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Michael J. Alter is the author of the copiously researched, 913-page volume,\u00a0The Resurrection: a Critical Inquiry<\/em><\/a> (2015). I initially offered\u00a0 59 \u201cbrief\u201d replies to as many alleged New Testament contradictions<\/a> (March 2021). We later engaged in amiable correspondence and decided to enter into a major ongoing dialogue about his book. He graciously sent me a PDF file of it, free of charge, for my review, and has committed himself to counter-response as well: a very rare trait these days. All of this is, I think, mightily impressive.<\/span><\/p>\n Mike describes himself as \u201cof the Jewish faith\u201d but is quick to point out that labels are often \u201cmisleading\u201d and \u201cdivisive\u201d (I agree to a large extent). He continues to be influenced by, for example, \u201cReformed, Conservative, Orthodox, and Chabad\u201d variants of Judaism and learns \u201cfrom those of other faiths, the secular, the non-theists, etc.\u201d Fair enough. I have a great many influences, too, am very ecumenical, and am a great admirer of Judaism, as I told Michael in a combox comment<\/a> on my blog.<\/p>\n He says his book \u201ccan be described as Jewish apologetics\u201d and one that provides reasons for \u201cwhy members of the Jewish community should\u00a0not\u00a0convert to Christianity.\u201d I will be writing many critiques of the book and we\u2019ll be engaging in ongoing discussion for likely a long time. I\u2019m quite excited about it and eagerly enjoy the dialogue and debate. This is a rare opportunity these days and I am most grateful for Mike\u2019s willingness to interact, minus any personal hostility.<\/p>\n *****<\/p>\n You\u2019ll soon discover that I have particular interests and am uninterested in other things. That will be true with regard to your book. I am primarily interested in\u00a0demonstrating that alleged NT contradictions really aren\u2019t so<\/a><\/i>, or \u201cdefeating the defeaters\u201d: as Protestant philosopher Alvin Plantinga likes to say. The idea is to question whether\u00a0internal contradictions<\/i>\u00a0are present, and to refute each one that is alleged. That\u2019s what I did so far in my 59 replies to your book<\/a>: based on what I could read of it. So you already see what I will mostly be doing as I proceed.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Photo credit:<\/strong>\u00a0Selva Rasalingam as Jesus in the The Gospel of Luke<\/em> (2016, Netflix USA)<\/span> [Wikimedia Commons<\/a> \/\u00a0Creative Commons<\/a>\u00a0CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication<\/a>]<\/p>\n Summary<\/em>: In the first of a series of dialogues (\u201cResurrection Debate\u201d) with Jewish author Michael Alter, I lay out my fundamental premises with regard to biblical inspiration and alleged \u201ccontradictions.\u201d<\/p>\n Tags<\/em>: alleged Bible contradictions,\u00a0alleged Resurrection contradictions,\u00a0Bible \u201ccontradictions\u201d,\u00a0Bible \u201cdifficulties\u201d,\u00a0Bible Only,\u00a0biblical inspiration,\u00a0biblical prooftexts,\u00a0biblical skeptics, New Testament critics, New Testament skepticism, biblical theology, New Testament, exegesis,\u00a0hermeneutics,\u00a0Holy Bible,\u00a0inerrancy,\u00a0infallibility,\u00a0Jewish anti-Christian polemics,\u00a0Jewish apologetics,\u00a0Jewish critique of Christianity,\u00a0Jewish-Christian discussion,\u00a0Michael J. Alter, Resurrection \u201cContradictions\u201d,\u00a0Resurrection of Jesus,\u00a0The Resurrection: A Critical Inquiry<\/em><\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Michael J. Alter is the author of the copiously researched, 913-page volume,\u00a0The Resurrection: a Critical Inquiry (2015). I initially offered\u00a0 59 \u201cbrief\u201d replies to as many alleged New Testament contradictions (March 2021). We later engaged in amiable correspondence and decided to enter into a major ongoing dialogue about his book. He graciously sent me a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2331,"featured_media":56098,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[448,172],"tags":[4129,12966,525,524,514,2637,1879,1633,1878,1387,1386,535,4068,140,13451,13448,13445,13457,13454,282,13495,13498,13261,1347,13481],"class_list":["post-56096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jews-judaism-old-testament","category-trinitarianism-christology","tag-alleged-bible-contradictions","tag-alleged-resurrection-contradictions","tag-bible-contradictions","tag-bible-difficulties","tag-bible-only","tag-biblical-inspiration","tag-biblical-prooftexts","tag-biblical-skeptics","tag-biblical-theology","tag-exegesis","tag-hermeneutics","tag-holy-bible","tag-inerrancy","tag-infallibility","tag-jewish-anti-christian-polemics","tag-jewish-apologetics","tag-jewish-critique-of-christianity","tag-jewish-christian-discussion","tag-michael-j-alter","tag-new-testament","tag-new-testament-critics","tag-new-testament-skepticism","tag-resurrection-contradictions","tag-resurrection-of-jesus","tag-the-resurrection-a-critical-inquiry"],"yoast_head":"\n*<\/div>\nIt\u2019s a \u201cnegative\u201d sort of evidence for NT trustworthiness and internal consistency and cohesion. It doesn\u2019t prove<\/em> inspiration, but it is consistent<\/em> with it; that is, inspired revelation\u00a0would not and could not contain real contradictions. And it\u2019s an\u00a0objective\u00a0<\/i>enterprise: one of logic. Orthodox, traditional Christians like myself believe that the NT (and the OT) are ultimately \u201csupervised\u201d (quite different, however, from \u201cdictated\u201d), guided, and protected from error by God Himself, and that the results, therefore, are infallible (in the\u00a0original autographs<\/i>) and therefore, non-contradictory.
\n*
\nWhere human authors, writing of their own accord, but inspired by God, may not have been intentionally seeking logical harmony with all other NT books (often not even knowing they existed), God saw to it that this harmony was in fact achieved. This is my presupposition, and it lies behind my view that the NT books are a coherent whole, and that cross-references from any one book are relevant to similar subject material in all the other books (one of the key premises of systematic theology, which I love).
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\nOf course, this is a tenet of faith. One can hardly \u201cprove\u201d such a thing. Faith itself is (we say) consonant with reason and not antithetical to it at all. Reason can bolster it in quite a few ways; yet faith can never\u00a0reduce<\/i>\u00a0to mere reason or philosophy. It is its own entity. And it is enabled by God\u2019s grace. If \u201cmost\u201d modern scholars reject these sorts of things, it is of little concern to me. From where I sit, they have adopted various false premises, leading to a loss of a faith they may have once had (whether Jewish or Christian), or preventing the attainment of such faith in the future. In our view, loss of faith, or never having had faith can\u2019t help but harm their thinking processes as well.
\n*
\nIn a word, they lack wisdom. I think much of liberal biblical scholarship and atheist \u201cbiblical scholarship\u201d is outright and intrinsically dishonest. It is not approaching the Bible as it actually is, and is dedicated to forcing it into conceptions that it is not. I\u2019m not a scholar and I can\u2019t say that I have read 5,000 books like you or deal with this stuff on that level, but I do have some 40 years of experience debating atheists and defending the Bible and Christianity and (more broadly) theism.
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\nChristianity cannot be reduced to philosophy or scholarship of the \u201cpointy heads.\u201d I\u2019m not \u201canti-scholarship\u201d at all; but I take a dim view of skeptical and theologically liberal scholarship (as you saw in my vigorous criticism of Fr. Raymond Brown<\/a>). Catholics in particular believe that biblical scholarship from professed Catholics must seek to be in harmony with Church teachings and dogmas<\/em>.
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\nA lot of people don\u2019t like that. Again it comes down to the beliefs of faith and one\u2019s premises. Bertrand Russell maintained that St. Thomas Aquinas was not a philosopher because he was also a theologian and orthodox Catholic. For Russell, those two things were utterly incompatible. For St. Thomas (drawing largely from Aristotle) and virtually all Catholics, they are not at all. It\u2019s two different things that are in harmony, just as science and faith \/ theology are also in harmony.<\/div>\n*<\/div>\nMany people view me as a fundamentally dishonest person, a sophist or special pleader, or even an outright liar because I am an apologist and defend a particular viewpoint. I respond that\u00a0everyone\u00a0<\/i>has a viewpoint or a worldview, whether they acknowledge it or not, and they accept many axiomatic premises that cannot\u00a0themselves be proven. A Catholic apologist simply has a few more<\/em> ironclad premises than\u00a0most, but it\u2019s not an intrinsically\u00a0dishonest enterprise.
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\nThis will give you an idea of how I approach these things, and where my main interest in your book lies. I will still have a lot to respond to, because you allege many contradictions. With atheists who propose many of these, the discussion often gets down to one about plausibility. I think I decisively refute a proposed contradiction, and they don\u2019t see it at all, because they have these (arbitrary) notions that \u201cthe text shouldn\u2019t read as it\u00a0does<\/i>, and\u00a0should<\/i>\u00a0read a different way.\u201d And of course they reject all miracles and even the honesty and integrity of the NT authors.<\/div>\n*<\/div>\nBut on what basis can they say that (what the Bible writers should or shouldn\u2019t have written if they were \u201chonest\u201d etc.)? It\u2019s all arbitrary: as are all the convoluted, cynical theories they have about the NT writers being agenda-driven; special pleading sophists.\u00a0Belief in biblical inspiration and internal coherence, on the other hand, is indeed a tenet of faith, but at least it leads to a consistent methodology of both respecting and analyzing the NT. It\u2019s not inherently hostile to the NT.<\/div>\n*<\/div>\nThese things that atheists constantly throw out as if they are Gospel Truths (ah, the irony!) can\u2019t be objectively, reasonably\u00a0argued, because there is nothing to base them on. You yourself wrote:\u00a0 \u201cthere is no way to know what\u00a0the writers were thinking when they constructed their narratives\u201d (p. 26). Well, I think we can often have a good idea, but for sure no one can possibly \u201cknow\u201d all these cynical theories that atheists dream up and fantasize about, regarding the construction of the NT and its purpose to deceive and manipulate: as they think. These are the true\u00a0myths in play here, in my opinions; not the NT stories.
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\nBut most of the time, in resolving these \u201cdifficulties\u201d the argument comes down to (from my perspective) atheist ignorance of biblical \/ Hebraic thinking (particularly the many non-western or non-Greek elements) and ancient near eastern culture and the meaning of the Hebrew or Greek words involved, as well as not grasping what is said about the same topic in other parts of the NT and OT.<\/div>\n*<\/div>\nLastly, though I won\u2019t be arguing matters of philosophy of religion (e.g., whether miracles occur, etc.) much at all, you might be interested in knowing that the book along these lines that profoundly influenced me was\u00a0An\u00a0Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent<\/a><\/i>, by St. John Henry Cardinal Newman<\/a>: who is my \u201cintellectual\u00a0hero\u201d and the primary intellectual influence on my conversion<\/a> to Catholicism from evangelical Protestantism in 1990 (development of doctrine as classically\u00a0analyzed by him being the main element).<\/div>\n*<\/div>\nMy\u00a0Quotable Newman<\/i><\/a>\u00a0was published by a major Catholic publisher, and I self-published two more books of his quotations. His thinking\u00a0in that book was absolutely extraordinary and anticipated subtle and profound aspects of philosophy of religion and religious and philosophical epistemology (tacit knowledge or implicit knowledge<\/a>) later expounded upon by Michael Polanyi<\/a> some eighty\u00a0years later. It\u2019s by far the most difficult and complex\u00a0book I have ever read, but one of the most rewarding in its incredible richness and depth.
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\nI\u2019m rambling a bit, but perhaps you will find this helpful to understand my presuppositions and methodology.<\/div>\n