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The Bible: Myth or History?

Posted by catholicfaithdefender on April 4, 2008

The Bible: Myth or History?
“Yes and No” is Peter Kreeft’s answer to so many religion texts which leave students thinking of religion as little more than a dull and boring rehash of things everyone already knows. Kreeft’s book asks hard questions, great questions, and then answers them convincingly.

Peter Kreeft
Sal: Chris, I’ve got to ask you something personal.

Chris: Go ahead, Sal: We’re friends, aren’t we?

Sal: How do you know so much about God? Are you a theological brain?

Chris: No, not at all. I’m just an ordinary person.

Sal:You must have taken some high level religion courses somewhere.

Chris: No . . .

Sal: Then you must have read hundreds of books.

Chris: No, Sal. Actually, what I know about God for sure comes from just one book. In fact, what the whole human race knows about God for sure, and not just as a matter of speculation and guesswork, comes from just one book.

Sal: The Bible, you mean?

Chris: Yes.

Sal: You really believe that one book gives you all the facts about God?

Chris: All the facts? Of course not. How could we ever have all the facts about the Infinite One? None of us can have complete knowledge of God, any more than a clam could have complete knowledge of us. Less so, in fact, because the difference between us and clams is only finite, but the difference between us and God is infinite.

Sal: Some facts, then?

Chris: Yes, what he told us.

Sal: So you think you’ve got some hard facts there in the Bible, eh?

Chris: I don’t know what you mean by “hard facts”.

Sal: Like the stuff science gives us.

Chris: No. Science measures things. We can’t measure God.

Sal: So it’s just myth, then.

Chris: No, it’s truth.

Sal: You mean you really think God sits up there in the sky on a golden throne and has a strong right hand, and gets angry?

Chris: No. That’s poetic language. But you can tell the truth in poetic language, you know. God really is exalted — though not physically, in space, in the sky. God really does rule the universe, though not from a physical golden throne. God really does have all power, though he doesn’t have the same kind of strength as Muhammad Ali had in his right hand. And God really does want us to do good and not evil, though he doesn’t get hysterical and red in the face.

Sal: So it’s just symbolism.

Chris: But true symbolism. Not just a made-up story, like Santa Claus.

Sal: So you admit the whole Bible is poetic symbolism, not literal history.

Chris: No, I didn’t say that. I said that the language it uses to describe God has to be symbolic. God can’t be described literally because we can’t see him. He doesn’t have a physical body. But there are a lot of things in the Bible that are described literally -things we can see.

Sal: How can you tell what parts of the Bible to interpret symbolically and what parts to interpret literally? Isn’t it just your personal preference?

Chris: No, there’s an objective standard.

Sal: Well, what is it?

Chris: It’s quite simple, really. Language about visible things is meant literally, language about invisible things is meant symbolically.

Sal: So the story of the creation of the world in Genesis is meant literally? It is about visible things, the universe.

Chris: But before the creation of Adam and Eve there was no human eye around to see it. So the account isn’t an eyewitness account. It’s true, but not literal. The “6 days” of creation, for instance, don’t have to be 24 hour days.

Sal: And the last book in the Bible, the book of Revelation — all that stuff about the end of the world, horses and burning mountains going through the sky and angels blowing trumpets — that’s not literal either, right?

Chris: Right. That’s symbolism. But it’s true. It’ll happen, just as the creation happened.

Sal: But it’s not literal because nobody’s there to see it yet. It’s future.

Chris: Well, prophecies of the future can be literal. You could predict something literally. Some passages in the Bible do. For instance, the Old Testament predicts dozens of specific details about the Messiah that happened, literally, to Jesus, like being sold for 30 pieces of silver, and having his clothes gambled for.

Sal: I guess I’m really concerned with whether you interpret the miracle stories literally or not.

Chris: If they’re meant literally, yes.

Sal: Like Noah’s flood and the ten plagues in Egypt and the crossing of the Red Sea? And all Jesus’ miracles? And the literal Resurrection?

Chris: Yes.

Sal: Well, I don’t.

Chris: Don’t what?

Sal: Believe the miracle stories. So I don’t interpret them literally, I interpret them symbolically.

Chris: You’re confused, Sal.

Sal: You mean you think I’m wrong. But I’m not confused. I know what I believe and what I don’t believe.

Chris: No, I mean you’re confused. You’re confusing two different questions: interpretation and belief

Sal: What do you mean?

Chris: The question of interpretation is: What did the writer mean? The question of belief is: Do you agree with him? The question of interpretation is: What does the Bible claim to be true? The question of belief is: What do you believe really is true?

Sal: Well, I interpret the Bible according to my beliefs.

Chris: But that’s your confusion, Sal: Suppose I read a speech by Hitler that said we should create a super-race of Germans and kill all the Jews. Suppose I didn’t believe that, so I interpreted the speech according to my beliefs and I said that what the speech really meant was that all races were equal and we should love one another. Do you see how I would be confused?

Sal: Not about race, or love.

Chris: But about what Hitler meant.

Sal: Oh. Yes. I see. But wouldn’t it be good to improve on such a terrible speech?

Chris: If you want to make a speech yourself, yes. If you want to choose what to believe in, yes. But if you want to know what Hitler meant, no. That’s your confusion. You think the Bible’s stories of miracles are false. Why not just say so, clearly? The miracle stories are either lies or true history. They’re not myth. They’re not meant mythically, or poetically, or symbolically.

Sal: But I think they are. What could be more poetic and symbolic than life coming out of death — Jesus’ Resurrection is just like spring. And Moses’ crossing the Red Sea is a perfect symbol for overcoming death, or any obstacle. There are all sorts of poetic, symbolic meanings in the miracles.

Chris: I agree. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t literal too. They’re signs. But if a sign isn’t really there — if there’s no literal piece of wood on a pole — then it can’t symbolize anything, can it? So if Moses didn’t really cross the Red Sea, it’s not a real sign of anything. I believe the miracles are signs and symbols, all right. But I also believe they really happened. They’re not just stories, myths. You think that’s all they are, right?

Sal: Right.

Chris: So you agree with the demythologizers.

Sal: What’s that?

Chris: The word was made popular by a German theologian named Rudolf Bultmann. It means that the miracle stories are only myths, and that we should believe the rest of the Bible, but not the myths. A lot of theologians believe that. Many rabbis and priests and ministers do too. Some writers of catechism textbooks too.

Sal: So I’m in good company.

Chris: No, in numerous company. Truth isn’t found by counting noses. I’d rather agree with God even if only a few human beings agreed with me, than agree with millions of humans but disagree with God.

Sal: Well, doesn’t the clergy teach demythologizing? You said a lot of rabbis and ministers and priests believe it. Are they heretics?

Chris: Technically, yes. If they disagree with essential teachings of the Bible. But the word heretic isn’t used much any more.

Sal: You sound sad. Do you want to burn heretics, like the Inquisition?

Chris: Of course not. You can label an idea accurately without wanting to burn the people who hold it.

Sal: I’m glad to hear that. Because I guess I’m a heretic. I think for myself I don’t just swallow whatever line the Church gives me.

Chris: Then you have your reasons for disagreeing?

Sal: Certainly.

Chris: I think you can guess what my next question is going to be.

Sal: We went over those reasons in that conversation we had about miracles.

Chris: Yes. You see, everything is connected. If there’s no supernatural God with the power to work miracles, then miracles can’t happen. If miracles can’t happen, then Christ didn’t really rise from the dead. If Christ didn’t really rise from the dead, the story is only a myth, and the demythologizers are right. (Though they’re still confusing the two questions of interpretation and belief; they should say the story is a lie, not a myth.) Do you have any other reasons, any new reasons for being a demythologizer of the Bible?

Sal: Yes, I do. I’ve been reading some books about this, and I think I’ve found at least four good reasons for being skeptical about the Bible.

Chris: Go ahead. What are they?

Sal: For one thing, there’s what they call “form criticism”. That means you should interpret a text not absolutely but relative to its literary form. If the form is poetry or myth or parable, you just don’t take the story literally.

Chris: That’s a good principle. So apply it to eyewitness descriptions too, and historical narratives, and interpret them literally, just as you interpret symbolism symbolically. The miracle stories have the form of history, not myth.

Sal: No they don’t. And that’s my second point: the resemblances between the Bible’s miracle stories and myth. They’re both full of magic. And things like magic numbers: ten plagues, forty days of fasting, three days in the tomb.

Chris: Do you mean to say no one ever really fasts forty days, and plagues can really come in any number but ten? Or that if Jesus had spent four days in the tomb you’d be more likely to believe it?

Sal: Well, no. But mustn’t we distinguish two different, questions, the question of belief and the question of history? That’s my third point. Whether Moses really crossed the Red Sea or not is not important; that’s the question of history. The important thing is whether or not God was there; the point of the Bible is religion, not history.

Chris: But the Bible’s religion depends on history. Its God works in history. Your distinction between history and religion fits Oriental religions, but not Western religions. It’s not important whether Buddha ever really lived; the only important thing is meditation and practicing Buddha’s way. But Christianity is different: it’s about Christ. If he never lived, or never died and rose again, then Christianity is simply a lie. Aren’t you honest enough to call it that, if that’s what you believe?

Sal: But it has so much good stuff to say about ethics and love and neighborliness.

Chris: Everybody knows that already, even though they don’t practice it. Remember our first conversation? If ethics is all that Christianity means, forget it.

Sal: Why?

Chris: Because then it’s just copying all the other good philosophies and moralities. It claims to be different; it claims to be history, “good news”, Gospel: that God came to earth and died on the cross and rose again to save us from sin and death and Hell.

Sal: That’s what you say it is.

Chris: That’s simply what Christianity is, and always was from the beginning. If you don’t believe that, you’re not a Christian. Just agreeing with Jesus’ ethics doesn’t make you a Christian, any more than agreeing with Buddha’s ethics makes you a Buddhist.

Sal: Well, I guess I’ll have to say I’m not a Christian, then.

Chris: Good! That’s the first step to becoming one.

Sal: But I still have another reason for not believing in the stories in the Bible. We haven’t finished my four points, remember?

Chris: Sorry. What’s the fourth one?

Sal: There are contradictions in the Bible, internal in the Bible? consistencies in the stories. They can’t all be true.

Chris: Name one.

Sal: Did Jesus speak the Sermon on the Mount all at once, as Matthew reports, or on different occasions, as Luke reports?

Chris: Why couldn’t it be both? In any case Matthew didn’t say Jesus said it all at once, he just said Jesus said it.

Sal: Well, what about the sign on the cross? How many words were on it? Each of the four Gospels has a different version.

Chris: Why couldn’t they all be right, but some are condensed, sort of Reader’s Digest versions, so to speak? If the sign really read, “This is Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews”, then the account that says simply “Jesus, King of the Jews” isn’t false, just condensed. The essential point is the same. Show me a single contradiction about an essential point of substance, not just a matter of verbal style.

Sal: Well, they’re different, anyway.

Chris: The very fact that the four Gospels tell the same story in different ways is strong evidence that the story is true — like four witnesses in court telling the story in four different ways. If they agreed word for word, you’d think they had made it up and collaborated beforehand. The differences don’t amount to contradictions. And the four Gospels agree remarkably — more so, much more so, than any other set of ancient documents about any other ancient event.

Sal: But an event so long ago — isn’t it likely that the telling of it got garbled, like the party game where you sit in a circle and tell a message around? — by the time it gets to the tenth person it’s a completely different message.

Chris: That’s why the Church wrote it down in the Bible, and preserved this book with infinite care.

Sal: Well, even so, no matter how carefully the book is preserved, it’s just a book. Written by human beings. Their ideas about God.

Chris: That’s the essential question about the Bible: Is it our ideas about God or is it God’s ideas about us? Is it God’s Word to us or our words about God?

Sal: Yes, that’s the essential question all right. It’s like the question about God: Did he create us in his image or do we create him in our image?

Chris: Yes, and that’s like the essential question about the Christian story too: Is it the story of our search for God or the story of God’s search for us? Is it God coming down in Christ, the “one way” down, or is it us trying to get up to God, with Christ just one of the many human ways up, one of many manmade religions?

Sal: At least we’ve got the questions straight. And I see that all these questions are parts of one question: the question about the Bible being God’s Word or ours, the question about God being Creator or created by us, the question about Christ being God’s way down or our way up, and the question about the Christian religion being the one divine way or just one of many human ways. It all fits together.

Chris: Did I fail to answer any of your reasons for not believing the Bible?

Sal: Well, no, not really.

Chris: Then your reason for not believing it must be something else than what we’ve talked about. We’ve clarified the question, but not your real motive for answering it “no”.

Sal: What do you think my real motive is? Are you going to psychoanalyze me?

Chris: No, but I have a good guess, and I can only ask you to honestly ask yourself whether this guess is accurate or not. You want to believe the demythologizers, right?

Sal: Right.

Chris: Why? Because you don’t believe in miracles, right?

Sal: Right.

Chris: And why don’t you believe in miracles? Because if miracles happen, then Christ really did rise from the dead, and then he is not just a human ideal but he is really God — everyone’s God, your God too, Sal. Then he has claims on your soul and on your life, right here and now. Then you have to face him and repent, turn around, beg forgiveness, let him be your Lord rather than you being your own lord. That’s not an easy or comfortable thing to do, and I’m not trying to put you down for not doing it. I’m just trying to help you be honest with yourself and know yourself. Only you can answer the question: Is that really your motive for not believing? The reason I suspect it is, is because none of your arguments seem to stand up. The house of your beliefs doesn’t stand on rational foundations. All your arguments can be answered. You just choose to believe there’s no God, or no miracles, or no Resurrection, or no salvation.

Sal: Maybe so, Chris we’re friends, so we have to be honest with each other. I appreciate your speaking so frankly about this -acquaintances have to be polite, but friends can say hard things to each other. And I have to be as honest with you as you were with me: I just don’t know.

Chris: That’s a wonderful discovery, Sal: that you don’t know. That’s the beginning of wisdom.


Kreeft, Peter. “The Bible: Myth or History?” In Yes or No: Straight Answers to Tough Questions about Christianity (Ignatius Press: San Francisco, 1991), 83-94.

Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Yes or No: Straight Answers to Tough Questions about Christianity


Peter Kreeft has written extensively (over 25 books) in the areas of Christian apologetics. Link to all of Peter Kreeft’s books here.

Peter Kreeft teaches at Boston College in Boston Massachusetts. He is on the Advisory Board of the Catholic Educator’s Resource Center.

Copyright © 1991 Ignatius Press


Posted in A Challenge for Skeptics, Bible | 1 Comment »

God Exists

Posted by catholicfaithdefender on April 3, 2008



What is this evidence for God’s existence, apart from the Bible?


  • The first is from causality. The universe, limited in all its details, could not be its own cause. It could no more come together with all its regulating laws than the Golden Gate Bridge could just happen, or a clock could assemble itself and keep perfect time without a clockmaker. On the same principle, if there were no God, there would be no you to dispute His existence.
  • A second indication is drawn from the universal reasoning, or if you wish, intuition of men. The universal judgment of mankind can no more be wrong on this vital point than the intuition of an infant that food must be conveyed to the mouth. The stamp of God’s handiwork is so clearly impressed upon creation, and, above all, upon man, that all nations instinctively believe that there is a God. The truth is in possession. Men do not have to persuade themselves that there is a God. They have to try to persuade themselves that there is no God. And no one yet, who has attained to such a temporary persuasion, has been able to find a valid reason for it. Men do not grow into the idea of a God; they endeavor to grow out of it.
  • The sense of moral obligation confirms these reasons. In every man there is a sense of right and wrong. A man knows interiorly when he is doing wrong. Something rebukes his conduct. He knows that he is going against an inward voice. It is the voice of conscience, dictating to us a law we did not make, and which no man could have made, for this voice protests whether other men know our conduct or not. This voice is often quite against what we wish to do, warning us beforehand, condemning us after its violation. The law dictated by this voice of conscience supposes a lawgiver who has written his law in our hearts. And as God alone could do this, it is certain that He exists.
  • Finally, justice demands that there be a God. The very sense of justice among men, resulting in courts of law, supposes a just God. We did not give ourselves our sense of justice. It comes from whoever made us, and no one can give what he does not possess himself. Yet justice cannot always be done by men in this world. Here the good often suffer, and the wicked prosper. And, even though human justice does not always succeed in balancing the scales, they will be balanced some day by a just God, who most certainly must exist.

Posted in A Challenge for Skeptics | Leave a Comment »


Posted by catholicfaithdefender on March 30, 2008

A Challenge for Skeptics

See also our article on: The Importance of the Resurrection

A reasonable challenge to the skeptic is this: If it can be proved that Jesus really rose from the dead, will you believe in him? For if he really rose, that validates his claim to be divine and not merely human, for resurrection from death is beyond human power; and his divinity validates the truth of everything else he said, for God cannot lie.

The Strategy of the Argument for the Resurrection: Five Possible Theories

We believe Christ’s resurrection can be proved with at least as much certainty as any universally believed and well-documented event in ancient history. To prove this, we do not need to presuppose anything controversial (e.g. that miracles happen). But the skeptic must also not presuppose anything (e.g. that they do not). We do not need to presuppose that the New Testament is infallible, or divinely inspired or even true. We do not need to presuppose that there really was an empty tomb or post-resurrection appearances, as recorded. We need to presuppose only two things, both of which are hard data, empirical data, which no one denies:

I. The existence of the New Testament texts as we have them.

II. The existence (but not necessarily the truth) of the Christian religion as we find it today.

The question is this: Which theory about what really happened in Jerusalem on that first Easter Sunday can account for the data? There are five possible theories: Christianity, hallucination, myth, conspiracy and swoon.

Jesus died — Jesus rose ———————————- (1) Christianity

Jesus didn’t rise — the apostles were deceived —– (2) Hallucination

the apostles were myth-makers ————————- (3) Myth

the apostles were deceivers —————————— (4) Conspiracy

Jesus didn’t die ———————————————- (5) Swoon

Theories 2 and 4 constitute a dilemma: if Jesus didn’t rise, then the apostles, who taught that he did, were either deceived (if they thought he did) or deceivers (if they knew he didn’t). The Modernists could not escape this dilemma until they came up with a middle category, myth. It is the most popular alternative today.

Thus either (1) the resurrection really happened, (2) the apostles were deceived by a hallucination, (3) the apostles created a myth, not meaning it literally, (4) the apostles were deceivers who conspired to foist on the world the most famous and successful lie in history, or (5) Jesus only swooned and was resuscitated, not resurrected. All five theories are logically possible, and therefore must be fairly investigated — even (1) ! They are also the only possibilities, unless we include really far-out ideas that responsible historians have never taken seriously, such as that Jesus was really a Martian who came in a flying saucer. Or that he never even existed; that the whole story was the world’s greatest fantasy novel, written by some simple fisherman; that he was a literary character whom everyone in history mistook for a real person, including all Christians and their enemies, until some scholar many centuries later got the real scoop from sources unnamed.

If we can refute all other theories (2-5), we will have proved the truth of the resurrection (1). The form of the argument here is similar to that of most of the arguments for the existence of God. Neither God nor the resurrection are directly observable, but from data that are directly observable we can argue that the only possible adequate explanation of this data is the Christian one.

We shall take the four non-believing theories in the following order: from the simplest, least popular and most easily refuted to the most confusing, most popular and most complexly refuted: first swoon, then conspiracy, then hallucination and finally myth.

Refutation of the Swoon Theory: Nine Arguments

Nine pieces of evidence refute the swoon theory:

(1) Jesus could not have survived crucifixion. Roman procedures were very careful to eliminate that possibility. Roman law even laid the death penalty on any soldier who let a capital prisoner escape in any way, including bungling a crucifixion. It was never done.

(2) The fact that the Roman soldier did not break Jesus’ legs, as he did to the other two crucified criminals (Jn 19:31-33), means that the soldier was sure Jesus was dead. Breaking the legs hastened the death so that the corpse could be taken down before the sabbath (v. 31).

(3) John, an eyewitness, certified that he saw blood and water come from Jesus’ pierced heart (Jn 19:34-35). This shows that Jesus’ lungs had collapsed and he had died of asphyxiation. Any medical expert can vouch for this.

(4) The body was totally encased in winding sheets and entombed (Jn 19:38-42).

(5) The post-resurrection appearances convinced the disciples, even “doubting Thomas,” that Jesus was gloriously alive (Jn 20:19-29). It is psychologically impossible for the disciples to have been so transformed and confident if Jesus had merely struggled out of a swoon, badly in need of a doctor. A half-dead, staggering sick man who has just had a narrow escape is not worshiped fearlessly as divine lord and conquerer of death.

(6) How were the Roman guards at the tomb overpowered by a swooning corpse? Or by unarmed disciples? And if the disciples did it, they knowingly lied when they wrote the Gospels, and we are into the conspiracy theory, which we will refute shortly.

(7) How could a swooning half-dead man have moved the great stone at the door of the tomb? Who moved the stone if not an angel? No one has ever answered that question. Neither the Jews nor the Romans would move it, for it was in both their interests to keep the tomb sealed, the Jews had the stone put there in the first place, and the Roman guards would be killed if they let the body “escape.”

The story the Jewish authorities spread, that the guards fell asleep and the disciples stole the body (Mt 28:11-15), is unbelievable. Roman guards would not fall asleep on a job like that; if they did, they would lose their lives. And even if they did fall asleep, the crowd and the effort and the noise it would have taken to move an enormous boulder would have wakened them. Furthermore, we are again into the conspiracy theory, with all its unanswerable difficulties (see next section).

(8) If Jesus awoke from a swoon, where did he go? Think this through: you have a living body to deal with now, not a dead one. Why did it disappear? There is absolutely no data, not even any false, fantastic, imagined data, about Jesus’ life after his crucifixion, in any sources, friend or foe, at any time, early or late. A man like that, with a past like that, would have left traces.

(9) Most simply, the swoon theory necessarily turns into the conspiracy theory or the hallucination theory, for the disciples testified that Jesus did not swoon but really died and really rose.

It may seem that these nine arguments have violated our initial principle about not presupposing the truth of the Gospel texts, since we have argued from data in the texts. But the swoon theory does not challenge the truths in the texts which we refer to as data; it uses them and explains them (by swoon rather than resurrection). Thus we use them too. We argue from our opponents’ own premises.

Refutation of the Conspiracy Theory: Seven Arguments

Why couldn’t the disciples have made up the whole story?

(1) Blaise Pascal gives a simple, psychologically sound proof for why this is unthinkable:


The “cruncher” in this argument is the historical fact that no one, weak or strong, saint or sinner, Christian or heretic, ever confessed, freely or under pressure, bribe or even torture, that the whole story of the resurrection was a fake a lie, a deliberate deception. Even when people broke under torture, denied Christ and worshiped Caesar, they never let that cat out of the bag, never revealed that the resurrection was their conspiracy. For that cat was never in that bag. No Christians believed the resurrection was a conspiracy; if they had, they wouldn’t have become Christians.

(2) If they made up the story, they were the most creative, clever, intelligent fantasists in history, far surpassing Shakespeare, or Dante or Tolkien. Fisherman’s “fish stories” are never that elaborate, that convincing, that life-changing, and that enduring.

(3) The disciples’ character argues strongly against such a conspiracy on the part of all of them, with no dissenters. They were simple, honest, common peasants, not cunning, conniving liars. They weren’t even lawyers! Their sincerity is proved by their words and deeds. They preached a resurrected Christ and they lived a resurrected Christ. They willingly died for their “conspiracy.” Nothing proves sincerity like martyrdom. They change in their lives from fear to faith, despair to confidence, confusion to certitude, runaway cowardice to steadfast boldness under threat and persecution, not only proves their sincerity but testifies to some powerful cause of it. Can a lie cause such a transformation? Are truth and goodness such enemies that the greatest good in history — sanctity — has come from the greatest lie?

Use your imagination and sense of perspective here. Imagine twelve poor, fearful, stupid (read the Gospels!) peasants changing the hard-nosed Roman world with a lie. And not an easily digested, attractive lie either. St. Thomas Aquinas says:

“In the midst of the tyranny of the persecutors, an innumerable throng of people, both simple and learned, flocked to the Christian faith. In this faith there are truths proclaimed that surpass every human intellect; the pleasures of the flesh are curbed; it is taught that the things of the world should be spurned. Now, for the minds of mortal men to assent to these things is the greatest of miracles….This wonderful conversion of the world to the Christian faith is the clearest witness….For it would be truly more wonderful than all signs if the world had been led by simply and humble men to believe such lofty truths, to accomplish such difficult actions, and to have such high hopes.” (Summa Contra Gentiles, I, 6)

(4) There could be no possible motive for such a lie. Lies are always told for some selfish advantage. What advantage did the “conspirators” derive from their “lie” ? They were hated, scorned, persecuted, excommunicated, imprisoned, tortured, exiled, crucified, boiled alive, roasted, beheaded, disemboweled and fed to lions — hardly a catalog of perks!

(5) If the resurrection was a lie, the Jews would have produced the corpse and nipped this feared superstition in the bud. All they had to do was go to the tomb and get it. The Roman soldiers and their leaders were on their side, not the Christians’. And if the Jews couldn’t get the body because the disciples stole it, how did they do that? The arguments against the swoon theory hold here too: unarmed peasants could not have overpowered Roman soldiers or rolled away a great stone while they slept on duty.

(6) The disciples could not have gotten away with proclaiming the resurrection in Jerusalem — same time, same place, full of eyewitnesses — if it had been a lie. William Lane Craig says,

“The Gospels were written in such a temporal and geographical proximity to the events they record that it would have been almost impossible to fabricate events….The fact that the disciples were able to proclaim the resurrection in Jerusalem in the face of their enemies a few weeks after the crucifixion shows that what they proclaimed was true, for they could never have proclaimed the resurrection (and been believed) under such circumstances had it not occurred.” (Knowing the Truth About the Resurrection, chapter 6)

(7) If there had been a conspiracy, it would certainly have been unearthed by the disciples’ adversaries, who had both the interest and the power to expose any fraud. Common experience shows that such intrigues are inevitably exposed (Craig, ibid).

In conclusion, if the resurrection was a concocted, conspired lie, it violates all known historical and psychological laws of lying. It is, then, as unscientific, as unrepeatable, unique and untestable as the resurrection itself. But unlike the resurrection, it is also contradicted by things we do know (the above points).

Refutation of the Hallucination Theory: Thirteen Arguments

If you thought you saw a dead man walking and talking, wouldn’t you think it more likely that you were hallucinating than that you were seeing correctly? Why then not think the same thing about Christ’s resurrection?

(1) There were too many witnesses. Hallucinations are private, individual, subjective. Christ appeared to Mary Magdalene, to the disciples minus Thomas, to the disciples including Thomas, to the two disciples at Emmaus, to the fisherman on the shore, to James (his “brother” or cousin), and even to five hundred people at once (1 Cor 15:3-8). Even three different witnesses are enough for a kind of psychological trigonometry; over five hundred is about as public as you can wish. And Paul says in this passage (v. 6) that most of the five hundred are still alive, inviting any reader to check the truth of the story by questioning the eyewitnesses — he could never have done this and gotten away with it, given the power, resources and numbers of his enemies, if it were not true.

(2) The witnesses were qualified. They were simple, honest, moral people who had firsthand knowledge of the facts.

(3) The five hundred saw Christ together, at the same time and place. This is even more remarkable than five hundred private “hallucinations” at different times and places of the same Jesus. Five hundred separate Elvis sightings may be dismissed, but if five hundred simple fishermen in Maine saw, touched and talked with him at once, in the same town, that would be a different matter. (The only other dead person we know of who is reported to have appeared to hundreds of qualified and skeptical eyewitnesses at once is Mary the mother of Jesus [at Fatima, to 70,000]. And that was not a claim of physical resurrection but of a vision.)

(4) Hallucinations usually last a few seconds or minutes; rarely hours. This one hung around for forty days (Acts 1:3).

(5) Hallucinations usually happen only once, except to the insane. This one returned many times, to ordinary people (Jn 20:19-21:14; Acts 1:3).

(6) Hallucinations come from within, from what we already know, at least unconsciously. This one said and did surprising and unexpected things (Acts 1:4,9) — like a real person and unlike a dream.

(7) Not only did the disciples not expect this, they didn’t even believe it at first — neither Peter, nor the women, nor Thomas, nor the eleven. They thought he was a ghost; he had to eat something to prove he was not (Lk 24:36-43).

(8) Hallucinations do not eat. The resurrected Christ did, on at least two occasions (Lk 24:42-43; Jn 21:1-14).

(9) The disciples touched him (Mt 28:9; Lk 24:39; Jn 20:27).

(10) They also spoke with him, and he spoke back. Figments of your imagination do not hold profound, extended conversations with you, unless you have the kind of mental disorder that isolates you. But this “hallucination” conversed with at least eleven people at once, for forty days (Acts 1:3).

(11) The apostles could not have believed in the “hallucination” if Jesus’ corpse had still been in the tomb. This is very simple and telling point; for if it was a hallucination, where was the corpse? They would have checked for it; if it was there, they could not have believed.

(12) If the apostles had hallucinated and then spread their hallucinogenic story, the Jews would have stopped it by producing the body — unless the disciples had stolen it, in which case we are back with the conspiracy theory and all its difficulties.

(13) A hallucination would explain only the post-resurrection appearances; it would not explain the empty tomb, the rolled-away stone, or the inability to produce the corpse. No theory can explain all these data except a real resurrection. C.S. Lewis says,

“Any theory of hallucination breaks down on the fact (and if it is invention [rather than fact], it is the oddest invention that ever entered the mind of man) that on three separate occasions this hallucination was not immediately recognized as Jesus (Lk 24:13-31; Jn 20:15; 21:4). Even granting that God sent a holy hallucination to teach truths already widely believed without it, and far more easily taught by other methods, and certain to be completely obscured by this, might we not at least hope that he would get the face of the hallucination right? Is he who made all faces such a bungler that he cannot even work up a recognizable likeness of the Man who was himself?” (Miracles, chapter 16)

Some of these arguments are as old as the Church Fathers. Most go back to the eighteenth century, especially William Paley. How do unbelievers try to answer them? Today, few even try to meet these arguments, although occasionally someone tries to refurbish one of the three theories of swoon, conspiracy or hallucination (e.g. Schonfield’s conspiratorial The Passover Plot). But the counter-attack today most often takes one of the two following forms.

I. Some dismiss the resurrection simply because it is miraculous, thus throwing the whole issue back to whether miracles are possible. They argue, as Hume did, that any other explanation is always more probable than a miracle. For a refutation of these arguments, see our chapter on miracles (chapter 5).

II. The other form of counter-attack, by far the most popular, is to try to escape the traditional dilemma of “deceivers” (conspirators) or “deceived” (hallucinators) by interpreting the Gospels as myth — neither literally true nor literally false, but spiritually or symbolically true. This is the standard line of liberal theology departments in colleges, universities and seminaries throughout the Western world today.

Refutation of the Myth Theory: Six Arguments

(1) The style of the Gospels is radically and clearly different from the style of all the myths. Any literary scholar who knows and appreciates myths can verify this. There are no overblown, spectacular, childishly exaggerated events. Nothing is arbitrary. Everything fits in. Everything is meaningful. The hand of a master is at work here.

Psychological depth is at a maximum. In myth it is at a minimum. In myth, such spectacular external events happen that it would be distracting to add much internal depth of character. That is why it is ordinary people like Alice who are the protagonists of extra-ordinary adventures like Wonderland. That character depth and development of everyone in the Gospels — especially, of course, Jesus himself — is remarkable. It is also done with an incredible economy of words. Myths are verbose; the Gospels are laconic (concise).

There are also telltale marks of eyewitness description, like the little detail of Jesus writing in the sand when asked whether to stone the adulteress or not (Jn 8:6). No one knows why this is put in; nothing comes of it. The only explanation is that the writer saw it. If this detail and others like it throughout all four Gospels were invented, then a first-century tax collector (Matthew), a “young man” (Mark), a doctor (Luke), and a fisherman (John) all independently invented the new genre of realistic fantasy nineteen centuries before it was reinvented in the twentieth.

The stylistic point is argued so well by C.S. Lewis in “Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism” (in Christian Reflections and also in Fern-Seed and Elephants) that we strongly refer the reader to it as the best comprehensive anti-demythologizing essay we have seen.

Let us be even more specific. Let us compare the Gospels with two particular mythic writings from around that time to see for ourselves the stylistic differences. The first is the so-called Gospel of Peter, a forgery from around A.D. 125 which John Dominic Crossan (of the “Jesus Seminar”), a current media darling among the doubters, insists is earlier than the four Gospels. As William Lane Craig puts it:

“In this account, the tomb is not only surrounded by Roman guards but also by all the Jewish Pharisees and elders as well as a great multitude from all the surrounding countryside who have come to watch the resurrection. Suddenly in the night there rings out a loud voice in heaven, and two men descend from heaven to the tomb. The stone over the door rolls back by itself, and they go into the tomb. The three men come out of the tomb, two of them holding up the third man. The heads of the two men reach up into the clouds, but the head of the third man reaches beyond the clouds. Then a cross comes out of the tomb, and a voice from heaven asks, ‘Have you preached to them that sleep?’ And the cross answers, ‘Yes.'” (Apologetics, p. 189)

Here is a second comparison, from Richard Purtill:

“It may be worthwhile to take a quick look, for purposes of comparison at the closest thing we have around the time of the Gospels to an attempt at a realistic fantasy. This is the story of Apollonius of Tyana, written about A.D. 250 by Flavius Philostratus….There is some evidence that a neo-Pythagorean sage named Apollonius may really have lived, and thus Philostratus’ work is a real example of what have thought the Gospels to be: a fictionalized account of the life of a real sage and teacher, introducing miraculous elements to build up the prestige of the central figure. It thus gives us a good look at what a real example of a fictionalized biography would look like, written at a time and place not too far removed from those in which the Gospels were written.

“The first thing we notice is the fairy-tale atmosphere. There is a rather nice little vampire story, which inspired a minor poem by Keats entitled Lamia. There are animal stories about, for instance, snakes in India big enough to drag off and eat an elephant. The sage wanders from country to country and wherever he goes he is likely to be entertained by the king or emperor, who holds long conversations with him and sends him on his way with camels and precious stones.

“Here is a typical passage about healing miracles: ‘A woman who had had seven miscarriages was cured through the prayers of her husband, as follows. The Wise Man told the husband, when his wife was in labor, to bring a live rabbit under his cloak to the place where she was, walk around her and immediately release the rabbit; for she would lose her womb as well as her baby if the rabbit was not immediately driven away.’ [Bk 3, sec 39]

“The point is that this is what you get when the imagination goes to work. Once the boundaries of fact are crossed we wander into fairyland. And very nice too, for amusement or recreation. But the Gospels are set firmly in the real Palestine of the first century, and the little details are not picturesque inventions but the real details that only an eyewitness or a skilled realistic novelist can give.” (Thinking About Religion, p. 75-76)

(2) A second problem is that there was not enough time for myth to develop. The original demythologizers pinned their case onto a late second-century date for the writing of the Gospels; several generations have to pass before the added mythological elements can be mistakenly believed to be facts. Eyewitnesses would be around before that to discredit the new, mythic versions. We know of other cases where myths and legends of miracles developed around a religious founder — for example, Buddha, Lao-tzu and Muhammad. In each case, many generations passed before the myth surfaced.

The dates for the writing of the Gospels have been pushed back by every empirical manuscript discovery; only abstract hypothesizing pushes the date forward. Almost no knowledgeable scholar today holds what Bultmann said it was necessary to hold in order to believe the myth theory, namely, that there is no first-century textual evidence that Christianity began with a divine and resurrected Christ, not a human and dead one.

Some scholars still dispute the first-century date for the Gospels, especially John’s. But no one disputes that Paul’s letters were written within the lifetime of eyewitnesses to Christ. So let us argue from Paul’s letters. Either these letters contain myth or they do not. If so, there is lacking the several generations necessary to build up a commonly believed myth. There is not even one generation. If these letters are not myth, then the Gospels are not either, for Paul affirms all the main claims of the Gospels. Julius Muller put the anti-myth argument this way:

“One cannot imagine how such a series of legends could arise in an historical age, obtain universal respect, and supplant the historical recollection of the true character [Jesus]….if eyewitnesses were still at hand who could be questioned respecting the truth of the recorded marvels. Hence, legendary fiction, as it likes not the clear present time but prefers the mysterious gloom of gray antiquity, is wont to seek a remoteness of age, along with that of space, and to remove its boldest and most rare and wonderful creations into a very remote and unknown land.” (The Theory of Myths in Its Application to the Gospel History Examined and Confuted [London, 1844], p. 26)

Muller challenged his nineteenth-century contemporaries to produce a single example anywhere in history of a great myth or legend arising around a historical figure and being generally believed within thirty years after that figure’s death. No one has ever answered him.

(3) The myth theory has two layers. The first layer is the historical Jesus, who was not divine, did not claim divinity, performed no miracles, and did not rise from the dead. The second, later, mythologized layer is the Gospels as we have them, with a Jesus who claimed to be divine, performed miracles and rose from the dead. The problem with this theory is simply that there is not the slightest bit of any real evidence whatever for the existence of any such first layer. The two-layer cake theory has the first layer made entirely of air — and hot air at that.

St. Augustine refutes the two-layer theory with his usual condensed power and simplicity:

“The speech of one Elpidius, who had spoken and disputed face to face against the Manichees, had already begun to affect me at Carthage, when he produced arguments from Scripture which were not easy to answer. And the answer they [the Manichees, who claimed to be the true Christians] gave seemed to me feeble — indeed they preferred not to give it in public but only among ourselves in private — the answer being that the Scriptures of the New Testament had been corrupted by some persons unknown…yet the Manicheans made no effort to produce uncorrupted copies.” (Confessions, V, 11, Sheed translation)

Note the sarcasm in the last sentence. It still applies today. William Lane Craig summarizes the evidence — the lack of evidence:

“The Gospels are a miraculous story, and we have no other story handed down to us than that contained in the Gospels….The letters of Barnabas and Clement refer to Jesus’ miracles and resurrection. Polycarp mentions the resurrection of Christ, and Irenaeus relates that he had heard Polycarp tell of Jesus’ miracles. Ignatius speaks of the resurrection. Puadratus reports that persons were still living who had been healed by Jesus. Justin Martyr mentions the miracles of Christ. No relic of a non-miraculous story exists. That the original story should be lost and replaced by another goes beyond any known example of corruption of even oral tradition, not to speak of the experience of written transmissions. These facts show that the story in the Gospels was in substance the same story that Christians had at the beginning. This means…that the resurrection of Jesus was always a part of the story.” (Apologetics, chapter 6)

(4) A little detail, seldom noticed, is significant in distinguishing the Gospels from myth: the first witnesses of the resurrection were women. In first-century Judaism, women had low social status and no legal right to serve as witnesses. If the empty tomb were an invented legend, its inventors surely would not have had it discovered by women, whose testimony was considered worthless. If, on the other hand, the writers were simply reporting what they saw, they would have to tell the truth, however socially and legally inconvenient.

(5) The New Testament could not be myth misinterpreted and confused with fact because it specifically distinguishes the two and repudiates the mythic interpretation (2 Peter 1:16). Since it explicitly says it is not myth, if it is myth it is a deliberate lie rather than myth. The dilemma still stands. It is either truth or lie, whether deliberate (conspiracy) or non-deliberate (hallucination). There is no escape from the horns of this dilemma. Once a child asks whether Santa Claus is real, your yes becomes a lie, not myth, if he is not literally real. Once the New Testament distinguishes myth from fact, it becomes a lie if the resurrection is not fact.

(6) William Lane Craig has summarized the traditional textual arguments with such clarity, condensation and power that we quote him here at length. The following arguments (rearranged and outlined from Knowing the Truth About the Resurrection) prove two things: first, that the Gospels were written by the disciples, not later myth-makers, and second, that the Gospels we have today are essentially the same as the originals.

(A) Proof that the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses:

(1) Internal evidence, from the Gospels themselves:

(a) The style of writing in the Gospels is simple and alive, what we would expect from their traditionally accepted authors.

(b) Moreover, since Luke was written before Acts, and since Acts was written prior to the death of Paul, Luke must have an early date, which speaks for its authenticity.

(c) The Gospels also show an intimate knowledge of Jerusalem prior to its destruction in A.D. 70. The Gospels are full of proper names, dates, cultural details, historical events, and customs and opinions of that time.

(d) Jesus’ prophecies of that event (the destruction of Jerusalem) must have been written prior to Jerusalem’s fall, for otherwise the church would have separated out the apocalyptic element in the prophecies, which makes them appear to concern the end of the world. Since the end of the world did not come about when Jerusalem was destroyed, the so-called prophecies of its destruction that were really written after the city was destroyed would not have made that event appear so closely connected with the end of the world. Hence, the Gospels must have been written prior to A.D. 70.

(e) The stories of Jesus’ human weaknesses and of the disciples’ faults also bespeak the Gospels’ accuracy.

(f) Furthermore, it would have been impossible for forgers to put together so consistent a narrative as that which we find in the Gospels. The Gospels do not try to suppress apparent discrepancies, which indicates their originality (written by eyewitnesses). There is no attempt at harmonization between the Gospels, such as we might expect from forgers.

(g) The Gospels do not contain anachronisms; the authors appear to have been first-century Jews who were witnesses of the events.

We may conclude that there is no more reason to doubt that the Gospels come from the traditional authors than there is to doubt that the works of Philo or Josephus are authentic, except that the Gospels contain supernatural events.

(2) External evidence:

(a) The disciples must have left some writings, engaged as they were in giving lessons to and counseling believers who were geographically distant; and what could these writings be if not the Gospels and epistles themselves? Eventually the apostles would have needed to publish accurate narratives of Jesus’ history, so that any spurious attempts would be discredited and the genuine Gospels preserved.

(b) There were many eyewitnesses who were still alive when the books were written who could testify whether they came from their purported authors or not.

(c) The extra-biblical testimony unanimously attributes the Gospels to their traditional authors: the Epistle of Barnabas, the Epistle of Clement, the Shepherd of Hermes, Theophilus, Hippolytus, Origen, Puadratus, Irenaeus, Melito, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Dionysius, Tertullian, Cyprian, Tatian, Caius, Athanasius, Cyril, up to Eusebius in A.D. 315, even Christianity’s opponents conceded this: Celsus, Porphyry, Emperor Julian.

(d) With a single exception, no apocryphal gospel is ever quoted by any known author during the first three hundred years after Christ. In fact there is no evidence that any inauthentic gospel whatever existed in the first century, in which all four Gospels and Acts were written.

(B) Proof that the Gospels we have today are the same Gospels originally written:

(1) Because of the need for instruction and personal devotion, these writings must have been copied many times, which increases the chances of preserving the original text.

(2) In fact, no other ancient work is available in so many copies and languages, and yet all these various versions agree in content.

(3) The text has also remained unmarred by heretical additions. The abundance of manuscripts over a wide geographical distribution demonstrates that the text has been transmitted with only trifling discrepancies. The differences that do exist are quite minor and are the result of unintentional mistakes.

(4) The quotations of the New Testament books in the early Church Fathers all coincide.

(5) The Gospels could not have been corrupted without a great outcry on the part of all orthodox Christians.

(6) No one could have corrupted all the manuscripts.

(7) There is no precise time when the falsification could have occurred, since, as we have seen, the New Testament books are cited by the Church Fathers in regular and close succession. The text could not have been falsified before all external testimony, since then the apostles were still alive and could repudiate such tampering.

(8) The text of the New Testament is every bit as good as the text of the classical works of antiquity. To repudiate the textual parity of the Gospels would be to reverse all the rules of criticism and to reject all the works of antiquity, since the text of those works is less certain than that of the Gospels.

Richard Purtill summarizes the textual case:

“Many events which are regarded as firmly established historically have (1) far less documentary evidence than many biblical events; (2) and the documents on which historians rely for much secular history are written much longer after the event than many records of biblical events; (3) furthermore, we have many more copies of biblical narratives than of secular histories; and (4) the surviving copies are much earlier than those on which our evidence for secular history is based. If the biblical narratives did not contain accounts of miraculous events, biblical history would probably be regarded as much more firmly established than most of the history of, say, classical Greece and Rome.” (Thinking About Religion, p. 84-85)

Conclusions: More Objections Answered

No alternative to a real resurrection has yet explained: the existence of the Gospels, the origin of the Christian faith, the failure of Christ’s enemies to produce his corpse, the empty tomb, the rolled-away stone, or the accounts of the post-resurrection appearances. Swoon, conspiracy, hallucination and myth have been shown to be the only alternatives to a real resurrection, and each has been refuted.

What reasons could be given at this point for anyone who still would refuse to believe? At this point, general rather than specific objections are usually given. For instance:

Objection 1 : History is not an exact science. It does not yield absolute certainty like mathematics.

Reply : This is true, but why would you note that fact now and not when you speak of Caesar or Luther or George Washington? History is not exact, but it is sufficient. No one doubts that Caesar crossed the Rubicon; why do many doubt that Jesus rose from the dead? The evidence for the latter is much better than for the former.

Objection 2 : You can’t trust documents. Paper proves nothing. Anything can be forged.

Reply : This is simply ignorance. Not trusting documents is like not trusting telescopes. Paper evidence suffices for most of what we believe; why should it suddenly become suspect here?

Objection 3 : Because the resurrection is miraculous. It’s the content of the idea rather than the documentary evidence for it that makes it incredible.

Reply : Now we finally have a straightforward objection — not to the documentary evidence but to miracles. This is a philosophical question, not a scientific, historical or textual question. (See chapter five in this book for an answer).

Objection 4 : It’s not only miracles in general but this miracle in particular that is objectionable. The resurrection of a corpse is crass, crude, vulgar, literalistic and materialistic. Religion should be more spiritual, inward, ethical.

Reply : If religion is what we invent, we can make it whatever we like. If it is what God invented, then we have to take it as we find it, just as we have to take the universe as we find it, rather than as we’d like it to be. Death is crass, crude, vulgar, literal and material. The resurrection meets death where it is and conquers it, rather than merely spouting some harmless, vaporous abstractions about spirituality. The resurrection is as vulgar as the God who did it. He also made mud and bugs and toenails.

Objection 5 : But a literalistic interpretation of the resurrection ignores the profound dimensions of meaning found in the symbolic, spiritual and mythic realms that have been deeply explored by other religions. Why are Christians so narrow and exclusive? Why can’t they see the profound symbolism in the idea of resurrection?

Reply : They can. It’s not either-or. Christianity does not invalidate the myths, it validates them, by incarnating them. It is “myth become fact,” to use the title of a germane essay by C.S. Lewis (in God in the Dock). Why prefer a one-layer cake to a two-layer cake? Why refuse either the literal-historical or the mythic-symbolic aspects of the resurrection? The Fundamentalist refuses the mythic-symbolic aspects because he has seen what the Modernist has done with it: used it to exclude the literal-historical aspects. Why have the Modernists done that? What terrible fate awaits them if they follow the multifarious and weighty evidence and argument that naturally emerges from the data, as we have summarized it here in this chapter?

The answer is not obscure: traditional Christianity awaits them, complete with adoration of Christ as God, obedience to Christ as Lord, dependence on Christ as Savior, humble confession of sin and a serious effort to live Christ’s life of self-sacrifice, detachment from the world, righteousness, holiness and purity of thought, word and deed. The historical evidence is massive enough to convince the open-minded inquirer. By analogy with any other historical event, the resurrection has eminently credible evidence behind it. To disbelieve it, you must deliberately make an exception to the rules you use everywhere else in history. Now why would someone want to do that?

Ask yourself that question if you dare, and take an honest look into your heart before you answer.

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Three Days and Three Nights in the Tomb By Steve Ray

Posted by catholicfaithdefender on March 25, 2008


(Matt. 12:3840)


Skeptics claim to have discovered an error in the New Testament —claiming Jesus was not in the tomb for three full 24-hour periods like he prophesied. He was buried Friday afternoon and rose early Sunday morning.being only one full day and two nights. Has the sceptic found an error in the Bible? How does one respond?







First, it appears that this expression is another way of stating “on the third day” or “in three days.” This can be illustrated from 1 Samuel 30:1213. The same Greek expression is found in 1 Samuel 30:12 in the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint) as in Matthew 12:40. Verse 13 refers to this three-day and three-night period as “three days ago” or, as the LXX literally states, “the third day today.” If “three days and three nights” can mean “on the third day,” there is no major problem in our passage. By Jewish reckoning Jesus could have been crucified on Friday and raised on Sunday, the third day. Friday afternoon = day one; Friday 6 PM to Saturday 6 PM = day two; Saturday 6 PM to Sunday 6 PM = day three.’




Posted in A Challenge for Skeptics, Error in the Bible? ANSWERED !!! | 1 Comment »