, none of it can be taken as confirmation of the divinity of Jesus, or even the gospel portrait of him. The archaeological corroboration of the reference to the Pool of Bethesda in John's gospel cannot tell us anything about who Jesus really was or what he did. All this chapter actually does is try to answer some historical challenges to the gospels. We are still not any closer to a case for Christ. Chapter 6: The Rebuttal Evidence Chapter six of The Case for Christ is devoted entirely to criticism of a group of scholars known as the Jesus Seminar. Founded in 1985 by Robert Funk and John Dominic Crossan, and comprised of around 150 members, the seminar has drawn substantial heat from conservative critics over its rejections of biblical inerrancy, the divine view of Jesus, and other faith-based doctrines. Gregory Boyd, Strobel's fifth interviewee, attacks the Jesus Seminar as "radical-fringe scholars who are on the far, far left wing of New Testament thinking" (p. 114). This chapter is the epitome of Strobel's poor investigative writing. Not a single member of the Jesus Seminar is interviewed, but worse still, none of their arguments are quoted either. Conclusions are quoted and paraphrased without even a summary of the arguments behind them. Solidifying the bias, we have Boyd - a ferociously outspoken enemy of the Jesus Seminar. Boyd begins his tirade against the seminar by arguing that they "rule out the possibility of the supernatural from the beginning, and then they say, 'Now bring on the evidence about Jesus'" (p. 116). Continuing, Boyd argues: "I think there should be a certain amount of humility in the historical investigation to say, 'You know what? It is just possible that Jesus Christ did rise from the dead.'" Interestingly, most of the assertions made by Strobel and Boyd about the methods of the Jesus Seminar are completely unsourced, and - not surprisingly - appear to be contradicted by the members' actual statements. Robert Funk has stated that "Nothing is impossible, unless we exclude logical impossibilities, such as square circles" [7], while Crossan has likewise said, "I leave absolutely open what God could do" [8]. Proceeding, Boyd attempts to dispute the criteria for authenticity used by the Jesus Seminar, but first we are given a particularly intriguing statement. "Historians usually operate with the burden of proof on the historian to prove falsity or unreliability, since people are generally not compulsive liars," Boyd explains. "Without that assumption we'd know very little about ancient history" (p. 117). The problem with this approach is that it doesn't appreciate the biases that we all have, nor does it take into account the faulty nature of memory, which I elaborated upon in my critique of the first chapter. The job of the historian is to gather data, examine the facts, and then piece things together in a way that best fits those facts. Recall the questions Strobel pondered during the Dixon case in the introduction: "Had the collection of evidence really been thorough? And which explanation best fit the totality of the facts?" (p. 12). We may be justified in accepting some natural and unexceptional claims without resorting to such rigorous standards of evidence, but, to paraphrase Carl Sagan, the more extraordinary a claim, the more extraordinary the evidence should be. As incredible as the truth behind the Dixon case was, it was nothing but the wild pleas of a desperate man until the supporting evidence came in to verify the story. The criteria used by the Jesus Seminar are portrayed by Boyd as definitive rules for assessing the reliability of the gospels, yet they are more like rules of thumb or helpful tools in increasing or decreasing the case for authenticity. For example, the criterion of multiple attestation simply states that the more independent sources there are for something, the more likely it is to be part of the early, original tradition. Boyd seems confused on this and asks, "why argue in the other direction - if it's only found in one source, it's not valid?" (p. 117). The criteria for authenticity are like a gauge of probability, though, and so the existence of a story in only one source does not absolutely mean the story is invalid, it just means the story is not as reliable as other stories that are multiply attested. Christian apologists use this criterion all the time when citing extra-biblical sources for the historicity of Jesus (Strobel does it in chapter four). The more independent confirmations of his existence, they think, the better. "[A]n increasing number of scholars are expressing serious reservations about the theory that Matthew and Luke used Mark," Boyd tells us on page 118. But yet again, no sources are provided and no explanation is given for why the two-source hypothesis should be rejected. Boyd makes numerous appeals to majority consensus in his attacks on the Jesus Seminar, even going so far as to use the two words that every critical thinker hates hearing: "Everyone concedes that [the Gospel of Thomas] has been significantly influenced by Gnosticism" (p. 123). What's worse is that there are many scholars who do NOT concede to these blanket statements made by Boyd. As one example, there are reputable scholars like Stephen J. Patterson, Stevan Davies, Ron Cameron, and Paterson Brown who argue against Gnostic influence in the Gospel of Thomas. At the very least, Boyd should refrain from fallaciously appealing to consensus and making gross exaggerations to the same effect.
Ironically, many of these miracles were performed centuries before Jesus by prophets of the Jewish faith, according to the Hebrew scriptures. Elisha healed a leper in 2 Kings 5, Moses parted the Red Sea in Exodus, Elisha multiplied twenty loaves in 2 Kings 4:42-44, and Elijah and Elisha each raised someone back from the dead (1 Kings 17:8-23, 2 Kings 4:25-35). The parallels go deeper than the surface too, with entire Greek phrases shared between the Septuagint passages and the stories of Jesus in the gospels (i.e. "kai edoken auton te metri autou" is found in both the LXX version of 1 Kings 17:23 and Luke 7:15). The miracles of Jesus were not radical, they were very Jewish, and that's exactly what the gospel authors were counting on their audiences to notice - that Jesus had an authority equal to, if not greater than, the Jewish prophets of antiquity. Boyd tries to distance Christianity from parallels with other myths and cults based on datings, dissimilarities, and even ridicule. If anything, the 3rd century reports of Apollonius of Tyana being a miracle-working savior would have been inspired by Jesus, he argues, not the other way around (p. 120). This is a post hoc fallacy; because reports of Apollonius' miracles are later than Jesus', they must have been inspired by Jesus' miracles. This conclusion does not follow, for it could be that these legends of Apollonius were already circulating in his time and simply not written down until later. And what about the miracle-workers reported in Josephus that pre-date Jesus, like Onias? Ought we to assume, based on Boyd's reasoning, that these figures inspired the stories about Jesus? Mystery religion parallels are dismissed as "once upon a time" stories that have "nothing in common" with the mythologized stories of the gospels, and the occasional variance of certain details of the myths is wielded as an excuse to ignore any similarity whatsoever (p. 121). Wrapping up the chapter, Boyd draws an analogy of loving someone in a way that goes beyond the facts, but is still rooted in the facts about the person (p. 125). This he compares to his relationship with Christ. I find this fitting in how it communicates something else, though. When we feel very strongly about a person, we are often prone to misperceiving the facts, or even refusing to acknowledge them. Boyd has demonstrated this tendency in his interview with Strobel, as he rails against people like the Jesus Seminar who, in his mind, slander his beloved. Like an infatuated lover, he won't face the real facts, and when others try to inform him of his delusional perspective, he strikes back at them with pointed accusations - "highly questionable," "left-wing scholars," "following a pipe dream," with "their own brand of fundamentalism," "blah, blah, blah." Someone has an axe to grind. One wonders how Boyd would respond to a critique of his work that does not interview him, does not quote him, inaccurately summarizes his conclusions without stating the arguments, and coats the entire thing in similarly derisive rhetoric. Thus far, we have found the worst interview in The Case for Christ. Chapter 7: The Identity Evidence Chapter seven begins a new section in the book called "Analyzing Jesus." This section proceeds on the assumption that the reader has found the arguments for the reliability of the gospels to be persuasive, and so the focus can shift to considering the implications of the gospel portrait of Christ. In the style of C.S. Lewis' famous trilemma argument, Strobel wants to establish that Jesus was not a liar or a lunatic. The reliability of the gospels hardly counts for squat if Jesus was a mere madman or impostor. So, interviewing a theologian by the name of Ben Witherington III, Strobel investigates to find out what Jesus might have thought of himself. According to our author, Witherington consults the earliest sources, "unquestionably safe from legendary development," to determine the matter (p. 134). Considering that the earliest report of a postmortem sighting of Elvis was only two days after his death [9], it seems unlikely that any source, no matter how early, would be "unquestionably" free from mythicizing. Witherington first cites Jesus' place among the 12 disciples as evidence of his status. "He's not just part of Israel, not merely part of the redeemed group, he's forming the group - just as God in the Old Testament formed his people and set up the twelve tribes of Israel" (p. 134). Disciples would not be disciples without some sort of teacher or figurehead discipling them, though, and it would be ludicrous to suggest that every leader with disciples must have thought of himself as god, the messiah, or anything similar. But perhaps the symbolism of 12 disciples is a part of the argument for Witherington too, as he notes the connection to the 12 tribes of Israel. Yet the number of 12 disciples seems to be a literary motif of religious importance that may not have been the truth of the matter. Inconsistencies pop up at several junctures, such as the 1 Corinthians 15 'creed,' wherein Jesus is said to have appeared to 12 disciples, though Peter is named separately and Judas had died before the resurrection, with Matthias not chosen as his replacement until later. Jesus' remark about the 12 disciples sitting upon 12 thrones in Matthew 19:28 is also suspect, since Judas arguably would not have inherited a throne. That Jesus used the word "Abba," for father, in prayer is another indication of his divinity, according to Witherington (p. 137). But as Strobel notes, the disciples also prayed in the same way and were not considered divine. Witherington attempts to weasel out of the problem by observing that Jesus initiated the practice, but this kind of speculation doesn't offer any real support to his contention. Witherington further argues that Jesus was considered divine by citing Matthew 16:15-17 and a string of early Christian sources (p. 137-138). The problem with all of this evidence is that none of it is capable of telling us who Jesus believed he was. These accounts only tell us who other people thought he was - and why take them at their word? Strobel put five entire chapters worth of effort into arguing for their credibility, but even if every point in my rebuttal fails to convince, nothing has been introduced that gives the slightest support to the supernatural and divine claims of the New Testament. And this will remain the case even after we look at the arguments for the resurrection in chapters twelve and thirteen. Perhaps the most interesting comment made by Witherington is a question that he answers himself:
These three sentences perfectly summarize The Case for Christ. It is Evangelical Christianity framing and answering its own questions about the historical Jesus. The concern is not on cutting to the truth, following the evidence where it leads, or promoting critical reflection on a controversial subject. The purpose is to confirm the presuppositions of Evangelical believers, plain and simple. Hardly even an attempt at pretense is made, as we can see from the transparency of such arguments. Jesus is worshiped still today because Christianity had three important things on its side that few, if any, other messianic cults of the time had: the gospels, Paul's letters, and the power of the Roman empire under Constantine. With the proliferation of documents rather than oral traditions, the work of diligent propagandists like Paul, and the subsequent adoption of the beliefs into the official religion of Rome by one of its emperors, it would be an understatement to say Christianity gained significant advantage. That Witherington, fully knowledgeable of these things, prefers to attribute the success of Christianity to the supernatural shows that I am not mistaken about the purpose of this book. Chapter 8: The Psychological Evidence The charge that Jesus was mentally insane has not been leveled against Christianity by any serious critic for a long while, but this is what Strobel seeks to 'debunk' in chapter eight. As ridiculous as the bombardment on the Jesus Seminar is in chapter six, the premise of evaluating the psychological state of a man who lived 2,000 years ago makes for a far more absurd chapter. Though Strobel begins by referencing the over-use of the insanity plea in courtcases, and agrees that psychology is "an inexact science," he and his interviewee, psychologist Gary Collins, act as if there is a concrete definition for madness, when there is not. That we are expected to believe Collins - who is president of the American Association of Christian Counselors - will be unbiased and objective in determining Jesus' mental state is yet another part of the farce. Much of what Collins has to say in evaluation of the psychology of Jesus presumes the historical accuracy of the gospels. "He spoke clearly, powerfully, and eloquently," Collins believes (p. 147). This comes after Strobel notes that "people suffering from delusional psychosis may appear rational much of the time yet can have grandiose beliefs that they are superlative individuals" (p. 146). So what does it matter if Jesus was well-spoken or seemed to be a rational being? Clear, powerful, and eloquent speech has come from countless figures thought to suffer from some form of mental illness, such as Edgar Allan Poe, Friederich Nietzsche, and Hans Christian Andersen. Collins continues: "[Jesus] didn't have a bloated ego, even though he was surrounded by adoring crowds" (p. 147). If Jesus thought himself to be god, and believed he had the authority to forgive and punish people for things they hadn't done against him, his ego would seem to be quite bloated. Of course, Collins and Strobel presume that Jesus really was all those things, so it 'doesn't count.' In a bizarre comment, Collins says he has "no problem" with the possibility that Jesus used the placebo effect in his miracles, or cured people by the power of suggestion. However, he's quick to clarify that, "regardless of how he did it, Jesus did heal them" (p. 149). According to this logic, Benny Hinn really heals people too. But the placebo effect seems misunderstood here. When a person is given a sugar pill and they 'recover' from an imagined condition, we can say that the placebo worked, but the sugar pill itself was not the reason for the recovery. To downgrade Jesus' miracles to interactions with suggestible people with imagined illnesses seems like it would strip the power of his healings of any value. Nonetheless, Collins argues that not all of the miracles in the gospels could be chalked up to the placebo effect. I won't disagree on that, but there's still no evidence that miracles were performed in the first place. Concluding the chapter, Strobel and Collins move into discussing demonic possession. Although Collins has never encountered a demon, he states, he does have "friends" - who are skeptics, of course - that have encountered "demons" in their clinical work (p. 152). Despite there being no arguments or evidence of any kind for the existence of demons in the chapter, and despite Collins never having seen a demon, he adds that, "People who deny the existence of the supernatural will find some way, no matter how far-fetched, to explain a situation apart from the demonic" (p. 152). There's just something ironic about a Christian psychologist declaring the reality of demons he's never witnessed, while trying to maintain a professionalism and objectivity in his advocacy of Jesus Christ's mental health. Collins dismisses the opinion of the Jews, who thought Jesus to be "demon-possessed and raving mad," according to John 10:20. Their opinion is "hardly a diagnosis by a trained mental health professional," he quips (p. 148). I wonder why Collins trusts that the New Testament authors believed their messiah was sane, then, since they were no more 'qualified professionals' than first century Jews. Go to page 3 - Chapter 9: The Profile Evidence
1. Josephus. Antiquities. 18.2-9.
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