Dan barker (suite)

Second Rebuttal, Dan Barker, 8 minutes.

You ask why the authorities didn't just dig up the body of Jesus to prove that he was still in the grave, because after the Christians were preaching . . . One thing you are forgetting, though, is that the Gospel of Jesus was not preached, was not beginning to be widely spread or preached at all, until the Day of Pentecost, which was about two months later. You even said that it was weeks later that Peter was out preaching, right?

Mike: Forty days.

Dan: Forty days? How long is that?

Mike: It's closer to one month.

Dan: Okay, well, seven weeks, or whatever that comes out to from that day. [Pentecost was 50 days.] In that temperature, in that climate, a body in a grave, after that many weeks, would not have been recognizable anyway. From the time when the idea of the resurrection of Jesus was being propagated, it would have been a colossal waste of time, even if they could have found that grave, to dig [it] up. Who would have believed that this decayed, unrecognizable body was the body of Jesus, anyway? Especially at that point after they had started to preach. Would you believe it, after you had invested your life into it? It would have made no sense at all, even if they could have found it.

And, there's a shrine today for the Tomb of Jesus. Why do you think that they would not have had a shrine to the empty tomb in those days? You use the argument that the absence of a shrine shows that the body wasn't there. But you could use the argument the other way around. You could say, well, the absence of a shrine means that there was no shrine, there was no tomb, there was nothing at all. I mean, you could go both ways with that. In fact, there's two competing shrines, I understand, in Jerusalem right now.

You suggested that it was against Jewish thought that you could have a resurrection with the body still in the grave. But you don't have to go any further than the New Testament itself. Some of the Jews in the New Testament were saying that Jesus was the resurrected John the Baptist. [Mark 6:14-15] They had thought John the Baptist had resurrected. Jewish people had thought that a dead man was resurrected in a different form. And you know those verses that are in the bible. So that contradicts.

You tell us about Michael Grant saying that you can't deny the empty tomb. But what you neglect to tell us is that Michael Grant goes on to say that it does not follow, therefore, that we must believe in a resurrection from the empty tomb.

Well, okay. Let's get to his contradiction. All right. I mean, you want to get to the goodies, right? You want to see who wins the debate? Well, this one wins it.

Mike told us earlier that it takes two or three generations in order for a legend to develop. Yet he just told us now that a legend can develop, could develop in two days. Didn't he just say that? He said he's open to the possibility that that legend could have happened two days after the event, in that same location, in that area where the event happened. But he just quoted authorities to us to say that legends can't develop unless there's two generations that have gone by, after the people had died. We know that's not true. We just know that from what we know about human nature, the things that people believe.

A lot more people claim to have seen and to have been healed by Elvis Presley than ever claimed to have been healed [by] and seen Jesus. I mean, really. Think about it. I know none of us take that seriously. But you know what the mentality of people is, especially two thousand years ago.

So, you blew it. You blew that one. You can't win every debate, Mike, but it's a valiant effort here.

You talk about the historical accuracy of the New Testament, as if confirming some of these secondary events in the story. You forget to tell us that there is no historical confirmation at all for anything about the life of Jesus. Nothing. Josephus has been considered a later interpolation in the beginning of the fourth century. There is nothing from the first century. In fact, Matthew and Luke were pretty bad historians. Luke had Jesus born in the year 6 AD, under the reign of King Herod, yet we know from history that King Herod died in 4 BC. So how could Jesus be nine years old when he was born? Luke really screwed up a lot of his facts. Matthew as a historian messed up a lot of his facts as well. He misinterpreted the Septuagint in a lot of cases. He thought the word "almah" meant "parthenos" because the Septuagint thought it did. He thought that since Jesus was born of a "young woman" that that proved the virgin birth. These guys were sloppy scholars. Their historical accuracy was somewhat good and give-and-take.

Suppose two thousand years from now somebody were to uncover one of the novels of James Michener. They could say, "Ah, there was a New York City. There was a Cedar Falls, Iowa. There was this person. There was a Hitler." They could say, "Look at all the historical facts that are in his novel." But no one claims that the actual story itself is true. It's a fictional, a historical fiction that's being written. And that's what the early Christians were doing. They were writing historical fiction. They were going back into history, using . . . they knew there was a Pilate. Luke kind of got his dates wrong -- he thought Herod had died at a certain time, but he didn't quite get it right. And it would be surprising if there were not some corroborating historical details from the next century looking back through history from what was known. This does not confirm the story of Jesus at all, by the way.

I would ask you another question. Maybe . . . you don't have to answer this at all because the answering time is over, but, you said that the fact that their are discrepancies -- I call them contradictions, you call them differences in point of view, I suppose -- you said that that strengthens the case for the Resurrection because it shows that there was no collusion. I would ask you, then, if all the New Testament accounts were in perfect harmony and perfect agreement, then would you suspect collusion? I bet you wouldn't. I bet this is not a sincere argument of yours. If they were in complete harmony, you wouldn't say, "Ah, they're colluding with each other." You're only using this argument as an ad hoc defense against the appearance of contradictions. Why is an omnipotent, omniscient, all-caring god, who has to communicate a message of crucial importance to the human race, why is he doing it in such a sloppy manner? Doesn't he care more than that? Why is he allowing me not to believe it? I mean, think about it. Why couldn't he do it in a clear way? Why couldn't he do it in a simple way?

Now, obviously, it's okay if different witnesses of a car accident disagree. Somebody might say, "Oh, the car was blue." Somebody might say, "Oh, the car was green." You could account for that. But what if one person said the accident happened in Cedar Falls and someone else said it happened in Des Moines? Then you would know, "Wait a minute! One of these people is wrong." The first appearance of Jesus to the disciples happened either in Galilee, which was 60 to 100 miles away, or in Jerusalem. Now, I would not call that a trivial discrepancy: a difference in viewing angle, or something. You know? There is a major contradiction in the bible here.

Why can't we just admit that these people were human beings, and they made mistakes? What's the problem? Why can't you admit that they were trying their best, but they made some . . . they goofed a little bit? Were they exempt from human error? Were they exempt from exaggerations? Why do fundamentalists have so much tied up in inerrancy? It just doesn't seem right.

Well, I used to believe that myself.

The evidence that you have given us tonight for the resurrection of Jesus is not even up to the level of good evidence yet. It's weak evidence. It's not up to the level of what we ordinarily expect. I'm not asking for extraordinary evidence. I know Thomas Paine made a quote that extraordinary [outrageous] claims require extraordinary [outrageous] proof, and there is some sense to that. But we don't have to discuss that tonight because we haven't even got to ordinary proof yet on the resurrection of Jesus. We've got ad hoc ideas. We've got third- and fourth-hand testimony. We've got anonymous writers. We've got people whose character is impugned by telling lies and by being under emotional distress. We've got things that we can't check out. We have an obvious progression, evolution of events from simple to fantastic embellishments. So, I don't call this strong evidence. It is some kind of evidence, I agree. It's something. But it's not yet up to the level of what we would ordinarily expect to believe that [when] somebody said they had a flat tire. It's not good enough. Your arguments are weak, and they fail.