John J. Bombaro and Adam S. Francisco. The Resurrection Fact: Responding to Modern Critics. New Reformation Publications, 2016. See here to purchase the book.
Allow me to quote the description of the book on Amazon, before I
offer my thoughts about it. The description says who wrote the book,
the book’s general perspective, and the book’s intended audience.
“As this team did with the book, ‘Making The Case For Christianity’
(CPH), Drs. Bombaro and Francisco bring together a variety of
contemporary Lutheran apologists to respond to a wide array of
challenges to the heart of the Christian Faith. Each chapter addresses a
specific argument from a popular, non-Christian author and offer a
clear and concise rebuttal and argument for the resurrection. The
editors have found able representatives from the disciplines of biblical
studies, history, philosophy, and the legal profession to write each
chapter. The book is accessible, written for a broad audience, and is
ultimately designed to equip its readers for the apologetics task.”
Now for my thoughts:
A. Whenever I see a book like this, I wonder if it will contribute
anything new to the discussion. So many Christian apologetic books have
already been written defending the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection.
Does this book contribute anything new? I will later detail what I
learned from this book, but, in response to the question of whether it
contributes anything earth-shakingly new to the debate, I would say that
it does not. It responds to skeptics with the usual apologetic spiel,
even though many of those skeptics have already raised objections to
that spiel. How about responding to their objections to the spiel,
rather than regurgitating the spiel itself? I will address how they
could have done this in the next item.
B. I have heard that, in writing a book review, I should avoid
talking about the book that I wish the authors had written and instead
focus on the book as it is. I am going to depart from that rule in this
item because I do believe that there are things that the authors could
have done to make this book better. This book could have responded to
skeptics without regurgitating the usual apologetic spiel, while still
being accessible to a broad audience who would not want to get lost in
scholarly minutiae. It could have done so by interacting with specific
topics. For example, there is the debate about whether Jesus’
resurrection in Paul’s writings was an exchange of a physical body for a
spiritual body (while the physical body remains in the grave) or a
resuscitation and transformation of a body: the latter option implies
the empty tomb, which apologists deem to be physical evidence for Jesus’
resurrection, whereas the former does not. There is debate about
whether Second Temple Judaism had a conception of resurrection that was a
bodily exchange rather than a bodily transformation; this is
significant because apologists in this book assert that Second Temple
Judaism only conceived of resurrection as physical transformation of a
dead body into a living body. On that basis, they argue that Jesus’
resurrection was physical, meaning early Christian belief in Jesus’
resurrection arose from Jesus’ resurrection itself and not from seeing a
ghost. Another debate is whether there are parallels between the
Gospels’ resurrection stories and themes in Greco-Roman literature; one
author in the book briefly touches on this, but more discussion would
have been helpful. And, if one wants to respond to Bart Ehrman’s
textual critical arguments, how about engaging some of the texts that he
cites—-the texts that he believes reflect theological revision on the
part of the proto-orthodox scribes—-rather than casually dismissing
Ehrman’s argument by saying that most of the differences among New
Testament versions are theologically insignificant? Such discussions
would have responded to skeptics in a fruitful, engaging, fairer, and
more interesting manner. It also would have brought these debates to a
broader audience.
C. The description of the book highlighted that the apologists were
Lutheran, and that made me wonder if they would add a distinct Lutheran
perspective to the debate. I saw that in this book occasionally. The
author of the introduction lists among his pieces of evidence for Jesus’
resurrection “the continual assertion by the disciples and apostles
that the living Christ was with them in the Eucharist and governing them
by his Spirit…” I vaguely recall a reference to baptismal
regeneration. There was also a discussion of Martin Luther’s conception
of faith. Overall, though, the distinctly Lutheran references were
rare. Much of the book was the usual apologetic spiel!
D. I did learn things from this book. A few of the authors referred
to scholar Craig Evans’ scholarship on Jewish burial. They argued that
the Sanhedrin ensured that crucified Jewish bodies were disposed of
properly, and that Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus may have been
commissioned by the Sanhedrin to ensure Jesus’ burial. That may differ
from seeing Joseph and Nicodemus as nobly stepping forward out of
devotion to Jesus (see John 19:38-39), but it does coincide with Acts
13:28-29’s statement that the Jewish leaders as a whole buried Jesus.
Mark Pierson refers to a scholarly source that disagrees with the
idea that Papias was historically unreliable. Papias is a significant
figure in debates about whether the Gospels are based on eyewitness
testimony.
Another author referred to a book about rabbinic views on Jesus’
resurrection, and another author mentioned Christian writings as early
as the sixteenth century (maybe earlier) that tried to harmonize the
Gospels’ resurrection stories.
C.J. Armstrong and Andrew DeLoach explore the nuances of mystery
religions, including the question of whether they focused on the
afterlife. They also discussed the difficulty in ascertaining what the
Mithra cult actually believed. Their essay was probably the best in the
book, even though it could have been more consistent. (Was Jesus myth
entering historical reality, or was Jesus different from other mythical
figures? The authors claimed both.)
E. Back to the issue of Jewish burial practices, John Bombaro states
in the book that “Scholarly opinion agrees with Craig that the Jews of
Jesus’s day fastidiously observed Torah burial mandates regardless of
the deceased’s economic status and circumstances.” Relying on the
synoptic Gospels, however, a number of Christians believe that the
Jewish authorities transgressed a lot of Passover laws in trying Jesus
(Craig Parton refers to this issue in an endnote). Were the Jewish
authorities fastidious in their Torah observance or not?
F. I think that the book based some of its prominent arguments on
certain assumptions. More than one author said that the disciples could
not have stolen Jesus’ corpse from the tomb because guards were at the
tomb site, as the Gospel of Matthew states. That assumes that the
Gospel of Matthew was historically accurate on this detail. The Gospel
of Mark, which many scholars believe is earlier, does not say there were
guards at Jesus’ tomb. More than one author said that the Roman and
Jewish authorities would have presented Jesus’ corpse to the public to
refute the emerging Christian movement, had Jesus’ tomb not been empty.
That assumes that the Roman and Jewish authorities were preoccupied
with Christianity. A few authors said that early Christian eyewitnesses
would have prevented historically-inaccurate details from getting into
the Gospels, but were things really that neat?
G. A few authors attempted to refute the skeptical idea that people
in the first century were especially gullible, and thus we cannot trust
the early Christian claim that Jesus rose from the dead. They did not
engage the examples that Richard Carrier has cited of this. And yet,
one of the authors did well to observe that the disciples in the Gospels
were initially skeptical after hearing that Jesus rose from the dead.
Granted, Jesus seems to rebuke their skepticism (Luke 24:25; John
20:29), but the Gospels present the disciples as the opposite of
gullible, perhaps showing some respect for critical thought.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher through Cross Focused Reviews. My review is honest!