Pearce’s Potshots #63: Lex, NT Texts, & the Next Town Over

February 18, 2022 By Dave Armstrong

Atheist anti-theist Jonathan M. S. Pearce is the main writer on the blog, A Tippling Philosopher. His “About” page from his former site states: “Pearce is a philosopher, author, blogger, public speaker and teacher from Hampshire in the UK. He specialises in philosophy of religion, but likes to turn his hand to science, psychology, politics and anything involved in investigating reality.”

He has encouraged me to visit his site and offer critiques. Before he departed his former site at Patheos, he wrote under a post dated 12-14-21: “I even need to thank the naysayers. Some of them have put up with a lot of robust pushback and still they come. Bravery or stupidity – it’s a fine line. But they are committed, and there is something to be said for taking that commitment into the lion’s den. Dave, you are welcome at my new place. Come challenge me. All the best to you and thanks for your critiques of my pieces. Sorry I couldn’t get to more of them.”

Again, at his new site (under a post dated 1-27-22), after a vicious attack by a commenter, calling for me and indeed all Christians to be banned, Jonathan offered an honorable and principled refusal: “I do welcome disagreements because I don’t want [my blog] to [be] just an echo chamber. As long as it is good faith . . . someone like Armstrong does give me ammunition for some of my pieces! As long as they aren’t trollish.”

Guest writer Lex Lata’s words will be in blue.

*****

“Lex Lata” has responded to my reply to his post, “You say ‘Gerasa’ and I say ‘Gadara’: The case of the “obviously and demonstrably false” place name in the Gospels” (2-16-22). Mine was entitled, Pearce’s Potshots #62: Gadarenes & Gerasenes #3 (2-17-22). He made his reply in the combox of his post (hosted on Jonathan MS Pearce’s site). My words that he cites from my previous article will be indented and in black. My present replies will be non-indented black. His words from his article (as opposed to his combox reply) will be indented and in blue.

There’s a lot going on there, and time being in short supply, I’ll just kinda do drive-by responses to some of the things that get my attention; definitely not everything.

Well, I hope that in due course you will get to “everything” because everything in my article is important to my overall argument, or else it wouldn’t be there in the first place. I like to make all my words and arguments “count.” Not much “filler” . . .

To quote the Dread Pirate Roberts/Wesley, “Get used to disappointment.” For my part, I think it’s unrealistic to expect folks to respond to everything I write, and it wouldn’t even occur to me to ask that much of them. Their time is theirs. They are welcome to read or respond to all or some or one or none of the points I might cover. [Lex shrugs.] And of course someone has to be quiet and let stuff go for a conversation to ever end.

***

I’ll note up front that we don’t disagree as much as you seem to think we do (yay!),

Yes, it is very good to agree and find common ground.

in part because you have an unfortunate and rather off-putting tendency to attribute positions to me that I don’t espouse (boo!).

If so, then that can be clarified as we dialogue. I don’t want to misrepresent anyone’s position. I’m not sure, however, that this relative “closeness” of viewpoint is the case with Jonathan, and in a way I was responding to this new dynamic duo of Jonathan + Lex [Jon-Ex or Lexathan?], since this is now my third reply on this topic and since he seemed quite jubilant about your article and quickly stated that “we” [i.e., you and him] would reply to anything I wrote in this regard and that my view was, in fact, already “destroyed.”

I don’t think you two are clones in your views, but forgive me if I sometimes miss the fine distinctions. The standard atheist view (and certainly Jonathan’s) is that the Bible massively, relentlessly contradicts itself. Recently, for example, we saw Jonathan arguing that Matthew simply made up the guards at the tomb story. For us Christians, that is very serious sin: lying, bearing false witness. I described that as making up fairy tales, and Jonathan construed that judgment as a personal attack on him (which it was not). If one has no evidence whatsoever for a claim, then that is accurately described as a fairy tale. But I digress . . .

This is a different argument than claiming a contradiction in a legitimate manuscript (i.e., in the actual Bible, as best we can determine it), as Jonathan and Lex do.

Nowhere do I make this claim. Rather, I write that human error (or conceivably a deliberate change) regarding the Gerasenes likely crept into the manuscript tradition at some point. Please see my final thoughts.

Well, with all due respect, I think you do so in the subtitle of your article, right out of the starting-gate: “The case of the ‘obviously and demonstrably false’ place name in the Gospels.” That (rather provocatively) is claiming that there is a falsehood in the Gospels; not in such-and-such manuscript[s]. And, quite obviously, as you unpack your argument, you are maintaining that there is an internal contradiction present, too. So I don’t see how you can characterize that as merely quibbling about manuscripts. The first time you mentioned “manuscript” it was in the context of the texts becoming canon:

Origen would have been less than ecstatic, then, to learn that the discrepancy he lamented came to nest securely in the manuscript tradition and become canon: [followed by your three NT citations]

Origen [just one man and with no particular authority, according to how Christians view the Church fathers] may have thought these were spurious texts, but in any event, they did enter the canon, and so it seems to me that that is how they must be discussed now: as part of the Bible, not merely a once-disputed manuscript which now no longer is. The alleged discrepancies you discuss are part of the canon now.

You only mention “manuscripts” one more time in your article: referring to Origen “collect[ing] important manuscripts.” This is hardly enough for any reader to get the impression that you were talking about disputed texts from different manuscripts, rather than disputed texts in the accepted NT canon. You’re expecting more from me than ought to be expected, since you didn’t make that clear at all. All I have is your words. I can’t read your mind and intentions. If you clarify now, that’s fine, but the words in your article did not spell such a thing out clearly at all.

Okeedoke. I think it was clear enough. I started by quoting Origen on the discrepancy in the “Greek copies” at his fingertips, talked about the discrepancy coming to nest in the manuscript tradition, and closed by explicitly considering the possibility of inadvertent composition, translation, or transcription error creeping into Mark and Luke, much as Origen supposed. YMMV.

***

But as Gergesa was a small village, and little known, the evangelists, who wrote for more distant readers, spoke of the event as taking place in the country of the Gadarenes, so named from its largest city, Gadara; and this country included the country of the Gergesenes as a state includes a county.

Debatable.

It may be debatable, but it’s not implausible at all. It’s a perfectly sensible interpretation of Matthew’s description. As I noted, Gadara was only six miles away from the Sea of Galilee (and your linked photo showed how it could be seen from there), and 10-12 from Kursi [what I have contended was Gergesa / Gerasa]. You yourself argued at some length about the high importance of Gadara. So given those things, plus what the Greek word for “country of” meant, my interpretation shouldn’t be controversial at all. It can’t be absolutely proven, but few things in such discussions can be, anyway, so it comes down to relative plausibility.

The location associated with Gergesa was probably in the χώρα of Hippos (not Gadara), or possibly in its own. Regardless, I don’t contend that “τὴν χώραν τῶν Γαδαρηνῶν” is materially wrong.

You wrote:

Gadara was not some one-horse town easily lost in Gerasa’s long shadow. Scholars provisionally estimate Gadara’s population during this period to have been around 8,000, . . . Gadara produced noted poets and philosophers, boasted theaters and a hippodrome (like Gerasa), and warranted mentions from Pliny, Strabo, Josephus, and Ptolemy, among others (like Gerasa). . . .Gadara even minted its own silver coinage . . .

All that, and yet we are supposed to believe that it’s unreasonable to describe the area covering six miles to the Sea of Galilee and 10-12 to Kursi as “the country of the Gadarenes” (Matthew’s usage)?

No. (Others might contend that, but I’m not answerable for them, any more than you’re answerable for what other apologists write.) Even if the location was technically in Hippos’ territory and not in Gadara’s (per Eisenberg’s χώρα map), I can imagine why an author might refer less precisely (whether by accident or design) to Gadara rather than Hippos, or much smaller Gergesa, or whatever the landing spot was actually called.

***

Now, later, you say you had no beef with Matthew. I take you at your word. But if you don’t, many others do, and I am defending the Bible from all such attacks. Your main point seems to be that Gerasa was far away, and so couldn’t have had relevance to any statement regarding the “country of” in relation to the location of the incident with the demoniacs and the pigs.

[McGrew] makes this argument based on the fact that the original Aramaic names for Gerasa and Kursi would have been spelled very similarly if not identically. Therefore, the identification with Gerasa is potentially due to an early copyist mistake or misinterpretation of Kursi.

Yes, that’s a defensible hypothesis, consistent with Origen’s advocacy for Gergesa, and with my closing thoughts about human error.

Good. Then if this is granted, or allowed as “defensible”, then that accounts for the supposed discrepancy of Gerasa being too far away.

Three key things give us pause about the Gergesa/Kursi hypothesis, though. First, we don’t currently have solid, compelling archaeological confirmation of this community’s existence in the 1st century CE.

The likelihood is that the archaeologists simply haven’t dug that far down yet. Archaeologist / Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen has noted that this is true of many archaeological sites, and by all appearances, it is of this one. They’ve found Byzantine remains of a church from several centuries later. But that’s the thing: the presence of the Church suggests that it was there for a reason: that something was believed to have happened there, of biblical significance.

It’s the same thing all around the Sea of Galilee. What is believed to be Peter’s house in Capernaum (discovered in 1968) had a church built over it (and a synagogue from the first century); so did the place of the alleged feeding of the 5,000, and the site of the Sermon on the Mount, etc. At a storied location like the Sea of Galilee: filled with connections to the Galilean ministry of Jesus, the presence of a church will almost always suggest a prior tradition tying Gospel events to a particular spot.

I agree that such traditions are not in the same category of hard archaeological proof, but if the site hasn’t been properly excavated yet, that will come in due course, just as is the case, for example, with other towns by the Sea of Galilee, like Chorazin and Bethsaida (Lk 10:13), which have been discovered and dated to the time of Christ:

Excavations in 1980 at Chorazin found remains going back to the 1st century. (Avraham Negev and Shimon Gibson, Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land, New York and London: Continuum, 2003; “Chorazin”, 118-119). As for Bethsaida:

In 2019, what some describe as the Church of Apostles was unearthed by the El-Araj excavations team during the fourth season at the site of Bethsaida-Julias / Beithabbak (El-Araj), on the north shore of Sea of Galilee near where the Jordan river enters the lake. The excavation was carried out by Prof. Mordechai Aviam of Kinneret College and Prof. R. Steven Notley of Nyack College. This Byzantine period church is believed by some to have been built over the house of the apostle brothers, Peter and Andrew. . . . According to Professor Notley:

We have a Roman village, in the village we have pottery, coins, also stone vessels which are typical of first century Jewish life, so now we strengthen our suggestion and identification that El-Araj is a much better candidate for Bethsaida than e-Tell.

SOURCES

Wikipedia, “Bethsaida”.

“The Lost Home of Jesus’ Apostles Has Just Been Found, Archaeologists Say” (Noa Shpigel & Ruth Schuster, Haaretz, 6 August 2017).

“Church of the Apostles Found by Sea of Galilee, Archaeologists Claim” (Ructh Schuster, Haaretz, 18 July 2019).

Another excavated site on the Sea is Magdala, the hometown of Mary Magdalene. The Wikipedia article on it states:

Archaeological excavations on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) conducted in 2006 found that the settlement began during the Hellenistic period (between the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE) and ended during the late Roman period (3rd century CE). Later excavations in 2009–2013 brought perhaps the most important discovery in the site: an ancient synagogue, called the “Migdal Synagogue”, dating from the Second Temple period. It is the oldest synagogue found in the Galilee, and one of the only synagogues from that period found in the entire country, as of the time of the excavation.

So yeah; I’d bet good money (with you!) that within ten years, Kursi will be properly excavated dated to at least the first century, complete with many indisputable artifacts, just as was the case with these other related sites.

Wouldn’t put a timeframe on it, but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of things going down this way, whether it’s at the location associated with Kursi or elsewhere on the eastern shore.

***

Such things are happening almost on a monthly basis in Israel. I know, because I have concentrated on biblical archaeology over the past year.

We have tons of stuff for Hippos, Gadara, Gerasa, Scythopolis, their χώρα boundaries, etc., but for Gergesa/Kursi we’ve got little-to-nothing (until a couple of centuries later).

Like I said, it simply needs to be excavated at a lower level. If a Byzantine Church is there, almost certainly a first century presence will eventually be verified, based n massive analogy to other similar sites. I’d bet the farm on it (well, my Jet-Ski and my book and music collections).

Second, we similarly have no independent documentary evidence for this community’s existence in the 1st century, either, the way we do for the Decapolitan city-states.

It was likely just a small village: made significant by the fact that the demoniac-pig incident and the feeding of the 4,000 happened there, according to the Bible.

Yes, and even if no-one ever finds any contemporary documentary or archaeological confirmation, that doesn’t mean the community necessarily didn’t exist at the time. (Wood rots, adobe erodes, stones tumble, and papyrus disintegrates.) It just means the Gergesa/Kursi hypotheses remains tentative.

***

Nazareth, too, was a very small town when Jesus was born. When we were there, our guide told us that it was scarcely as large as the parking lot of the Church of the Annunciation there. But it’s been excavated to the time of Jesus.

Skeptics for many years have asserted that Nazareth didn’t exist at all in His time. Their judgments were premature and erroneous, as usual. Amanda Borschel-Dan, reporter for The Times of Israel, wrote an article about this topic and the latest archaeology:

Nazareth. . . as British-Israeli archaeologist Yardenna Alexandre notes . . .,the once small village with huge name recognition existed well before and well after [Jesus’] lifetime. . . .

Among her digs, in 2009, Alexandre discovered the first example of a residential building from the time of Jesus. It was found near today’s Church of the Annunciation, . . . In her report, Alexandre describes the structure as “a simple house comprising small rooms and an inner courtyard was inhabited in the late Hellenistic and the Early Roman periods [late 2nd c. BC to early or mid 2nd c. AD].” . . .

Among the artifacts is a coin of Emperor Claudius that was uncovered on the floor of a corridor that led into a three-story pit complex. According to the report, “The coin was minted in ‘Akko-Ptolemais in 50–51 CE. (“What do we know about Nazareth in Jesus’ time? An archaeologist explains”, The Times of Israel, 22 July 2020)

And finally, “Gergesa” itself seems to be a relative latecomer to the Synoptic manuscript tradition, which is suggestive that it might have been a motivated contrivance (some blame/credit Origen). So while the Gergesa/Kursi hypothesis has some appeal, and there could have been a 1st century community of that name that was mistranslated into the χώρα of the Gerasenes, we’re short on corroborating, contemporary evidence. Could that change? Sure. But for now, the support is scant.

Time will tell, won’t it? I’m quite confident that it’ll turn out to be the same there as it has for scores of biblical sites throughout Israel. You see how recent some of the finds were, that I noted above.

In the meantime, I have found a reputable Jewish literary source that attests to Gergesa / Kursi in around 150 AD, or some 75 years before Origen’s reference. It’s in the article, “Gerasa, or Gadara? Where Did Jesus’ Miracle Occur?” by Ze’ev Safrai (Jerusalem Perspective, Vol. 51, April-June 1996, 16-19). Dr. Safrai is Israeli Professor in the Department for Israel Studies in Bar Ilan University, with background education in the Talmud, Jewish history, geography, and archaeology. In his ongoing research, he specializes in the connection between talmudic literature and archaeological remains. He wrote in the above article:

Origen mentions an “ancient city” [in the quote I used, this was rendered “old town”] named Gergesa beside the Sea of Galilee. At first glance, one might think that this is only a literary description. The term “ancient city” sounds suspect, yet Origen has accurately described the Gergesa of his day, as the following midrash proves:

R. Nehemiah said: “When the Holy One, blessed is he, show’s Israel the graves of Gog and Magog, the feet of the Shechinah will be on the Mount of Olives and the graves of Gog and Magog will be open from south of the Kidron Valley to Gergeshta on the eastern side of Lake Tiberias. And he came until he entered [nichnesah; read instead, “Naosa,” i.e., Nysa Scythopolis].”

According to this midrash, the graves of Gog and Magog will stretch from Jerusalem to Gergeshta (= Gergesa), which is described as a settlement on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee. Thus, we learn that a place called Gergesa really existed east of the lake. Though its location was still known in Origen’s time, Gergesa was apparently desolate; therefore, Origen called it “an ancient city.” . . .

In the first century, there was a town on the eastern coast of the Sea of Galilee called Gergesa, or Gergeshta. Later, this place appeared as Kursia or Kursi in the accounts of Cyril of Scvthopolis, and as Karshin in talmudic literature. Apparently, both pronunciations were used concurrently. . . . To what extent did the early Christian community succeed in accurately transmitting the location of events in Jesus’ life from generation to generation? This question has not received sufficient scholarly attention. Here, however, we have shown that in at least one case — that Kursi-Gergesa was the scene of Jesus’ miracle of the swine — the community accurately transmitted the name of a miracle site. Apparently, Christian residents of Galilee, familiar with local geography, faithfully preserved this tradition.

The midrash he cited is Shir ha-Shirim Zutta, devoted to the Song of Solomon (aka Song of Songs), and the exact reference is Zuta 1:4. The saying in question is ascribed to Rabbi Nehemiah, a disciple of the famous Rabbi Akiba, or Akiva. Wikipedia says that Nehemiah “lived circa 150 AD (fourth generation of tannaim).” The Jewish site Sefaria gives his dates as “c.135 – c.170”. This probably means dates that he is absolutely known to have been alive. He had to have been alive when R. Akiva was, and he lived (so says Wikipedia) from c. 50 to 135.

It has a steep cliff going down to the coast, but alas, not right on the water. Is this yet another ‘contradiction’?

I don’t use the word “contradiction,” and I would answer no. I’m even okay with Gadara’s χώρα, which has a lot of flat ground between the hills and the lake’s edge. Origen’s pickier about that than I am.

I didn’t say you did. That was me covering all the bases. Because the cliff isn’t right on the water, atheists will say that this is a disproof. I was anticipating that, for the sake of readers who might be confronted with that argument.

Lex wants to equate the ‘Gerasa’ under discussion with Jerash (Arabic: جرش Ǧaraš; Ancient Greek: Γέρασα Gérasa): the city now located in Jordan.

This is not about my wants;

It was simply a manner of speaking.

this is exactly the Gerasa described in plenty of apologetic arguments—the Apologetics Press piece I linked to in my guest post, for instance, which is flawed for multiple reasons. Moreover, this was your position in 2017, I see: “Now onto the place names. Gerasa is (as we know) some 30-35 miles southeast of the Sea of Galilee (but may have also been the name of the larger region). Wikipedia states about it: ‘In the second half of the 1st century AD, the city of Jerash achieved great prosperity’.” And in 2020, you still seemed okay with the idea. You appear to have changed your mind substantially since then (cool), but let’s be clear: the notion of Mark’s and Luke’s Gerasa being modern Jerash is not merely something I cooked up out of motivated reasoning.

That’s right. Some apologists have made that argument, and I used them myself in my past papers. As I make my replies, often my thought develops. I throw out possible resolutions to alleged contradictions, not necessarily holding to them myself, or totally. I keep thinking through the issue, as I am doing now again with you. Most of these things never cross a Christian’s mind, till atheists bring them up. They’re non-issues for us. As I did that for this topic, I came to regard the linguistic argument as the best solution. That’s not brand-new because I cited Dr. McGrew making the argument in my second, 2020 paper, near the end.

My argument above is that Gerasa should be understood as Kursi, which fits the scene of the biblical story to a tee (once the changing coastline of the Sea of Galilee is understood). If that is is or was indeed the case, then Jonathan’s and Lex’s argument collapses.

Huh? My closing thoughts, consistent with McGrew’s apparent idea, are that the Gerasenes reference could well be the result of a scribal or translation error. That error might have been a Gergesa/Kursi–>Gerasa scenario of the sort McGrew proposes.

Then that would be an area of agreement, but it contradicts your advocacy of Jerash as ancient Gerasa: and the one referenced in the Bible. Place names in the Bible are always complicated, because they often evolve and change and there are language issues and various transliterations. That’s all part of this, and altogether to be expected.

One of the big supposed ‘problems,’ as Jonathan and Lex see it, is Matthew’s references to the Gadarenes.

Again, huh? At no point do I write that I have a big (or small) problem with Matthew’s reference to the χώρα of the Gadarenes. Of course I think it’s accurate if Team JC in fact came ashore within Gadarene territory. And even if the location was in Gergesa’s/Hippos’ territory, I think calling it Gadarene country is perhaps inaccurate or imprecise, but not blog-worthy wrong.

Okay. Probably I was remembering Jonathan’s two articles, and/or other biblical skeptics making hay of it. If I have assumed too much, I apologize. I’m not trying to misrepresent you. That’s why I’m happy to reproduce your clarifications here and your reply in its entirety on my blog: to be as fair as possible.

[A]nd now they’re contending that Gadara is too far away to be reasonably referred to. But Lex’s own comments betray this.

My comments “betray” that contention because I contend no such thing. Again, at no point do I fault Matthew.

You did, after all, write:

And referring to Gadarene territory as the land of the Gerasenes would be tantamount to calling Virginian territory the land of the New Yorkers.

Is that not reasonably construed as taking a swipe at Matthew’s description?

No, you’re definitely misconstruing my analogy. It is saying that referring to Gadarene territory as the land of the distant Gerasenes (which certain apologists try to justify—again, see your 2017 and 2020 posts for just a few examples) is as inaccurate as calling Virginia the land of the New Yorkers. Calling Gadarene territory the territory of the Gadarenes—what Matthew essentially does—is of course perfectly kosher, like calling Virginian territory the land of the Virginians.

***

I don’t think I was that far off. Since I have to wrangle with you and Jonathan, it might be helpful to make a list: “this is where I disagree with Jonathan regarding the Gadarene / pig stuff: a, b, c, d, e . . ..” As it is, being an apologist who literally writes about many hundreds of topics (including hundreds of replies to atheists) — I have written more than 4,000 articles and 50 books (21 of them “officially” published) — , sometimes I can botch a few facts as to who thinks what. It’s never intentional, though. And if I am corrected, I always eat my humble pie openly, in public.

Yet Jonathan and Lex would have us believe that it can’t possibly be the case that this region could rightly be called ‘the country of the Gadarenes’ by Matthew?

No. Again, at no point do I fault Matthew.

Does Jonathan do so? I’m pretty sure he does, and I don’t feel like dredging up his reply to me, which was only to my first reply in 2017. I hadn’t even made my whole argument at that time.

I have since found an independent reference in Josephus that supports Matthew’s “country of the Gadarenes.” In His Life (Vita, 42), he refers to “the villages, belonging to Gadara and Hippos, which lay on the frontiers of Tiberias and of the territory of Scythopolis” and to “one of the neighboring states [as opposed to a “town” or “city”], Gadara . . .” This is a very early work, dated from 94-99 AD.

He goes on to say that his Gerasa (as opposed to Kursi / Gerasa) was less significant than Gadara at the time.

No. I say that Gerasa wasn’t significantly more prominent than Gadara. There’s a difference.

I did get that wrong (backwards). This is simple human error with the two G-towns, but sorry for that. You wrote:

Gerasa was so significant, wealthy, and influential that its reputation or identity loomed above that of Gadara, as a big city might relate to a suburb today.

Secondly, that’s not the Christian argument, anyway (straw men abound).

First, this is unintentionally hilarious, given your mischaracterization of my thoughts on Matthew and the χώρα of the Gadarenes. Second, as you must know, there is not merely “the Christian argument,” singular. Please see your 2017 and 2020 posts for just some examples.

What I was referring to was specifically an attempted equation of Gerasa and Gadara in apologetics efforts, which (if I recall correctly) I haven’t seen.

We’re not equating ‘Gerasene’ and ‘Gadarene’ (which would indeed be a contradiction).

Nowhere do I write that anyone is equating ‘Gerasene’ and ‘Gadarene’. What I contend is that some folks argue that Gerasa’s purported prominence justified calling the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee the χώρα of the Gerasenes, even though the Gerasenes lived a day or two away.

Fair enough. At this point, I’ll take a pass on going back and figuring out why that was my impression.

Not if there were two places named Gerasa, and one was indeed by the Sea of Galilee.

Agreed—If. (And it’s one thing to hypothesize that Gergesa/Kursi/whatever was miscommunicated as Gerasa; quite another to say the location was actually called Gerasa, which is unduly speculative.) And as noted earlier, our lack of contemporary corroborating evidence from the 1st century leaves Gergesa/Kursi explanation tentative. Maybe that’ll change, maybe it won’t.

I have provided several arguments from analogy, using the examples of other biblical towns around the Sea of Galilee, for why I think it likely will change, and also attestation in a Jewish Midrash from c. 150 AD.

So if, say, an excavation in 2025 in Kursi finds first century artifacts (maybe a fish hook, etc.) and something that says “Gergesa” or “Gerasa” on it (and a drawing of Jesus walking on the water: JUST kidding!), then you will concede that point and give up on utilizing Jerash / Gerasa in your argument?

No, I will settle for nothing less than two thousand pig skeletons all piled together in the same stratum at that spot. ;)

But seriously. I’m not married to the Jerash/Gerasa thing in the way you seem to ponder, so let’s put it this way. If archaeologists found credible 1st century evidence of a community called “Gerasa” in the Kursi/Hippos region, such as a reasonably clear and datable inscription on a tablet or stele or other artifact, I’d say case solved—that’s the Gerasa that the authors of Mark and Luke meant, and the texts are not in error on that particular geographic point. Or if historians found compelling contemporary documentary evidence (like Roman tax records or somesuch) to the same effect, I’d have the same reaction. It’s not as thought I melt when I see the Bible isn’t wrong about something, any more than you melt when you see that it is.

Now, if the findings showed the existence of something like “Gergesa” or “Gargishta” or the like at roughly the same location and time, I would also say this is most likely what the authors of Mark and Luke (or their sources) had in mind, but I would conclude that some scribal or translation error probably crept into the chain of communication at some point to give us “Gerasenes” (again, a likelihood I explicitly floated in the closing thoughts of my original post). There is a difference between Gerasenes, Gergesenes, Girgashites, Geshurites, etc.

Anytime we make an interesting discovery about prehistory or ancient history, it’s good news in my book, regardless of whether it tends to confirm or disconfirm events portrayed in Bible. Or the Iliad. Or the Epic of Gilgamesh. Or Herodotus. Or Livy. Etc. I don’t have an emotional stake in how accurately the works of antiquity do or don’t reflect the settings in which they were composed.

***

Would you still have remaining objections then, and keep using the polemical terminology of “‘obviously and demonstrably false’ place name in the Gospels” or would that settle it in my favor? I want to see if falsifiability applies to your position.

If the shoe were on the other foot, and such excavations go down to what would be a first century level and find nothing, then I would concede that Kursi was not the biblical location in question. It would have to be found elsewhere, and maybe it wouldn’t be too far away (on the other side of the big cliff, etc.). But such matters don’t cause a collapse of one’s Christian beliefs, anymore than you conceding the argument would threaten your atheism at all. In other words, there are no “big things” at stake here.

Lastly, I wanted to commend you again. You actually grant that Christians can have honestly and sincerely held opinions that atheists (equally honest and sincere) disagree with: a position that seemingly most in Jonathan’s forum disagree with. You can dialogue with me as a fellow thinker, who values reason and fact and the search for truth, and not cynically view me as an essentially compromised, intellectually dishonest apologist-hack. And I happily return the favor. This is why this dialogue was a great pleasure. Thanks for that. I hope you enjoyed it, too.

Together, I think we can demonstrate that it’s entirely possible for an atheist and a Christian (while continuing to disagree) to have an intelligent, constructive, thought-provoking dialogue, minus all insults and epithets and nonsense. I knew it was possible because I have done it many times (and my favorite dialogue of some 1000 was with an atheist, over twenty years ago, on the “problem of good”). But it is relatively rare. So I’m always pleased to be able to enjoy such opportunities.

I also want to sincerely thank you for writing this latest article. Before this one I had two defenses of the non-contradictoriness of the Bible with regard to the Gadarenes / Gerasenes et al. Now I have four, and my overall argument is far stronger than it was. I came up with a bunch more arguments: more quantity and also higher quality, in my opinion.

Even today I found some great new material that I added to my replies #3 and #4. One of the blessings in apologetics is to have respectable, serious critiques and counter-replies sent one’s way. This creates a challenge, and makes us go back to the grindstone and improve and hone our arguments. I have done so, and am very happy with the result. I learned a ton, and pass it along to others to consider as well.

When I’m challenged, one of two things happen, and both are good:

1. If I think the critique is erroneous and can be overcome, I work harder, do more research, and make my argument considerably stronger than it was originally.

Or:

2. I am successfully challenged so that I concede or am forced by reason and fact to modify what I formerly argued. This is good, too, because I don’t want errors in my work. That does me no good; nor my readers.

The common element of #1 and #2 is the outlook of seeking truth wherever it leads, and modifying one’s views accordingly.

I appreciate your open-mindedness and a complete lack of the “gotcha!” approach so common around here and other atheist forums. And — minus these few thoughts — you can have the last word (surprise!).

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Photo credit: Map of the Decapolis; Nichalp (12-14-05) [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license]

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Summary: Continuing discussion on the incident with the demoniacs & pigs, & alleged contradictions in the NT texts, with Lex Lata, guest writer on Jonathan MS Pierce’s blog.

Pearce’s Potshots #62: Gadarenes & Gerasenes #3

February 17, 2022 By Dave Armstrong

His words below will be in blue, and guest writer Lex Lata’s in green.

*****

This particular debate has a long history:

Jonathan: “On Harmonising Biblical Contradictions” (7-23-17)

Me: Gadarenes, Gerasenes, Swine, & Atheist Skeptics [7-25-17]

Jonathan: “The Demons! The Demons! Replying to Armstrong on Biblical Contradictions” (7-29-17)

Me: Demons, Gadara, & Biblical Numbers (vs. JMS Pearce) [12-18-20]

Jonathan: [no further reply in writing, unless I missed something, in which case I’m sure he’ll let me know]

Now, Jonathan’s buddy “Lex Lata” has written the piece on Jonathan’s blog: “You say ‘Gerasa’ and I say ‘Gadara’: The case of the “obviously and demonstrably false” place name in the Gospels” (2-16-22)

The following is my reply to the latter.

***

Lex cites Church father Origen:

Now, Gerasa is a town [πόλις] of Arabia, and has near it neither sea nor lake. And the Evangelists would not have made a statement so obviously and demonstrably false . . . (Commentary on the Gospel of John, VI:24.) [italics removed]

Origen obviously regarded it (by alluding to “Greek copies”) as an illegitimate manuscript: a discussion that Christians have had for 2,000 years. This is a different argument than claiming a contradiction in a legitimate manuscript (i.e., in the actual Bible, as best we can determine it), as Jonathan and Lex do.

Origen would have been less than ecstatic, then, to learn that the discrepancy he lamented came to nest securely in the manuscript tradition and become canon:

They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. Mark 5:1-2 (ESV).

Then they sailed to the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. When Jesus had stepped out on land, there met him a man from the city who had demons. Luke 8:26-27 (ESV).

And when he came to the other side, to the country of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men met him, coming out of the tombs, so fierce that no one could pass that way. Matthew 8:28 (ESV).

Since I’ve already dealt with this charge twice, readers (especially those who read those two articles) may perhaps forgive me if I cite some my existing research (I have a lot of new stuff, too, further below):

Smith’s Bible Dictionary . . .:

These three names are used indiscriminately to designate the place where Jesus healed two demoniacs. The first two are in the Authorized Version. (Matthew 8:28; Mark 5:1; Luke 8:26) . . . The miracle referred to took place, without doubt, near the town of Gergesa, the modern Kersa, close by the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, and hence in the country of Gergesenes. But as Gergesa was a small village, and little known, the evangelists, who wrote for more distant readers, spoke of the event as taking place in the country of the Gadarenes, so named from its largest city, Gadara; and this country included the country of the Gergesenes as a state includes a county.

We need to look up the Greek word for “country” in these passages, to see what latitude of meaning it has. In all three instances the word is chōra (Strong’s word #5561). Thayer’s Greek Lexicon defines it as “the space lying between two places or limits . . . region or country.” The Sea of Galilee was clearly one of the limits.

In Luke 2:8 it is applied to the city of Bethlehem; in Acts 18:23 to Galatia and Phrygia. In Mark 1:5 it is used of “the land of Judaea” (KJV) and in Acts 10:39,to “land of the Jews” (KJV). In Acts 8:1 we have the “regions of Judaea and Samaria” (KJV), and in Acts 16:6, Galatia alone. Thus it is not always used of one specific country (nation), but rather, usually to regions or areas of either small (Bethlehem) or large (Judaea and Samaria) size, including regions surrounding large cities.

Additionally, there is a linguistic argument to be brought to bear, that I will devote most of my energies to this time around:

Dr. Timothy McGrew persuasively argues that “country of the Gerasenes” refers not to Gerasa, but to the town of Kursi (which was in the region of Gadara). [Alleged Historical Errors in the Gospels, published online, 2012, pg. 52-53] He makes this argument based on the fact that the original Aramaic names for Gerasa and Kursi would have been spelled very similarly if not identically. Therefore, the identification with Gerasa is potentially due to an early copyist mistake or misinterpretation of Kursi.

Dr. McGrew’s theory is strongly supported by the geography of Kursi and early church history. Kursi is on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee and has a steep hill that runs directly into the water . . .

In addition, the early church, through the 3^rd century church father Origen, identified Kursi as the town in which this miracle occurred. Further, an early 5^th century Christian monastery was built in Kursi and seems to have been located there to commemorate this event. (“Busted (8): The Question of Jesus and the Demoniac” by Scott Dunkley, Logic & Light, 8-15-15)

He’s not the only one to note this. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem has a page devoted to an archaeological site of a monastery at least as old as the third century, at Kursi, near the Sea of Galilee (I visited the area myself in 2014). The monastery is described:

Identification:

The monastery uncovered at Kursi was identified as commemorating the “Miracle of the Swine” as described in the New Testament (Matt. 8, 28-34; Mark 5, 1-20; Luke 8, 26-39). The identification is mentioned by Origen in the third century (Commentaria in Joannem, 6.22).The small chapel located on the upper reaches of the monastery marks the location of the miracle. The large complex consisted of a large basilica, a monastery, a pilgrims’ hospice with a bathhouse and other installations. It was probably named for the miracle it commemorated.

And what does it give for the “site name?: “Kursi-Gerasa; Chorsia-Gergesa.” Note that this is a Jewish university making these linguistic equations, not the Protestant apologist (Dr. McGrew) or the Catholic one (myself). Go argue with them. There is a connection between Gerasa and Gergesa and the site of the alleged miracle at present-day Kursi. “Gergesenes” doesn’t appear in the RSV Bible that I use. It appears in the KJV (which has a different manuscript tradition behind it) at Matthew 8:28. But this is not without warrant, either, as we see from the Jewish site just noted, and as we will now see from two ancient and reputable sources.

Eusebius of Caesarea (260-313), the first great Church historian, in his Onomasticon: which was a gazetteer, listing place names with explanations of locations, wrote:

Gergesa. Where the Lord (Savior) heated the demoniacs (restored those vexed with demons to sanity). Now (today) a village is pointed out on the mountains near Lake Tiberias where the swine were condemned (cast down) to death. (Onomasticon, #363)

Origen himself (since Lex wanted to bring him up in this debate) — in the same section from which Lex made his citation — opts for Gergesa:

Gergesa, from which the name Gergesenes is taken, is an old town in the neighbourhood of the lake now called Tiberias, and on the edge of it there is a steep place abutting on the lake, from which it is pointed out that the swine were cast down by the demons. Now, the meaning of Gergesa is dwelling of the casters-out, and it contains a prophetic reference to the conduct towards the Saviour of the citizens of those places, who besought Him to depart out of their coasts. (Commentary on John, Book VI, sec. 24)

I visited this place in my trip to Israel in 2014. It has a dramatic cliff going down to the coast, but alas, not right on the water. Is this yet another “contradiction”? No. The texts, examined carefully, do not say that the pigs fell over the cliff into the sea, but that they ran down the cliff and then into the sea. Indeed, the cliff is shaped in a way that would allow them to do that (i.e., it’s not so steep that they couldn’t run down):

Matthew 8:32 (RSV) . . . the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea, and perished in the waters.

Mark 5:13 . . . the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea, and were drowned in the sea.

Luke 8:33 . . . and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.

Besides Dr. McGrew, others have argued that Gerasa (+ Gergesa?) are transliterations of Kursi:

Another possible resolution to the problem of the location of Gerasa has been proposed by Roger David Aus, who asserts that Gerasa may be a transliteration of Kursi . . . (Amanda Witmer, Jesus, the Galilean Exorcist: His Exorcisms in Social and Political Context [T&T Clark; 1st edition: April 26, 2012], 168; cf. further related reference on p. 183. Both pages were accessed through the “Look Inside” feature on Amazon; see it for much further context and linguistic argumentation from Aus)

Lee A. Maxwell, in his doctoral dissertation for Concordia Seminary (St. Louis): Gadara of the Decapolis (1 May 1980), also finds this explanation quite plausible:

It has been suggested that Gerasa should actually be read as Gergesa, under the assumption that Gergesa was not well known enough so that the more renowned Gerasa was inserted into the text. More probable, however, is that the two were simply alternative spellings of the same name. In pronunciation the consonants grs and grgs would have been easily confused. Consequently, only when one thought of the alternative Gerasa (viz., Gerasa of the Decapolis) would there have been a problem of identification.

The following question, however, arises: If this Gergesa/Gerasa is the correct designation, where was its location on the southern or eastern side of the Sea of Galilee? Some have avoided specification (and speculation) simply by affirming that it was somewhere along the southern or southeastern shore of the lake.” One suggestion has been that it was at Beth-yerah (modern Khirbet al-Kerak on the southwest corner of the lake).” The presence of swine, however, indicates that the party landed in Gentile territory, and the area around Beth-yerah (at least that part of it west of the Jordan River) was in Galilee, that is, in Jewish territory.

The other proposed location for the site of Gergesa/Gerasa is along the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee near the Wadi as-Samak. For both topographical and toponymical reasons Tell al-Kursi on the south side of this wadi seems to be the most attractive option. Excavations there testify to the ancient tradition attached to the site. . . . the combination of geography and tradition renders Tell al-Kursi, or somewhere in the vicinity, probably the most logical candidate for the location of ancient Gergesa/Gerasa. (pp. 48-50)

Maxwell (on page 51) deems this explanation the most “probable” of the four possible explanations that he outlined. Surely, this is significant and can’t be dismissed, seeing (as I understand it) that the writer of a dissertation is supposed to know more than anyone else on the topic he or she chooses, as a result of all the copious research undertaken.

[W]e’ll . . . focus solely on the geographic predicament. Simply put, our scriptures link the same event to two different and noncontiguous communities. Contrary to the dutiful and not especially coherent harmonization efforts of some apologists, the archaeological and documentary evidence does not support the notion that “the country of the Gerasenes” somehow encompassed, or was more-or-less interchangeable with, “the country of the Gadarenes.”

Lex wants to equate the “Gerasa” under discussion with Jerash (Arabic: جرش Ǧaraš; Ancient Greek: Γέρασα Gérasa): the city now located in Jordan. But this is precisely what my linguistic argument undercuts. There were apparently at least two “Gerasa’s” in the Middle East in ancient times (a not uncommon occurrence, then or now). My argument above is that Gerasa should be understood as Kursi, which fits the scene of the biblical story to a tee (once the changing coastline of the Sea of Galilee is understood). If that is is or was indeed the case, then Jonathan’s and Lex’s argument collapses.

The Wikipedia article, “Gerasa (Judaea”) states: “Several attempts have been made to identify the Gerasa of Judea, the vast majority of scholars concurring that the ancient site is not to be confused with Gerasa (Jerash) of Transjordan, but with a site in Judea proper.” In the same article it’s also noted that the proposed sites in Israel are also a matter of controversy, and that Kursi is not even mentioned as one of the possibilities. But that’s where the linguistic and etymological argument comes in, which wasn’t touched by this particular article.

The Wikipedia article, “Kursi, Sea of Galilee” doesn’t address this argument, either, but on the other hand, neither does it rule it out. It needs to be addressed and shown to be implausible or improbable or erroneous if I am to be persuaded otherwise.

Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land (Avraham Negev and Shimon Gibson [New York and London: Continuum, 2003]) — not a Christian work –, in its article, “Kursi (Khirbet El-)” never mentions Jerash, and gives credence to my linguistic argument:

Located on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, the name Kursi is thought to have originated from the name Gergesa and so it may be connected with the Land of the Gergesenes of the Gospels and the story of the stampeding Gadarene swine . . . (p. 286).

Likewise, in their article, “Gergesa” (p. 194) Negev and Gibson observe:

A place on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, . . . where Jesus cast out devils (Matt. 8:28 ff.). The site was known by the name of Kursi in Jewish sources, . . . Origen and Eusebius (Onom. 73:14) mention a village by the name of Gergesai near the Lake of Tiberius, in which the swine drowned. The site is known today by the name of Kursi.

One of the big supposed “problems”, as Jonathan and Lex see it, is Matthew’s references to the Gadarenes. I submit, based on my arguments above, that they’ve already gotten the location of the “Gerasa” in question wrong, and now they’re contending that Gadara is too far away to be reasonably referred to. But Lex’s own comments betray this.

Gadara’s urban center was close enough to the Sea of Galilee for residents to view it at a distance.

His link provides a helpful photo for the reader to visualize how close it was to the Sea of Galilee. Consulting a Google Map for the coordinates provided in the Wikipedia article, “Gadara”, I see that it is exactly six miles away. Now, surely, after seeing what the word translated “country” in the three Gospel accounts can mean (which both sides of this discussion have addressed), this is within its parameters, so that Matthew was perfectly reasonable to describe the area as “the country of the Gadarenes” (both RSV and ESV).

Assuming for the sake of argument that Kursi is our place for the miracle, Gadara is a mere twelve miles from that, too, according to the same Google Map: easily within a day’s walk (that the ancients were well used-to and routinely capable of). Yet Jonathan and Lex would have us believe that it can’t possibly be the case that this region could rightly be called “the country of the Gadarenes” by Matthew? Of course it can! There is nothing implausible or forced or “rationalizing” about that. Kursi is also directly across the Sea of Galilee from Capernaum: precisely as Matthew stated (8:5, 18, 23, 28).

Here is Lex’s own treatment of the Greek for “country of” (complete with very impressive sources!):

The word χώρα (khora/chora) can mean country, region, land, hinterland, area, location, place, etc. Of course, context frequently determines the precise sense of a word, and in the context of Hellenistic city-states—our context here—χώρα also refers more specifically to the rural territory within the jurisdiction of a given city-state (πόλις, polis) outside the main urban center (ἄστυ, asty). (See B. Antela-Bernárdez, “Poleis, Choras and Spaces, from Civic to Royal: Spaces in the Cities Under Macedonian Rule from Alexander the Great to Seleucus I,” Pyrenae, vol. 47, no. 2 (2016), pp. 27-38; M.H. Hansen, ed., A Comparative Study of Thirty City-State Cultures (2000), p. 19; and “polis,” in S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth, eds., The Oxford Classical Dictionary (1996), p. 1205.)

Sure. Nothing is contrary to my scenario here. I’ve already made arguments for why the area could reasonably be called either “the country of the Gadarenes” or “the country of the Gerasenes” (Mark and Luke): since Geresa = Kursi (as my linguistic argument holds). It’s not a contradiction. Rather, it is the usual biblical non-contradictory complementarity.

Bearing this in mind, let’s turn to the χώρα within the political geography of the Decapolis. Take a few moments to look over the map on the second page of this chapter from Prof. Michael Eisenberg, a University of Haifa archaeologist who digs in the area. (We aren’t posting an image here for copyright reasons).

Gerasa’s χώρα did not extend to the Sea of Galilee. It did not even share a border with Gadara’s; the χώρα of Pella separated the two entirely. If a history teacher using this map asked me to put my finger on the country of the Gerasenes, and I pointed at the gray-brown patch around Gadara rather than the sienna patch around Gerasa, my teacher would justifiably doubt whether I was cut out for elementary map-reading.

But it’s the wrong Gerasa, which is the point. His premise is wrong. He goes on to say that his Gerasa (as opposed to Kursi / Gerasa) was less significant than Gadara at the time. He then “talks up” Gadara: which only supports my argument for why Matthew referred to it as the lead city of “the country” in this region:

To be sure, Gerasa’s economy and infrastructure experienced vibrant growth beginning especially in the latter part of the 1^st century CE. But the same was true of its siblings throughout the Decapolis, including Gadara, during the Pax Romana. And Gadara was not some one-horse town easily lost in Gerasa’s long shadow. Scholars provisionally estimate Gadara’s population during this period to have been around 8,000, with Gerasa’s being not much larger, at roughly 10,000 (see W. Pierson, Spatial Assessments of Urban Growth in Cities of the Decapolis (2021), pp. 167, 170). Gadara produced noted poets and philosophers, boasted theaters and a hippodrome (like Gerasa), and warranted mentions from Pliny, Strabo, Josephus, and Ptolemy, among others (like Gerasa). (See S.T. Parker, “The Decapolis Reviewed,” Journal of Biblical Literature, vol. 94, no. 3 (1975), p. 437-441.) Gadara even minted its own silver coinage—unlike Gerasa and most other Decapolitan communities, whose mints appear not to have gone beyond bronze currency. (See A. Lichtenberger, “The Decapolis,” in T. Kaizer, ed., A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East (2022), p. 217.)

Prevailing in a debate becomes very easy when one’s opponent is partially making one’s argument. Thanks! All those resources are most helpful for strengthening my own case. Saves me a lot of work . . .

Second, and more significantly, any notion of Gerasene reputational prominence didn’t warrant even a mention by Origen, our best ancient source to consider the Gerasa/Gadara problem. He had his hands on some of the earliest Gospel papyri, spoke and wrote Koine Greek with native fluency, lived in Roman Palestine a little over a century after the Gospels were composed, and traveled extensively throughout the area to teach, collect important manuscripts, and trace JC’s footsteps as best he could. He literally talked the talk and walked the walk. If Gadarene territory might reasonably and correctly have been called the land of the Gerasenes in the Greek usage of the time—for whatever reason—we should expect Origen to have told us that, or to have stayed silent about a non-issue.

First of all, he (like Eusebius) equated Gergesa with what we know as Kursi today.

Secondly, that’s not the Christian argument, anyway (straw men abound!). We’re not equating “Gerasene” and “Gadarene” (which would indeed be a contradiction). We’re saying (following Origen and Eusebius and deducing a bit more) that Gerasa = Gergesa = Kursi and that the region around Kursi could reasonably be described as either “the country of the Gadarenes” (more regional, like a county) or “the country of the Gerasenes” (a local reference, to the town), just as I could say that I live “in the country / area / region of Lenawee County [Michigan]” or that I live “in the country / area / region of Tecumseh“: my current town, which happens to have a population of 8,000 or so just as ancient Gadara did.

I can also refer to the location of my residence as “southeast Michigan” [i.e., in the Lower Peninsula] or “the Irish Hills region of Michigan, which is another (colorful and delightful) place name in this area. If I were closer to Detroit, I could also say “suburb of Detroit” or “metro Detroit.” What is so difficult to understand about permissible alternate names for a region? We do it all the time. So did the ancients. Lex can do the same for wherever he lives in Minnesota. And Jonathan can do it in England / the UK / Great Britain, which is in the British Isles and western (but not continental) Europe. Lots o’ place names exist, and overlapping and non-contradictory ones.

But he did neither. Quite the opposite. Origen dismissed the nomenclature as “obviously and demonstrably false” (“προφανὲς ψεῦδος καὶ εὐέλεγκτον”).

Yes, because he was referring to the Gerasa in Transjordan. What is now known as Kursi, he called Gergesa, as Eusebius also did. As Maxwell noted in his dissertation on Gadara (cited above), “In pronunciation the consonants grs and grgs would have been easily confused.” Origen’s Commentary on John was written between 226-229. Eusebius’ Church History dates from 326. That’s pretty early attestation. “Gergesenes” (from the same root) appeared in the KJV at Matthew 8:28.

The King James Version used the Textus Receptus, which is based on Greek manuscript of very ancient pedigree, but not the oldest ones (which are followed by most modern versions). The question of preferability of Bible manuscripts is an extraordinarily complex issue. See, for example, the lengthy article, “Text of the Gospels” in Hastings’ Dictionary of the New Testament (five volumes: 1904). But there have been several new developments in the understanding of the most accurate manuscripts in the 118 years since that article.

The five-volume Expositor’s Greek Testament from 1897 already pretty much figured out (based on recent archaeological discovery) what is now my preferred argument, 125 years ago, in its commentary on Matthew 8:28-34:

[S]ince the discovery by Thomson (Land and Book, ii. 374) of a place called Gersa or Kersa, near the eastern shore of the lake, there has been a growing consensus of opinion in favour of Gerasa (not to be confounded with Gerasa in Gilead, twenty miles east of the Jordan) as the true name of the scene of the story. A place near the sea seems to be demanded by the circumstances, and Gadara on the Hieromax was too far distant. . . .

Prof. G. A. Smith, Historical Geography, p. 459, note, pronounces Gerasa “impossible”. But he means Gerasa in Decapolis, thirty-six miles away. He accepts Khersa, which he identifies with Gergesa, as the scene of the incident, stating that it is the only place on the east coast where the steep hills come down to the shore.

Likewise, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, in its commentary on Matthew 8:28-34, which was written in 1893, states in concurrence:

The readings vary between Gerasenes, Gadarenes and Gergesenes. Gerasa and Gergesa are forms of the same name. Gadara was some distance to the south of the Lake. It was, however, the capital of Peræa, and the more important place; possibly Gergesa was under its jurisdiction. Gergesa is identified with the modern Khersa; in the neighbourhood of which “rocks with caves in them very suitable for tombs, a verdant sward with bulbous roots on which the swine might feed” (Macgregor, Rob Roy), and a steep descent to the verge of the Lake, exactly correspond with the circumstances of the miracle.

The Pulpit Commentary, from the 1890s, also agrees with this general scenario, in its commentary on the same verses:

Verse 28. – And when he was come to the other side into the country of the Gergesenes; Revised Version, Gadarenes, which is certainly right here, as is “Gerasenes” in the parallel passages (cf. Westcott and Hort, it. ‘App.’). Gergesa (Textus Receptus here, and Alexandrian authorities in parallel passages) and Gerasa (unless, with Origen on John 1:28, we understand by this the Arabian Gerasa fifty miles away)are probably forms of the same name now represented by Khersa, a village discovered (? in 1857) by Thomson (‘The Land and the Book,’ pp. 375, sqq., edit. 1880) on the eastern side of the lake, and lying “within a few rods of the shore,” with “an immense mountain” rising directly above it, “in which are ancient tombs, out of some of which the two men possessed of the devils may have issued to meet Jesus. The lake is so near the base of the mountain that the swine, rushing madly down it, could not stop, but would be hurried on into the water and drowned.”

So why do the Gospels of Mark and Luke refer to “τὴν χώραν τῶν Γερασηνῶν” rather than “τὴν χώραν τῶν Γαδαρηνῶν?” Dunno. We have little basis for any confident conclusions.

That’s odd. There are perfectly plausible, reasonable explanations for it.

. . . a lakeside area was confusingly and inaccurately given the name of a landlocked community one or two days to the southeast.

Not if there were two places named Gerasa, and one was indeed by the Sea of Galilee.

To be clear, I don’t expect the fuss about a place name in a spectacular exorcism story to deal a stunning blow to anyone’s faith. By itself, this is a mere foot fault in the broader context of the New Testament. Nor is it my position that the Gerasene difficulty must mean the Gospels and other books of the Bible are unusually defective with regards to geography. On the contrary, I think they get a good deal of that stuff right, roughly on par with many analogous texts from antiquity.

This is good and fair-minded, unlike so much of online atheist rhetoric of the anti-theist variety, which is insulting and condescending. This is why it’s a true pleasure to dialogue with Lex. He exhibits not one trace of those ethical and intellectual shortcomings. He also — refreshingly — understands that these arguments of mine are not “personal” at all. Not one bit. It’s all addressed to the weakness of premises and arguments.

I discuss this misidentification simply to illuminate one notable example of human error creeping into canonical holy writ that many believers of a fundamentalist bent tell us is inerrant. Origen discerned the problem of the Gerasenes firsthand nearly two millennia ago. We see it still today. And the inaccuracy cannot be convincingly cured by any amount of ad hoc apologetics.

And I beg to profoundly differ. I’ve dealt with this paper and two previous ones by Jonathan. Jonathan wrote under Lex’s article today:

[We] have 3 written pieces and a video. Deal with them or don’t. . . .There are arguments and you need to deal with them and that’s the end.

I dealt with all three (this one being produced within 24 hours of Lex’s article). I don’t deal with videos, only written material, for several reasons. So I’ve held up my end. The question is whether Lex and/or Jonathan will counter-reply to this and whether Jonathan will rebut my second reply to him.

Three meaty articles from me [a total of about 9,300 words or roughly 33 standard pages] just about the Gadarenes / Gerasenes supposed contradiction are quite sufficient to adequately cover the topic. I have a lot to write about as an apologist. But I will reply again if they come up with anything different from what I’ve already dealt with, and especially if they take on my arguments directly (a true dialogical counter-response), as I have, theirs. There is no need to repeat myself when these three articles are published on my blog for one and all to read.

[Note: I did reply a fourth time and came up with several new arguments: Pearce’s Potshots #63: Lex, NT Texts, & the Next Town Over (2-28-22).]

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Photo credit: Talmoryair (3-10-09). Present-day Kursi, Israel (= Gerasa = Gergesa) on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus healed the two demoniacs. [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license]

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Summary: This is my third rebuttal of atheists’ use of the tired “Gadarenes & Gerasenes” alleged biblical contradiction and “problem”: with several new resources introduced.

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Pearce’s Potshots #61: The Rationale for Prayer

February 5, 2022 By Dave Armstrong

His words below will be in blue.

*****

This is a reply to a portion of his post, “Gambling on prayer: Getting addicted to blind hope” (2-4-22).

I’ve made it clear that prayer does not change God’s mind. It can’t. God is immutable,

So far so good. That is orthodox Christian theology.

and his predictions or knowledge about the universe (and his own actions) are set in stone from causally before the creation of the universe. It’s all down to his infallible foreknowledge.

That’s true, too, although He allows us free will, and this is incorporated into His providence and sovereignty. No one is predestined to hell, and no one gets to heaven without cooperating with saving God’s grace and Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross on our behalf: without which no one would be saved.

It’s a bit like children playing on a hill that has steep cliffs on all sides. Putting a fence around the edges prevents them from getting hurt and “constricts” their free will in a sense. That’s like God’s will in some ways. But the children feel free to run around as they wish and take no thought of possible harm. In fact, the fence (ostensibly a “restriction”) makes them feel *more* free, because they don’t have to worry about falling over the edge.

So in one sense they are free, and in another they are not (at least not totally or in an unlimited sense). That’s how we are with God.

So prayer isn’t about changing God’s mind. But people still do it. Believers believe (because that’s what they do!), somehow and for some reason, that their prayer will enact change away from God’s divinely foreknown course. The trolley is on the railroad, but they think they have the lever in their hands to change tracks for that God-driven cart.

This is where you fail to understand the immensity and wondrous nature of God’s sovereignty. What you neglect to see is that God, from all eternity, knowing everything that will happen or even what would happen differently, given different conditions (scientia media: “middle knowledge”) chooses to incorporate our prayers into His perfect will and sovereignty. They then become part of the whole mix.

The idea is that He wants us to participate in His workings: not that we are controlling Him or giving Him orders, but willingly participating with what He does and wishes to do.

God doesn’t need anything. He’s not sitting up in heaven waiting for us to summon Him so He can act (as if He is our mere robot). He urges us to pray in order to involve us in His actions. That’s how He likes it to be. Prayer helps us (i.e., it’s a good and pious thing to pray), and helps recipients of prayer. The world was designed to be a place where people helped each other. Prayer is a means of helping others by involving the power of God. The Bible has many indications of this notion of “working with” God. For example:

1 Corinthians 3:9 (RSV) . . . we are God’s fellow workers . . . (KJV: “labourers together with God”)

2 Corinthians 6:1 Working together with him, then, we entreat you not to accept the grace of God in vain.

2 Corinthians 13:3 . . . Christ is speaking in me . . .

Philippians 2:13 for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Prayer is the same. We also participate in our own salvation by cooperating with God, and He includes us in His plan to save as many people as He can. Prayer is part of this whole package. For much more on all this, see my article:

God’s “Fellow Workers” Help Spread Salvation & Grace (We “Impart Grace”, “Save” Others, Win Souls, Help Them “Obtain Salvation”, Etc., In Our “Work of the Lord”)

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Photo credit: Old Flanders (1915), by Theophile Marie Francois Lybaert (1848-1927) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

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Summary: I explain to atheist Jonathan MS Pearce the Christian and biblical rationale for prayer: participating with God in His great works, & being “co-workers”: by God’s choice.

Pearce’s Potshots #60: Fairy-Tale Atheist Eisegesis (2)

February 1, 2022 By Dave Armstrong

His words below will be in blue.

*****

This is a reply to his post, Christian apologetics and defending Matthew’s guards (1-31-22), which in turn is a response to my articles, Pearce’s Potshots #57: Matthew & the Tomb Guards (1-28-22) and Pearce’s Potshots #58: Paul & Jesus’ “Empty” Tomb (1-29-22). See Part 1 of this larger reply for background.

First, I don’t make this up out of thin air. The general ahistoricity of Matthew’s guards pericope is accepted by all skeptical scholars and a good deal of believing ones—see Brown above. Here is the famous Christian scholar Dale C. Allison:

…and [the theory that] Matthew, “with vindicatory intent,” backdated the guard to an earlier time. The most extensive treatment of the subject is Kankaanniemi, Guards. He argues that the Christian story developed as a response to the early Jewish fiction that the disciples stole the body while Roman soldiers guarded the tomb. Although he has not convinced me that the guards derive from Jewish polemic as opposed to Christian apologetic, we concur that Matthew’s story is not history.

Dale C. Allison (2021), The Resurrection of Jesus, New York: Bloomsbury, p. 180.

Allison continues later to make exactly the same point as me concerning the guards not becoming Christians and believing—is he pulling it out of thin air? Is his claim a rabbit out of the hat?

Whatever the rationalization, it is wildly unlikely that either would have declared, “Jesus is Lord!” Annas and Herod would have been like the fictional guards in Matthew 28, who see everything yet fail to lay down their weapons and take up the new faith.

Ibid. p.331.

This is a problem today: a lot of Christian scholars: even the more “conservative” / orthodox ones, accept false skeptical premises. My friend, Dr. Lydia McGrew, philosopher and amateur theologian (traditional Anglican) has written a book about this, called, The Mirror or the Mask: Liberating the Gospels from Literary Devices (2020). Here is the Amazon blurb about it:

In recent years a number of evangelical scholars have claimed that the Gospel authors felt free to present events in one way even though they knew that the reality was different. Analytic philosopher Lydia McGrew brings her training in the evaluation of evidence to bear, investigates these theories about the evangelists’ literary standards in detail, and finds them wanting. At the same time she provides a nuanced, positive view of the Gospels that she dubs the reportage model. Clearing away misconceptions of this model, McGrew amasses objective evidence that the evangelists are honest, careful reporters who tell it like it is.

And here is the comment of a well-known Christian philosopher:

As Thomas Kuhn pointed out long ago, it is often someone from a different discipline who has the epistemic distance and objectivity to evaluate a widely accepted paradigm/methodology in another discipline, because practitioners in the latter tend to look at things the way they were trained and, thus, cannot see things accurately. Kuhn’s remarks are right on target when it comes to philosopher Lydia McGrew’s critique of widespread methodological practices in New Testament studies. While The Mirror or the Mask is very easy to read, it is also a massive piece of first-rate, rigorous scholarship that leaves no stone unturned. Replete with very careful distinctions, The Mirror or the Mask offers a precise analysis of the contemporary practice of employing “fictionalization” to exegete various Gospel texts. McGrew’s careful analysis finds such a practice wanting and dangerous and replaces this practice with an approach that treats the Gospels as honest historical reports based on eyewitness testimony. This book is a must read for all who are interested in the historical accuracy of our portraits of Jesus. I highly recommend it. (J.P. Moreland: Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Talbot School of Theology)

This is what is going on with Dr. Allison above. One would have to see why he thinks this way; what evidence he adduces other than conspiracy theories, bolstered by the fact that an increasing number of scholars now believe them. Does he have anything substantial? Jonathan doesn’t present it, if so. But the text of Matthew has in its favor the hostile Jewish witnesses of the early centuries after Christianity arose, who themselves talked about the stolen body theory. That’s actual concrete historical evidence; quite different from Jonathan’s relentless mythmaking and legend creation with no historical basis. Wikipedia (“Stolen body hypothesis”) noted this:

A Jewish anti-Christian work dating from the 5th-century, the Toledoth Yeshu, contains the claim that the disciples planned to steal Jesus’s body from his tomb. In this account, the body had already been moved, and when the disciples arrived at the empty tomb they came to the incorrect conclusion that he had risen from the dead. Later, the corpse was sold to the Jewish leaders for thirty pieces of silver, who confirmed Jesus’s death; Jesus’s corpse was then dragged through the streets of Jerusalem. Another variant comes from a record of a 2nd-century debate between a Christian and a Jew, Justin Martyr‘s Dialogue with Trypho: “his disciples stole him by night from the tomb, where he was laid when unfastened from the cross, and now deceive men by asserting that he has risen from the dead and ascended to heaven.”

This makes Matthew’s story more plausible. Jonathan thinks conspiratorially about the Gospels. I look at them, not just with the faith of a Christian (belief in their inspiration), but in light of independent verification of their veracity. I think the scientific and intellectual approach is more respectable than sitting around coming up with 153 different conspiratorial scenarios. And of course, now these include (among many atheists) the increasingly fashionable Jesus mythicism, which I have always considered intellectual suicide; hence, I refuse to interact with it at all.

Jonathan then enlists John Dominic Crossan in favor of his “Matthew & the guards” skepticism. Wikipedia says about him: “His work is controversial, portraying the Second Coming as a late corruption of Jesus’ message and saying that Jesus’ divinity is metaphorical.” So much for him. Why would any Christian be impressed by a scholar who blasphemes Jesus as a creature and not God? He has no credibility in our eyes. But you atheists love him because he spouts anti-Christian things that you agree with.

N.T. Wright is mentioned by Jonathan:

The other story which spills over in Matthew’s gospel from the crucifixion narrative to the Easter account involves the chief priests getting together with the Pharisees to go to Pilate and request a guard on Jesus’ tomb. This is of considerable interest, not so much for its own sake (though that is interesting too) but for the sake of what it tells us about the story-telling motives of the early church.

The tale begins on the sabbath itself…

NT Wright (2003), The Resurrection of the Son of God,

But Wright does not agree with Jonathan’s take. He is brought to the table for a particular polemical purpose, as I will discuss below. The book is partially accessible at its Google Books page. On page 637, Wright recounts Matthew’s story in 27:62-66 and concludes that “there is nothing intrinsically implausible” in the description of “the apparently easy collaboration of the Pharisees and chief priests, and of the two together with Pilate.” Then he opines regarding the Jewish polemical use of “that deceiver” in 27:63 (“that impostor” in RSV): “it seems more likely that it goes back to some kind of well-rooted memory.”

He then cites Matthew 28:11-15, which continues this motif, concluding with “this story has been spread among the Jews to this day.” Wright’s opinion of this portion is that “There is nothing improbable in this narrative; indeed, it makes good sense all round.” Frustratingly, page 638 isn’t available on this site, but page 639 is. Here he summarizes “the Bultmannian scheme” of the passages and he concludes:

If any historian finds this sequence more probable than the one Matthew offers, I can only admire their ability to believe such remarkable things. But I suspect that if even Rudolf Bultmann were to find himself as a member of a jury he would be more prepared to believe a story like the one Matthew tells than a story like the five- or six-stage development of tradition that must be told if we are to declare that Matthew’s is impossible.

Jonathan cites Wright from page 638:

But, while the historian is always cautious about accepting obviously apologetic tales, there are further considerations which make it very unlikely that this one was actually invented from scratch within the Christian community. . . . For our present purposes, the main thing is not to argue that the story, in both its parts, is historically true in all respects, though as we have seen it is unlikely to have been invented as a late legend.

Jonathan takes a potshot against me as an apologist by contrasting me with “actual apologists” like Wright, who is “well aware of the skeptical and non-Christian accusations” and “takes them seriously” and “acknowledges the counter-argument.” I suppose he could say that he did that in some sense, in describing Bultmann’s theory at length. But then he remarks that he thinks that Bultmann wouldn’t even believe his own story over Matthew’s if he were on a jury. And he says of folks who would believe his take: “I can only admire their ability to believe such remarkable things.” So if that is taking Bultmann “seriously” it is certainly only in the very mildest sense (by merely citing it). Once he gives his own opinion, he virtually belittles it (scarcely different from my take on liberal scholars of his ilk).

So once again the cynical and (his self-description) “purposeful passive-aggressive” attempt to pit me against the great Christian scholar N. T. Wright with regard to the Matthew guard story, fails miserably. Wright basically believes Matthew’s account (at worst thinking it might have been embellished a bit) because he is an orthodox Anglican believer who actually believes the Bible and not an extreme skeptic, like most of those Jonathan cites. Therefore, his conclusion is diametrically opposed to folks like Crossan and Fr. Brown. Their biases (for or against the Bible) are manifest.

Conveniently, after citing reams of Bishop Wright’s words, he stops precisely before the paragraph above where Wright talks about what Bultmann would do on a jury. Nice touch there, Johnny. I believe in getting a scholar’s whole opinion out there, as much as we are able, within space limitations. One more paragraph would not have put Jonathan out. It’s silly and objectionable to quote Wright’s description of Bultmann’s view but to omit his negative and rather dismissive opinion of it. But I’m delighted that Jonathan brought up Wright, because he has bolstered my opinion a lot.

It is hilarious because Armstrong accuses me of lacking any historical evidence for why Matthew alone claims this and then provides absolutely no evidence himself for his own historical belief!

This is untrue.

I have already noted in my many recent discussions on this matter that authors (even ancient ones) are generally given the benefit of the doubt and not regarded as deceivers, minus any compelling historical evidence of same. I’ve used Herodotus as an example: the great Greek historian who also includes supernatural elements in his accounts: like the Bible writers do.
I also call to the defense of the Bible, archaeology (particularly with Luke). If it’s shown to be accurate again and again, we can trust it in details where we have no explicit evidence (or any at all).
I also noted above that the presence of a verifiable post-Christian Jewish conspiracy theory of the “stolen body” makes it more plausible for Matthew to describe a situation where that very thing is discussed, and that this is an example of actual historical evidence for a claim (whereas Jonathan has offered none of that). He cites a bunch of almost all radically skeptical academic muckety-mucks, but never describes or cites their rationale for why they believe in this conspiracy theory; that is, some hard historical substantiation and not just raw, bald assertion and mention of others with like mind (which approaches the ad populum fallacy in some respects).

Perhaps his most substantial argument is the claim that there are 135 instances when the Synoptic Gospels make claims that are not seen in any other Gospel. He claims that this makes it “no big deal.”

Except many of the ones he mentions are again arguments against historicity!

Judas’ suicide? It’s included in Acts and there is a clear contradiction between the accounts.

No there isn’t, as I wrote about last May.

The magi and Herod chasing Jesus and family out of the country to live in political asylum for two years before returning out of Egypt to fulfill a Messianic prophecy in Matthew is a super example. Only super-committed Christians have the cognitive dissonance reduction to believe this rather insignificant “fact” of Jesus’ life would be omitted from, say, Luke, who flatly contradicts the claim in having Jesus’ family go to the Temple in Jerusalem straight away before then returning straight away afterwards to Nazareth. This never happened! This is Matthew ex eventu prophesying!

Nonsense. I’ve dealt with this whole supposed “gotcha!” polemic too:

Reply to Atheist Jonathan MS Pearce: Bethlehem & Nazareth “Contradictions” (Including Extensive Exegetical Analysis of Micah 5:2) [7-28-17]

Jesus the “Nazarene”: Did Matthew Make Up a “Prophecy”? (Reply to Jonathan M. S. Pearce from the Blog, A Tippling Philosopher / Oral Traditions and Possible Lost Old Testament Books Referred to in the Bible) [12-17-20]

Pearce’s Potshots #11: 28 Defenses of Jesus’ Nativity (Featuring Confirmatory Historical Tidbits About the Magi and Herod the Great) [1-9-21]

What Armstrong fails to do here is to explore how the guards were posted there and how the Gospel writer knew about them and their arrangement. I briefly discussed the issue in the last post. Matthew would have had to have been privy to a private meeting between the chief priests and Pilate.

No he wouldn’t. It’s altogether possible that he heard a report from Nicodemus or Joseph of Arimathea, who were Pharisees (Mt 27:62) and members of the Sanhedrin, sympathetic to Christianity. They could very well have been present at the meeting with Pilate with the “chief priests” also.

Of course, he doesn’t mention his sources, or how actual words from secret non-Christian conversations were accurately relayed across such time and space.

I just provided one perfectly plausible theory. It’s speculation, but it’s plausible and based on some facts we know from the Bible (which is historically trustworthy).

This kind of stuff is too problematic for Armstrong.

Hardly.

My original piece stands. Armstrong has provided nothing to even remotely change my opinion on that. He should opt for substance over rhetoric because latter just starts a rhetorical whirlpool to the depths.

I’m happy as always to let readers decide who has built up a more compelling argument or “case.”

I’m still waiting for the substance.

Read this and Part 1 as well.

Just insulting me is an uninteresting game that we can, indeed, both play.

Once again, I have not insulted Jonathan personally. I have uttered many strong words, however, against his many flimsy, lousy arguments about this, and his futile, irrelevant (yet dogmatically expressed) bald opinions that entail by their very nature, mythmaking and legend-building efforts.

It’s just that it is a waste of time, no one wants to see it, and I don’t really want to play it anymore.

Jonathan played it this time, having already charged me in this overall discussion with “being willfully disingenuous” and “being really dishonest.” I have not accused him of these things: neither now nor ever. So if he is concerned about insulting debate opponents, I suggest that he look in the mirror and the beam in his own eye and not the speck in mine.

Meanwhile, though he lectures me about my nonexistent attacks on his person, he continues all the while (inexplicably) being perfectly content to allow commenters in his combox to insult me up and down in sweeping, prejudicial, and bigoted ways (with the repeated utter lie-myth-whopper that I supposedly ban everyone who simply disagrees with me, front and center). That’s all fine and dandy. I haven’t done this at all with him, yet somehow he has this mistaken notion in his head that I have. Go figure. I think it is oversensitivity: something we all fall into at times, as frail human beings.

I guess he has me confused with so many of his atheist buddies who routinely savage and insult Christians and offer little or no rational engagement on the issues between us.

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Practical Matters: Perhaps some of my 3,900+ free online articles (the most comprehensive “one-stop” Catholic apologetics site) or fifty books have helped you (by God’s grace) to decide to become Catholic or to return to the Church, or better understand some doctrines and why we believe them.

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Photo credit: Saint Paul Writing His Epistles (c. 1620), attributed to Valentin de Boulogne (1591-1632) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

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Summary: I critique atheist Jonathan MS Pearce’s relentless attack on the truthfulness of the Gospel texts & the honesty of the four Evangelists, i.e., fairy tale atheist eisegesis.

Pearce’s Potshots #59: Fairy-Tale Atheist Eisegesis (1)

January 31, 2022 By Dave Armstrong

His words below will be in blue.

*****

There’s something meta going on

Oooh! More conspiracies underfoot?

when a Christian apologist takes aim at a biblical account of mine with some typical apologetics, claiming I am making stuff up out of whole cloth when I myself accused the Gospel writers (or apologists) of making stuff up out of whole cloth to defend themselves against Jewish accusations 2,000 years ago.

Or perhaps this is not meta, but hypocrisy, as you will see.

Yes it is not only hypocrisy, but high irony, that Jonathan does what he falsely accuses Matthew of doing, or — to put it more mildly — offers no proof or evidence whatsoever that Matthew was doing what he accuses him of doing.

This all concerns a small section of narrative—a pericope—that is only found in one Gospel (Matthew) and looks very much like the author made it up to serve a purpose.

Where is the hard historical evidence that he did this? And lacking same, why is the hostile claim made in the first place? Does Jonathan claim to be able to read the mind and discern the interior motivations of a Jewish writer from 1900+ years ago? If so, I hope he explains to all of us how that works. Simply stating something and assuming it is compelling is not an intellectual argument.

I’m sure many — like myself — are waiting with baited breath to see this revelation of how Jonathan can read minds and motives at a distance. But don’t hold your breath, folks, because you’ll be waitin’ a long, LONG time.

Christians don’t like such claims because, of course, it all has to be true!

Merely silly and useless comment. He believes very strongly what he does; so do I. My view “has” to be true as long as I believe there is sufficient epistemological reason and reason in general (of many sorts) to believe it to be true (along with a reason for religious faith itself). That’s how I’ve always lived my life and how I have approached disputes of fact and clashing beliefs: which is why I’ve changed my mind in many major ways throughout my life.

First let me again present the thesis I am proposing which is, just to confirm, constructed from the Gospel data and is drawing on a lot of pre-existent biblical criticism,

. . . which is itself almost always arbitrary and pulled out of thin air. This is a major point I make throughout.

and not pulled out of thin air, my posterior, or constructed from whole cloth:

Yeah, he gets it from theologically liberal or skeptical or atheist academics. Atheist arguments are almost always recycled and regurgitated and parroted from others. Very few of them are brand new. But these arguments from the big-name, fashionable academics among atheists must be substantiated on their own, not just accepted because they have an axe to grind that Jonathan also happily wants to grind along with them.

Paul does not mention the empty tomb narrative at all in the passion sequence concerning Jesus’ death and resurrection. This is bizarre because we would have expected him to do so (perfect reasons for so doing to defend his arguments in 1 Corinthians, for example).

As I wrote at the end of my previous reply to Jonathan:

Paul is under no moral, logical, or “literary” obligation to replicate all that the Gospels have about the empty tomb. They already covered that. Paul did mostly systematic theology, not recounting of events.

Knocking him for that is yet more of the silly argument from silence. I say that Paul stated pretty much what he should have been expected to say, given his purpose in his writing. The epistles were written for theological instruction and exhortation, not to reiterate the facts of the life of Jesus that Christians were already well familiar with.

From this perspective, I don’t see why we should “expect” him to mention it. He referred to the “tomb” once, as I showed last time (Acts 13:29) and to Jesus’ “burial” three more times in his epistles. It’s much ado about nothing. He mentioned it. Because I dared to submit Acts 13:29 for Jonathan’s consideration, he immediately upped the rhetoric and polemics a thousand-fold and melted down in his combox:

Wow, you are being willfully disingenuous. Please show me where Paul mentions the empty tomb or any of the narrative the gospels include about the empty tomb. You are being really dishonest here and skating close to the mark.

Lacking any compelling reason to question to question the authenticity of Acts 13:29 and Luke’s record of what Paul preached in that instance, he immediately did what atheists almost always do when their particular claims are shown to be false: 1) make a huge fuss, and 2) arbitrarily and with no provided compelling reason, deny that Acts 13:29 is a truthful accurate record of Paul’s words. How do we know it’s not accurate? As I wrote in my second reply back to Jonathan:

Luke’s trustworthiness as an accurate reporter of all kinds of things in the book of Acts has been rather dramatically verified by archaeology, again and again. . . . This is the criterion for any other ancient historian: are the things they report independently verified or substantiated?

That’s objective, hard evidence: the opposite of what Jonathan is offering. One can quibble about how relatively strong each individual instance of this archaeological confirmation is, but it is evidence.

2. Mark, the first Gospel (written 40 years after the death of Jesus and some decades after Paul), mentions the empty tomb. But he adds an odd sequence at the end of his narrative that no other later Gospel writer adds. Indeed, they outright contradict the claim. He and his Gospel (later versions interpolate further details) with the women witnesses to the empty tomb leaving and specifically not telling anyone about the empty tomb and what they had seen. [five typos corrected]

3. This very much appears to act as an explanation as to why his audience has not heard about the empty tomb—because the women kept it a secret, of course! After all, we need to explain why he mentions this secret-keeping but all the other Gospels contradict this.

This is old ground that I have already covered. Word-search for the section “Jesus: Resurrection” in my Armstrong’s Refutations of Alleged Biblical “Contradictions” to find fifteen articles about all the alleged “difficulties” in the biblical accounts.

4. Matthew admits that Jews had been arguing that a better explanation of the empty tomb was that someone had stolen the body: “and this story was widely spread among the Jews and is to this day.” (Matthew 28:15)

Yes, it’s a perfectly plausible thing to believe actually happened. They didn’t believe in Jesus’ Resurrection and so they had to make up an alternate explanation for the empty tomb: precisely as atheists do today: including this very “stolen body” rationalization. We have Matthew’s report. Is it something that seems plausible or not? I think it clearly is. People hostile to one explanation of a purported event provide a contradictory one to explain the same thing. When folks didn’t like Jesus’ miracles, they tried to claim that they were done under the inspiration of the devil and not God (to which Jesus replied with his “a divided house cannot stand” discourse).

5. Matthew is the next Gospel after Mark, some 15+ years later, and is the only Gospel to include the narrative of their being guards at the door. This is odd, and is part of a slew of good evidence that it was made up by Matthew.

Saying there is “evidence” (hard, concrete, historical evidence) is not the same thing as demonstrating it. It remains the case that Jonathan has provided no such evidence that Matthew made up a whopper, save the conspiracy theories that emanate from his head and the heads of atheists whose ideas he parrots. The idea underlying this silliness seems to be, “if a nefarious plot to deceive readers is possible from the Evangelists, then it must be plausible or actual.” That doesn’t follow.

[An] eminent Catholic exegete admits that Matthew’s guards are “almost unintelligible” and that “there is neither internal nor external evidence to cause us to affirm historicity.” (The Death of the Messiah, Raymond Brown, 1994, p. 1311) [two typos corrected]

I’m delighted that Jonathan brought up Fr. Brown. I’ve been doing apologetics for 41 years: the last twenty as a full-time, published (11 books) Catholic apologist. I have observed a zillion times that the enemies of Christianity always bring up liberal or skeptical scholars who claim the name “Christian” in order to fight against various things in Christianity that they disbelieve. Atheists and cultists like Jehovah’s Witness, and Muslims, all use precisely this same technique. And I’ve debated them all.

But if a person cannot be said to accurately represent historical Christianity, then it is improper to cite them, and it should be noted that their views are heterodox, not orthodox, according to standard, historical Christian theological categories. Fr. Raymond Brown is one of these who is always brought up. He had some good things to say, like almost all scholars do. But he was a Catholic dissident, as I have documented:

Fr. Brown . . . cast doubt on the historical accuracy of numerous articles of the Catholic faith. These articles of faith, proclaimed by Popes and believed by the faithful over the centuries, include Jesus’ physical Resurrection; the Transfiguration; the fact that Jesus founded the one, true Catholic Church and instituted the priesthood and the episcopacy; the fact that 12 Apostles were missionaries and bishops; and the truth that Jesus was not “ignorant” on a number of matters.

Not least, though, was Fr. Brown’s exegesis concerning the infancy narratives of Saints Matthew and Luke that calls into question the virginal conception of Jesus and the accounts of our Lord’s birth and childhood.

In addition to Cardinal Shehan, such eminent peers of Fr. Brown as Msgr. George A. Kelly, Fr. William Most, Fr. Richard Gilsdorf, Fr. Rene Laurentin, and John J. Mulloy were highly critical of the Brown revisionism of the Catholic Church’s age-old theology of inspiration and inerrancy. (“Traditional Catholic Scholars Long Opposed Fr. Brown’s Theories,” Henry V. King, The Wanderer, 10 September 1998; reprinted at the Catholic Culture website)

This guy is supposed to represent historic Christianity? He does not! He’s skeptical of Matthew’s guards because he was skeptical even of all kinds of Catholic dogmas (things all Catholics are required to believe as a member of the faith). And I’m quite sure that if we examined Fr. Brown’s stated reason for doubting the veracity of the guards account, we would find nothing of any evidentiary value. It’ll be — so I confidently predict — like peeling an onion: no core. Just because he was famous and wrote a big 1000-page book that atheists like Jonathan are ecstatic about, doesn’t turn a non-argument (bald statements with no substantiation) into an actual argument.

Now Jonathan (with his oft-employed broad brush) will say that I am dismissing Christian scholarship per se, which is nonsense. I am dismissing those who masquerade as orthodox Catholics, but who are not at all: which is fundamentally intellectually dishonest. He himself does exactly the same thing from the opposite perspective. So, for example, Jonathan roundly mocks archaeologist and Egyptologist Kenneth A. Kitchen, who is a profound scholar, as if he were some uneducated troglodyte whose opinions are utterly worthless.

And why does he do that? Well, it’s because Kitchen is an archaeological “maximalist” who actually believes the Bible is trustworthy in matters of historical detail, and he is a practicing evangelical Protestant. That’s more than enough reason for Jonathan to immediately dismiss him out of hand. Here is an example of him sarcastically doing this:

He [yours truly!] then lists a bunch of Jewish and Christian conservatives, many from the 50s, 60s, and 70s, throwing in archaeologist Kenneth Kitchen for good measure. Always good to see an axiomatic biblical maximalist in there for fair and objective academia. (7-3-21)

Thus, if he is justified in dismissing a scholar like Kitchen because he actually believes in Christianity and the Bible, then by the same token I can dismiss the erroneous opinions of Fr. Brown: a man who was a Catholic priest, but who denied many Catholic dogmas. Goose and gander. Jonathan thinks Kitchen was intellectually dishonest and not a “true” archaeologist. I think Fr. Brown was intellectually dishonest and not a “true” Catholic (in the full sense of the words, including acceptance of dogmas). It doesn’t mean I would never cite him ever. In cases where he made a true observation, I certainly would.

Atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell, in his History of Western Philosophy (which I read many years ago) made a statement to the effect that a Christian (even someone like Thomas Aquinas) cannot truly do philosophy. Jonathan seems to think (with no basis) that an orthodox Christian cannot do theology, either. He or she must disbelieve several required tenets of their Christian faith in order to be a “true scholar.” This is epistemological madness.

Therefore, because I am an orthodox Catholic apologist, Jonathan must accuse me of “being willfully disingenuous . . . being really dishonest” when I defend the notion that Paul mentioned the empty tomb. He seems to be unable to classify me any other way. I actually believe that which I am defending, and so my opinions must be dismissed out of hand.

6. This looks like a counter-argument against the Jewish counter-arguments that the body was stolen. Matthew even phrases it like it is. Matthew appears to be privy to a private conversation between the guards and the Sanhedrin (Matthew 28):

I recently dealt with this issue of how the Evangelists could know “hidden / secret things.” In this case, one scenario that could explain it would be that a member of the Sanhedrin privy to such discussions later became a Christian and reported what was talked about. Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea were two such men. There could have been others. In fact, it could very well have been one of these two men who gave Matthew the information. Note that I am simply speculating on possibilities: not making foolish “certain” proclamations of what Matthew must have done, with no evidence.

7. This Christian polemic counter-counter-argument evidences that Mark invented (or communicated a developed narrative)

Yes, the oral traditions were present right from the time of Christ’s death and could be drawn from.

that did not exist in Paul’s time because otherwise Mark would have had to be dealing with the Jewish counter-arguments.

Of course it existed before Paul’s time . . .

But he didn’t because those arguments did not exist because no one in the wider community knew about the narrative before Mark’s Gospel.

Jonathan makes yet another universal negative statement — he never tires of these! — for which he has no hard evidence. Did you notice that he gave none? He simply spouts his fantasies as if they should be received with the utmost seriousness as unarguable profundities.

8. This is also supported by the fact that later Gospels did not include the women keeping secret since everyone did know about the empty tomb as a result of the late (compared to Paul and the events) communication of this part of the story. They had no need to explain the to their audiences why they had not heard of the empty tomb as Mark had to do.

See my defenses of the scriptural Resurrection accounts, under that category in my collection. Much ado about nothing. Groundless tin foil hat conspiracy theories . . .

9. The later Luke and John did not include the guards polemic. Christians equally need to explain this. I surmise that they saw it for what it was: an obviously ahistorical polemic.

I am not compelled to enter into a conspiratorial mindset. It’s a non-issue. The four Gospels have different emphases and different intended audiences. The Christian observes that if one of them mentioned something that was unique, so what? It’s in the New Testament somewhere, and that’s all that matters. There is no obligation for all four Gospels to be absolutely identical. What would be the point?! So all of them have unique things, because that’s what happens when four human beings take up writing about particular historical events.

I did not literally construct anything out of thin air. That is, er, literally impossible.

Did I even metaphorically do this?

No. I used data that is in the Gospels, and Matthew even admits to the Jews having a prevailing counter-argument. You cannot make things up out of thin air in proposing a coherent causal theory connecting actual data (Gospel claims). This is how all theories are constructed. Can we test it? Yes, for coherence. No, since we cannot go back in time. Data can disconfirm the theory (but doesn’t), if it could be found to do so. And this is the same case for the Christian thesis.

The hypothesis of Matthew simply making it up for polemical purposes has no supporting historical evidence. Period. Zero, zilch, zip, nada, nuthin’. The fact that Jonathan thinks it has explanatory value and should be believed because of the NT we have is not such evidence. One could “prove” [choke] virtually anything by the ridiculous criteria that Jonathan is employing.

Secondly, the fact that it is a hostile interpretation of Matthew’s motives has no connection whatsoever to what can be historically known. There is certainly nothing in the Bible about that. When Evangelist Luke explains his motivation for writing his Gospel (1:1-4) it seems perfectly respectable, honest, and above board. We have no good reason to suspect his stated motivations. Likewise, with the other three.

But of course, in the conspiratorialist mentality (which always has a quick answer for everything), that is just a ruse to fool the folks, you see . . .

This part is pretty egregious: apparently I “constructed (literally out of thin air) an entire elaborate story of deceit and intent to deliberately lie about the events surrounding Jesus’ death.”

Yes! This is his view: Matthew made up a story and pretended that it was fact when he knew it to be fiction; a fairy-tale. As I noted today in his combox: that is serious immorality according to Christian ethics. It violates one of the Ten Commandments (not bearing false witness) and is an objectively mortal (grave) sin in Catholic teaching, and a serious sin according to all Christians.

Now Jonathan is trying to make out that he didn’t do what he has stated repeatedly. If I call him on it, he is highly offended. It’s the first part of his recent article (1-27-22) on the Guards at the tomb and Matthew (my bolding):

I’ve written before on why the guards at the tomb of Jesus, included only in the Gospel of Matthew, are almost certainly invented by the author of that Gospel. . . .

Suffice to say that Matthew’s guards are a polemic created by the author to answer criticisms . . .

Mark made up the Empty Tomb claim. [i.e., this is the basis for the further conspiratorialist claim that Matthew made up the guards story]

Everyone loves a good fairy tale, but this is a bad fairy tale.

I am not sure if my claims are deceitful and if I am lying about the events, or whether I claim deceit and lying in the sources I am talking about.

The latter. I haven’t (and have never) accused Jonathan of being deliberately dishonest or disingenuous. He has accused me of that (see the citation above).

Either way, he needs to sort out his rhetoric and walk back the accusation or not mischaracterize or misinterpret my claims.

I don’t need to sort out or walk back anything. I have not misrepresented Jonathan. He thinks the Evangelists are (at least in some respects, not all) a pack of liars and that the ends justified the means for them. If they had to lie and deceive to get the story of Jesus Christ out, well, that’s just what they did! There’s not the slightest historical evidence for such an outrageous charge, but that won’t stop Jonathan from making it!

We’re back to the same old desperate Christian defenses that attack me rather than the substance of my arguments.

I have done no such thing. As always in my apologetics, I make a very vigorous “bulldog” argument against what I believe to be untrue and erroneous opinions. It’s ALL about the ideas, not persons. I think Jonathan is a nice guy who sincerely believes what he does, and that he is sincerely dead wrong on a zillion things, whenever he opines about the Bible and Christianity.

I have reiterated recently that I highly admire his allowing me to comment on his site. I have nothing whatever against him personally. I’m simply disagreeing with him. He’s said some nice things about me, too, but at times he becomes acerbic and makes it personal, and this is counter-productive in terms of good back-and-forth dialogue.

I think he may be too thin-skinned and oversensitive in this particular instance, causing him to “see” things in my critiques that simply aren’t there. He’s a human being. We’ve all done that at times.

Of course, it is worth noting that I didn’t pull the idea out of my posterior: the late Gospel invention of the empty tomb narrative has been around since Rudolf Bultmann proposed it in the early 20th century, and no doubt before.

Of course. See my comments about Fr. Raymond Brown above. All this does is send the process of how one manages to believe such conspiracy theories back to Bultmann, who has to explain where it came from; what actual evidence there is for it. As we see in the Wikipedia article on him, Bultmann was another radical skeptic:

[H]e argued for replacing supernatural biblical interpretations with temporal and existential categorizations . . . This approach led Bultmann to reject doctrines such as the pre-existence of Christ. [which is blasphemy and rank heresy according to Christianity because it denies the divinity of Christ and the Trinity] . . . Bultmann carried form criticism so far as to call the historical value of the gospels into serious question.

Why should I care what such a man thinks? He hasn’t even gotten to first base in Christianity, having rejected Jesus’ divinity. He has no credibility for any orthodox Christian on those grounds alone. So your pride in drawing from him gets a “ho hum” / “what else is new?” from me. Of course you will like a guy who has beliefs like that.

Armstrong continues in a way that makes me pretty angry:

First and foremost, arguments of this type are arguments from silence (the logical fallacy, argumentum ex silentio), and as anyone familiar with logic and/or philosophy, and/or debating strategies in general knows (and Jonathan calls himself “a philosopher”), they carry little or no force at all.

Considering he wants me to, I presume, exchange cordially and intellectually with him, he goes about this in a bizarre way. He is intellectually and existentially insulting me with passive-aggressive comments…

Really? I have no such passive-aggressiveness. I like Jonathan. I have nothing against him; tons of objections to his beliefs. Noting that someone used the notorious argument from silence is not attacking the person who did it. It’s pointing out a logical fallacy. He just doesn’t like having his views vigorously critiqued. Almost everyone is that way. He’s not alone, by any means. And many get angry when that happens, as he now admits he is. But there is not the slightest reason to be.

If anyone should be angry here, it would be me, seeing what Jonathan is saying, but I’m not, because I have a very even-tempered, easy-going personality and am well-used to people getting angry when their views are critiqued. His task is to prove that he has not used the fallacy of the argument from silence. It’s pretty clear that he has, in talking about various Gospel writers who didn’t mention things, and then poor old pitiful Matthew, who feels led to construct a lie as a result.

But he is also wrong. This is not an argument from silence, only a part of it is. The Paul claim is the only part that is, and it is valid, as I set out in an entire chapter on this in The Resurrection: A Critical Examination of the Easter Story. He can deal with that. This isn’t “pulled out of thin air” but he is certainly “skating on thin ice”.

I’m not referring to only Paul, but also the other Evangelists. He asserts their silence over and over in his previous related article (1-27-22):

Mark mentions nothing of the guards at the tomb because there is not yet a counter-argument. . . .

Yet Mark mentions nothing. There are no Jewish counter-claims, so Mark needs no counter-counter-claims. The lack of a pre-existing empty tomb narrative is the only thing that makes sense of the lack of guards in Mark, and their addition in Matthew. . . .

Luke and John don’t include them at all, which is a very good argument for their lack of authenticity. . . . Presumably, Luke and John omitted them because they saw it for what it was—an obvious polemic mechanism. . . .

So now Jonathan is objecting loudly to my characterization of his argument, while not even being aware of precisely what I am arguing.

He goes on to give three definitions of an argument from silence but does not in any way explain how the above entire claim is an argument from silence. Go figure.

Well, now I have! I thought it was so obvious that I didn’t need to spell it out.

Of course, as you will notice, mention of the tomb is in Luke/Acts, not Paul’s writing.

So what? It’s irrelevant. You claimed Paul never mentioned the empty tomb. Luke records a sermon where he in fact did do so.

And the rest, well, this is embarrassing stuff. This is taking the idea that he has died and been buried (well, yes…), and projecting his own ideas onto that. “Well, he was buried, so it must have been a tomb! And he left it, so it must have been empty! So Paul obviously mentions the empty tomb narrative!”

Nice try. This is so wearisome. I was projecting no ideas of my own. It was cross-referencing, which Bible students do all the time: interpreting one passage in light of another on the same topic and/or from the same person. So Paul states three times in the epistles that Jesus was “buried.” What should we think he meant by that? Buried in what? Well, Acts 13:29 fills that little information gap.

Now we know that Paul agreed that He was buried in a tomb, and so when he says “buried” in the epistles it’s reasonable to assume in light of this that he meant “buried in a tomb.” This is simple logic. Jonathan can fuss and protest and raise a big stink about it all he wants (much ado about nothing, and it would be at least entertaining and amusing if it weren’t so boorish), but it’s simple logic and common sense.

Yes: if a tomb is mentioned as the resting place of a dead person (Jesus, here), and then the narrative goes on to say that He was resurrected, then it follows inexorably that we have also an “empty tomb.” I didn’t invent logic. It is what it is. A=a.

Jonathan wasn’t talking in those instances (at least going by his words) the entire story of disciples seeing the empty tomb, entering it, etc., but whether Paul mentioned the tomb at all. Thus, he wrote on 1-31-21: “Paul has no mention of an empty tomb; Just Jesus was ‘buried’.” And on 11-10-21: “The phrase ‘he was buried’ is ambiguous, and does not necessarily imply an entombment.” Acts 13:29 resolves all this speculation.

Except no. Paul has a spiritual body resurrection that has no need for an empty tomb,

This is sheer nonsense, and I have refuted it several times:

Pearce’s Potshots #56: Paul & Jesus’ Resurrection [12-10-21]

Seidensticker Folly #26: Spiritual Bodies R Still Bodies! [10-9-18]

Seidensticker Folly #52: Spiritual Bodies R Physical [9-10-20]

and there is far, far greater likelihood that Jesus was dishonorably buried in a criminal’s necropolis. See my extensive chapter and writing in this in my Resurrection book.

I’ve dealt with this as well:

Pearce’s Potshots #49: Homer & the Gospels (Mythmaking Scholar Suggests the Story of Priam in the Iliad as the Model for a Fictional Joseph of Arimathea) [10-15-21]

Pearce’s Potshots #52: No Tomb for Jesus? (Skeptical Fairy Tales and Fables vs. the Physical Corroborating Evidence of Archaeology in Jerusalem) [11-10-21]

His claim that Jesus “was ‘buried’ (i.e., in a tomb, which is how they do it in Israel)” shows a real lack of knowledge of the subject matter. Criminals—especially ones accused of high treason and blasphemy—would never have been buried in a tomb, family or otherwise, at least until after a year of ritual purification in a criminal’s graveyard, or more likely in Jerusalem, necropolis. Such a place would have been the Graveyard for the Stoned and the Burned.

That’s simply not true (and there he goes with his irresponsible “never” statements again), as I showed in the above two papers (especially the second, which documents from actual relevant Roman law records regarding burials).

It is far more likely that Jesus was stoned, then hung upon a post, as this was literally the punishment for his crime. There are plenty of sources for all of this stuff if Armstrong wants to look:

Josephus Antiquities of the Jews 4.8.6.
Christian Byron R. McCane, in ‘“Where No One Had Yet Been Laid”: The Shame of Jesus’ Burial’.
Mishnah Sanhedrin 6.5 and 6.6.
Talmud Sanhedrin 47a (amongst also the Tosefta).
Midrash Rabbah Numbers XXIII:13 (877).
On stoning: Josephus Jewish Wares 4.202, 260; Leviticus 24:14; Acts 7; Mishnah Sanhedrin 6.4…
…and so on.

Yet somehow, the massive majority of historians and Bible scholars (Jonathan loves to count up academic heads) — conservative and liberal alike — believe He was crucified. I concur with them (and the Bible got it right, as always). Jonathan is free to adopt an eccentric opinion (drawn largely from “hostile witnesses”) if he likes. But he can’t present it as a mainstream opinion. See, for example, the “Crucifixion” sections of the article, “Punishments in Ancient Rome” (Facts and Details).

Now why is it that all of a sudden, Jonathan won’t cite Fr. Raymond Brown when it comes to whether Jesus was crucified? It’s probably because he wrote a book entitled, A Crucified Christ in Holy Week (1986). So he’s a font of wisdom when he agrees with Jonathan’s opinion, but alas, “Needs to [like me!] do his research” when it comes to the question of how Jesus was murdered.

Armstrong needs to do his research because, and even though he is providing merely inference based on his own projection, his inferences are wholly incorrect. If he can’t be bothered to read up about it, there is this:

Yeah, been there, done that, in installments #49 and #52 answering Jonathan, which he appears unaware of, seeing that he has ignored almost all of my recent critiques. Occasionally, — often when he gets teed off (as presently) — he will attempt an answer. But his mostly ignoring my replies makes him say silly things about what I have done or supposedly not done.

Paul would surely have made reference to some aspect of the entire empty tomb narrative given he is arguing with the Corinthians about certain elements of the Resurrection.

I don’t see any compelling reason why he “surely” must do so. Again, it’s mere empty speculation. That’s all Jonathan has been giving us with this particular argument of his.

Instead, he uses Old Testament quotes to buttress his arguments, which is bizarre.

Why is it at all “bizarre”? It was standard New Testament practice to cite the Old Testament, because before the NT was compiled, that was what they meant (almost always in the NT; a few exceptions) by “Scripture”: accepted by all observant Jews and Christians as God’s infallible revelation. Part and parcel of the Gospel is that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, Who fulfilled scores and scores of OT prophecies about the Messiah. It was regarded as evidence in support of His claims to be the Messiah and God in the flesh.

There is no reference to the women as first witnesses,

Yet another argument from silence . . .

nothing concerning Apostolic verification: “We know this, Corinthians, because X saw Y.”

This is untrue, as I have already shown:

1 Corinthians 15:5-7 (RSV) . . . he appeared to Cephas [Peter], then to the twelve. [6] Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. [7] Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.

GO TO PART TWO

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Photo credit: Saint Paul Writing His Epistles (c. 1620), attributed to Valentin de Boulogne (1591-1632) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

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Summary: I critique atheist Jonathan MS Pearce’s relentless attack on the truthfulness of the Gospel texts & the honesty of the four Evangelists, i.e., fairy tale atheist eisegesis.

Pearce’s Potshots #58: Paul & Jesus’ “Empty” Tomb

January 29, 2022 By Dave Armstrong

His words below will be in blue.

*****

This is a reply to one statement in his post, “Why Matthew’s guards at Jesus’ tomb are so important” (1-27-22), and some related earlier comments.

Paul says absolutely nothing about the Empty Tomb even though he would have had good reason to do so.

This is untrue:

Acts 13:29-31 [RSV] [Paul preaching: see 13:16] And when they had fulfilled all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree, and laid him in a tomb. [30] But God raised him from the dead; [31] and for many days he appeared to those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now his witnesses to the people.

To summarize:

1. He was in the tomb (dead): Acts 13:29.

2. “But” [pregnant with meaning] God raised Him (13:30).

3. He appeared to His disciples for many days (13:31).

4. In order to appear to His disciples, He obviously had to depart the tomb.

5. Therefore, the tomb (His tomb) was empty, and Paul taught this, contrary to what Jonathan claimed.

Paul also stated three times that Jesus (by analogy to us in baptism) was “buried” (i.e., in a tomb, which is how they do it in Israel) and then raised again (thus implying — by simple logic — the empty tomb):

Romans 6:4-5 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. [5] For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

1 Corinthians 15:3-7 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, [4] that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, [5] and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. [6] Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. [7] Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.

Colossians 2:12 and you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.

So that is four times that Paul referred to the risen Jesus departing from His tomb (which then became “empty”), whereas Jonathan claimed “Paul says absolutely nothing about the Empty Tomb.”

Jonathan had written about 1 Corinthians 15 on 6-21-21:

Paul just said “buried” which is ambiguous; It could have been an earth burial, or burial in a tomb or communal mausoleum.

On 1-31-21 he opined:

It is generally agreed that Paul was the earliest writer in the NT (c. 50 CE, approx 20 years after the crucifixion). Paul has no mention of an empty tomb; Just Jesus was “buried”.

And on 6-8-21:

Paul never mentions a tomb, just saying Jesus was “buried” which is an ambiguous term (could be earth grave or tomb).

Again, on 11-10-21 he reiterated:

The phrase “he was buried” is ambiguous, and does not necessarily imply an entombment.

Well, we know that Paul meant “tomb” from Acts 13:29. Isn’t cross-referencing wonderful?

He elaborated on 12-9-21:

[T]he Gospels, . . . argue against Paul for a re-animated corpse resurrection. Of course, Paul’s claims from 1 Corinthians and elsewhere explain why he doesn’t mention an empty tomb anywhere – because there would be no empty tomb as the earthly body would remain in situ. The Gospels fundamentally contradict Paul precisely because they are an overt counter-argument against Paul’s theology . . .

See Acts 13:29.

Lots of revising to do! I’m sure Jonathan wouldn’t want to promulgate demonstrably false claims.

Um. Where is there mention of an empty tomb?

Acts 13:29-31.

A criminal, especially one accused of the highest form of crime as Jesus was, would never have been afforded an honourable burial in a tomb given that this was against Jewish law since the criminal could not be buried next to the righteous. I assume you must know all of this, of course. If not, don’t be afraid to read my book on the subject.

Now you move onto quibbling about Jesus in a tomb. I already dealt with this issue at length:

Pearce’s Potshots #52: No Tomb for Jesus? (Skeptical Fairy Tales and Fables vs. the Physical Corroborating Evidence of Archaeology in Jerusalem) [11-10-21]

Wow, you are being willfully disingenuous. Please show me where Paul mentions the empty tomb or any of the narrative the gospels include about the empty tomb. You are being really dishonest here and skating close to the mark.

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Contributor Lex Lata joined in the discussion in the combox:

Now Acts (a book Paul did not write) 13:29 does quote Paul as preaching that “ἔθηκαν εἰς μνημεῖον”—“they placed [JC] in a tomb”—before he was raised from the dead and seen by many. Putting aside the creative license we know authors of antiquity routinely and understandably employed when transcribing purported speeches, let’s assume Paul did in fact refer to entombment. Acts 13 is still devoid of the various and varying Empty Tomb details we see in the three Gospels that contain them.

Acts 13:31 (RSV) has a little detail: “for many days he appeared to those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now his witnesses to the people.”

1 Corinthians 15:5-7 has more: “. . . he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. [6] Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. [7] Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.”

The “more than five hundred” aspect is not found in the Gospels, so he has added something to the narrative.

Paul is under no moral, logical, or “literary” obligation to replicate all that the Gospels have about the empty tomb. They already covered that. Paul did mostly systematic theology, not recounting of events.

Knocking him for that is yet more of the silly argument from silence. I say that Paul stated pretty much what he should have been expected to say, given his purpose in his writing. The epistles were written for theological instruction and exhortation, not to reiterate the facts of the life of Jesus that Christians were already well familiar with.

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Photo credit: Ulrich Berens (5-24-16) [Flickr / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license]

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Summary: Atheist Jonathan MS Pearce has claimed five times in print that St. Paul never mentions Jesus’ “empty” tomb. Wrong!: as I prove, with four Bible passages from Paul.

Pearce’s Potshots #57: Matthew & the Tomb Guards

January 28, 2022 By Dave Armstrong

Including the Analogy of Xenophon and Plato as Biographers of Socrates

*****

This is a reply to his post, “Why Matthew’s guards at Jesus’ tomb are so important” (1-27-22). His words will be in blue.

The central plank of his argument (the only thing he has to work with that is not disputed by all parties) is reiterated three times:

. . . the guards at the tomb of Jesus, included only in the Gospel of Matthew, . . .

The standard criticism of this passage is that it appears in no other Gospel, . . .

So the questions are: Why Mark didn’t include this claim? Why does the guard narrative only appear in Matthew? [his bolding]

He then goes on to construct (literally out of thin air) an entire elaborate story of deceit and intent to deliberately lie about the events surrounding Jesus’ death (recycled, of course, from standard atheist mythology and polemics concerning the NT), to account for why only Matthew includes the story. “Whodunits”are great. I like them as much as anyone (my favorite current TV show is The Murdoch Mysteries). But they make for — sans fingerprints and DNA evidence — lousy and hyper-subjective historiography and historical analyses and hypothesizing. More on all this as I proceed . . .

My reply to this line of argument is threefold:

1) First and foremost, arguments of this type are arguments from silence (the logical fallacy, argumentum ex silentio), and as anyone familiar with logic and/or philosophy, and/or debating strategies in general knows (and Jonathan calls himself “a philosopher”), they carry little or no force at all. Christian philosopher Dr. Timothy McGrew responded to this argument about the guards in an article from 24 February 2019, entitled, “Was There a Guard at Jesus’ Tomb?” He noted about arguments from silence:

[T]he argument from silence in such cases is generally terribly weak, it is hard to see why it should be significant just here. Many of the events of antiquity crop up in only one source. The conditions that have to be met for an argument from silence to be strong are rather stringent and are rarely met in historical work. (For details, see my paper “The Argument from Silence,” Acta Analytica 29 (2014), 215-28.)

In his Abstract for this article, Dr. McGrew wrote:

The argument from silence is a pattern of reasoning in which the failure of a known source to mention a particular fact or event is used as the ground of an inference, usually to the conclusion that the supposed fact is untrue or the supposed event did not actually happen. Such arguments are widely used in historical work, but they are also widely contested. This paper surveys some inadequate attempts to model this sort of argument, offers a new analysis using a Bayesian probabilistic framework that isolates the most problematic step in such arguments, illustrates a key problem besetting many uses of the argument, diagnoses the attraction of the argument in terms of a known human cognitive bias affecting the critical step, and suggests a standard that must be met in order for any argument from silence to have more than a very weak influence on historical reasoning.

Wikipedia’s article “Argument from Silence” describes the technique as used in historical discussions:

[I]n historical analysis with an argument from silence, the absence of a reference to an event or a document is used to cast doubt on the event not mentioned. While most historical approaches rely on what an author’s works contain, an argument from silence relies on what the book or document does not contain. This approach thus uses what an author “should have said” rather than what is available in the author’s extant writings.

The salient point is how one determines “what an author ‘should have said'”: particularly in the case of one who wrote over 1900 years ago. And that leads to my next point.

2) Lacking any concrete historical evidence for why Matthew alone mentioned the guards and why Mark and Luke didn’t, Jonathan does what all Bible skeptics, writing about the Resurrection do: he (in effect, since he is no doubt drawing from the atheist playbook) invents a story out of thin air, out of whole cloth. He pulls it out of a hat like a rabbit; invents an entirely (merely subjective) groundless, fictitious myth about Matthew’s interior motivations and intentions. It’s ridiculous enough to do that to people today, but to someone 1900 years ago?!

Of course the high irony is that he ends up doing precisely what he falsely accuses Matthew of doing: spinning whoppers and tall tales for the purpose of polemics and defense of one’s prior biblically hostile beliefs. Here is an example (from his article’s conclusion) of Jonathan’s vacuous, literally content-less material: purely speculative, with no substantiation whatever:

Mark mentions nothing. There are no Jewish counter-claims, so Mark needs no counter-counter-claims. The lack of a pre-existing empty tomb narrative is the only thing that makes sense of the lack of guards in Mark, and their addition in Matthew.

In other words, the guards’ claim is far more important than you might think. It shows that Mark made up the empty tomb, and Matthew was the one left to deal with the counter-arguments.

Luke and John don’t include them at all, which is a very good argument for their lack of authenticity. After all, they were possibly some of the only witnesses to the actual resurrection, or at the very least the angels rolling the stone away and announcing it. Presumably, Luke and John omitted them because they saw it for what it was—an obvious polemic mechanism.

Matthew’s guards aren’t just evidence that Matthew made up an element of the story . . . Rather, this is evidence of a far larger narrative creation throughout the Gospels. It shows that Mark made up the whole Empty Tomb narrative.

Since it is a subjective fairy tale with exactly zero historical evidence or any concrete reason for anyone to believe it, other than the fact that it corresponds to existing hostility to the Bible and Christianity, there is absolutely no point or compulsive necessity in engaging it. It’s literally meaningless and epistemologically bankrupt. And this is, sadly, the nature of the vast majority of atheist skeptical “arguments” regarding Holy Scripture. I know, because I’ve refuted them scores and scores of times.

That said, one can choose to make a counter-argument for why Matthew’s sole use of the assertion should not cast aspersions upon his motivations and truthfulness. At least that’s no longer an argument from silence. It’s a defense of a person Christians believe to be falsely accused: or at least (a more agnostic position) unjustly accused due to utter lack of evidence. Dr. McGrew brilliantly makes such an argument in his article above, if someone wants to pursue that. I have no such interest myself, but I’m glad that there are sharp folks out there, like Dr. McGrew — blessed with infinite patience — doing it.

Atheists and other biblical skeptics who argue in this fashion are literally conspiratorialists. And that is clearly not a respectable or sufficiently thoughtful thing to be. They ought to be ashamed of themselves.

3) Since such a big deal is made out of Matthew alone mentioning this detail, it is relevant to note that there are no less than 135 instances where one Synoptic Gospel includes something not present in the others (Luke:68, Matthew:41, Mark:26). I found this in a very helpful summary by Julian Spriggs. In other words, it’s no big deal.

Some of the more notable (of many) single appearances are the visit of the wise men (Mt 2:1-12), Peter walking on the sea (Mt 14:28-31), Judas’ suicide (Mt 27:3-10), command to baptize and the Great Commission (Mt 28:16-20), the Sabbath being made for man, and not vice versa (Mk 2:27), Jesus objecting disciples sending children away (Mk 10:14), The Annunciation of Mary (Lk 1:26-38), Angels appearing to shepherds at Jesus’ birth (Lk 2:8-20), the raising of the widow of Nain’s son (Lk 7:11-17), the story (not parable!) of the rich man and Lazarus (Lk 16:19-31), and Jesus’ Ascension (Lk 24:50-53).

What does a person afflicted with a conspiratorial bent do with all this information? Well, it’s simply fodder for all manner of additional conspiracies, of course! Now the nefarious net grows even wider. Every unique instance is “proof” of yet another wicked, evil conspiracy to promulgate lies, etc. This is how that stunted mentality works. Atheist anti-theists (the ones who relentlessly tear down the Bible) do this all the time; being conspiratorialists almost by nature.

But (back to actual rational thought, which attempts objectivity), I think an instructive analogy to this business of pitting one Evangelist against another is the question of dual biographical accounts of Socrates (c. 470-399 BC), the great philosopher, by Plato (bet. 428-423 to 348 or 347 BC) and Xenophon (c. 430-c. 354 BC). It’s been a longstanding dispute.

Some folks accept both as of equal validity, others choose one or the other, for various reasons. But why must they be pitted against each other? Why can’t it be “different strokes for different folks”? Xenophon was an historian, Plato a philosopher (so philosophers usually favor him). This accounts for some differences and variant emphases.

The Bryn Mawr Classical Review in June 2019 did a bit of a comparative study of the two biographers. Vincent Renzi, Clinical Professor in the Foundations of Contemporary Culture and of Classics at New York University, did the review:

Of rather more value here, I believe, will be to give some overview of several related issues that run through the papers: . . . [including] methodological concerns that arise in the comparative approach especially to reading Plato and Xenophon against one another. . . .

In his introduction to the first of those volumes, Dorion argued at length for the need finally to recognize the “Socratic problem” as a false issue . . . In the variety and quality of the contributions, the present volume amply demonstrates the value of once again taking Xenophon seriously as a philosophical thinker without need of apology, as well as the merits of a comparative approach to the study of the Socratic literature. Likewise, I believe Dorion has been vindicated in his judgment that the “Socratic problem” is a false one, . . .

Two authors wrote about one man. They differ in details and emphases (just as the Gospel writers do). It’s not a matter of contradiction (as I have proven countless times). To me it’s a big “so what?!” and a ho hum; a yawner; “what else is new!” But to those who wish to tear down the reliability and integrity of the Gospel writers as part of a larger attempt to discredit Christianity itself, and God, it’s a big deal: a trumped-up “big deal.” Theirs is the agenda (if there must be one at all); and they appear to project their desire to create fictitious tales and conspiracies as the primary / propagandistic motivation of the Gospel writers. It’s quite the pathetic and absurd spectacle to observe.

4) Another possible counter-argument would be to establish that the ancient Romans guarded tombs in other instances. This would make it more plausible that Matthew’s account is correct. It would be some sort of hard evidence that has a relation to the topic at hand (rather than mere arbitrary and self-serving atheist tale-weaving). And in the case of a perceived Messiah (real or false) or one thought to be an imposter “king” one can see the pragmatic reasoning of such an approach among the Romans: who liked nothing more than to nip in the bud any disorder or upsetting of the apple cart.

I did some searching and could find nothing about such guarding, but there may very well be evidence along these lines out there somewhere. I did find that the Romans had a death penalty for grave-robbing (recorded by Cicero; see also the Nazareth Inscription), thus showing that they had a significant concern over such occurrences, which is arguably consistent with Matthew’s story. The ancient Egyptians also posted guards at tombs (they still do today):

Paweraa (alt. Pewero) was the Mayor of Western Thebes during a series of tomb robberies that occurred in the Valley of the Kings during the late New Kingdom of Ancient Egypt. In official transcripts of a Tomb Robbery report from Year 16 of Ramesses IX [c. 1113 BC], Paweraa was accused by Paser, the Mayor of Eastern Thebes, of either being involved in the series of Tomb robberies or being negligent in his duties in protecting the royal tombs from incursions by marauding Libyan bands or conventional Egyptian tomb robbers. (Wikipedia)

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With all due respect, and I am not being rhetorical here, but that is a really bad article.

I guess I’m refuted then! Simply pronounce it as “bad” and be done with it . . . Nice and easy. I think very little of yours, too, and have said it is conspiratorial nonsense and fairy tales. But at least I gave a thought-out reply; worked many hours on it yesterday. Agree or not, it has content, and it does address your argument. You dismiss mine with one line and no counter-argument.

Those are pretty preposterous claims. Your piece is devoid of any substance. I’m writing a follow up piece.

Good! An actual reply! Good for you . . .

And I hope you are feeling better from COVID. We disagree on everything, but it’s not personal at all.

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Further comments of mine in the combox:

He has no evidence whatsoever for such a hypothesis. It’s a mere conspiracy theory with no concrete, verifiable, falsifiable basis whatever, a la “the Passover Plot” or the ridiculous Swoon Theory. This is the “Gospel writers are deliberate liars and deceivers with a nefarious purpose” conspiracy theory.

All of it is sheer speculation, with no support for it at all in terms of actual historical evidence. When will you atheists ever tire of indulging your fairy tale imaginations?

At least with all the pseudo-alleged Bible “contradictions” you are within the realm of the text: something concrete to grapple with. It’s something both sides can intelligently discuss. But here you are far beyond that: inventing motivations and plots and designs that are strictly products of your own imaginings.

It’s a non-issue. So only Matthew mentioned it. So what? It’s irrelevant. It only is “relevant” and of supreme, earth-shaking importance when atheists want to build huge ridiculous conspiracy theories around simple facts like this.

Moreover, we regard the New Testament as a trustworthy document because it has been proven zillions of times by archaeology to be historically accurate in details. So we can trust it in places that don’t have express historical evidences in its favor.

It’s the same manner in which we trust the demonstrably credible, reliable witness in a court trial. There’s lots of other ancient literature that has supernatural or very odd elements that isn’t dismissed just because of that. Thus, this “standard” isn’t applied by atheists across the board.

We need to have a fair approach to ancient authors. We give them the benefit of the doubt that they are sincere and of good will, unless we have compelling evidence otherwise. And of course Jonathan has offered no compelling reason or evidence for his regarding Matthew as a deliberate deceiver and a liar. For example, Herodotus. Wikipedia states about him:

Herodotus (c. 484 – c. 425 BC) was an ancient Greek writer, geographer, and historian . . . known for having written the Histories – a detailed account of the Greco-Persian Wars. Herodotus was the first writer to do systematic investigation of historical events. He is referred to as “The Father of History”, a title conferred on him by the ancient Roman orator Cicero.

The Histories primarily covers the lives of prominent kings and famous battles such as Marathon, Thermopylae, Artemisium, Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale. His work deviates from the main topics to provide cultural, ethnographical, geographical, and historiographical background that forms an essential part of the narrative and provides readers with a wellspring of additional information.

Herodotus has been criticized for his inclusion of “legends and fanciful accounts” in his work. Fellow historian Thucydides accused him of making up stories for entertainment. However, Herodotus explained that he reported what he “saw and [what was] told to him.” A sizable portion of the Histories has since been confirmed by modern historians and archaeologists.

So, for example, we have an article in The Guardian: “Nile shipwreck discovery proves Herodotus right” (3-17-19).

Now, is his entire body of work discounted, and is he regarded as a wanton liar because he has some supernatural elements? No. What has been confirmed by archaeology and subsequent historiography is accepted, while atheists who don’t believe in the supernatural simply discount those sections.

But you guys treat Matthew quite differently: with irrational disdain and a relentless double standard.

Speculation of the sort Jonathan has been indulging is not evidence. This is my whole point. This mere speculation, filled with existing profoundly hostile bias, simply isn’t evidence. I won’t charge y’all with intellectual dishonesty (I don’t play that game, that I’m constantly accused of by run-of-the-mill “angry” atheists), but I will say that such an approach is the height of what might be called “epistemological naivete.”

Luke is not anonymous. He was a real person, and a physician, alluded to as Paul’s companion and fellow worker three times (Col 4:14; 2 Tim 4:11; Phlm 1:24). He lays out his motivations (they aren’t lying and deception) quite openly:

Luke 1:1-4 Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, [2] just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, [3] it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent The-oph’ilus, [4] that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed.

I might add that Luke’s trustworthiness as an accurate reporter of all kinds of things in the book of Acts has been rather dramatically verified by archaeology, again and again. So if he can be trusted there, he also can be in his Gospel. This is the criterion for any other ancient historian: are the things they report independently verified or substantiated?

There are good arguments for the disciples Matthew and John being the author of the Gospels that bear their names. Mark (aka John Mark) is also a real person, mentioned several times in Acts and the epistles. He is thought (early reliable tradition) to have drawn his Gospel from Peter.

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NOTE ABOUT COMMENTS: For some reason, this article alone is not allowing comments (Disqus). I have no idea why this is. But the next article again has it, so it is some sort of glitch that is only present with this paper. I’ve always allowed comments. Occasionally, I will close a thread that gets out of hand or off-topic. And people must behave in a civil fashion. But beyond those (exception) things, I always encourage exchange of ideas and alternate viewpoints and dialogue. I love it. It’s the best way to be intellectually stimulated and to learn.

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Photo credit: The resurrected Christ appears before terrified soldiers. Etching by B Bartoccini after F. Overbeck, 1848 [public domain / Look and Learn History Picture Archive]

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Summary: I provide several reasons for why Matthew’s being the only one to mention tomb guards, does not prove some massive nefarious, deceitful conspiracy on his part.

Pearce’s Potshots #56: Paul & Jesus’ Resurrection

December 10, 2021 By Dave Armstrong

Atheist anti-theist Jonathan M. S. Pearce is the main writer on the blog, A Tippling Philosopher. His “About” page states: “Pearce is a philosopher, author, blogger, public speaker and teacher from Hampshire in the UK. He specialises in philosophy of religion, but likes to turn his hand to science, psychology, politics and anything involved in investigating reality.”

This is a reply to his post, A Spiritual Body Resurrection vs Corporeal Resurrection (12-9-21). His words will be in blue.

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I have had another interview with Derek Lambert of MythVision in the series where we are working through my book The Resurrection: A Critical Examination of the Easter Story [UK]. This latest episode (8) concentrated on the conflict between Paul, who believed in a two-body spiritual resurrection thesis, as opposed to the Gospels, who argue against Paul for a re-animated corpse resurrection. Of course, Paul’s claims from 1 Corinthians and elsewhere explain why he doesn’t mention an empty tomb anywhere – because there would be no empty tomb as the earthly body would remain in situ.

The Gospels fundamentally contradict Paul precisely because they are an overt counter-argument against Paul’s theology, and the related Gnostic position of a full-on spiritual resurrection.

Jonathan seems to maintain (from what I can tell in his brief statements) that Paul’s reference to a “spiritual body” is to a pure spirit, with no physical body. This is immediately absurd, since “spirit” cannot have an additional description of “body”. A “body” is physical, and spirits aren’t physical; they are immaterial.

Evangelical G. Shane Morris gives a good refutation of this Gnostic-influenced thinking in his article, “Jesus Has a Physical Body Forever (And So Will We)”:

There’s a common misconception in the Christian rank and file that Jesus’ resurrected body was something other than a real, physical body with flesh and bones, and that our resurrected bodies will likewise be something other than or somehow less solid than our bodies are now. . . .

Christians’ enduring hope has always been what Paul said the creation itself groans for: “the redemption of our bodies.” (Romans 8:23) This is what it means to swallow up death in victory. A “spiritual resurrection” of any kind isn’t resurrection. It’s a euphemistic redescription of death.

Second, the term “spiritual body” in 1 Corinthians 15:44 does not, in Paul’s original use, mean what the phrase seems to imply in English. [N. T.] Wright points out that to the original audience, a “spiritual body” understood as an “immaterial body” would be a contradiction in terms. There is no such thing. You might as well talk about solid mist or dry water. What Paul is doing, in context, is contrasting a body of flesh (which is the most common New Testament metonym for fallen humanity) with the body of the Spirit—that is, a body empowered and animated by the Holy Spirit. The Jews and Greeks had words for immaterial beings.

If Paul had meant for us to expect a non-physical resurrection, he could have spoken of “ghosts,” or “spirits.” He did not. For a man of his background, “resurrection” meant only one thing: To get up out of the grave, body and all, and walk again. Jesus left behind an empty grave devoid of flesh and bones. He took them with Him. And so will we. (1 John 3:2)

James Bishop adds:

Paul was, prior to his conversion, a Pharisee. Pharisees held to a physical resurrection (see: Jewish War 3.374, 2.163; 4Q521; 1QH 14.34; 4Q 385-391; Genesis Rabbah 14.5; Leviticus Rabbah 14.9). For instance, one leading scholar by the name of NT Wright, in his 700 page volume, argues that the resurrection in pagan, Jewish, and Christian cultures meant a physical and bodily resurrection (2). Paul held the same view (cf. 1 Corinthians 6:14; Romans 8:11; Philippians 3:20-21). . . .

As [N. T.] Wright articulates: “Until second century Christianity, the language of ‘resurrection’ had been thought by pagan, Jew, and Christian as some kind of return to bodily and this-worldly life” [The Resurrection of the Son of God, 2003, p. 83].

The context of 1 Corinthians 15 further bolsters this view:

1 Corinthians 15:35-44 (RSV) But some one will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” [36] You foolish man! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. [37] And what you sow is not the body which is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. [38] But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. [39] For not all flesh is alike, but there is one kind for men, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. [40] There are celestial bodies and there are terrestrial bodies; but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. [41] There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. [42] So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. [43] It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. [44] It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.

1 Corinthians 15:53-54 For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality. [54] When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”

Does Jonathan think that Paul thought the moon was a spirit and not physical? It’s absurd. In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul uses the Greek word egiro (usually “raised” in English) 19 times, referring to resurrection, either of Jesus (15:4, 12-17, 20) or of the general resurrection of human beings (15:29, 32, 35, 42-44, 52). The same word is used in the gospels of the raising of the young girl who had died. She remained human, with her body, after being raised. Jesus held her hand when she was raised:

Matthew 9:18, 23-25 While he was thus speaking to them, behold, a ruler came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” . . . [23] And when Jesus came to the ruler’s house, and saw the flute players, and the crowd making a tumult, [24] he said, “Depart; for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. [25] But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl arose [egiro].

In John 12, the word is applied to Lazarus three times (12:1, 9, 17: “raised from the dead” and “raised him from the dead”: RSV). In John 12:2, the risen Lazarus is referred to, sitting at the table, eating supper with Jesus: obviously a physical being. This is what the word means: “a body being physically raised and restored after it had died.”

Jesus was obviously also still in a physical body after He was resurrected, but it was a spiritual body, and so He could “walk through walls” (which modern physics tells us is actually physically possible, in additional dimensions and what-not). He ate fish with His disciples, told Thomas to put his hand in His wounds, which were still visible; was touched by Mary Magdalene, broke bread with the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, etc.

Norman Geisler and Thomas Howe offer further explanation in the following excerpt their book, When Critics Ask: A Popular Handbook on Bible Difficulties (Wheaton, Illinois: Victor Books, 1992):

[N]otice the parallelism mentioned by Paul:

The complete context indicates that “spiritual” (pneumatikos) could be translated “supernatural” in contrast to “natural.” This is made clear by the parallels of perishable and imperishable and corruptible and incorruptible. In fact, this same Greek word (pneumatikos) is translated “supernatural” in 1 Corinthians 10:4 when it speaks of the “supernatural rock that followed them in the wilderness” (RSV).

Second, the word “spiritual” (pneumatikos) in 1 Corinthians refers to material objects. Paul spoke of the “spiritual rock” that followed Israel in the wilderness from which they got “spiritual drink” (1 Cor. 10:4). But the OT story (Ex. 17; Num. 20) reveals that it was a physical rock from which they got literal water to drink. But the actual water they drank from that material rock was produced supernaturally. When Jesus supernaturally made bread for the five thousand (John 6), He made literal bread. However, this literal, material bread could have been called “spiritual” bread (because of its supernatural source) in the same way that the literal manna given to Israel is called “spiritual food” (1 Cor. 10:3).

Further, when Paul spoke about a “spiritual man” (1 Cor. 2:15) he obviously did not mean an invisible, immaterial man with no corporeal body. He was, as a matter of fact, speaking of a flesh and blood human being whose life was lived by the supernatural power of God. He was referring to a literal person whose life was Spirit directed. A spiritual man is one who is taught by the Spirit and who receives the things that come from the Spirit of God (1 Cor. 2:13–14).

To summarize Paul’s doctrine of the general resurrection, I cite the section on that topic in the entry, “Resurrection” in the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia:

As the believer then passes into a condition of glory, his body must be altered for the new conditions (1 Corinthians 15:50; Philippians 3:21); it becomes a “spiritual” body, belonging to the realm of the spirit (not “spiritual” in opposition to “material”). Nature shows us how different “bodies” can be–from the “body” of the sun to the bodies of the lowest animals the kind depends merely on the creative will of God (1 Corinthians 15:38-41). Nor is the idea of a change in the body of the same thing unfamiliar: look at the difference in the “body” of a grain of wheat at its sowing and after it is grown! (1 Corinthians 15:37).

Just so, I am “sown” or sent into the world (probably not “buried”) with one kind of body, but my resurrection will see me with a body adapted to my life with Christ and God (1 Corinthians 15:42-44). If I am still alive at the Parousia, this new body shall be clothed upon my present body (1 Corinthians 15:53,54; 2 Corinthians 5:2-4) otherwise I shall be raised in it (1 Corinthians 15:52). This body exists already in the heavens (2 Corinthians 5:1,2), and when it is clothed upon me the natural functions of the present body will be abolished (1 Corinthians 6:13). Yet a motive for refraining from impurity is to keep undefiled the body that is to rise (1 Corinthians 6:13,14).

Moreover, Paul describes our own resurrected bodies as like that of Jesus:

Romans 6:5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

Philippians 3:20-21 . . . a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, [21] who will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power which enables him even to subject all things to himself.

Paul talks about our resurrection bodies, which we “put on” being “imperishable.” In other words, he’s saying that according to natural law, physical bodies perish and die, but spiritual, resurrected bodies do not. He’s not talking about spirits. If it were a transformation of a physical body into a spirit, he wouldn’t use the terminology of “raised” either: because that refers to physical bodies, which died, and are now “raised”.

Nor would he refer to a “spiritual body”: he would have simply referred to a “spirit” (which the New Testament does many times). The two are not at all identical. The whole point was Jesus conquering physical death, which applies to physical bodies, not spirits. The Gospel of Matthew exhibits the same understanding of resurrected bodies of the dead:

Matthew 27:52 the tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised,

Here is another passage from Paul that plainly refer to bodily resurrection:

Romans 8:22-23 We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; [23] and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

Case closed. Jonathan is wrong yet again about what the Bible (agree or disagree) teaches. It’s amazing how often that happens.

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ADDENDUM: Jonathan Clarifies

You literally got it wrong from the outset: . . .

You are suggesting more of a “Gnostic” approach that Paul was similar to. There are three approaches: Gnostic, Paul’s two body transformation (psychikos to pneumatikos), and the Gospel’s resuscitation resurrection. The Gospels do a really explicit job in arguing against Paul and the gnostics. I mean, it’s really overt. The contradictions couldn’t be more obvious. Plus, the early church fathers carry this on very explicitly (Justin Martyr etc). Why would they be so forceful and arguing these points if there was no one claiming otherwise?

Go read 1 Corinthians 15 and get back to me. I mean, really read it, not with “I must cohere this with the Gospels” glasses on. Read it as it is written.

What do you mean by “two body transformation”? If you are saying that Paul’s view of Jesus’ resurrection still involves a physical (“glorified”) body, then we agree. We disagree that this is supposedly a blatant and “obvious” contradiction over against the Gospels.

[After telling me I should watch a three-hour video or buy one of his books, he finally wrote]

Or read [Richard] Carrier’s FAQ on the topic.

[His basic idea is that Paul thought Jesus had a completely new body, unrelated to the one He had before He was crucified, which is contradictory to the Gospel’s teachings that His resurrected body was one and the same as His previous one; just transformed. I read it and replied]:

Thank you. I have rarely read such ridiculous sophistry as Carrier’s analysis there. He believes that he can explain or rationalize away anything, no matter how obviously it is stating the opposite of Carrier’s anti-Christian agenda.

Carrier’s (and your) view is contradicted by the following statement of Paul:

Romans 8:11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you.

If indeed a resurrected body was a brand new one, with no relation to our bodies on this earth, then it makes no sense that Paul would say, in the context of our resurrection, “he . . . will give life to your mortal bodies.” That is clearly teaching a transformation of our earthly bodies rather than a completely new body with no relation to our earthly ones, because it’s saying that the bodies that could die and that were mortal will be given “life” and power and be glorified. Therefore, it has to be the same body, by virtue of the reference to “mortal bodies” being given “life” so that our bodies can be glorified as Christ’s was.

Jonathan cited Carrier in reply:

Q: In Romans 8:11 Paul says God “will also give life to your mortal bodies” just as he did to Jesus, and then he says in 8:23 that we await “the redemption of our body.” Don’t these passages clearly indicate the same body that dies is the body that will be raised?

A: Not necessarily. I already challenge this interpretation of both verses in the book (pp. 149-50). I say a lot there that must be read. Here I will only note three of the facts that I discuss further there: the “also” in Romans 8:11 does not grammatically correlate with the resurrection of Jesus (bad translations have falsely given that impression); Paul does not say “our mortal bodies will be raised” (in fact, he never connects our “mortal bodies” with resurrection at all, not even in 8:23, which is a whole twelve verses away from 8:11 and does not speak of a “mortal” body); the context of 8:11 appears to be about our current state of grace, not our future resurrection (as in 2 Cor. 4:10), while Paul only gets to the resurrection in later verses; and 8:23 actually says we expect “the release of our body,” without specifying which body he means, or in what way it will be released. Close examination suggests he more likely meant the release of our “inner man,” which is our new spiritual body, which we are already growing inside us (pp. 144-45, 150, and related notes; see my answer to a related question below).

Cross-referencing the word for “give life” in Romans 8:11:

Thayer’s Greek Lexicon
STRONGS NT 2227: ζοωποιέω

. . . of the dead, to reanimate, restore to life: 1 Corinthians 15:45; τινα, John 5:21; Romans 4:17; Romans 8:11; passive 1 Corinthians 15:22;

HELPS Word-studies

2227 zōopoiéō (from 2221 /zōgréō, “alive” and 4160 /poiéō, “make”) – properly, make alive (zōos); i.e. “quicken,” vivify (“animate”); (figuratively) cause what is dead (inoperative) to have life; empower with divine life. . . .

(1 Cor 15:36,38) seed, come to life – The resurrection-body of the believer will be characterized by continuity with diversity – i.e. reflecting the physical-spiritual life we lived here on earth in a supra-physical fashion (Phil 3:11-21). Both of these aspects of glorification are illustrated in 1 Cor 15 by the metaphor of seeds.

Other verses where it appears in the same sense:

John 5:21 V-PIA-3S
GRK: οὓς θέλει ζωοποιεῖ
NAS: the dead and gives them life, even so
KJV: so the Son quickeneth whom he will.
INT: to whom he will gives life

John 6:63 V-PPA-NNS
GRK: ἐστιν τὸ ζωοποιοῦν ἡ σὰρξ
NAS: It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh
KJV: the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh
INT: it is who gives life the flesh

Romans 4:17 V-PPA-GMS
GRK: θεοῦ τοῦ ζωοποιοῦντος τοὺς νεκροὺς
NAS: [even] God, who gives life to the dead
KJV: [even] God, who quickeneth the dead
INT: God who gives life the dead

1 Corinthians 15:36 V-PIM/P-3S
GRK: σπείρεις οὐ ζωοποιεῖται ἐὰν μὴ
NAS: you sow does not come to life unless
KJV: is not quickened, except it die:
INT: you sow not is come to life if not

Pearce’s Potshots #55: “3” in the Bible & Literature

December 1, 2021 By Dave Armstrong

This is a reply to his post, Matthew & John’s Threes: Fact or Literary Device? (11-30-21). His words will be in blue; Michael Alter’s in green.

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The Gospels are littered with literary devices and mechanisms that serve narrative purposes but leave the reader doubting the veracity of the claims. . . . Numerology is certainly important, whether it be the number 12, the gematria of groups of 14 and 7 in the genealogies, the Pythagorean 153 fish caught, and 3. 3 is a big one that Matthew and John love.

Michael J. Alter, in his magisterial work The Resurrection: A Critical Inquiry, documents Matthew and John’s usage of the number three in the various groupings that they contain: [many examples given]

Yes, I’m very familiar with Mr. Alter. I have critiqued this book of his 29 times.

Just another example of why we should doubt the claims made in the Gospels, since they seem to be fulfilling other functions and agendas than truth-telling.

First of all, three important considerations must be stressed:

1) Use of literary / rhetorical techniques is not intrinsically opposed to the reporting of facts; the two things are not mutually exclusive.

2) Use of such techniques, including numerology and the stress on the number three in particular, is by no means confined to the Bible. They were used very widely use in the ancient world, especially among the “rational” Greeks, renowned for their reason and logic.

3) Several individual items on the list that Mr. Alter draws up are at least arguably often arbitrary and/or of no particular or great significance.

Numerology is unquestionably a prominent phenomenon in the Bible, which has been examined in great depth and endorsed by Bible believers (see an example devoted to “three” in the Bible). What we object to in the above presentation is the insulting and illogical accusation that use of these techniques somehow cast into doubt the veracity of biblical claims. They do not inherently do that at all (and I would contend that this is self-evident), per #1 above. Yet Pearce blithely assumes that this is fundamentally or essentially contrary to “truth-telling” and he ludicrously pits facts and numerology against each other in a false dichotomy (“Fact or Literary Device”).

I shall tackle the issue described in #3 above, first (the following all being examples from Alter’s book):

Mt 1:1-17—The names of Abraham’s descendants were manipulated into three sets of fourteen individual male descendants.

I think it was simply making a sensible division of the three lists into 1) patriarchal period, 2) Israel’s monarchy, and 3) post-exilic period in Babylon. If there is any numerology here, it would seem to be regarding “14” and not “3.”

Mt 1:20-24—Three “people” were identified prior to Mary’s conception: (1) Joseph, (2) Mary, (3) and the angel.

It’s actually five, because Jesus is also mentioned (1:21), as is [Isaiah] “the prophet” (1:22). Moreover, why stop at 1:24? By what criterion do we know where these alleged or actual triads occur?; within which limits? The original New Testament had no chapters of verse divisions. The chapters we use now were introduced in the early 13th century, and the present verse numbers were used no earlier than 1551. So Matthew 2:1 mentions four more people: Herod and the magi.

Mt 4:4, 6 and 7—The statement “for it was written” was repeated three times.

The devil challenged Jesus three times and He answered with Scripture. It was customary to introduce it by “it is written.” But (amusingly) Alter cites only three of what is actually four repetitions. Verse 6 is the devil using the phrase. Jesus uses it for the third time in verse 10.

Mt 27:62-66; 28:4, and 11-15 —There were three appearances of the guard.

This is rather desperate. They “appear” (in the narrative) at 27:65-66. 28:4 simply notes that they “trembled and became like dead men” when an angel appeared to roll back the stone. Then they go to the city to tell their report (28:11-15). There are plenty of real triads without manufacturing one this silly.

Mt 27:64- 66—Three times the word “secure” is employed.

So what! It was three different people saying it, referring to the same thing: the Pharisees, Pilate, and the narrator.

Jn 2:1—A wedding at Cana was held on the third day.

That’s not a triad; it’s simply noting what day of the week it was (Tuesday).

Jn 21:15, 16, and 17—Three times Jesus asked Peter, “Do you love me?”

Jn 21:15, 16 and 17—Three times Peter affirmed that he loved Jesus.

Jn 21:15, 16, and 17—Three times Jesus recommissioned Peter by stating, “Feed my lambs” or “Take care of my sheep.”

Yes, because Jesus was specifically “undoing” Peter’s three denials by having Him affirm his love for Him three times.

Atheist “Lex Lata” (underneath the article I critique) made a dead-on observation about Alter’s weak methodology along largely the same lines:

Hmm, I dunno. Yes, numbers can convey symbolic or sacred meaning (especially in the ancient Hebrew tradition), and three has rhetorical utility even today (thesis, antithesis, synthesis; the Rule of Three in comedy and other literary endeavors; etc.). But some of the examples listed here are a bit strained, by my reckoning, and are as likely to be products of Alter’s apophenia as they are to be instances of intentional narrative numerology.

Moreover, things sometimes come in threes by sheer coincidence. This morning, my wife, our younger son, and I woke up in our three-story house, and fed our three pets. Three threes right there, in a perfectly true statement.

On my list of reasons to question the historical accuracy of the Gospels and other books of the Bible, this wouldn’t crack the top three.

Numerology was widely believed in the ancient world. I will briefly make note of the Greeks, because they were the “rational” and “philosophical” ones, and atheists feel a kinship with them, since they fancy themselves much more rational than us dumb, blind faith, troglodyte Christian types.

Pythagoreanism

The earliest known systematic cult based on the rule of numbers was that of the Pythagoreans. Pythagoras [560-480 BC] was a Greek who thrived in the 6th century BCE. . . .

The Pythagoreans invested specific numbers with mystical properties. The number 1 symbolized unity and the origin of all things, since all other numbers can be created from 1 by adding enough copies of it. For example, 7 = 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1. The number 2 was symbolic of the female principle, 3 of the male; they come together in 2 + 3 = 5 as marriage. All even numbers were female, all odd numbers male. The number 4 represented justice. The most perfect number was 10, because 10 = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4. (Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Number Symbolism”)

The New World Encyclopedia (“3 [Number]”) noted how often three has been a big feature of historical philosophical analysis.

“Omne Trium Perfectum. The Rule of 3 for Writers”: an article by Linda Caroll (7-9-20) observed:

The power of three is a rhetorical technique that can be traced back to ancient Greece. Aristotle wrote about it in his book, Rhetoric, in 4th century BC.

Omne Trium Perfectum.
Three is perfection.

Ancient Greeks didn’t know why, but they recognized the principle.

Today, we know the human brain is a pattern seeking machine. And the smallest number the human brain identifies as a pattern?

Three.

3 charms, but 4 alarms

We also know the ideal number of claims to win a persuasive argument is 3.
Which is why smart marketers use 3 bullet points. Not 2. Not 4.
Three.

In the research paper ‘When Three Charms but Four Alarms’, Dr Kurt Carlson (Georgetown U.)and Dr. Suzanne Shu (U. of California) found that when making a persuasive argument, two claims are not convincing, but adding a fourth has a detrimental effect. A fourth point increases skepticism.

The ideal number of persuasive claims? Three.

Winston Churchill didn’t say blood, sweat and tears…
In his famous speech, what he said was blood, toil, sweat and tears.
Human preference remembered blood, sweat and tears.

Omne Trium Perfectum.

The Bible is no doubt consciously utilizing the same approach. Neither Mr. Pearce nor Mr. Alter have demonstrated that techniques of this sort are antithetical to truth-telling, factuality, concern for accuracy of detail, etc. They merely assert it, and that is no argument. Alter provided examples: several of them questionable, as I contended above; others valid. He asserts a [false] dichotomy (“Fact or a Literary Device”) but he by no means proves his accusation. And so I (as a good socratic in methodology) go right to the false and unsupported premises involved in this rather flimsy criticism of the Bible.

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Photo credit: Pythagoras [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license]

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Summary: Atheist anti-theist Jonathan MS Pearce examines biblical numerology (particularly, “3” in the Bible) and draws several unwarranted and illogical conclusions.

Pearce’s Potshots #54: Tower of Babel; Who’s the “Idiot”?

November 24, 2021 By Dave Armstrong

This is a reply to his post, The Tower of Babel Story Is OBVIOUSLY Not Historical (11-23-21). Jonathan’s words will be in blue.

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Genesis 11:1-9 (RSV) Now the whole earth had one language and few words. [2] And as men migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. [3] And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. [4] Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” [5] And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons of men had built. [6] And the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. [7] Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” [8] So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. [9] Therefore its name was called Ba’bel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

I’ve got to the point where, and I know this will be counter-productive, I have to claim that anyone who believes this story actually happened is an idiot. Such believers are idiots. There, I’ve said it. Deal with it.

I know there will be some Christians who might come across this article who believe in the historical veracity of the story and who will stop reading on account of my forthright position that they are idiots. But sometimes you just gotta tell it like it is.

And, because it’s what I do, I’ll help them along the way to realising it is ahistorical so that they can deal with it.

The problem at the level of presupposition or premise here is that Jonathan almost certainly is unfamiliar with how educated, scholarly Christians typically interpret a very early biblical story like the one about the Tower of Babel. He assumes (very typically of atheist anti-theists) that everything must be taken hyper-literally and that there can be no metaphor or hyperbole or non-literal expression. Basically, his modus operandi is to approach every biblical issue as if the only possible interpretation is that of an anti-intellectual, anti-science, woodenly literalistic fundamentalist.

But (quite obviously) that is a tiny, unbalanced, often misguided portion of all of Christianity. So why do anti-theists keep concentrating on them? Well, because they best fit into the caricature of Christianity and the Bible that anti-theists wish to convey, for the purpose of making Christianity look anti-intellectual and ridiculous. Caricature, fight straw men, and dismiss.

Whatever works . . . Never interact with serious Christian thought on any given biblical / exegetical issue. That’s Jonathan’s MO! He sometimes has serious philosophical discussions with Christians (because he self-identifies as a philosopher), but rarely serious, open-minded discussions about the Bible and its sensible, plausible interpretation.

So, as to our present topic, Jonathan says no one can possibly believe the biblical Tower of Babel story is historical (in any way, shape, or form), without being an “idiot.” He simply assumes it is a complete myth, fable, legend, fairy tale. Again, it is a question of what exactly a Christian thinks happened with regard to this reported incident and what we can know about it, lo some five thousand years later.

In all likelihood, the educated Christian will not interpret it as Jonathan does. So it’s basically “ships passing in the night.” Jonathan needs to first understand that (believe it or not!) there is a plausible interpretation that is not immediately ridiculous, absurd, and idiotic.

His main objection, no doubt, would be the notion of origin of languages. He thinks that anthropology deals a death blow to the Tower of Babel story. But it only does to (here’s a little “dirty secret”) the hyper-literal version that he thinks is the only possible version of the story.

Both stories [the flood and this one] show that God is not omniscient. . . . Yet again, the story reports God getting a realisation, not knowing something from the start. . . . With the Tower of Babel, he wouldn’t have to pop down to Earth to see what humans were up to and then realise that they were getting together, using their teamwork, and building things up to the heavens. This is what they have started to do, God realises, musing. The narrative makes no sense of his omniscience and foreknowledge. . . .

If God was truly omnipotent, there really was nothing to worry about. God’s omnipotence should mean that he doesn’t have to worry one iota about anything like this. It’s utter nonsense.

Etc., etc. ad nauseam.

And so, for the umpteenth time, one has to explain to Jonathan that there are things called anthropomorphism and anthropopathism in the Bible. These are well-developed non-literal / metaphorical literary techniques by which God’s actions are made more comprehensible to human beings, by condescending to our understanding. Jonathan has been informed of this so many times, that one must at this point conclude that he is being willfully ignorant, and stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the existence of these clear features of the Bible.

They don’t fit with his cynical, quixotic determination to always interpret the Bible hyper-literally, so he deliberately ignores them and pretends that they don’t exist. It’s like the fairy tale of the The Emperor’s New Clothes. The monarch was walking around naked and everyone pretended that he wasn’t. Or he acts like the ostrich putting its head in the sand, or the monkey covering his eyes and ears, etc.

Such builders at the time really weren’t equipped with the knowledge or technology to build very high at all.

Everything is relative. I can’t find the exact estimated height, but for its time, the White Temple and ziggurat at Uruk [present-day Iraq; then Mesopotamia] — finished around 3500 BC — was a very impressive structure, as can be startlingly visualized in a photograph of what remains of it. And that was built some 600 years before the Tower of Babel (as I shall argue), with mud-bricks, whereas the Tower of Babel utilized the recently developed technology of kiln-fired bricks.

The Great Pyramid of Egypt was built c. 2600 BC and its height was originally 481 feet, or the equivalent of a 34-storey building (a storey being usually considered to be 14 feet). Its height wasn’t surpassed for 3900 years, until the Lincoln Cathedral in 1311, with its 520-foot high central spire (since collapsed).

Jonathan finally gets to the bottom line at the end of his article:

It’s Not How Languages Evolved.

We know how languages evolved and it wasn’t like that. The story is refuted by linguistics. Go research it, Christian.

Nuff said.

Who is saying that was how all languages evolved? Not educated Christians, familiar with science (particularly anthropology and the history of languages and linguistics). Baptist theologian and apologist Bernard Ramm, in his 1954 classic, The Christian View of Science and Scripture, wrote about this:

With reference to the origin of languages, we must make a decision as to a local or universal flood. If we choose a universal flood we must eventually find all languages stemming from Babel, but if a local flood we need only trace some of the Caucasian languages back to a common point. It is true that the languages of Europe can be traced back (on paper at least) to the primitive Indo-European. We know that French, Italian, and Spanish derive from Latin, and that Latin and Greek derive from a common ancestor with Sanskrit. The convergence of Caucasian languages upon a primitive Indo-European stock may be taken as a suggestive substantiation of the record of the Tower of Babel.

Two things more need to be said about the Tower of Babel, (i) Such structures called ziggurats have been discovered by archaeologists. In the clay tablets expressions are found of their reaching to heaven—a figure of speech like our skyscraper. On top of these ziggurats were temples, so that there could have been an anti-God spirit in building these temples for some other deity or deities, (ii) Anthropologists have stated that the chief barrier among peoples is the language barrier . Differences of food, customs, and clothing do not present the barrier that language does when two cultures mix. No other device known to anthropologists could break the unity of a group like a confusion of tongues. We need not speculate how the confusion was done nor how long it took. (pp. 339-340)

The local Flood (of Noah) — which I have explained and defended several times — has been the mainstream position of both Protestants and Catholics for well over a hundred years, as I have documented in the past from the Catholic Encyclopedia and International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Jonathan and other atheists want to pretend otherwise or blithely continue to maintain that the Bible can’t possibly sustain such an interpretation, or that we are all playing rationalizing, special pleading games, but they are out to sea and ignorant on this point.

I agree with Dr. Ramm that if one holds to a local Flood position, the Tower of Babel story with regard to languages is only relevant to one particular “line” of language development. But technically, if “all the earth” in the text was not intended to be literally “the entire world” then the story of Babel doesn’t even necessarily address the origin of languages, whether universally or even in a local sense.

All it is saying is that these particular workers on a tower (who, after all, may not be that great in number), had their language “confuse[d]” by God and were “scattered.” The hyperbolic language is what drew the analogy to the Flood — which occurred just two chapters before — in Ramm’s argument.

Chris Gousmett also argues for a “local” interpretation in his article, “The confusion of language in the interpretation of Genesis 11” (Evangelical Quarterly, 89.1 [2018], 34–50):

I argue below that the story of Babylon in Gen. 11 is in the correct place in the narrative. It is not the origin of all the languages of the earth, but instead describes something else entirely.

I. What is meant by the ‘earth’?

*

The first requirement is to decide how we should interpret the word translated ‘earth’ namely eretz. This has a direct bearing on whether Gen. 11 describes the origin of all languages throughout the earth, or whether it is referring to a more localised phenomenon. We should not interpret the word eretz as meaning the Earth, the whole planet (as in Gen. 1:1, 15; 2:1, 4) in many of the other places where it appears. Often it makes sense only if we interpret it as ‘land’, the immediate locality where the events spoken of occur. It refers to the ground generally, countries, such as Egypt [eretz mitzrayim], Canaan [eretz kana’an], Moab, Assyria, Edom and Israel itself.

The same word eretz is used multiple times in Genesis 1 where its meaning covers the whole world (Gen. 1:1, 15), the dry land (Gen. 1:10), and the ground from which seeds grow (Gen. 1:12). Thus we cannot simply read ‘the earth’ wherever eretz appears in the Hebrew text. We must give heed to the context in which it appears which will then guide the interpretation. I argue that in Gen.11:1–9 we are dealing with the land (country) of Shinar, hence this passage is referring to events of local reference only. We read:

*

Now the whole earth [kol-ha’aretz] had one speech and the same words. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar [eretz shinar] and settled there […] Let us make a name for our-selves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth [kol-ha’aretz] […] So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth [kol-ha’aretz] […] Therefore it was called Babel[Babylon], because there the Lord confused the speech of all the earth [kol-ha’aretz]; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth [kol-ha’aretz].

*

We can see that eretz must be translated ‘land’ in at least one instance in this passage (the land of Shinar – Gen. 11:2). While the expression kol-ha’aretz is translated as ‘the whole earth’ or ‘all the earth’ we could be justified in suggesting that there it refers to ‘the whole land’. In addition, we can ask whether the population of the whole earth migrated into the plain of Shinar. This would appear not to be the case, as this story follows an account of the dispersal of various groups into other lands. The scattering they feared was not dispersal over the whole earth, but across the plain into which they had migrated to settle. (pp. 35-36)

*

The story of the dispersal of the clans of Noah described in Gen. 10 records these as having their own languages [lashon; LXX glossa]. If they have dispersed before the story of the tower, then the different languages spoken by the various nations did not arise from the confusion of tongues at Babylon. The story is not necessarily placed in chronological order, but there does not appear to be anything to indicate that it is not. The migration towards the east in Gen. 11:2 [or: from the east, NRSV] then could be read as one instance of the dispersal of the nations following the flood, as described in Gen. 10. The story of those under the sway of Nimrod, described as establishing Babylon in the land of Shinar(Gen. 10:8–12), ties in with Gen. 11:2, which also speaks of those who migrated to the land of Shinar to establish Babylon.

*

That this is only one group of people among many is indicated by their desire to ‘make a name’ (a reputation) for themselves as one people among many. If this were the whole population of the earth prior to their dispersal after the flood then for whom would they make ‘a name’? (pp. 41-42)

*

In Gen. 11:1 the term for words is debarîm (which is not used again in this passage) and indicates here not a single vocabulary as distinct from the different vocabularies of the many languages, but rather again a commonality of speech among those who were building the tower: they used ‘the same words’ [debarîmahadîm], a plural form.

*

What Gen. 11 speaks about is not the origin of the many different languages spoken across the earth, but the confusion engendered by God among one group of people in the land of Shinar. These people had one language [saphah] and the same words [debar]. This does not indicate that they had the same language (although that may be possible), but that they shared the same intent, the same expression of their plans, the same motivation and aspiration, which was expressed in the same way – using the same words [debar]. . . .

The confusion consisted in breaking up this unity into contending factions which could no longer cooperate. To say that they had the same words [debarim] is to say that they were unanimous in their plan. . . .

God confused their speech [saphah] so they could not understand one another. As a result they were scattered across the land – not the whole earth, but the land of Shinar. (pp. 44-46)

VI. The origin of languages

*

If we were to grant that what happened in Genesis 11 was the origin of different languages, then we must concede that God not only caused them to begin spontaneously using different languages, but so changed their neural pathways and mentality that they began to think and speak in ways quite different from their previous accustomed language, using different vocabulary, different syntax and grammar, intonation, accentuation, and all the other aspects which go into making one language distinct from all others, with members of each group being changed identically so they could understand each other. It may be pro-posed that what happened here was only the beginning of the differentiation of language, and that the sharp differences we see in later times is the result of centuries of change and development in language.

*

But even if we accept that languages were spontaneously brought into use through the act of God, and these were more alike than not, the fact remains that the speakers had to experience the change in the way they thought and spoke which went along with a different language. Is this really a credible expectation? Or is it more likely that God acted to confuse and frustrate their plans by changing their hearts and minds with respect to the grand project of building the city?

*

This is not simply a desire to rationalise away a miracle of God, but instead to understand the passage in a way which is more coherent and which makes better sense of the different word usage [saphah rather than lashon] and the different way those words are used in the rest of the Old Testament. What I assert is that God did not by a miracle create new languages for the different groups at Babylon. (p. 48)

W. Creighton Marlowe’s article, “The sin of Shinar (Genesis 11:4)” (Evangelical Journal of Theology, Vol. 20:1, 29–39 [2011]), offers a view similar to Ramm’s and Gousmett’s:

Chapter 11 begins with the statement, not that the entire global world had one language only, but that an entire specific region (“the land”) somehow came to have “one tongue and a common vocabulary”. Even the mention of tribes moving out . . . should be viewed as only the expansion of various people groups as delimited by chapter 10 to a large region of the earth, yet not the entire earth. This would suggest that already a number of languages were in use. The author could only speak of his known world and not the global earth of many societies with very ancient roots we know today. Hamilton’s argument, based on Gordon, that the unique wording of 11:1 means a lingua franca is the best explanation. . . .

[M]ultiple languages are already mentioned in chapter 10. . . . various languages are already in existence in 10:5-24. . . .

Chapter 11 focuses on one example in which a particular people (perhaps led by Nimrod in the earliest settlement of Babylon) subjugated a region and enforced linguistic and political unity with wicked and wanton desire for power, prestige and prosperity. This explains how “it came to be” in 11:1 that this land had one language at some point in the multiplying and migrations of chapter 10. (pp. 30-31, 33)

[In Genesis 11:8-9] The verb used does not indicate that at that time God divided these people into different languages, only that they were rendered unable to understand each other enough to continue cooperating and constructing. Only by a presupposition and a jump in logic can these words be extended to mean that numerous languages were supernaturally created. Something happened
that led to miscommunication and chaos and eventually to these people being deported or dispersed. (p. 35)

Here are the references to multiple languages in chapter 10, the “table of nations”:

Genesis 10:5 (RSV) . . . These are the sons of Japheth in their lands, each with his own language, . . .

Genesis 10:20 These are the sons of Ham, by their families, their languages, their lands, and their nations.

Genesis 10:31 These are the sons of Shem, by their families, their languages, their lands, and their nations.

Wikipedia (“Sumerian language”) sheds some interesting light on the possible lingua franca interpretation and the language of Mesopotamia in 3000-2900 BC: the time frame I provisionally adopt for the Tower of Babel story, seemingly (in biblical chronology) not long after the Flood:

Sumerian (Emegir “native tongue“) is the language of ancient Sumer. It is believed to be a language isolate and to have been spoken in ancient Mesopotamia (also known as the Fertile Crescent), in the area that is modern-day Iraq. . . .

Archaic Sumerian is the earliest stage of inscriptions with linguistic content, beginning with the Jemdet Nasr (Uruk III) period from about the 31st to 30th centuries BC. . . .

Gordon Whittaker^[31] [holds] that the language of the proto-literary texts from the Late Uruk period (c. 3350–3100 BC) is really an early Indo-European language which he terms “Euphratic”. . . .

The Sumerian language is one of the earliest known written languages. The “proto-literate” period of Sumerian writing spans c. 3300 to 3000 BC.

The notion of Archaic Sumerian a “language isolate” may have something to do with the meaning Genesis 11:1: “Now the whole earth had one language and few words.” The Wikipedia article on this linguistic category states:

Language isolates are languages that cannot be classified into larger language families with any other languages. Korean and Basque are two of the most commonly cited language isolates, but there are many others.

A language isolate is a language that is unrelated to any others, which makes it the only language in its own language family. It is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical (or “genetic”) relationships—one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common with any other language.

One explanation for the existence of language isolates is that they might be the last remaining branch of a larger language family. The language possibly had relatives in the past but they have since disappeared without being documented. Another explanation for language isolates is that they developed in isolation from other languages.

I wrote an article on this topic three months ago: Tower of Babel, Baked Bricks, Bitumen, & Archaeology (8-26-21). I contended that there are several notable verifications of the story in archaeology and history:

1) The location was (according to Genesis) in in the flood plain of southern Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. “Shinar” [Gen 11:2] is an alternate name of Babylon or southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq). Genesis 11:2 also refers to a “plain” that fits the area, which is as flat as a pancake. The ancient Babylonian cities of Erech (Uruk) and Akkad: the capital of Sargon the Great and his dynasty in the 24th-22nd centuries BC, are also mentioned in the same verse as Shinar and Babel, in Genesis 10:10. Genesis 11:8-9 states that the “city” being built in Shinar was “called Babel” (i.e., Babylon).

2) Genesis references kiln-fired bricks [Gen 11:3]. We know the history of this. I showed how its origins date to about 3000 BC and (you guessed it!) it was right in this area.

3) I go into the history of ziggurats [towers or high buildings] in ancient Mesopotamia as well.

4) The use of bitumen (= asphalt / tar / pitch) was also well-established in this area at this time, as I detail.

All of this provides fairly significant and far beyond “chance” or coincidence independent verification through science and historiography that there is indeed arguably historical basis for at least the general outlines of the story of the Tower of Babel. Mere fairy tales don’t have such corroboration from science. We can’t verify whether God confused language of the people in one particular area and time (c. 2900 BC, as I calculate it), but we can attempt to verify physical / empirical aspects of the story that can be subjected to such analysis. And when we do that, the convergence of evidences is quite striking and impressive.

So who’s the “idiot” here? Well, I’ll let you decide that. Personally, I think Jonathan is more stubborn and intellectually prideful than stupid. It’s a matter of the will, not the intellect. He knows better. In any event, wrong conclusions derive from wrong premises, and as a Socratic, I always examine underlying premises. That’s my focus: squarely on premises, the plausibility and solidity of arguments, and an open-minded seeking of truth; not whether someone is an “idiot” or not.

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Photo credit: The Tower of Babel, by Alexander Mikhalchyk (b. 1969) [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license]

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Summary: Atheist anti-theist polemicist Jonathan MS Pearce mocks the Tower of Babel story and those who accept it as “idiots.” But it’s not nearly that clear-cut and simple.