Historical Evidence and the Empty Tomb Story, by Jeffery Jay Lowder

[hammodius]

This post refers to Jeffery Jay Lowder's "Historical Evidence and the Empty Tomb Story: A Reply to William Lane Craig."

I haven't read any of Craig's books yet, but the reviews and responses I've seen make me think it would be worthwhile to do so. It is interesting to me that Lowder, who claims to be the only one to address all of Craig's arguments, concludes with a recommendation for agnosticism. Craig himself apparently believes a strong case can be made in favor of the resurrection, and makes it. Many skeptics take a strong position against the resurrection, but fail to address Craig's arguments. Lowder addresses Craig's arguments head on, is refreshingly fair and free from mud slinging, and fails to refute them. The "historian qua historian" should admit the "absence of inductively correct arguments for or against the historicity of the empty tomb", he says.

This reader is unconvinced by Lowder's alternative to resurrection, the reburial theory. I find the analysis of these points to be weak:
1. Joseph of Arimathea's character and motives
2. the Roman guards' offical stolen-while-we-slept story

As an aside, there's an additional point that Lowder did not raise, but I wonder why, as it supports his theory, and that is
3. Mary's testimony "They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulcher, and we know not where they have laid him" (John 20:2).

1. The reburial theory largely depends on Joseph of Arimathea. Was he sympathetic to or a follower of Jesus? Why did he offer his personal tomb? Is it likely he'd have reburied Jesus elswhere?

I believe Mark implies that Joshep of Arimathea was at least sympathetic to Jesus. There's precedent for Jesus eliciting sympathy from bystanders during his trial and crucifixion. Pilate could tell the Sanhedron's motives were petty (Mark 15:10 "For he knew thast the chief priests had delivered him for envy"). The centurion who witnessed Jesus' last words and death was so impressed that "he said, Truly this man was the Son of God." There's also precedent for Jesus having sympathy among the pharisees: Nicodemus in John 3 came to Jesus by night with questions about how he could be born again.

So when Mark says in 15:43,46 that Joseph of Arimathea "went in boldy unto Pilate, and craved the body of Jesus....And he bought fine linen, and took him down, and wrapped him in the linen," I think that implies some sympathy for Jesus on Joseph's part. Mark seems to have a theme that the impartial or humane among bystanders were won over by Jesus' obvious innocence and courageous demeanor.

Mark doesn't spend a lot of time analyzing Joseph's motives, but given that it was a "bold" move to appeal to Pilate for the body, I think we are safe in infering some courage on Joseph's part. He wasn't ready to overrule the council itself (neither was Pilate, for that matter) but he did what he could after the fact: buried Jesus in honor. Maybe his sympathies were only clear after the fact. I find it convincing and human to suppose a member of the judging council to feel remorse afterwards and express it through acting as Joseph acted.

I don't find any textual reason to suppose that Joseph put Jesus in his own tomb out of "practical necessity," and that he intended to rebury Jesus later. The reburial theory has Joseph doing a lot of things not suggested by the text. Lowder has done exactly what he accuses Craig of doing: adduced a possibility but failed to show probability.

2. The Matthew account of guards coming to the chief priests and receiving instructions has the smack of name-calling. I grant Matthew's pro-Jesus bias. It is natural he would attribute deceptive motives to his adversaries. But Matthew 28:15 says, "and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day." I can't see any reason for Matthew to invent a naturalist explanation for the empty tomb. If there was a such an explanation circulating, Matthew might be expected to explain it away as he did in v. 11-14, but it does not make sense that Matthew would have invented the polemic and its refutation.

Even if the polemic came at a later date, it implies wide acceptance of the empty tomb story, even among Christianity's adversaries.

3. This is in support of Lowder's reburial theory. It occurred to me as I read and I wonder if there's some reason it was not included. The first person to discover the empty tomb, according to John 20:1-2 was Mary, and her initial reaction to the discovery was to wonder where "they" had taken him. This implies there was some expectation that someone might remove the body (Joseph? the centurions?) and bury it elsewhere. This is the sort of specific textual evidence we need to make a reburial story more than a mere possibility. However, the John account seems to contradict the other gospel empty tomb accounts (maybe that's why Lowder did not mention it?).

My knowledge is not very scholarly, I'll admit. The notion of Markan precedence is relatively new to me and I'm not quite sure how to establish which bits of text are reliable and which aren't. Maybe there are good explanations for the points I raised. However, I am quite well read in the Bible and catching up on the latest status of these debates. What strikes me is the widespread failure of anyone to conclusively disprove the resurrection. Granted, other explanations are possible, but none particularly probable. Assuming there is a God and therefore miracles are possible, the Biblical resurrection impresses me as being very probable. If it is invention, why can't we point to positive errors? At best, we suggest plausible alternatives and cavil over minor discrepancies.

From where I stand, the strongest rational reason to be a Christian is that I can't find anyone who can show the resurrection probably did NOT happen. If it happened, and it seems likely it did, then the first person I'll consult on what it meant is Jesus himself. His claims are quite remarkable, but if he rose from the dead as he said he would, then I'd better consider his claims at face value.

Matt

P.S. I'm also considering the Humean stance against miracles in general due to their very low prior probability. That's subject to more research on my part. However, short of taking a Humean stance, is there any stronger (but just as fair) answer to the resurrection than Lowder's agnositicism?

[-DM-]

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[jlowder]

I am gratified by Matt's interest in my article. There are a few items in his feedback I want to comment on. Before I do, however, I should mention that I have written a revised version of my article that will be published (in print) in about a year. In that article, I refer to my hypothesis as the "relocation hypothesis" and not the "reburial hypothesis." In what follows, then, I will adopt this revised terminology.

1. Matt states that I "failed to address Craig's arguments." I consider this to be one of his most important objections to my entire article, but Matt never identifies a specific argument of Craig's for the empty tomb that I failed to address. Perhaps Matt has in mind some of Craig's other arguments for the resurrection--arguments that are not about an empty tomb--but I very clearly stated that the scope of my paper was limited solely to Craig's arguments for the empty tomb. Within that limited scope, I think I accomplished my goal: my article does provide a comprehensive point-by-point rebuttal to all of Craig's arguments for the empty tomb.

2. As I read him, Matt offers two specific objections to the relocation hypothesis: (a) the character and motives of Joseph of Arimathea; and (b) the Jewish polemic about the Roman guards' stolen-while-we-slept story. I'll address each in turn.

(a) is based upon the notion that "Mark implies that Joshep (sic) of Arimathea was at least sympathetic to Jesus." According to Matt, Mark 15:43,46--which states Joseph of Arimathea "boldy" asked for the body of Jesus--"implies some sympathy for Jesus on Joseph's part." I already answered this argument in endnote 30 of my original article, however. I wrote:

For all we know antecedently, Mark’s statement (15:43) that Joseph "went boldly to Pilate" may be indicative of the fact that crucifixion victims were rarely buried. Or, as Brown points out, there may be other reasons why it required courage on Joseph’s part to approach Pilate. Cf. Brown 1994, pp. 1217, 1232.

Moreover, Matt has not addressed my argument for the conclusion that there is a very low prior probability that Joseph of Arimathea was a sympathizer of Jesus who buried a condemned criminal in his own tomb. I wrote:

Evidentially, the claim that Jesus was buried favorably by a Sanhedrist sympathizer of Jesus is akin to the claim that, say, Ted Bundy was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery by one of the very judges who upheld his execution. While I can imagine historical evidence which (if it existed) would make the historicity of Bundy’s honorable burial more probable than not, historians would certainly demand better evidence than a report circulated by one of Bundy’s followers (if there were such a thing) 30-40 years after the event. In a similar manner, the Markan evidence is too weak to overcome its inherent implausibility.

I do agree with Matt, though, that the relocation hypothesis "has Joseph doing a lot of things not suggested by the text." Nevertheless, I strongly disagree with the comment, "Lowder has done exactly what he accuses Craig of doing: adduced a possibility but failed to show probability." Let me add just two points. First, I am agnostic about the relocation hypothesis precisely because there is no direct textual evidence of relocation, i.e., there is no passage that says Joseph moved the body on Saturday night. Nowhere in my paper do I state that the relocation hypothesis is what actually happened.

Second, insofar as Craig's arguments for the empty tomb are concerned, the relocation hypothesis has a greater balance of prior probability and explanatory power than the resurrection hypothesis.[1] Consider prior probability: the relocation hypothesis is intrinsically much more probable than the resurrection hypothesis. In other words, given our background information about Jewish burial practices and given our background information about resurrections, the relocation hypothesis has a much greater prior probability than the resurrection hypothesis.

Likewise, the relocation hypothesis has greater explanatory power than the resurrection hypothesis, when each hypothesis is considered as a possible explanation for an empty tomb. Since the relocation hypothesis entails an empty (first) tomb, the probability of an empty tomb given relocation is 100%. In contrast, the resurrection hypothesis does not entail an empty tomb; therefore, the probability of an empty tomb given resurrection is less than 100%. For example, Jesus could have risen from the dead and then hung out in the tomb for 50 years--watching the cobwebs collect dust--before ascending to Heaven directly from inside the tomb. Only if we combine the resurrection hypothesis with one or more auxiliary hypotheses (like the hypothesis that the resurrected Jesus did not remain in the tomb), can we guarantee an empty tomb. Thus, the relocation hypothesis has greater explanatory power than the resurrection hypothesis.

Since the relocation hypothesis has a greater balance of both prior probability and explanatory power, it follows from the probability calculus that the relocation hypothesis has a higher final probability than the resurrection hypothesis--at least so far as Craig's arguments for the empty tomb are concerned.

(b) Matt's other objection to the relocation hypothesis focuses on the Jewish polemic in Matthew 28. Matt writes, "I can't see any reason for Matthew to invent a naturalist explanation for the empty tomb." Please notice, however, that I have never accused the author of Matthew of "inventing" a naturalistic explanation for the empty tomb. Although it is easily conceivable that the story is nothing but a literary device designed to answer obvious doubts, I am perfectly willing to grant that it is more probable that the story has some basis in historical fact. So let's assume there probably was an accusation of theft by the disciples. Remember, in my article I made a distinction between the empty tomb and the Markan story of the empty tomb. The Jewish polemic only presupposes the former, not the latter. Thus, the Jewish polemic in Matthew 28 doesn't undermine the relocation hypothesis.

3. Regarding John 20:1-2 as possible support for the relocation hypothesis, Matt writes, "This is in support of Lowder's reburial theory. It occurred to me as I read and I wonder if there's some reason it was not included." Matt is, of course, correct: if John 20:1-2 is historical, then the passage does provide some support for the relocation hypothesis. In endnote 86, I wrote, "Ironically, if one accepts Craig’s view that the Johannine story represents an early tradition, then I think the story would actually support my argument in 1.1 that Jesus had been reburied elsewhere. According to John 20:2, the women told the disciples, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him." But I don't use this as evidence for my position on Jesus’ burial because I reject Craig's view that the Johannine story is an early tradition." In my revised article, I've moved this point into the body of my paper. I've also softened my language by removing the statement that I "reject" the idea that John 20:1-2 is an early tradition, and instead make it clear I am undecided about the matter.

3. Matt seems to have confused agnosticism about the relocation hypothesis with agnosticism about the resurrection hypothesis. If you read the conclusion of my article carefully, you'll notice that I state I am only an agnostic about the former, not the latter. Nevertheless, I do believe that the former is a better historical explanation for the fact of the empty tomb (if it is a fact) than the latter hypothesis.

4. Although Matt refers to the relocation hypothesis as "an alternative to the resurrection," it was never intended to be a full alternative. The relocation hypothesis is an alternative to the resurrection only in the very limited sense that it is intended to be an alternative explanatory hypothesis for an empty tomb (assuming there was one). It was never intended to be an alternative explanatory hypothesis for other alleged facts adduced by Craig in favor of the resurrection hypothesis.

Jeffery Jay Lowder

[1] I owe the idea of comparing rival explanatory hypotheses according to the balance of prior probability and explanatory power to Robert Gregory Cavin.

[hammodius]

Thank you for the thorough response!

I misunderstood or overlooked several of your points in my initial post. The most important is that you offer the reburial hypothesis as an alternative to the Markan empty tomb story (as defended by Craig), and not as an alternative to the resurrection itself with all its attendant events and implications. So I overestimated the scope of your argument. (I will continue to call it the "reburial" hypothesis because I haven't read your article in its revised form. I will be interested to do so when it appears in print.)

Also I overlooked your footnote mention of Mary's "I don't know where they've taken him" from John.

Also I overlooked your footnote mentions of the gloss put upon Joseph of Arimathea by Matthew, Luke, and John.

You misquoted me when you said I claimed you didn't address all of Craig's arguments, I said you didn't refute them. I am familiar with Craig's arguments, to date, only insofar as they've appeared in your articles, so I was definitely not refering to some argument he's made on the larger resurrection as opposed to the Markan empty tomb account. I haven't heard any of his other arguments!

I see your point about the polemic depending only on the tradition of an empty tomb, and not on the Markan empty tomb story in specific. The reburial hypothesis does adequately explain the polemic, assuming two things:
a) There was a circulating empty tomb tradition the Sanhedron wanted to defuse.
b) The Sanhedron did not know about the reburial (or else why not suggest it instead of inventing a theft?).

The likelihood of Joseph of Arimathea offering his personal tomb for Jesus' permanent burial is an important issue. The "sympathizer" motivation Craig offers is not an extra-textual invention; it is present, as you've noted, in the accounts of Matthew and John. I lack the necessary knowledge to debate whether these accounts were entirely derived from Mark or were supported by additional sources, so I won't linger on this point. However, the Mark story contains nothing that makes it obviously improbable that Joseph was sympathetic to Jesus.

Your analogy to Ted Bundy strikes me as a flagrant straw man. Here it is in full:

Evidentially, the claim that Jesus was buried favorably by a Sanhedrist sympathizer of Jesus is akin to the claim that, say, Ted Bundy was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery by one of the very judges who upheld his execution. While I can imagine historical evidence which (if it existed) would make the historicity of Bundy?s honorable burial more probable than not, historians would certainly demand better evidence than a report circulated by one of Bundy's followers (if there were such a thing) 30-40 years after the event. In a similar manner, the Markan evidence is too weak to overcome its inherent implausibility.

To correct the analogy, we should first have to substitute for Ted Bundy, say, Gandhi--or some other controversial leader whose message was both peaceful and radical. And second we should have to substitute for burial "with full military honors" something less public, like burial in a private tomb with a few witnesses. The corrected scenario gets far less of a knee-jerk negative reaction! And sounds considerably less implausible. If a man like Gandhi were executed for treason, it is highly conceivable that his executors would not be unanimous in their hatred of him, and that one of them might see it as a privilege to bury Gandhi in fine linens and an expensive private tomb.

I suggest that you consider modifying your Ted Bundy analogy for the printed paper; it will automatically alienate Christian readers, which I doubt is your intent.

Your post stated the reburial hypothesis beats the Markan empty tomb story in two points:
a) prior probability
b) explanatory power

For a), you say the following, "given our background information about Jewish burial practices and given our background information about resurrections, the relocation hypothesis has a much greater prior probability than the resurrection hypothesis." This reference to background information on resurrections surprised me. I think you're implying that, as everybody knows, a dead person coming back to life is a miracle and therefore improbable. That is indeed a strong point, but I had understood your paper to take a purely historical tack without resorting to dismissal of the miraculous per se.

b) sounds suspiciously like the affirmation of the consequent fallacy to me. (If A, then B. B, therefore A.) If the body were reburied, the tomb would be empty. The tomb was empty, therefore the body was reburied. Of course, this sort of reasoning is fallacious whether one argues the reburial hypothesis or the Markan empty tomb story.

Your claim is that relatively speaking, the reburial hypothesis explains the empty tomb better than the Markan account. However, I don't think your suggestion that Jesus might return to life and then linger in the empty tomb for 50 years need be taken seriously. Practically speaking, both theories have explanatory probability of 100%.

In summary, I conclude that you have indeed made a decent case for an alternative theory, but I don't think you've demonstrated its likelihood is greater than the Markan account on purely historical grounds. Your strongest point is the prior improbability of a resurrection per se, but as I understand it your original paper does not intend to resort to this argument.

In passing, I'd like to say I've read several of your contributions to the Secular Web archives and have a growing respect for you. Your careful consideration of both sides and refusal to call names is much needed! And I appreciate the informative nature of your scholarship and the clarity of your writing.

Matt

[jlowder]

Thanks to Matt for the enjoyable exchange. In what follows, I offer some further thoughts and reflections on the relocation hypothesis.

I see your point about the polemic depending only on the tradition of an empty tomb, and not on the Markan empty tomb story in specific. The reburial hypothesis does adequately explain the polemic, assuming two things:
a) There was a circulating empty tomb tradition the Sanhedron wanted to defuse.
b) The Sanhedron did not know about the reburial (or else why not suggest it instead of inventing a theft?).

I'm not so sure that either (a) or (b) needs to be presupposed. In the first place, I'm not so sure that we need to take it for granted that the polemic originated with the Sanhedrin. The polemic could have been the reaction of lay Jews not affiliated with the Sanhedrin. Also, regarding (b), even if the Sanhedrin was was responsible for the polemic, it is a separate issue as to whether the entire Sanhedrin would have known about the relocation (assuming there was one). For all we know antecedently, given the relocation theory, Joseph may not have informed anyone on the Sanhedrin that a relocation had taken place.

The likelihood of Joseph of Arimathea offering his personal tomb for Jesus' permanent burial is an important issue. The "sympathizer" motivation Craig offers is not an extra-textual invention; it is present, as you've noted, in the accounts of Matthew and John. I lack the necessary knowledge to debate whether these accounts were entirely derived from Mark or were supported by additional sources, so I won't linger on this point. However, the Mark story contains nothing that makes it obviously improbable that Joseph was sympathetic to Jesus.

My paper is intended to undermine the "intrinsic" probability that Joseph was a sympathizer of Jesus. In the formal jargon of inductive logic, my argument assesses the so-called "prior probability" of Joseph being a Jesus sympathizer; the prior probability is then used to assess the plausibility of claims made in the gospels. Also, note that Mark 15:42 merely states that Joseph was "himself waiting for the Kingdom of God," whatever that means. I think it is an open question whether that means Joseph was a sympathizer of Jesus. For all we know antecedently, that statement could simply mean that Joseph was a pious Jew who obeyed Jewish burial regulations, even when the burial involved a condemned criminal.

Your analogy to Ted Bundy strikes me as a flagrant straw man. Here it is in full:

Evidentially, the claim that Jesus was buried favorably by a Sanhedrist sympathizer of Jesus is akin to the claim that, say, Ted Bundy was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery by one of the very judges who upheld his execution. While I can imagine historical evidence which (if it existed) would make the historicity of Bundy?s honorable burial more probable than not, historians would certainly demand better evidence than a report circulated by one of Bundy's followers (if there were such a thing) 30-40 years after the event. In a similar manner, the Markan evidence is too weak to overcome its inherent implausibility.

To correct the analogy, we should first have to substitute for Ted Bundy, say, Gandhi--or some other controversial leader whose message was both peaceful and radical.

I don't think the analogy is a straw man at all. The key point here is that the same Jewish council that had condemned Jesus would not provide him an honorable burial.

And second we should have to substitute for burial "with full military honors" something less public, like burial in a private tomb with a few witnesses.

I'm not sure this is correct. In the first place, if you take my analogy seriously, a contemporary burial with full military honors can quite easily be a private burial. More important, the key point here is that the same governmental body that had condemned a person to death is unlikely to give that person an honorable burial.

And, BTW, I should mention that I stripped out the Bundy example from my revised paper several months ago, but for reasons that have nothing to do with what we are discussing here. I think when readers have the opportunity to read the revised article, the reason will be obvious. (I regret I cannot say more at this time.)

For a), you say the following, "given our background information about Jewish burial practices and given our background information about resurrections, the relocation hypothesis has a much greater prior probability than the resurrection hypothesis." This reference to background information on resurrections surprised me. I think you're implying that, as everybody knows, a dead person coming back to life is a miracle and therefore improbable. That is indeed a strong point, but I had understood your paper to take a purely historical tack without resorting to dismissal of the miraculous per se.

Two points. First, I never dismissed the miraculous per se. I understand dismissing the miraculous per se to be denying, a priori, the very possibility of miracles. Clearly, I have not done that in the above statement or anywhere else. (For the record, my position is that miracles are logically possible since I regard the existence of the supernatural as logically possible, albeit extremely improbable.) All I have stated is that the prior probability of relocation is greater than the prior probability of resurrection. That statement is perfectly compatible with the possibility of resurrection (i.e., the resurrection having a prior probability greater than 0).

Second, and more important, my prior response was somewhat off-topic. Independently of whether Jesus was resurrected from the dead, it is a separate question whether he was buried and, if so, how (honorable vs. dishonorable). What I should have pointed out was that Craig seems to [1] defend the position that Jesus was honorably buried, and the relocation hypothesis (as a variant of the dishonorable burial hypothesis) has a much higher prior probability than the honorable burial hypothesis.

b) sounds suspiciously like the affirmation of the consequent fallacy to me. (If A, then B. B, therefore A.) If the body were reburied, the tomb would be empty. The tomb was empty, therefore the body was reburied. Of course, this sort of reasoning is fallacious whether one argues the reburial hypothesis or the Markan empty tomb story.

Matt's point (about affirming the consequent) would be absolutely correct, IF I had offered a deductive argument for the relocation hypothesis solely on the basis of explanatory power. But clearly I did not. In the first place, my argument is inductive, not deductive. In other words, the truth of my argument's premises do not guarantee the truth of my argument's conclusion; instead, the premises merely make it probable that their conclusion is true.

Here, then, is the formulation of my argument.

1. The relocation hypothesis is initially plausible.
2. If the relocation hypothesis is true, then we would expect an empty (first) tomb.
3. There was an empty (first) tomb. (assumption)
4. The resurrection hypothesis does not have as high a prior probability as the relocation hypothesis.
5. Therefore, the relocation hypothesis has a higher final probability than the resurrection hypothesis. (inductive argument of confirmation, from 1-4)

Note that the above argument is a far cry from the fallacious form of affirming the consequent. That argument would look like the following.

1. If the relocation hypothesis is true, then we would expect an empty (first) tomb.
2. There was an empty (first) tomb.
3. Therefore, the relocation hypothesis is true.

The latter argument form is clearly fallacious; the former is clearly not. See Merrilee Salmon, Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking, 3rd ed., pp. 250-261.

Your claim is that relatively speaking, the reburial hypothesis explains the empty tomb better than the Markan account. However, I don't think your suggestion that Jesus might return to life and then linger in the empty tomb for 50 years need be taken seriously. Practically speaking, both theories have explanatory probability of 100%.

Perhaps we do not need to take seriously the possibility that Jesus might return to life and then linger in the empty tomb for 50 years. That is, however, beside the point. My point was a purely logical one. The resurrection hypothesis, by itself, does not entail an empty tomb. The only way to guarantee an empty tomb, given the resurrection hypothesis, is to combine the resurrection hypothesis with one or more auxiliary hypotheses. This is inferior to the relocation hypothesis, which doesn't need an auxiliary hypothesis to explain the empty tomb. One might wonder, "Okay, so let's combine the resurrection hypothesis with an auxiliary hypothesis so that we can guarantee an empty tomb. What's the problem?" The key point here is the final probability of a hypothesis is a function of both its prior probability and explanatory power. One can easily modify a hypothesis to increase its explanatory power, but if the modification involves an appeal to an ad hoc auxiliary hypothesis, the result is a decrease in the prior probability of the resulting combinatory hypothesis.

Jeffery Jay Lowder

[1] I say "seems to" because in his earlier work on the resurrection, Craig seems to defend the honorable burial hypothesis, but in his more recent work he is careful to structure his argument in such a way that it does not depend on an honorable burial of Jesus (even if he probably believes that Jesus was honorably buried).

[hammodius]

I am left puzzled on only one point, but that one is central: what prior probability DO you assign to the resurrection hypothesis, and why? If miracles are logically possible, what basis is there to assume they are improbable, and what sorts of methods do you use to arrive at that assessment?


First, I never dismissed the miraculous per se. I understand dismissing the miraculous per se to be denying, a priori, the very possibility of miracles. Clearly, I have not done that in the above statement or anywhere else. (For the record, my position is that miracles are logically possible since I regard the existence of the supernatural as logically possible, albeit extremely improbable.) All I have stated is that the prior probability of relocation is greater than the prior probability of resurrection. That statement is perfectly compatible with the possibility of resurrection (i.e., the resurrection having a prior probability greater than 0).

The assumption that miracles are highly improbable is not much better than the assumption that miracles are impossible if your conclusion depends on a comparison of relative probabilities. In fact, the argument is circular: the resurrection is intrinsically improbable, therefore the resurrection has a low prior probability.


Here, then, is the formulation of my argument.

1. The relocation hypothesis is initially plausible.
2. If the relocation hypothesis is true, then we would expect an empty (first) tomb.
3. There was an empty (first) tomb. (assumption)
4. The resurrection hypothesis does not have as high a prior probability as the relocation hypothesis.
5. Therefore, the relocation hypothesis has a higher final probability than the resurrection hypothesis. (inductive argument of confirmation, from 1-4)

Assertion #4 depends on the resurrection hypothesis having a low prior probability. What is the probability of a miracle in general, and this miracle in specific? I'm afraid the Christian camp will not agree with your assumption that the resurrection is improbable, while the skeptic's camp will. Perhaps you could explain what makes a miracle improbable? (ie, I imagine something like taking statistics on all alleged resurrections from the dead in the U.S. for the past 10 years. Even if you were generous and assumed each alleged resurrection was genuine, the number of resurrections divided by number of deaths would be infinitesimal. You could do the same for reburials on the same sample and get, no doubt, a much larger number. Such a statistical analysis would be of questionable applicability, but at least it would be better than an unsupported assertion.)

I believe your paper is intented to demonstrate that the reburial hypothesis has more historical plausibility than the resurrection hypothesis, but that conclusion does not follow from your attack on the Markan empty tomb story. Even if we concede each of your answers to Craigs arguments for the empty tomb, we do not have a historical case for the reburial hypothesis.

In other words, let us concede the following (numbering taken from your original paper):

1. the Markan burial story is not historical
a. Paul's testimony does not support it
b. Joseph of Arimathea is probably historical
c. Joseph laid the body in his own tomb with intent to rebury
d. time of day does not support the burial's historicity
e. the lack of other traditions does not prove the Markan tradition
2. Paul doesn't provide independant confirmation of the empty tomb
a. Paul's sources may not have known the location of Jesus' final resting place
b. Paul himself probably did not visit the tomb
3. the pre-Markan tradition did not include the empty tomb story
a. the pre-Markan source probably ended before the empty tomb
i. the editor made the textual style homogenous
ii. the editor had motive to embellish the story
b. there's no reason to back-date the empty tomb story
4. the "first day of the week" language does not attest to the story's lack of legendary development

5. the alleged simplicity of the account does not attest to the story's lack of legendary devlopment

6. the discovery of the tomb by women is consistent with the reburial hypothesis

7. the alleged investigation of the tomb by Peter and John is consistent with the reburial hypothesis

8. the preaching of the resurrection in Jerusalem does not mean the resurrection took place
--there may have been no interest in disproving such preaching
--by the time of this preaching, the body would have decomposed past the point of recognisability
--even positive proof that Jesus was still dead and his body correctly identified would not have dissuaded his followers
9. the Jewish polemic does not constitute independent confirmation of the empty tomb; even if it did, it is consistent with reburial

10. Jesus' tomb may or may not have been venerated as a shrine

Even granting all those assertions, we arrive at Mark 16:5 with two rival theories and no grounds for preference. All your points above do not address why at this point we should consider the reburial hypothesis more likely than the resurrection hypothesis unless we have a predisposition to reject the resurrection hypothesis. (Note that Joseph may have intended to rebury Jesus and yet not have had a chance to do so. Presumably he too waited for the end of the Sabbath, which leaves him very little time to act before the discovery of the empty tomb early Sunday morning. Therefore even if it can be shown that Joseph's intention was to relocate the body, that intention is in no way inconsistent with Jesus' miraculous resurrection.)

Matt

[jlowder]

Despite catching myself getting off-topic in my previous post, I managed to get immediately off-topic again! I wrote:

Here, then, is the formulation of my argument.

1. The relocation hypothesis is initially plausible.
2. If the relocation hypothesis is true, then we would expect an empty (first) tomb.
3. There was an empty (first) tomb. (assumption)
4. The resurrection hypothesis does not have as high a prior probability as the relocation hypothesis.
5. Therefore, the relocation hypothesis has a higher final probability than the resurrection hypothesis. (inductive argument of confirmation, from 1-4)

Although I believe the above argument is correct, this isn't the argument I defend in my 2001 empty tomb paper (the one published on the Secular Web). That paper compares the reburial hypothesis against the "temporary burial" hypothesis, not the full resurrection hypothesis. Using the "temporary burial" hypothesis was my attempt to isolate the burial-related components of Craig's resurrection hypothesis (conjoined with the auxiliary hypothesis of an empty tomb). In my paper (see the conclusion), I defined the temporary burial hypothesis is the view "that Jesus’ body was no longer buried, which the women learned from an angelic proclamation." So what I should have written in my second reply to you was the following:

1. The reburial hypothesis is initially plausible.
2. If the reburial hypothesis is true, then we would expect an empty tomb.
3. There was an empty tomb. (assumption)
4. The temporary burial hypothesis does not have as high a prior probability as the reburial hypothesis.
5. Therefore, the reburial hypothesis has a higher final probability than the temporary burial hypothesis. (inductive argument of confirmation, from 1-4)

So, in response to the above argument, you might ask, why should we believe premise 4? In my paper, I provided the following argument:

The temporary burial hypothesis requires numerous new suppositions: that a member of the Sanhedrin would be a sympathizer of Jesus, that the Jews would be motivated to bury one executed criminal (Jesus) but not others (the two lestai), that a prominent member of the Sanhedrin would not permanently bury a criminal like Jesus in the criminals' graveyard, etc. In contrast, the reburial hypothesis requires none of these dubious assumptions.

I'll now turn briefly to the can of worms I opened by providing an off-topic response to you in my earlier messages.

I am left puzzled on only one point, but that one is central: what prior probability DO you assign to the resurrection hypothesis, and why? If miracles are logically possible, what basis is there to assume they are improbable, and what sorts of methods do you use to arrive at that assessment?

These are important questions I do not directly address in my 2001 empty tomb paper. Again, the conclusion of my paper compares the "reburial hypothesis" to the "temporary burial hypothesis." To do justice to Matt's (important) questions, I would probably have to write an entire separate essay. In the meantime, I will simply state my position: I believe there are good reasons for assigning miracles in general (and the resurrection in particular) a low prior probability, reasons that have nothing to do with doubting the existence of the supernatural.

The assumption that miracles are highly improbable is not much better than the assumption that miracles are impossible if your conclusion depends on a comparison of relative probabilities. In fact, the argument is circular: the resurrection is intrinsically improbable, therefore the resurrection has a low prior probability.

The argument Matt mentions is indeed a circular argument, but it is not my argument.

Assertion #4 depends on the resurrection hypothesis having a low prior probability. What is the probability of a miracle in general, and this miracle in specific? I'm afraid the Christian camp will not agree with your assumption that the resurrection is improbable, while the skeptic's camp will.

Perhaps Matt is confusing prior and final probability. Christians, as Christians, are only committed to the view that the resurrection has a high final probability. That belief is in no way logically inconsistent with the belief that the resurrection has a low prior probability, since the final probability is a function of both prior probability and explanatory power.

I believe your paper is intented to demonstrate that the reburial hypothesis has more historical plausibility than the resurrection hypothesis, but that conclusion does not follow from your attack on the Markan empty tomb story. Even if we concede each of your answers to Craigs arguments for the empty tomb, we do not have a historical case for the reburial hypothesis.

Again, let me repeat that I am agnostic about the reburial/ relocation hypothesis. (I stated this very clearly in my paper and in previous replies to Matt.) All I have claimed is that the reburial hypothesis has a higher prior probability and greater explanatory power than the temporary burial / resurrection hypothesis, insofar as Craig's arguments for the empty tomb are concerned. That is NOT equivalent to the claim that the reburial hypothesis has a high final probability (i.e., a probability greater than 50%).

Moreover, I have never claimed that my answers to Craig's arguments 2-10 are a historical case for the reburial hypothesis. My response to Craig's first argument would be the logical place to present my "case" for relocation, but I failed to make that argument explicit in my 2001 empty tomb paper. I have fixed that problem in the revised version of my paper scheduled to be published in 2005, where I devote an entire new section of the paper to presenting my case. I regret I cannot share the details of that argument online.

Jeffery Jay Lowder

[Matthew_Green]

This in response to Jeffrey Jay Lowder's article "Historical Evidence and the Empty Tomb" published in the Journal of Higher Criticism. My congradulations to a well-written essay. I was re-reading it over the weekend and thought of some interesting questions.

1.) Do you plan to write any similar essays on the post-mortem "appearances" of Jesus? Bill Craig argues that by appealing to visions doesn't explain the empty tomb or any diversity of post-mortem appearances. I know that you are more read on the subject that I am and so I was wondering if you are interested in writing anything on this subject as well?

2.) You wrote in an endnote that you contacted several New Testament scholars who thought that it was a "waste of time" to respond to Craig and one criticized you for taking Craig "too seriously". I am curious if there is a way for me to find out which scholars reject the empty tomb and why; I'd love to hear their reasoning.

3.) I concieved of a way of making one of your points stronger in your essay. You wrote that if the body of Jesus had been discovered, it was many weeks later and the body would've decayed beyond recognition and therefore it was impossible for the Jews to prove that the body they had was that of Jesus. I concieved of an interesting point- taking your argument further. After reading Galatians 1:8, where St. Paul tells his followers that even if an angel should appear to them and preach a different gospel- they weren't to believe that angel.

I realized that even if the Jews could produce a good quality body (one that hadn't decayed that much or at all) then the Christians could claim that the body was a forgery, or worse, a demonic/Satanic counterfeit. If Paul was nullifying his followers against miraculous disconfirmation of the gospel (by an angel preaching a different one) than how much more against something that was as mundane as the alleged body of Jesus. The more convincing it looks and the more it looks like something the Jews could'nt have faked, then Christians would appeal to the devil and claim that a Satanic counterfeit had been produced.

What do you think of this friendly amendment to your essay?

Matthew

[-DM-]

[Thank you for your feedback regarding Jeffrey Jay Lowder's article "Historical Evidence and the Empty Tomb" published in the Journal of Higher Criticism. E-mail notification has been sent to the author. Although there are no guarantees, you might want to check back from time to time for a further response following this post. -DM-]

[hallq]

I am somewhat confused by J.J. Lowerder's Historical Evidence and the Empty Tomb, where he attacks the idea that Mark's story of the empty tomb is historical but leaves open the possibility that the tomb was in fact empty. The objection he mentions in response to Craig's 6th point, that Mark 16:8 cannot be reconciled with the historicity of the story would seem to me damning. But if Mark held to be unreliable on this point, why not simply go with the initially more probable hypothesis, that Jesus was either not buried or buried in a common grave? Why maintain, in spite of Mark's unreliability, that Jesus might have gotten a tomb?

[-DM-]

hallq:

Jeffery Lowder has been notified of your feedback. Please check back from time to time for a possible response from Lowder.

Regards,
-Don-

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[PHK]

In reference to the post #109/#6 by ‘DM’, Don says:

“Regarding the alleged irrefutability of the so-called resurrection of Jesus, we also have several articles that provide evidence and argument to the contrary.”

I read the very articulate article written my Jeffery Jay Lowder, “Historical Evidence and the Empty Tomb Story – A Reply to William Lane Craig”.

This article caused me to chuckle more than once, and shake my head repeatedly in disbelief, that such an intellect as J. J. Lowder could be either so shallow or so intentionally deceptive in some of his assertions. However, I can understand why you (if you are, in fact, “DM” Don) would choose to direct readers to him and his article on the subject.

It is, of course, also quite understandable that Lowder’s argument falls apart on many fronts if it turns out to be true that Joseph of Arimathea was, indeed, a sympathizer of Jesus and “gave” the tomb up as a “permanent” burial place for Jesus. It is practically assumed out-of-hand by Lowder, that this gift is absurd because Joseph of Arimathea was a member of the Sanhedrin. Therefore, Lowder insists, he would not give up his personal tomb to a man that was a criminal, and because this Joseph of Arimathea was part of the organization (the Sanhedrin) that ordered his death.

He doesn’t consider (at least he doesn’t in his article) that because of his authority as a religious leader and his presumable knowledge of Old Testament prophetic scripture, that maybe he understood Jesus was the promised Messiah (or at least that he could be) because a study of Jesus’ life showed Joseph a fulfillment of those prophetic scriptures. He could have kept his real feelings quiet so as not to incur the wrath of the High Priest and others of the Sanhedrin. He could have petitioned the High Priest to allow him to burry Jesus in his own tomb, arguing that it would be good to have him buried and guarded against theft by his followers so they could not claim resurrection later as prophesies may have been understood to predict of the true Messiah. In this case, the body of Jesus would have been the only concern - not the bodies of the two thieves.

Also, Jeffery Jay Lowder, says in his article that it is more likely that Joseph of Arimathea had Jesus’ body moved “[P]robably on Saturday…” What? says I. Is Lowder actually saying that it is ‘most likely a true scenario’ that a priest of the Jewish faith, a member of the Sanhedrin, would have done a ‘work’ on the Sabbath, and that work being to touch, or order that and unclean thing – a dead body - be touched, on the Sabbath. Surely, that is the reason for the burial being “temporary” or readied for “reburial” or whatever. It was the reason for the hurried removal from the cross and the burial of Jesus. This statement by Jeffery Lowder is absurd and intensely weakens his argument in my opinion. It looks like a man arguing about some point his wishes were true, not one that he actually believes is true, for surely Jeffery Lowder is smarter than that.

There are many other weaknesses in his arguments but I have already written far more words than you will probably wish to post. It takes up far too much space. However, I too encourage people to read the article. I think it shows a weakness in the argument against the “Empty Tomb”, which is really just an argument against the resurrection. Reading Jeffery Jay Lowden’s piece just helped to reinforce my belief in the resurrection of Jesus (not that it needed reinforcing) and my assurance that Jesus is Lord, Christ, the Messiah.

Thank you for providing me this opportunity. Bless you.