closer look at the Bible

In Sahih Bukhari we find the tale of a brave and beloved soldier who, shortly before The Battle of Khaibar, is declared by Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) to be hellbound. Everyone is shocked; there’s a certain amount of incredulity even amongst some devout believers. Then our apparently dauntless warrior winds up receiving a horrible wound in combat (it is hardly his first) and he responds by hastily grabbing a handful of arrows and committing suicide. And thus is the prophethood of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) confirmed for the doubters.
Bear in mind that we’re talking about an event that involved a crowd large enough to fight a battle. It’s possible that there were, say, five hundred people present to witness this suicide take place. The narrative gets related a half dozen times over with only minor discrepancies. Two different narrators tell it: Abu Huraira in Bukhari 52:297, 59:515 and 77:603, Sahl bin Sad as Saidi in 59:514, 59:518 and 76:500.
Saint Paul, on the other hand, is the only known person ever to claim that a risen Jesus appeared to five hundred people. (1 Corinthians 15:3-7) He must have been aware that a trek all the way from Corinth to Palestine would be impractical, time-consuming and dangerous. (In ancient times long distance travel was always somewhat of a bargain, remember.) And this is assuming that his addressees were interested in making such a journey in the first place, and that they had the faintest notion of who they were supposed to consult.
Nothing about his account conforms to any subsequent Resurrection narrative either. What the aforementioned passage says is:
“…I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.”
[1]
So when did Jesus appear to Mary or the other women, for example? (Cf. Matthew 27:57-28:9) Paul’s giving us a list of appearances, isn’t he? Likewise the Gospel writers certainly have no reason not to mention those five hundred people! And what is this about “the twelve”? If we’re talking about an event after Judas’s suicide and before Mathias’s selection, who then is this mystery man?
When arguing for the Resurrection Christian apologists will often make peculiar appeals to the martyrdom of early Christians. (You know, “These people wouldn’t have died for something they knew to be a lie,” et cetera.) There is a subtle double standard involved here. These apologists invariably denounced any and every part of The Qur’an which happens to contain one or two parallels with relatively late apocryphal literature, as if that’ll automatically disallow any remote chance of consideration. Then, five minutes later, they’re giving credence to tales of martyrdom which almost never get related anywhere in The New Testament itself because they came about purely through later legend.
If you want to know how weak a case there is for the historicity of these martyrdoms, just watch an educated person try to offer a defense:
“We know from the book of Acts that the apostle James was executed by Herod Antipas. We know from Josephus that James, the brother of Jesus was executed as well for his faith. Eusebius, the first church historian, reports the death by martyrdom of allthe apostles except for John. John was exiled to Patmos, but later released, dying soon thereafter as an old man. Eusebius is generally fairly reliable, but definitely not completely reliable.He himself relied on other sources. The martyrdom of Peter and Paul is quite well established by many early church witnesses besides Eusebius. I think we can conclude that the two James, Peter and Paul were definitely executed for their faith, and probably the majority of the others were as well, but we are less certain about the means and timing of their deaths. I would not stake my faith or that of other people on the sure statement that all the apostles except John were executed. Having said that, the argument still stands. We know that all the apostles were very strongly persecuted, threatened with death, and several of them (although we are not sure how many) were in fact executed for their faith, yet all the evidence is that not one of them ever gave the slightest hint of denying their faith or the claim of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.”
[2]
Heaven knows there are all sorts of early Islamic martyrs I could’ve pointed to but I don’t think this argument deserves to have a great deal of time devoted to it. By all means feel free to research issues like whether Revelation was written by the apostle John and what Josephus actually said about the death of James the Just. As long as we’re on the subject of Eusebius though, let me leave it at this citation from “Church History”. Here, Eusebius is quoting an earlier Christian apologist, on the subject of an antecedent heresy:
“When therefore they are at a loss, being refuted in all that they say, they try to take refuge in their martyrs, alleging that they have many martyrs, and that this is sure evidence of the power of the so-called prophetic spirit that is with them. But this, as it appears, is entirely fallacious. For some of the heresies have a great many martyrs; but surely we shall not on that account agree with them or confess that they hold the truth. And first, indeed, those called Marcionites, from the heresy of Marcion, say that they have a multitude of martyrs for Christ; yet they do not confess Christ himself in truth.”
[3]
But in the end the whole thing comes down to that empty tomb, doesn’t it? Is it a fact or not? And if it is a fact, can it be explained? William Lane Craig wants you to believe that the empty tomb is practically an open-and-shut case. A majority of New Testament scholars believe in it, he tells us. [4] I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that were true; after all a majority of New Testament scholars are Christians, and were so before their training. It would be no more necessarily meaningful if we were to read about a poll stating that the majority of Koranic scholars believe in the inspiration of The Qur’an. And yet the “New Catholic Encyclopedia” has it that “contemporary NT scholars continue to debate the historical veracity of the tradition of the open-empty tomb”. [5] A majority there may well be but it hardly looks like the battle is lost even on such a Christian-dominated battleground.
Another argument of Craig’s [4] (as well as most everyone these days: you’ll find it in the “Handbook of Christian Apologetics”,[6] in “Jesus: The Evidence”, [7] and so forth) is that no one would have invented such a detail as a group of women coming across the empty tomb. Women weren’t given much credence in those days so any inauthentic account wouldn’t have put them in the role of the discoverers. This isn’t the appropriate time to go over said argument. There’s a trick to it, you see, and I want to know if you’ll catch on yourself before I go over the issue with you.
Craig claims that since “the earliest Jewish response [to the Resurrection story] presupposes the [reality of the] empty tomb” this makes said reality look all the likelier. [4] But again the “New Catholic Encyclopedia” begs to differ:
“The guarding of the tomb (requested by a Jewish leadership unaware of Jesus’ passion-resurrection prophecies, and not until the day after his burial), the defeat of the guards by the apocalyptic angel (a pre-Matthean or Matthean figure depicted to interpret the open-empty tomb), and therefore the payment of the guards to secure their silence (Mt 28.11-15) cannot be understood as historical data. Since this material, however, is taken seriously in Mt, the possibility suggests itself that neither the Christian story of the guarding of the tomb, nor the Jewish story of the disciples’ theft of the corpse, nor the Christian story of the payment of the guards were originally historical assertions but forms of theological debate, probably (but not necessarily) over the religious significance of the open-empty tomb. But what precisely such a theological debate might have centered upon is not presently ascertainable.” [8]
The “Handbook” would have it that there are exactly five ways of understanding what happened on that first Easter morning: either Jesus actually was resurrected, the appearances of the risen Christ were hallucinations, there was some sort of conspiracy, swoon theory is true (i.e. Jesus survived the crucifixion and entombment), or the whole thing is a myth based on a normal person who never performed any miracles. [9] Even were I not a Muslim I’d still find that classification somewhat of a false dilemma, or at least a false characterization. That “myth” pigeonhole is so very misleading. (In fact I kind of dislike the words “myth” and “mythology” just in general. There seems to be a tinge of inherent chronological snobbery to them.) “Urban legend” is much better here, although I’d settle for “embellishment of the facts”. And once you start thinking about the topic in such terms it should be easier for everything to fall into place for you.
Anyone who’s an avid enough reader of snopes.com will know that it takes no time flat for a story to get grossly exaggerated—in some cases distorted beyond recognition. Craig purports that the 1 Corinthians passage can be dated to within five years of the crucifixion. [4] How anyone can possibly know that about such a short and simple statement is something these apologists never quite explain. But all the same it happens.
Take, for example, the case of Ashley Revell. In 2004 he sold all of his worldly possessions and traveled from his homeland of England to Las Vegas just so that he could bet his life savings on one single roll of the roulette wheel. (I don’t know why he went all the way to Vegas for this. There are casinos in The United Kingdom.) Somehow he won. And somehow this true story didn’t prove dramatic enough for the human psyche. As it passed from ear to ear and casino to casino it got more elaborate and dramatic than it already was, and then yet more elaborate still—over the course of a mere three years. By the end the most well-known version of the tale involved a rich businessmen betting an entire million—and then returning to the same casino to do it all over again a year later. [10] [11] Who knows what became of that story after a further two years on the grapevine?
I’ve given info in the past which should help to explain why the Gospels were actually written by anonymous authors [12] but by now that’s common knowledge anyway outside of (and in some cases inside) highly evangelical circles. When it comes to said fact (ditto for the order in which the Gospels were written) I’m beginning to see no point in bothering to cite sources or offer arguments. If you don’t already know these things then you should probably be reading about them right now instead of reading this.