CADRE Comments

In their book, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus , Gary R. Habermas and Michael R. Licona argue for the historical reality of Jesus' bodily resurrection using the "minimum facts" approach. Rather than get bogged down in inerrancy and other debates, they focus on the key facts demonstrating Jesus' resurrection. For them, the key facts are: *Jesus' death by crucifixion. *Disciples' Beliefs that Jesus Appeared. *Conversion of Paul. *Conversion of James. *Empty Tomb. William L. Craig, another significant apologist for the historical bodily resurrection of Jesus likewise focuses, in his accessible The Son Rises , on the empty tomb and Jesus' resurrection appearance. Craig gives special emphasis to Jesus' honorable burial by Joseph of Arimathea and Jesus' appearances to James and Paul and their subsequent commitment to the Christian cause. Craig, Licona, and Habermas argue that these basic facts are generally supported by most of the relevant sc...

A persistent meme among skeptics is that there are numerous ancient writers and historians who fail to mention Jesus and this is evidence that Jesus did not exist. The source for this particular meme appears to be John Remsburg, a teacher and member of the Kansas State Horticultural Society. At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, Remsburg published a book, The Christ . The book itself is little remembered, but a list of ancient writers contained within it has reached a limited level of infamy on the internet. Now known as "Remsburg's List" and sometimes sensationalized as "A Silence that Screams," the list is used to supposedly show how many ancient writers did not mention Jesus and therefore suggest or prove that Jesus did not exist or was nothing like the Gospels' portrayal. J.P. Holding has done a comprehensive take down of this list, leaving little direct work to be done. As he concludes: In almost all cases, Remsberg's writers are either ...

One of the historical criteria often invoked by New Testament scholars is the criteria of embarrassment (which is related to the criteria of dissimilarity). It is also called the criteria of divergent patterns, which I think is a more accurate description of the criteria, and the criteria of contradiction. It would encompass not only "embarrassing" information but also historical acts or sayings which do not well serve the early Christian or author's overriding theme. Here is how Darrel Bock describes the criteria: The criterion of divergent patterns argues that a story that is retained in the face of difficulty is likely to be authentic. For example, texts that are embarrassing to the disciples because of their inadequate responses are more likely to go back to Jesus and are unlikely to have been created by the early church. Sometimes this criterion is called the criterion of embarrassment . Jesus saying he does not know the time of the return in Mark 13:32 is ano...

I have been reading Literary Texts and the Greek Historian , by Christopher Pelling, President of the Hellenistic Society and Professor of Greek at Oxford. I was interested in how he resolved an apparent discrepancy between Thucydides' and Apollodorus' (as recorded by Demosthenes) accounts of whether a vote was required to bestow citizenship on Plataean refugees. It reminded me of one of my articles, " Harmonizing" The Gospels: Some Principles for Dealing with Purported Contradictions in the Gospels ," where I quote R.T. France: It should be clearly understood that a serious attempt to harmonize what purport to be historical accounts of the same event is not simply a perverse concern of Christian apologists. Any student of history, especially ancient history, is familiar with the problem, and any responsible historian confronted by apparently discrepant accounts in his sources will look first for a reasonable, realistic way of harmonizing them. R.T. France, The...

I ran across a comment by Vridar/Neilgodfrey over at Infidels.org’s discussion board in yet another thread about the lost cause of Jesus Mythicism. We do not know who wrote the gospels, when or where or for whom. Yet "biblical historians" treat their narratives as sources of historical data. I know of no other historical studies that would ever contemplate using such "unsourced" documents as evidence in this way. Neil suggests that only “biblical historians” use ancient documents like the Gospels, whose provenance is purportedly unknown. In fact 1) the provenance of the Gospels and Acts is better than Neil acknowledges, 2) leading historians who are not “biblical historians” in fact rely on the Gospels and Acts as sources of historical data, and 3) classical historians use as sources of historical data ancient documents with less provenance support than the Gospels and Acts. 1. Disputed Does Not Mean “Unsourced” Many scholars dispute Neil’s assessment about the l...

I recently read The Battle of Salamis , by Barry Strauss. The Battle of Salamis was a naval battle in which the Greeks defeated a much larger Persian fleet, saving the Athenian people -- and perhaps Greek civilization -- in the process from domination by Xerxes' Persian Empire. The Athenians constituted the largest part of the Greek fleet, though many other Greek states contributed and the fleet's formal leader was a Spartan. The Persian fleet greatly outnumbered the Greek fleet and was made up of diverse sea-fearing nations and states who were part of the Persian Empire. Nevertheless, the Greek fleet was able to destroy the numerically superior Persian fleet. This resulted in the retreat of the bulk of the Persian army and the eventual defeat of the forces left behind at the Battle of Plataea. The reason for the Greek victory is attributed to many factors, including greater Greek motivation and stouter ships. Another important factor was that the Persians fought after a lo...