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S5E1 - Intro to Historical Sources on the Resurrection

Risen Jesus — Mike Licona
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S5E1 - Intro to Historical Sources on the Resurrection

November 2, 2020
Risen Jesus
Risen JesusMike Licona

Welcome to Season 5! In this season, we'll be diving into the historical sources pertaining to the resurrection of Jesus and discussing how probable or helpful some of them are.

Mike Licona is associate professor of theology at Houston Baptist University. HBU offers a fully accredited Master of Arts degree in Christian Apologetics that can be completed entirely online or on the HBU campus in Houston. For more information, visit https://bit.ly/2Wlej6Z.

WEBSITE: https://www.risenjesus.com

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TWITTER: https://twitter.com/michaellicona

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Transcript

[Music]
Hello and welcome to the Risen Jesus Podcast with Dr. Mike Wicona. Dr. Wicona is Associate Professor of Theology at Houston Baptist University, and he's a frequent speaker on campuses, churches, retreats, and has appeared on dozens of radio and television programs. Mike is the President of Risen Jesus, of 501c3 nonprofit organization.
My name is Kurt Jarrus, your host.
On this season of the Risen Jesus Podcast, we'll be looking at the historical sources pertaining to the resurrection of Jesus. I'm happy to be with you here.
Mike, it's good to be with you as well. I'm glad that we're going to be going through the subject matter.
A lot of good episodes coming up here for this season.
Yeah, thanks, Kurt. Good to be back with you again. And if I remember correctly, you just recently got your PhD.
And so instead of Kurt Jarrus, how about, I hear some people are referring to now as Dr. J. So how about we just call you that? Yes, we could do that. Dr. J works. I'm a big basketball fan, so Dr. J. Julius Irving schooled people on the court back a few decades ago.
But yeah, that could work. Interesting story about my, my doctorate, my degree, specifically the piece of paper. You know, we're in a COVID world right now.
And there were some delays with getting me the piece of paper from Aberdeen because the workers had vacated the campus.
So I had to wait. I did receive it though, actually a couple weeks ago, but sort of a much longer delay than the normal process time.
So I had been sending constant messages about that. Well, well, congratulations on it. That's, that's huge.
And it's just great. Anyway, I think you, you earned it back.
You passed your oral defense back in the spring, but I remember when I passed my oral defense was in October of 2008, but I didn't get my diploma until shortly after.
I think it was April 2009 when, you know, they had the ceremony. I didn't even go to the ceremony. But yeah, I wasn't even allowed to refer to myself as, as Dr. Michael Lacona until I received that.
Yeah. Yeah. There's an interesting metaphysical question.
When is someone a doctor? Is it after they pass? Is it the piece of paper? At any rate.
Well, we're talking about the historical sources pertaining to the resurrection of Jesus this season. And it's a continuing saga, if you will, about this thick book, The Resurrection of Jesus, a new historiographical approach by Dr. Michael Lacona.
Published in 2010, the labor of love, Mikey spent what, like 10 years on this project, working on this, something like that. About a total of 10 years. Yeah.
So for some people, we've been going through the chapters and we started with looking at sort of the philosophy of history.
So a couple seasons ago, we asked some very important questions, like what is history? And history is Mike, as you said, it's, if I recall, it's an essentially contested concept. And even historians can't quite agree.
They can't quite be on the same page about what constitutes history.
And that's what we're trying to do here. So it's great that you sort of laid out these different positions and sort of to put it in more laymen's terms, the pros and cons of the positions.
But you also cautioned us about our biases or as you call them horizons and how we can overcome our horizons and that the starting place to do that is by being aware of them. And there are some camps that think you can't even overcome them, postmodernist philosophers. And they're the types of people that say you can't even do history anymore.
It's dead because of that.
But you and I are on the same page that no, as long as we're aware of them, that helps us to move forward so we can get to truth. Yeah, and let's just clarify.
Let me clarify something. It's not that we overcome our horizons because our horizons, it's the way we look at it's the grid we use to look at things.
Sorry, it's our education, our worldview, everything.
And we look at things that way we're not overcoming that. What we are doing is we are managing it to an extent that it's not guiding our investigation.
We're being we can be guided by the data rather than our horizons necessarily.
Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay.
Yes. Yes.
So it's a part of our lives, but it's something that while it affects our truth seeking, it doesn't entirely mean that we can't get ahold of truth, that we can access truth.
So we also talked about a fact and how maybe even a fact is also one of those essentially contested concepts and how we can use data. So it was very philosophical that first season on your book, season three of the podcast. And last season, season four, we looked at the historian and miracles.
And we went through a number of historians like David Hume and McCullough. And we spent a couple episodes talking about your relationship in the views with Bart Ehrman. And going through the shortcomings of those positions and how they were frequently guided by maybe some of those horizons or put in other way the philosophical assumptions that those historians had.
For example, that we can't think that a miracle claim is trustworthy. And that's not a at the root, and correct me if you disagree here, at the root, that's not a historical claim, but that's a philosophical one. So would that be fair to say? And so when historians may say, well, we can't investigate miracle claims, that's really a philosophical difference that we may have with someone.
Is that fair?
Yeah, that'd be fair. It's not to say that you can't trust them necessarily. It would be to say that the historian doesn't have the tools to adjudicate on whether a miracle had occurred.
And yeah, that's one of the objections to investigating miracle claims. Because a miracle would require God to perform the deed or a supernatural agent of some sort. And the historian doesn't possess the tools to be able to identify that agent or tell us anything about it.
And so therefore you couldn't investigate a miracle claim. That's the objection.
Yeah.
So that's part of the, as I keep thinking about horizons here, you lay them on the table basically. One of the ways to manage one's horizon is to make it known what one's method is.
And then that can help move the conversation forward or at the very least, maybe for readers or listeners to know where you're coming from in your position.
So if that is your position, where does that lead you? And so you are in the book, you've been laying the groundwork for performing history. And this chapter, you have an analogy of a farmer. And it's kind of like you could read a book on farming and how to do farming and all that.
And then you can go do farming. And there's a difference between the theory and the practical. And now moving forward, what you have a shift here, you go from the theoretical to the practical, doing the work of the historian.
And I'm sure there are going to be people that disagree with historical, your historical analysis, but at the same time, then you can point them back and say, well, here, go back and read this and see where I'm coming from. That's right. Yep.
And so there are going to be people who disagree with your historical conclusions.
And I'll have some questions for you about this chapter, about your rating system that you use for historical sources pertaining to Jesus. Could you maybe go through, if you recall, off the top of your head, that rating system and how that can help us in evaluating the evidence? Yeah.
So, you know, as I'm trying to approach this, the question of whether Jesus was raised from the dead, I'm trying to do it in a manner that is unbiased or open-minded as neutral as possible.
Now, of course, nobody is going to come at this with a neutral, you know, a neutral mind on it. It's going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to do, because we all have our own wishes.
I had mine.
I wanted to show that Jesus rose from the dead. So, by making my method public and say, okay, here's how I'm approaching it, someone can say, well, you know, your method is wrong.
Your understanding of how you're doing things, it's all misguided. And then we can talk about that. But if my method is sound, then they can see how I have applied the method, and if they think that I have applied it unfairly or in a misguided area, they can point that out.
So, that's the importance of making it public. Otherwise, if you're not going to criticize, say, my approach to history, my method, you know, what are you going to do? You just can't say it didn't happen. I'm presenting a step-by-step, strictly controlled process in order to manage my own bias to make sure as much as possible that it doesn't get in the way.
And that's why I articulate specifically what method I'm doing. You can criticize the method. You can criticize my application of the method.
But if you don't do either of those, and I arrive at the conclusion that Jesus rose, it can't be dismissed easily. So, yeah. I recall in a debate that you had with Bart Ehrman, that he accused you of being biased.
And is that a fair critique? Yeah, it's a fair critique. Of course, I'm biased. But it's unfair to then conclude that what I'm saying is not true, or not correct, that would be at a hominom argument.
You're just attacking the source rather than the credibility or the arguments that are being given. And yes, I'm biased. I want Christianity to be true when I was arguing investigating the resurrection of Jesus.
But I also pointed out that Bart himself is biased. And he has admitted this in his debates with me on the resurrection, and he has admitted it in one of his debates with Craig Evans. So, he said at one point, on a podcast with Justin Breyerley's Unbelievable, he accused me of being biased.
And I said, "Sure, I'm biased, but so are you." And Justin said, "How about it, Bart? Are you biased?" He says, "Well, of course I am. We all are." And I said, "Okay, well, too bad then. Does that mean that we can't trust Bart either?" And what he says, you know, it kind of hurts, but you can't saw off the branch and what you're sitting and still be on solid grounding.
Yeah, yeah. Good. All right, let me run through this rating system here that you employ in this chapter.
So, the rating chart is as follows. And it's rating the independent testimony to apostolic teaching. That's specifically how you're rating these sources.
Unlikely, possible minus, possible, possible plus, highly probable, indeterminate and not useful. So, let me ask you here. This is your sort of like, I mean, you're putting a scale here, you know, one to ten sort of thing.
What would indeterminate or not useful? How would that apply here? Okay. And, you know, I've had ten years to reflect on some of this stuff. And, yeah, I think, you know, whether it is independent testimony to the apostolic teaching or preaching at that time is important.
But we could also say, you know, is it independent testimony to what happened? So, if you have a Roman source, a non-Christian Roman source who would test to Jesus' death by crucifixion, it's not important to whether that is a testing to apostolic testimony. It is important, I mean, because they could just be a testing to what the Roman record said, and that would be important. So, I would kind of adjust that now ten years later to say independent testimony to what was being reported, the early reports about what happened to Jesus.
So, indeterminate would be the evidence, you know, if you're looking at a spectrum, and on here, it's like, it definitely did not happen. And here, it definitely happened. Right in the middle is, we just can't tell.
The evidence isn't good enough to rule either way. It doesn't even lean toward one side or the other. It's just indeterminate.
We don't have sufficient data to make a decision on this. Not useful would be something like, if we have a source, and it discusses Jesus, but for our purposes, it doesn't address whether he died or rose from the dead or, you know, what happened with his fate. Let's just say it was referring to one of his teachings.
Let's say you've got a Roman source, that non-Christian source that mentions that Jesus taught a parable about the good Samaritan.
All right, well, that source would be relevant for whether Jesus taught that parable, but it would not be useful. We'd say it's not useful when coming to our present topic, and that would be the death or the fate of Jesus.
What happened to him? Did he rise from the dead?
Good, and then the unlikely that there might be material... The evidence is sufficient. It strongly suggests that this did not happen. This report is false.
Yes, good. I was trying to clear up the difference between unlikely and indeterminate, but yeah, I think I follow the system there now. Good, and we'll get an opportunity over the coming episodes to look at a number of different types of sources, Christian sources, non-Christian sources.
We'll be looking later in the season at sort of non-canonical Christian literature, select the New Testament apocryphal sources, and we'll be looking at material that exists before the New Testament was even written. There's some great clues in the New Testament itself about content traditions, sayings that existed in the Christian community before Paul even wrote certain epistles, or even the Gospels before they were written. So it's exciting stuff, and it's an honor for me to be here with you creating this content.
I feel like even though this book's been out for ten years, I feel like I'm still on cutting-edge research here about history that's being done on the resurrection.
What's been the continued engagement with the book? Have you seen that researchers and historians have engaged in much critiqued it, or how has it been received in the academic community? Well, it seems like it's been received fairly well. You know, you would have those who would reject the conclusions at which I arrive.
They don't think that Jesus rose, or they don't think that historians can adjudicate on the matter, and they would have said in a few reviews that even though they don't agree with me, they think I did a fair treatment on the topic, and I might have been a little too
sanguine or optimistic about some too optimistic about some of the conclusions at which I arrive. Then you have those on the far right, some of them, not all of them, of course, but some of them have criticized me, and they don't like the fact that I would even, some of them don't like the fact that I would even assess the resurrection historically. It's like, okay, you just have to believe this by faith.
This is God's word that talks about the resurrection of Jesus, and to even ask the historical question means that you're questioning God on it.
Yeah, so those would be the major criticisms I would say. But yeah, but otherwise it seems like it's been received fairly well.
Gary Habermas, who is the foremost authority in the world on the resurrection, thinks it's the best book been written on the subject.
He's told me that he's told that to his class, the students in his classes that he thinks is the best book ever written on the subject. Now, of course, he's working on his magnum opus, but he's out in a few years.
And whereas my book is 700 and just a little over 700 pages.
I think he told me that right now, his is somewhere around 5,800. So he's going to make mine look like the reader's digest version.
It's a sort of thing that he's been working on for well over a decade.
You know, yeah, compiling all the research. Yeah, through his career.
He's probably been working on his for over 40 years. He's been working on the subject. So he really knows his stuff with it.
Yeah, good, good.
Well, hey, before we take a question from a listener, I do want to show these little tracks here that you have Mike did Jesus rise from the dead. RisenJesus.com. It's a great little track modern day track here.
You can go can we go back in time and discover the truth. So you've got some information there.
A sort of minimal facts approach there on the back.
These great tracks. If our listeners are interested in acquiring these tracks, you can contact Trevor Fox, who is the executive director of Defenders Media.
Now, you can contact him Trevor at defendersmedia.com as Trevor's email.
Great little things. I'm sure Trevor would be happy to send some out to people who are interested in getting some of that material.
All right, Mike, here's a question from one of your listeners and readers, Zach.
He asks, do you think that modern apologetics fails to help the opposition in their spiritual needs rather than dismantling their argument reason logic?
Okay, so the way I'm interpreting that question, the way I'm understanding it is Zach is asking whether contemporary apologetics is more interested in winning an argument than reaching the person. Yeah, reaching the person. Yeah.
And I would say apologetics in itself is neutral on that. It's the apologist. It's the person who is presenting the evidence that will either be doing what is right and being concerned about the person versus those that are just out to try to win an argument and have fun with it.
And a lot of us, when we get introduced into apologetics and see the arguments and start really developing our critical thinking skills, we have fun with it and we can do it in a way that's bad. That's prideful, that is more concerned with winning the argument than with the person. The more mature person is going to be more concerned with the person and be sensitive to that.
So I think it just depends on the person.
You can't blame apologetics for it. It's like, you know, be like blaming science or math.
The science, the medicine for people who practice it in a bad way.
Yeah, yeah, it's one thing I've observed, especially being on the internet quite a bit is you can see when a conversation is going nowhere. And at that point, I think whether the apologist learns from experience or maybe already has a good framework, they realize, "Hey, maybe I shouldn't use my time in this way and because you're not going to convince the person." And it may not even be a situation where there are the lurkers people reading on the web.
So it's good to pull out from there and say, "Hey, let's have a phone call."
Or, "Why don't we text or send some Marco Polo videos and start a relationship with someone instead of just arguing." And the Bible talks, has some warnings against corolling, being corollsome with people. So the apologist needs to be aware of that. It's a very good... It also talks about, you know, speaking the truth and love, answering provided defense with gentleness and respect.
So, yeah, if those things, if love, gentleness and respect aren't involved in the conversation, then something is going wrong. Yeah, yeah. Good.
Mike, great to connect with you again. I'm looking forward to the further episodes in this season on the historical sources pertaining to the resurrection and gender.
The resurrection of Jesus.
If you'd like to learn more about the work and ministry of Dr. Mike Lacona, please visit RisenJesus.com, where you can find authentic answers to genuine questions about the resurrection of Jesus, the historical reliability of the Gospels, and a host of other subjects that Dr. Lacona has written about.
It's there at the website. You can find free resources like his articles, blogs, videos, this podcast, and more.
Please be sure to subscribe to Dr. Lacona on Facebook. Follow him on Twitter. Subscribe to the YouTube channel.
We'd love to get your support in following on that platform.
And if you haven't yet already, you can subscribe on iTunes and the Google Play Store to this program as well. This has been the RisenJesus Podcast, a ministry of Dr. Mike Lacona.
[music]
[buzzer]

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