WHY I DON'T
BUY THE RESURRECTION STORY
Richard Carrier
What
follows is a half-hour lecture I gave at Yale on 26 October 2000 at the request
of the Yale College Humanists and Secularists. It was followed by a Q
& A session that actually lasted nearly two hours. I have
subsequently been asked to give this lecture elsewhere on other occasions, so I
am reproducing it here, with footnotes in brackets giving more detail than I am
able to give in the lecture itself. Though it shares the same title as
the much-longer essay here, it is not the same paper, but actually a synthesis
of several papers I have published here, and including entirely new arguments
and information. It is worth reading on its own, in addition to or even
in lieu of the much lengthier essay also called Why
I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story.
Today I am going to
tell you why I don't buy the resurrection story. By that I mean the tales
in the Gospels, of Jesus physically rising again from the grave. As a
professional historian, I do not believe we have anywhere near sufficient
evidence or reason to believe this, and I've been asked by the Yale College
Humanists and Secularists to explain why. If any of you want to know more
about this than what few points I can cover in thirty minutes, I have several writings
on this and other subjects. But here I will cover the most important reasons
why I don't buy the resurrection story.
It actually begins
with a different tale. In 520 CE an anonymous monk
recorded the life of Saint Genevieve, who had died only ten years before
that. In his account of her life, he describes how, when she ordered a
cursed tree cut down, monsters sprang from it and breathed a fatal stench on
many men for two hours; while she was sailing, eleven ships capsized, but at
her prayers they were righted again spontaneously; she cast out demons, calmed
storms, miraculously created water and oil from nothing before astonished
crowds, healed the blind and lame, and several people who stole things from her
actually went blind instead. No one wrote anything to contradict
or challenge these claims, and they were written very near the time the events
supposedly happened--by a religious man whom we suppose regarded lying to be a
sin. Yet do we believe any of it? Not really. And we shouldn't.[1]
As David Hume once
said, why do such things not happen now?[2] Is it a coincidence that the
very time when these things no longer happen is the same time that we have the
means and methods to check them in the light of science and careful
investigation? I've never seen monsters spring from a tree, and I don't
know anyone who has, and there are no women touring the country transmuting
matter or levitating ships. These events look like tall tales, sound like
tall tales, and smell like tall tales. Odds are, they're tall tales.
But we should try
to be more specific in our reasons, and not rely solely on common sense
impressions. And there are specific reasons to disbelieve the story of
Genevieve, and they are the same reasons we have to doubt the Gospel accounts
of the Resurrection of Jesus. For the parallel is clear: the
Gospels were written no sooner to the death of their main character--and more
likely many decades later--than was the case for the account of Genevieve; and
like that account, the Gospels were also originally anonymous--the names now
attached to them were added by speculation and oral tradition half a century
after they were actually written. Both contain fabulous miracles
supposedly witnessed by numerous people. Both belong to the same genre of
literature: what we call a "hagiography," a sacred account of a holy
person regarded as representing a moral and divine ideal. Such a genre
had as its principal aim the glorification of the religion itself and of the
example set by the perfect holy person represented as its central focus.
Such literature was also a tool of propaganda, used to promote certain moral or
religious views, and to oppose different points of view. The life
of Genevieve, for example, was written to combat Arianism.
The canonical Gospels, on the other hand, appear to combat various forms of
Gnosticism. So being skeptical of what they say is sensible from the
start.[3]
It is certainly
reasonable to doubt the resurrection of Jesus in the flesh, an event placed
some time between 26 and 36 CE. For this we have only a few written
sources near the event, all of it sacred writing, and entirely
pro-Christian. Pliny the Younger was the first non-Christian to even
mention the religion, in 110 CE, but he doesn't mention the
resurrection. No non-Christian mentions the resurrection until many
decades later--Lucian, a critic of superstition, was the first, writing in the
mid-2nd century, and likely getting his information from Christian
sources. So the evidence is not what any historian would consider good.[4]
Nevertheless,
Christian apologist Douglas Geivett has
declared that the evidence for the physical resurrection of Jesus meets, and I
quote, "the highest standards of historical inquiry" and "if one
takes the historian's own criteria for assessing the historicity of ancient
events, the resurrection passes muster as a historically well-attested event of
the ancient world," as well-attested, he says, as Julius Caesar's crossing
of the Rubicon in 49 B.C.[5] Well, it is common in Christian apologetics,
throughout history, to make absurdly exaggerated claims, and this is no
exception. Let's look at Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon for a minute:
·
First
of all, we have Caesar's own word on the subject. Indeed, The Civil War has been a Latin classic for
two thousand years, written by Caesar himself and by one of his generals who
was definitely an eye-witness and who knew the man personally. In
contrast, we do not have anything written by Jesus, and we do not know for
certain the name of any author of any of the accounts of his physical
resurrection.
·
Second,
we have many of Caesar's enemies, including Cicero, a contemporary of
the event, reporting the crossing of the Rubicon, whereas we have no hostile or
even neutral records of the resurrection until over a hundred years after the
event, and fifty years after the Christians' own claims had been widely spread
around.
·
Third,
we have a number of inscriptions and coins produced soon after the Republican
Civil War related to the Rubicon crossing, including mentions of battles and
conscriptions and judgments, which in fact form almost a continuous chain of
evidence for Caesar's entire march. On the other hand, we have absolutely
no physical evidence of any kind in the case of the resurrection.
·
Fourth,
we have the story of the "Rubicon Crossing" in almost every historian
of the period, including the most prominent scholars of the age: Suetonius,
Appian, Cassius Dio, Plutarch. Moreover, these
scholars have a measure of proven reliability, since a great many of their
reports on other matters have been confirmed in material evidence and in other
sources. In addition, they all quote and name many different
sources, showing a wide reading of the witnesses and documents, and they show a
regular desire to critically examine claims for which there is any
dispute. If that wasn't enough, all of them cite or quote sources which
were written by witnesses, hostile and friendly, of the Rubicon crossing
and its repercussions.
Compare this with
the resurrection: we have not even a single historian mentioning the event
until the 3rd and 4th centuries, and then only by Christian
historians.[6] And of those few people who do mention it within a century
of the event, none of them show any wide reading, never cite any other sources,
show no sign of a skilled or critical examination of conflicting claims, have
no other literature or scholarship to their credit that we can test for their
skill and accuracy, are completely unknown, and have an overtly declared bias
towards persuasion and conversion.[7]
·
Fifth,
the history of
It
should be clear that we have many reasons to believe that Caesar crossed the
Rubicon, all of which are lacking in the case of the resurrection.
In fact, when we compare all five points, we see that in four of the five
proofs of an event's historicity, the resurrection has no evidence at all,
and in the one proof that it does have, it has not the best, but the very worst
kind of evidence--a handful of biased, uncritical, unscholarly, unknown,
second-hand witnesses. Indeed, you really have to look hard to find
another event that is in a worse condition than this as far as evidence
goes. So Geivett is guilty of a rather extreme
exaggeration. This is not a historically well-attested event, and it does
not meet the highest standards of evidence.
But reasons to be
skeptical do not stop there. We must consider the setting--the
place and time in which these stories spread. This was an age of fables
and wonder. Magic and miracles and ghosts were everywhere, and almost
never doubted. I'll give one example that illustrates this: we have
several accounts of what the common people thought about lunar eclipses.
They apparently had no doubt that this horrible event was the result of
monsters trying to devour the moon, or witches calling the moon down with
diabolical spells--sometimes both. So when an eclipse occurred, everyone
would frantically start banging pots and blowing brass horns furiously, to
scare away the monsters and confuse the witches' spells. So tremendous
was this din that many better-educated authors complain of how the racket
filled entire cities and countrysides. This was
a superstitious people.[9]
Only a small class
of elite well-educated men adopted more skeptical points of view, and because
they belonged to the upper class, both them and their arrogant skepticism were
scorned by the common people, rather than respected. Plutarch laments how
doctors were willing to attend to the sick among the poor for little or no fee,
but they were usually sent away, in preference for the local wizard.[10]
By modern standards, almost no one had any sort of education at all, and there
were no mass media disseminating scientific facts in any form.
By the estimates of
William Harris, author of Ancient Literacy [1989], only 20% of the
population could read anything at all, fewer than 10% could read well, and far
fewer still had any access to books. He found that in comparative terms,
even a single page of blank papyrus cost the equivalent of fifty dollars--ink,
and the labor to hand copy every word, cost many times more. We
find that books could run to the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars
each. Consequently, only the rich had books, and only elite scholars had
access to libraries, of which there were few.
The result was that
the masses had no understanding of science or critical thought. They were
neither equipped nor skilled, nor even interested, in challenging an inspiring
story, especially a story like that of the Gospels: utopian, wonderful,
critical of upper class society--even more a story that, if believed, secured
eternal life. Who wouldn't have bought a ticket to that lottery?
The differences
between society then and now cannot be stressed enough. There didn't
exist such things as coroners, reporters, cameras, newspapers, forensic
science, or even police investigators. All the technology, all the people
we have pursuing the truth of various claims now, did not exist then. In
those days, few would even be able to check the details of a story if they
wanted to--and few wanted to. Instead, people based their judgment on the
display of sincerity by the storyteller, by his ability to impress them with a
show, and by the potential rewards his story had to offer.[11] At the
same time, doubters didn't care to waste the time or money debunking yet
another crazy cult, of which there were hundreds then.[12] And so it
should not surprise us that we have no writings by anyone hostile to
Christianity until a century after it began--not even slanders or lies.
Clearly, no doubter cared to check or even challenge the story in print until
it was too late to investigate the facts.[13]
These are just some
of the reasons why we cannot trust extraordinary reports from that time without
excellent evidence, which we do not have in the case of the physical
resurrection of Jesus. For on the same quality of evidence we have
reports of talking dogs, flying wizards, magical statues, and monsters
springing from trees.[14] Can you imagine a movement today claiming that
a soldier in World War Two rose physically from the dead, but when you asked for
proof all they offered you were a mere handful of anonymous religious tracts
written in the 1980's? Would it be even remotely reasonable to believe such a
thing on so feeble a proof? Well--no.[15] What about alien bodies
recovered from a crashed flying saucer in
Even so, it is often
said in objection that we can trust the Gospels more than we normally would
because they were based on the reports of eye-witnesses of the event who were
willing to die for their belief in the physical resurrection, for surely no one
would die for a lie. To quote a Christian website: "the first disciples were
willing to suffer and die for their faith...for their claims to have seen
Jesus...risen bodily from the dead." Of course, the Gospel of
Matthew 28:17 actually claims that some eye-witnesses did not believe
what they saw and did not become Christians, which suggests the
experience was not so convincing after all. But there are two other
key reasons why this argument sounds great in sermons but doesn't hold water
under rational scrutiny.
First, it is based
on nothing in the New Testament itself, or on any reliable evidence of any
kind. None of the Gospels or Epistles mention anyone dying for their
belief in the physical resurrection of Jesus. The only martyrdoms
recorded in the New Testament are, first, the stoning of Stephen in the Book of
Acts. But Stephen was not a witness. He was a later convert.
So if he died for anything, he died for hearsay alone. But even in Acts
the story has it that he was not killed for what he believed, but for some
trumped up false charge, and by a mob, whom he could not have escaped even if
he had recanted. So his death does not prove anything in that
respect. Moreover, in his last breaths, we are told, he says nothing
about dying for any belief in the physical resurrection of Jesus, but mentions
only his belief that Jesus was the messiah, and was at that moment in
heaven.[17]
The second and only
other "martyr" recorded in Acts is the execution of the Apostle
James, but we are not told anything about why he was killed or whether
recanting would have saved him, or what he thought he died for.[18] In
fact, we have one independent account in the Jewish history of Josephus, of the
stoning of a certain "James the brother of Jesus" in 62 A.D., possibly
but not necessarily the very same James, and in that account he is stoned for
breaking the Jewish law, which recanting would not escape, and in the account
of the late 2nd century Christian hagiographer Hegesippus,
as reported by Eusebius, he dies not for his belief in a physical resurrection,
but, just like Stephen, solely for proclaiming Jesus the messiah, who was at
that moment in heaven.[19]
Yet that is the
last record of any martyrdom we have until the 2nd century. Then we start
to hear about some unnamed Christians burned for arson by Nero in 64 A.D.,[20]
but we do not know if any eye-witnesses were included in that group--and even
if we did it would not matter, for they were killed on a false charge of arson,
not for refusing to deny belief in a physical resurrection. So even if
they had recanted, it would not have saved them, and therefore their deaths
also do not prove anything, especially since such persecution was so rare and
unpredictable in that century. We also do not even know what it was they
believed--after all, Stephen and James did not appear to regard the physical
resurrection as an essential component of their belief. It is not
what they died for.
As far as we can
tell, no one knew what the fate was of any of the original eye-witnesses.
People were even unclear about who the original eye-witnesses were. There
were a variety of legends circulating centuries later about their travels and
deaths, but it is clear from our earliest sources that no one knew for
certain.[21] There was only one notable exception: the martyrdom of
Peter. This we do not hear about until two or three generations after the
event, and it is told in only one place: the Gnostic Gospel of Peter, which was
rejected as a false document by many Christians of the day. But even if
this account is true, it claims that Peter was executed for political meddling
and not for his beliefs. Even more important, it states that Peter
believed Jesus was resurrected as a spirit, not in the flesh...[22]
Which brings us to
the second point: it seems distinctly possible, if not definite, that the
original Christians did not in fact believe in a physical resurrection, but
that Jesus was taken up to heaven, and then "the risen Jesus" was
seen in visions and dreams, just like the vision Stephen has before he dies,
and which Paul has on the road to Damascus. Visions of gods were not at
all unusual, a cultural commonplace in those days, well documented by Robin
Lane Fox in his excellent book Pagans and Christians.[23] But whatever
their cause, if this is how Christianity actually started, it means that the
resurrection story told in the Gospels, of a Jesus risen in the flesh, does not
represent what the original disciples believed, but was made up generations
later. So even if they did die for their beliefs, they did not die for
the belief that Jesus was physically resurrected from the dead.
That the original
Christians believed in a spiritual resurrection is hinted at in many
strange features of the Gospel accounts of the appearances of Jesus after
death, which may be survivals of an original mystical tradition later corrupted
by the growing legend of a bodily resurrection, such as a Jesus that they do
not recognize, or who vanishes into thin air.[24] But more importantly,
it is also suggested by the letters of Paul, our earliest source of information
on any of the details of the original Christian beliefs. For Paul never
mentions or quotes any of the Gospels, so it seems clear that they were not
written in his lifetime. This is supported by internal evidence that
suggests all the Gospels were written around or after the destruction of
Yet Paul never
mentions Jesus having been resurrected in the flesh. He never mentions
empty tombs, physical appearances, or the ascension of Jesus into heaven afterward
(i.e. when Paul mentions the ascension, he never ties it to appearances in this
way). In Galatians 1 he tells us that he first met Jesus in a
"revelation" on the road to Damascus, not in the flesh, and the Book
of Acts gives several embellished accounts of this event that all clearly
reflect not any tradition of a physical encounter, but a startling vision (a
light and a voice, nothing more).[26] Then in 1 Corinthians 15 Paul
reports that all the original eye-witnesses, Peter, James, the Twelve
Disciples, and hundreds of others, saw Jesus in essentially the same way Paul
did--the only difference, he says, was that they saw it before him. He then
goes on to build an elaborate description of how the flesh cannot inherit the
Finally, when we examine the Gospel
record closely, it becomes apparent that the physical nature of the
resurrection was a growing legend, becoming more and more fabulous over time, a
good sign that it wasn't the original story. Now, we don't actually know
when any of the Gospels were written, but we can infer their chronological
order. Luke and Matthew both copy whole phrases from Mark and arrange
them in an identical order as found in Mark, so it is clear that Mark came first
among those three. Scholars dispute whether Luke preceded Matthew or the
other way around, but it seems to me that, since they show no apparent
awareness of each other, they were written around the same time, though
scholars generally hold that Luke perhaps wrote later than Matthew. John
presents the most theologically elaborate of the accounts, suggesting a late
development, and even earliest Christian tradition held that this Gospel was
the last to be written, and scholars generally agree on this.
So we start with Mark.
It is little known among the laity, but in fact the ending of Mark, everything
after verse 16:8, does not actually exist in the earliest versions of that
Gospel that survive.[28] It was added some time late in the 2nd
century or even later. Before that, as far as we can tell, Mark ended at
verse 16:8. But that means his Gospel ended only with an empty tomb, and
a pronouncement by a mysterious young man [29] that Jesus would be seen in
A decade or two
passes, and then Matthew appears. As this Gospel tells it, there
was a vast earthquake, and instead of a mere boy standing around beside an
already-opened tomb, an angel--blazing like lightning--descended from
the sky and paralyzed two guards that happened to be there, rolled away
the stone single handedly before several witnesses--and then announced
that Jesus will appear in Galilee. Obviously we are seeing a clear case
of legendary embellishment of the otherwise simple story in Mark. Then in
Matthew a report is given (similar to what was later added to Mark), where,
contrary to the angel's announcement, Jesus immediately meets the women that
attended to his grave and repeats what the angel said. Matthew is careful
to add a hint that this was a physical Jesus, having the women grovel and grab
his feet as he speaks.[32]
Then, maybe a
little later still, Luke appears, and suddenly what was a vague and
perhaps symbolic allusion to an ascension in Mark has now become a bodily
appearance, complete with a dramatic reenactment of Peter rushing to the tomb
and seeing the empty death shroud for himself.[32a] As happened in
Matthew, other details have grown. The one young man of Mark, which
became a flying angel in Matthew, in this account has suddenly become two
men, this time not merely in white, but in dazzling raiment. And to make
the new story even more suspicious as a doctrinal invention, Jesus goes out of
his way to say he is not a vision, and proves it by asking the Disciples
to touch him, and then by eating a fish. And though both Mark and Matthew
said the visions would happen in Galilee, Luke changes the story, and places
this particular experience in the more populous and prestigious
Jerusalem.[33]
Finally along comes
John, perhaps after another decade or more. Now the legend has
grown full flower, and instead of one boy, or two men, or one angel, now we
have two angels at the empty tomb. And outdoing Luke in style,
John has Jesus prove he is solid by showing his wounds, and breathing on
people, and even obliging the Doubting Thomas by letting him put his fingers
into the very wounds themselves. And Jesus eats not only fish this time,
but breaks bread as well. Like Luke, the most grandiose appearances to
the Disciples happen in
We have no primary
sources on what was going on in the forty years of the Church between Paul in
the year 58 CE and Clement of Rome in the year 95 CE, and Paul tells us
almost nothing about what happened in the beginning. We only conjecture
that the Gospels were written between Paul and Clement, though they may have
been written even ten or twenty years later still. But what I suspect happened
is something like this: Jesus died, was buried, and then in a vision or dream
appeared to one or more of his Disciples, convincing them he had ascended to
heaven, escaping death before the End Times, and then what began in the simple
story of Mark as a symbolic allusion to an ascended Christ soon to reveal
himself in visions from heaven, in time led some Christians to believe that the
resurrection was physical, and they heard or came up with increasingly
elaborate stories proving themselves right. Overzealous people often add
details and color to a story they've been told without even thinking about it,
and as the story passed from each to the next more detail and elaboration was
added, securing the notion of a physical resurrection in popular imagination
and belief.
It would have been
a natural mistake to make at the time, since gods were expected to be
able to raise people bodily from the dead, and physical resurrections were
actually in vogue in the very 1st century when Christianity began.
Consider the god Asclepius. Doctors associated themselves with this god,
and many legends were circulating of doctors becoming famous by restoring the
dead to life, as recounted by Pliny the Elder, Apuleius and others.[35]
Asclepius was also called SWTAYR, "The Savior," as many gods were in
that day. He was especially so-named for being able to cure the sick and
bring back the dead, and since "Jesus" (properly, Ioshua)
means "The Savior" in Hebrew it may have been expected that his
resurrection would be physical in nature. After all, so was that of
Lazarus, or of the boy raised by Elijah in 1 Kings--a prophet with whom Jesus
was often equated.[36] Jesus' association with many healing miracles may
also have implied a deliberate rivalry with Asclepius, and indeed, Jesus was
actually called SWTAYR, and still is today: we see the Christian fishes on the
backs of cars now, containing the Greek word ICHTHUS, the last letter of which
stands for: SWTAYR. Not standing to be outdone by a pagan god, Christians
may have simply expected that their god could raise himself physically from the
dead.[37]
Then there is Herodotus,
who was always a popular author and had been for centuries. He told of a
Thracian religion that began with the physical resurrection of a man called Zalmoxis, who then started a cult in which it was taught
that believers went to heaven when they died. We also know that
circulating in the Middle East were very ancient legends regarding the
resurrection of the goddess Inanna--also known as
Ishtar--who was crucified in the underworld, then rescued and raised back to
earth by her divine attendant, a tale recounted in a four thousand year old
clay tablet from Sumeria.[38] Finally, Plutarch
writes in the latter half of the 1st century how
"Romeo-and-Juliet-style" returns from the dead were a popular theme
in contemporary theatre, and we know from surviving summaries and fragments
that they were also a feature in romance novels of that day. This trend
is discussed at some length in G. W. Bowersock's
book Fiction as History.[39]
So the idea of
"physical resurrection" was popular, and circulating
everywhere. Associating Jesus with this trend would have been a very easy
mistake to make. Since religious trust was won in those days by the
charisma of speakers and the audience's subjective estimation of their
sincerity, it would not be long before a charismatic man, who heard the
embellished accounts, came into a position of power, inspiring complete faith
from his congregation, who then sought to defend the story, and so began the
transformation of the Christian idea of the resurrection from a spiritual
concept to a physical one--naturally, calling themselves the "true
church" and attacking all rivals, as has sadly so often happened in
history.
Lending
plausibility to this chain of events was the Jewish War between 66 and
70 CE [40], which ended with the complete destruction of the original
Christian Church in Jerusalem, and much of the entire city, after all Judaea
itself was ravaged by war. It is likely that many if not all of the
original believers still living were killed in this war, and with the loss of
the central source of Christian authority and tradition, legends were ripe for
the growing. This would explain why later Christians were so in the dark
about the history of their own Church between 58 and 95. It was a kind of
mini-dark age for them, a time of confusion and uncertainty. But what
exactly happened we may never know. However it came to change, it seems
more than likely that the first Christians, among them Paul, believed in a
spiritual resurrection, and not the resurrection story told in the
Gospels.
So this is where we
end up. We have no trustworthy evidence of a physical resurrection, no
reliable witnesses. It is among the most poorly attested of historical
events. The earliest evidence, from the letters of Paul, does not appear
to be of a physical resurrection, but a spiritual one. And we have at
least one plausible reason available to us as to why and how the legend grew
into something else. Finally, the original accounts of a physical
resurrection show obvious signs of legendary embellishment over time, and were
written in an age of little education and even less science, a time overflowing
with superstition and credulity. And, ultimately, the Gospels match
perfectly the same genre of hagiography as that life of Genevieve with which I
began. There the legends quickly arose, undoubted and unchallenged, of treeborn monsters and righted ships and blinded
thieves. In the Gospels, we get angels and earthquakes and a resurrection
in the flesh. So we have to admit that neither is any more believable
than the other.
It should not be
lost on us that Thomas was depicted as no less righteous for refusing to
believe so wild a claim without physical proof. We have as much right,
and ought to follow his example. He got to see and feel the wounds before
believing, and so should we. I haven't, so I can't be expected to believe
it.[41] And this leads me to one final reason why I don't buy the
resurrection story. No wise or compassionate God would demand this from
us. Such a god would not leave us so poorly informed about something so
important.[42] If we have a message for someone that is urgently vital
for their survival, and we have any compassion, that compassion will compel us
to communicate that message clearly and with every necessary proof--not
ambiguously, not through unreliable mediaries
presenting no real evidence. Conversely, if we see something incredible,
we do not attack or punish audiences who don't believe us, we don't even expect
them to believe--unless and until we can present decisive proof.
There is a heroic
legend in the technology community about the man who invented elevator safety brakes.
He claimed that any elevator fitted with his brakes, even if all the cables
broke, would be safely and swiftly stopped by his new invention. No one
trusted it. Did he get angry or indignant? No. He simply put
himself in an elevator, ordered the cables cut, and proved to the world, by risking
his own life, that his brakes worked.[43] This is the very principle that
has delivered us from superstition to science. Any claim can be made
about a drug, but people are rightly wary of swallowing anything that hasn't
been thoroughly tested and re-tested and tested again. Since I have no
such proofs regarding the resurrection story, I'm not going to swallow it, and
it would be cruel, even for a god, to expect otherwise of me. So I can
reason rightly that a god of all humankind would not appear in one tiny
backwater of the Earth, in a backward time, revealing himself to a tiny unknown
few, and then expect the billions of the rest of us to take their word for it,
and not even their word, but the word of some unnamed person many times
removed.
Yet, if one returns
to what was probably Paul's conception of a Christ risen in the spirit,
then the resurrection becomes no longer a historical proof of the truth of
Christianity, but an article of faith, an affirmation that is supposed to
follow nothing other than a personal revelation of Christ, not to be believed
on hearsay, but experienced for oneself. Though I do not believe this is
a reliable way to come to a true understanding of the world, as internal
experience only tells us about ourselves and not the truth of the world outside
of us,[44] I leave it to the Christians here to consider a spiritual
resurrection as a different way to understand their faith. But I don't
see any reason to buy the resurrection story found in the Gospels.
Footnotes:
[1]
For the Vita Genofevae see the translation of the
earliest mss. ("Text A") in Sainted Women of the Dark Ages by Jo Ann
McNamara and John Halborg, 1992, pp. 17 ff.
Their introduction gives background and further sources. See also The
Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed., s.v.
"Geneviève" for more sources. I only
mention a few of the most incredible of her miracles--by section number, cf.
monsters: 34; righted ships: 39; exorcisms: 44-47, etc.; calmed storms: 50;
oil: 51; water: 19; healings: 20, 32, 36, etc.; blinded thieves: 23, 33, etc.
[2]
Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1777), Chapter 10. See
the edition of this chapter and notes in In Defense
of Miracles, as well as Antony Flew's essay, ibid.,
"Neo-Humean Arguments About the
Miraculous," all with my Review of In Defense of Miracles.
[3]
Besides my summary of Metzger on The New Testament Canon, cf. R. Burridge, What are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography (1992); H. Koester, Ancient
Christian Gospels: Their History and Development (1990); W. Lane's New London
Commentary on the New Testament (1974); and also Bart Ehrman's
The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological
Controversies on the Text of the New Testament (1993).
[4]
A good summary of extra-biblical mentions of Jesus is Robert Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament: an Introduction to
the Ancient Evidence (2000). However, compare my treatment of Thallus with his. He outright omits mention of Phlegon, probably because we have no reliable quotations.
[5]
Douglas Geivett, "The Evidential Value of
Miracles," In Defense of Miracles (1997), pp. 186, 185, etc. He is
not alone: hundreds like him have made similar claims, cf. Josh McDowell's The
New Evidence That Demands a Verdict (1999), esp. § 9.5A & 9.8A for some
examples. I refute Geivett at length in my
Review of In Defense of Miracles.
[6]
The first Christians to show a desire to employ the methods of critical
scholarship in working out historical facts are Clement of Alexandria, Origen,
and Sextus Julius Africanus,
all working in the early 3rd century. Africanus
is the first known Christian chronologer, but not
quite a historian in the proper sense of someone who tried to develop a
critical analysis of what happened with an interest in the relevant causal
connections, and very little of his work survives. In the proper
sense, the first Christian historian was Eusebius, yet he is notoriously unreliable.
In fact, no trustworthy Christian historian would appear until the early modern
period. On Eusebius in particular, cf. D.S. Hadrill, Eusebius of
[7]
Two points need clarification. First, "bias" in and of
itself is never a sufficient reason to dismiss any account. Rather,
bias can only act as a supporting reason to doubt when we already have other
reasons to be skeptical, since bias, if demonstrable, is a ready explanation
for why an author would have consciously or unconsciously created, or
uncritically transmitted, an account or detail that was untrue. But
though bias explains this , making other skeptical grounds stronger, it does
not entail it. Indeed, bias can in fact be used to help prove an
account true, e.g. if an author is biased against some account of things but
reports it anyway. However, I do not merely charge the Gospels with
their obvious bias, but in some cases with an overtly stated propagandist
mission, which is something much more damning than mere bias: some of the
sources specifically state that their versions of events were written to
convert people. That alone raises them to a whole new level of
suspicion. Cf. e.g. John 20:31; Mark
Also
suspicious are repeated assertions of honesty, without explaining why the
account is to be given credit. This is the sort of thing liars are
more likely to do than honest people. When an author honestly
wishes to insist an account is true, he will usually add reasons why such an
insistence is appropriate ("I know this is true because I saw it
myself" is the simplest example). But when the insistence
stands by itself ("That's what happened! Honest!") we are right
to be cautious in trusting what the author says. Cf. e.g.
John 21:24; Galatians 1:20, etc. But even this is not sufficient to
dismiss an account: additional supporting reasons are necessary.
However, sufficient doubt can be raised when obvious bias is combined with a
complete lack of any critical analysis or source research. The
Evangelists simply tell stories, and never show any interest in admitting the
existence of alternative versions of any events, or admitting any doubt or
uncertainty about any details, or identifying or discussing the merits of any
of their sources, or making any attempt to justify their accounts with critical
or scholarly analysis. Contrast this with, for example, chapter 8
of Suetonius' Life of Caligula, and the dubiousness of the Gospel accounts
becomes plain.
[8]
Ancient historians on the crossing: Appian, Civil Wars; Cassius Dio, History; Plutarch, Caesar; Suetonius, Divus Iulius. For modern
scholarship and material evidence: Ronald Syme, The
Roman Revolution (1939); M. Gelzer, Caesar:
Politician and Statesman, 6th ed. (1968); L. Kreppie,
Colonization and Veteran Settlement in
[9]
This was a subject of my Columbia University Master's Thesis, The Cultural
History of the Lunar and Solar Eclipse in the Early Roman Empire (1998).
But the general point is carried much further with different examples in my
online essay Kooks and Quacks of the
[10]
"On Superstition," Moralia
168C. Seneca also wrote a work on superstition that does not
survive but for a few quotes in book 10 of Augustine's City of
[11]
Most relevant to this fact is Graham Anderson's Sage, Saint and Sophist: Holy
Men and Their Associates in the Early Roman Empire (1994); but consider Paul's
mode of argument in his letter to the Galatians as an example of how assertions
of authority mattered more than a presentation and analysis of witnesses and
evidence.
[12]
Cf. n. 10 above for the only two examples of pagan tracts devoted to debunking
popular cults. Their form of argument is relevant: they did not
conduct historical investigations to refute factual claims of distasteful
cults, but argued against them solely on ethical, aesthetic, and philosophical
grounds. This was the usual way skeptics dismissed cults like
Christianity--a detailed investigation wasn't worth their time. For
example, in the correspondence between Pliny and Trajan (Pliny the Younger,
Letters 10.96-7), the interrogation of a few local cult members in
[13]
Matthew alone records a supposed skeptical attack of Jews, namely the charge
that the body of Jesus had "really" been stolen (28:11-15; cf. 27:62-6;
28:4). But this appears in no Jewish writings, of the first century or
even later, and as a Christian story it is suspect: it involves reporting
secret conversations that no Christian could have been witness to, and Matthew
does not explain how he heard of those events. He only says "This
story [of theft] was spread around among Jews until today." But
apparently, not in print. There are many reasons to doubt the veracity of
this report: see my analysis of the guarding story in Section 2g of the larger
Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story. However, as I note there, an ad
hoc charge of theft could well have been an intuitive response to the story
when the story adopted an empty tomb motif, whenever that was (in my opinion,
probably after the Jewish War concluded in 70 CE ), and in that respect Matthew
may simply be inventing a story to "debunk" a new charge raised by
the adoption of a new empty tomb story a generation or two after the religion
began (so that what he thinks or claims is "until today" is really
just "today").
[14]
Referring to the Vita Genofevae above, as well as
material covered in Kooks and Quacks of the
[15]
Cf. Section 2 of the larger Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story for a
parallel argument, and for an elaboration of the methods of history applied to
miracle accounts, see my Review of In Defense of Miracles.
[16]
The ultimate starting points for those interested in studying the Roswell
legend are three books: Kal Korff's
The Roswell UFO Crash: What They Don't Want You to Know (2000) surveys the real
evidence meticulously, proving the legend entirely bogus, while UFO Crash at
Roswell: The Genesis of a Modern Myth (1997) by Benson Saler,
Charles Ziegler, and Charles Moore, relates the development of the legend
itself, and Toby Smith's Little Gray Men: Roswell and the Rise of a Popular
Culture (2000) explains how the legends became so popular. See also
Philip J. Klass, The Real Roswell Crashed-Saucer Coverup (1997). In support of the legend, see for
example
[17]
Cf. Section 2d of the larger Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story for much
more on this subject and the relevant verse citations.
[18]
Acts 12:2. Cf. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, s.v. "James, St, 'the Great'."
[19]
Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.200-1; Hegesippus apud Eusebius, History of the Church 2.23. Cf. The
Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, s.v.
"James, St, 'the Lord's brother'" and Jeffery Jay Lowder's
discussion of the Josephus reference in Josh McDowell's "Evidence"
for Jesus: Is It Reliable?.
[20]
Tacitus, Annals 15.44. This was written c. 117 CE
[21]
None of the Apostolic lists match exactly (Mk.
[22]
Eusebius repeats the same story, attributing it to Hegesippus,
but we know now that it derives from the Gospel of Peter. For scholarship
and modern consensus on Peter, cf. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian
Church, s.v. "Peter, St."
[23]
On hallucination as a cause of sacred or mystical visions, see my discussion of
Habermas on the Post-Resurrection Appearances of
Jesus. Also relevant are the historiographical
issues addressed in my discussion of Beckwith.
[24]
I discuss all of these features in detail in Section 3 of the larger Why I
Don't Buy the Resurrection Story.
[25]
Cf. part of my essay on the New Testament Canon, and all the relevant entries
for each author or book in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church for
consensus and sources of scholarship, cf. also s.v.
"Synoptic Problem."
[26]
I discuss this vision and Paul's Christology in sections 3a through 3f of the
larger Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story. Paul's declarations of the
"creed" of his religion also support this: physical resurrection is
nowhere stated to be a necessary belief. 1 Cor. 15:3-11 I discuss in the
links above, but to that can be added 1 Tim. 3:16, where the necessary elements
of the religion are listed as the incarnation, spiritual justification, some
connection with angels, the teaching of the Gospel, and the ascension.
The physical appearances get no mention. Likewise, Paul's summary of the
Gospel at Philippians 2:6-11 omits a physical resurrection: instead of being
raised, Jesus is merely exalted after death by being given a powerful
"name." And Colossians 1:13-29 summarizes the theology of the
Gospel, yet makes clear that by giving his body Jesus removed sin (vv. 22), and
that after death his "body" became the church (vv. 24; supported by
Ephesians 5:30, where it says we are now Christ's body). This strongly
implies that there was no "body" of Jesus after his death, except the
power of his name and message, and thus the church itself.
[27]
Paul probably had to use so many metaphors and go to such length to explain the
nature of a spiritual resurrection to a congregation clearly confused about it
because it was one of the important novel features of the religion.
Excusing members from God's Laws, such as regarding circumcision, was
another. Though Jews were more resistant than most people of that day to
syncretism with Hellenistic and Persian ideas, they were far from immune, and
Christianity was always more popular with Hellenic Gentiles than with Jews, and
more popular with Hellenized diaspora Jews than with
the Jerusalem orthodoxy. Even so, novel ideas made their way even into
mainstream Judaism, as is evident from the allegorizing and mysticism of the
Jewish philosopher Philo, the adoption of a notion of Hades in the Book of
Enoch similar to that held by popular mystery-religion, the gradual replacement
of Hebrew scriptures with Greek, the importation of Hellenic magic (by
attributing it to the Wisdom of Solomon), and the Zoroastrian idea of a flaming
hell--all are prime examples.
[28]
There are at least three endings to Mark in circulation that were combined into
what we now read in the Bible, but the mss. tradition shows they began as
separate additions. The longest, usually identified as vss. 16:9ff., is found
only in post-4th century manuscripts (for all the following, see the apparatus
for the relevant passages in The Greek New Testament, Fourth Revised
Edition). Outside the mauscript evidence, which
is decisive, the addition seems to be first partly quoted in the late 2nd
century, in a passage of Irenaeus (Against All
Heresies 3.5), but that text is also a late manuscript (and a Latin
translation, not the original Greek) that could have been redacted to match the
Gospel that was in circulation at the time. There is evidence of that
very fact in the same passage, with regard to his quotation of the first verse
of Mark: the words "son of God" are recognized as not being original
to that Gospel (cf. ibid. apparatus; also, Bart Ehrman's
The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological
Controversies on the Text of the New Testament 1993, pp. 72-5), and in fact
those words appear in only two of three surviving Latin translations and do not
exist in the one surviving fragment of that passage in the original Greek. We
do not have the original Greek for his mention of the ending of Mark, and
therefore it remains probable that it, too, was added by a later translator.
Other
than that one reference (which, if genuine, would suggest that Irenaeus added the ending to Mark to help his case against
the Gnostics), the longest addition seems to first appear in some Coptic
manuscripts in the early 4th century, and begins to be added to most Greek
versions over the course of that and the following century. It is cited
already in the 4th century by a few Christian authors. On this whole
issue, still of key relevance is F.C. Conybeare's
essay "On the Last Twelve Verses of St. Mark's Gospel," The
Expositor, 5th ser., 2 (1895), pp. 401-21; even though recent research has superceded him, as in the recovery of the Coptic mss., I
have been unable to find a convenient summary of more recent work.
[29]
Probably not meant by Mark as an angel, cf. my Review of Homer and the Gospel
of Mark.
[30]
See my essay on The New Testament Canon and Bart Ehrman's
The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological
Controversies on the Text of the New Testament (1993).
[31]
On Heracles, the references to his ascension on a cloud are found throughout
ancient literature (cf. K. Galinsky, The Herakles Theme 1972), but most notably in the earliest
Christian apologetic work, Justin Martyr's Trypho
69-70. On Apollonius, cf. Philostratus, Life of
Apollonius of Tyana 8.30. Empedocles is also a
paradigm example of a vanished wise man (Diogenes Laertius
8.67-8); citing Heraclides of Pontus, the story
clearly predates Jesus--Hermippus had even attempted
to invent a clever secular account of the story (Diogenes Laertius
8.69). There are also precedents for this in Jewish scripture: Elijah and
Enoch were raised into heaven (2 Kings 2:1-18), and a similar legend was
growing among Jews in the early 1st century regarding Moses (cf. The Oxford
Dictionary of the Christian Church, s.v. "Moses,
The Assumption of").
[32]
For more of my discussion of Matthew and Mark's "appearances" see
sections 2g and 3g of the larger Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story.
[32a]
There are good arguments that this passage is in fact a later addition, and
that the original Lukan text has been tampered with
(see pp. 212-17 of Bart Ehrman's The Orthodox
Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on
the Text of the New Testament, 1993). However, that only reinforces the
point: the texts show legendary development over time, even as the outcome of
tampering. How many passaged were tampered with
that we can't detect? We will never know. See, for example, Stephen
Carr's examples in The Textual Reliability of the New Testament.
[33]
see Section 3h of the larger Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story; also
relevant to Luke is Section 3k.
[34]
see Section 3i of the larger Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story.
[35]
I collect numerous references to revivals in Section 2e of the larger Why I
Don't Buy the Resurrection Story; on Asclepius, the decisive reference is
Asclepius: Collection and Interpretation of the Testimonies, Edelstein &
Edelstein, eds. (1945).
[36]
1 Kings
[37]
This rivalry was certainly a prominent influence on Christianity: cf. Thomas
Matthews, The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art (1993)
and Harold Remus, Pagan-Christian Conflict Over
Miracle in the Second Century (1981).
[38]
The Thracian god Zalmoxis (also called Salmoxis or Gebele'izis) was
buried, resurrected and deified in his own lifetime, as described in the
mid-5th-century BCE by Herodotus (4.94-96), and also mentioned in Plato's Charmides (156d-158b) in the early-4th-century BCE
According to the hostile account of Herodotus' Greek informants, Zalmoxis buried himself alive, telling his followers he
would be resurrected in three years, but he merely resided in a hidden dwelling
all that time. His inevitable "resurrection" led to his
deification, and a religion surrounding him, which preached heavenly
immortality for believers, persisted for centuries.
Innana (also known
as Ishtar), a Sumerian goddess whose crucifixion, resurrection and escape from
the underworld is told in cuneiform tablets inscribed c. 1500 BCE, attesting to
a very old tradition. The best account and translation of the text is to
be found in Samuel Kramer's History Begins at
[39]
Bowersock, 1994. The notion still floats
around, usually citing hopelessly outdated scholarship, that somehow all these
works of fiction post-date Christianity. Many do. But the whole
genre does not. Some are dated to the first century CE and even
B.C., and these we believe are late--many similar works existed earlier but
have not survived. See Graham Anderson, Ancient Fiction: The Novel in the
Graeco-Roman World (1984); Richard Stoneman & J.R. Morgan, eds., Greek Fiction: The Greek
Novel in Context (1994); and Susan Stephens & John Winkler, eds., Ancient
Greek Novels (1995). The genre of historical fiction itself begins in the
4th century BCE with Xenophon's The Education of Cyrus (though the idea was
begun with the very dialogues of Plato).
But
we have one definite proof that the resurrection motif in fiction predates the
1st century: the Latin satire of that very genre, The Satyricon
by Petronius. This is positively dated to around 60 CE (Petronius
was killed under the reign of Nero, and makes fun of social circumstances
created by the early Caesars) and is a full-fledged travel-narrative just like
Acts, with a clear religious motif. However, Petronius is making fun of
that motif, and also writing in Latin, yet we know the genre began in the Greek
language. Thus, in order for Petronius to move the genre into Latin and
make fun of it, it must have pre-existed the time of his writing and been
popular enough to draw his attention. Indeed, the satire itself may
actually have existed in a Greek form before Petronius took it up: P. Parsons,
"A Greek Satyricon?" Bulletin of the
Institute of Classical Studies 18 (1971) pp. 53ff. It should be noted
that Petronius pokes fun at the resurrection theme in section 140.frg2, where
the hero compares his restoration from impotence to the "resurrected Protesilaus," and attributes it to Mercury's known
role in "bringing back the dead." Similarly, Plutarch relates a
spoof of the motif in popular theatre, where a performing dog acts out its
death and resurrection on stage to the delight of the emperor Vespasian
("On the Cleverness of Animals," Moralia
973e-974a). In order to have something to spoof, the motif must predate
the year 80.
[40]
Of course, our closest source is Josephus himself, who fought in the war and
witnessed the sack of
[41]
To make the point clear, Thomas was not denigrated or condemned for asking for
hard evidence, and he was given it, thus God, as depicted here, accepted his
prima facie right to that evidence before committing to belief. The
Gospel goes on to emphasize that others who waive that right are also blessed,
but that does not affect the fact that they have that right, as recognized in
Thomas. On my views regarding the ethics of belief, see my essays A Fish
Did Not Write This Essay, Do Religious Life and Critical Thought Need Each
Other?, and What an Atheist Ought to Stand For.
[42]
This is related to the argument I make in Section 1 of the larger Why I Don't
Buy the Resurrection Story.
[43]
This is a true story: the man's name is Elisha Graves Otis, cf. s.v. "Otis, Elisha Graves," Encyclopedia
Britannica.
[44]
See 41 above.
Brief
Biography of Richard C. Carrier:
Mr Carrier was
born in 1969 and is an instructor of Ancient History. He holds the following
degrees:
B.A.
History (minor in Classical Civilization), UC Berkeley (1997)
M.A. Ancient History,
M.Phil. Ancient History,
He
is also a member of (among others)
Member
of the Association of Ancient Historians
Member of the History of Science Society
Member of the Historical Society Publications:
and
is fluent in:
English
German
French
Latin
Greek (Ancient).
Richard
married Jennifer Robin Paynter in 1995.
Copyright 2000 by Richard C. Carrier.
Copying is freely permitted, provided credit is given to the author and no
material herein is sold for profit.