Responding To My Critics On Christianity

Where the critics have changed my mind and where they haven't

1 Introduction

I recently wrote an essay about why I’m not a Christian. In it, I expressed skepticism about the burial of Jesus and the empty tomb. Several commenters have pushed back against my skepticism. For this reason, I thought I’d do a deeper dive into the subject and consider the arguments on both sides in more detail. Thanks especially to Caleb Jackson for raising many of the points that changed my mind.

The first three sections of this article will be specifically about why I changed my mind on the burial. The later sections will be about other objections and things I got wrong.

Why does the burial matter? A core part of the case for Christianity comes from the evidence for the empty tomb. If Jesus’s tomb was found empty, this fact is strong evidence for Christianity. If he rose, his tomb being empty is guaranteed; if not, it’s quite unlikely. However, for the tomb to have been found empty, Jesus would have had to have been buried in a tomb. While one can theoretically think he was thrown in a mass grave that was later found empty, if Jesus was thrown in a mass grave with other criminals, it would have been harder to later verify he wasn’t there.

Additionally, if he was really buried, it would have been easy to verify that his body was still in the tomb, and therefore, that he hadn’t risen. It’s hard to see how early Christianity could have taken off if Jesus remained in a tomb at a known location.

Here, I’ll explore the main arguments on both sides. But first, let me explain the texts from which the burial accounts are drawn. 1 Corinthians 15 contains an early creed dating to just a few years after Jesus’s death on the cross:

³ For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance^[a]: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, ⁴ that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, ⁵ and that he appeared to Cephas,^[b] and then to the Twelve. ⁶ After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. ⁷ Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, ⁸ and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

Each of the Gospels describe the burial in more detail. Mark 15 says:

⁴³ Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Council, who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body. ⁴⁴ Pilate was surprised to hear that he was already dead. Summoning the centurion, he asked him if Jesus had already died. ⁴⁵ When he learned from the centurion that it was so, he gave the body to Joseph. ⁴⁶ So Joseph bought some linen cloth, took down the body, wrapped it in the linen, and placed it in a tomb cut out of rock. Then he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. ⁴⁷ Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joseph saw where he was laid.

While I won’t quote them all, the same stories can be found in Matthew, Luke, and John. Ordinarily, when facts are included in all four Gospels, historians think they probably happened, unless they’re particularly outlandish. The question, therefore, is whether there’s a good reason to doubt the burial.

2 The best arguments against

Bart Ehrman used to believe in the burial and empty tomb but does no longer. He marshals two main classes of argument in his book How Jesus Became God. The first is based on the text itself: Paul, in the early Corinthian creed, doesn’t mention Joseph of Arimathea. Often the new testament added stories about bad guys turning good—the thieves on the cross both mocked Jesus in Mark, but in Luke, one of them praised him.

I don’t find any of this very convincing. Sure, the New Testament sometimes made up stories of villains turning away from their wickedness and turning to Jesus, but this was relatively rare. Generally when the New Testament does this, we have conflicting accounts between the Gospels, but Joseph’s burial in the tomb is attested in all four Gospels. Additionally, the Gospels progress in the direction of blaming the Jews and Sanhedrin more over time—it’s not super likely, therefore, that they’d make a member of the Sanhedrin one of the good guys.

The fact that Joseph’s name isn’t mentioned in 1 Corinthians seems relatively insignificant! Paul also didn’t mention who Jesus’s mother was—saying merely that he was born to a woman—and merely says he died for ours sins, without mentioning how he died. Creeds like the one in 1 Corinthians were supposed to be short and memorable. There was no need for them to include names and dates.

I originally found Ehrman’s second argument more convincing. Ehrman argues that in the ancient world, when people were crucified, they almost always remained up on the cross and then were thrown into a mass grave. He writes:

Evidence for this comes from a wide range of sources. An ancient inscription found on the tombstone of a man who was murdered by his slave in the city of Caria tells us that the murderer was “hung . . . alive for the wild beasts and birds of prey.” The Roman author Horace says in one of his letters that a slave was claiming to have done nothing wrong, to which his master replied, “You shall not therefore feed the carrion crows on the cross” (Epistle 1.16.46–48). The Roman satirist Juvenal speaks of “the vulture [that] hurries from the dead cattle and dogs and corpses, to bring some of the carrion to her offspring” (Satires 14.77–78). The most famous interpreter of dreams from the ancient world, a Greek Sigmund Freud named Artemidorus, writes that it is auspicious for a poor man in particular to have a dream about being crucified, since “a crucified man is raised high and his substance is sufficient to keep many birds” (Dream Book 2.53). And there is a bit of gallows humor in the Satyricon of Petronius, a onetime advisor to the emperor Nero, about a crucified victim being left for days on the cross (chaps. 11–12).

While the sources each reference people being left up on the cross, none of them indicated it was the universal practice, or discussed how long people were left up on the cross for. Thus, none seem to indicate very clearly that being left on the cross was standard practice. In contrast, we have evidence from a document called the Digesta, summarizing common Roman practices, that burial was standard:

“The bodies of those who are condemned to death should not be refused their relatives; and the Divine Augustus, in the Tenth Book of his Life, said that this rule had been observed. At present, the bodies of those who have been punished are only buried when this has been requested and permission granted; and sometimes it is not permitted, especially where persons have been convicted of high treason. Even the bodies of those who have been sentenced to be burned can be claimed, in order that their bones and ashes, after having been collected, may be buried.”

The Digesta also says:

The bodies of persons who have been punished should be given to whoever requests them for the purpose of burial.

While the Digesta was written later, it summarizes which practices were previously common nearer to the time of Jesus. Additionally, as Broussard notes:

The burial of crucified individuals is further supported by the 1968 discovery of the ossuary at Giv’at ha-Mivtar, a neighborhood in Jerusalem, of one Yehohanan, who had been crucified. The remains of an iron spike 11.5 centimeters in length still pierced the right heel bone.

In response to this, John Dominic Crossan writes:

“With all those thousands of people crucified around Jerusalem in the first century alone, we have so far found only a single crucified skeleton, and that, of course, preserved in an ossuary. Was burial, then, the exception rather than the rule, the extraordinary rather than the ordinary?”

However, Dale Allison convincingly rebuts this argument of Crossan. Allison writes:

Yet, as others have observed, the remains of victims who were tied up rather than nailed would show no signs of having been crucified.74 Additionally, the nails used in crucifixion—which some prized as amulets75—were pulled out at the site of execution (cf. Gos. Pet. 6:21), presumably for reuse, and so not entombed with the bodies.76 The only reason we know that the man in the ossuary from Giv’at ha-Mivtar was crucified is that a nail in his right heel bone could not be removed from the wood: it remained stuck in a knot. In the words of Byron McCane,

“If there had not been a knot strategically located in the wood of Yehohanan’s cross, the soldiers would have easily pulled the nail out of the cross. It never would have been buried with Yehohanan, and we would never have known that he had been crucified. It is not surprising, in other words, that we have found the remains of only one crucifixion victim: it is surprising that we have identified even one.”

Lastly, Ehrman’s sources only tell us about general practices. None are specific to Jerusalem during that time. The Jews of the period opposed allowing people to be kept up, as Deuteronomy 21:22-23 says:

“And if a man has committed a sin worthy of death, and he is to be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree: his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but though shalt in any wise bury him that day.”

Thus, given the Jews opposed leaving people up on the cross, the question is simply: would the Romans have listened to them? But we have evidence that they did often honor requests to take a crucified criminal down. The Jewish historian Josephus tells us:

Nay, they proceeded to that degree of impiety, as to cast away their dead bodies without burial, although the Jews used to take so much care of the burial of men, that they took down those that were condemned and crucified, and buried them before the going down of the sun.

In addition, it seems the Romans had a policy of being generally deferential to Jewish practices. An Edict of Augustus declares:

Since the nation of the Jews and Hyrcanus, their high priest, have been found grateful to the people of the Romans, not only in the present but also in the past, and particularly in the time of my father, Caesar, imperator, it seems good to me and to my advisory council, according to the oaths, by the will of the people of the Romans, that the Jews shall use their own customs in accordance with their ancestral law, just as they used to use them in the time of Hyrcanus, the high priest of their highest god; and that their sacred offerings shall be inviolable and shall be sent to Jerusalem and shall be paid to the financial officials of Jerusalem; and that they shall not give sureties for appearance in court on the Sabbath or on the day of preparation before it after the ninth hour.

If they showed any deference to Jewish customs, they would have followed the highly important customs about burial of the dead. Caleb Jackson informs me that “there are exactly zero sources that mention Romans denying burial in Israel prior to the Jewish War.” The AIs I asked seemed to indicate the same.

Now, there is one source that Ehrman cites which is more relevant to the surrounding period. Philo, writing near the time of Jesus, writes:

“Rulers who conduct their government as they should and do not pretend to honour but do really honour their benefactors make a practice of not punishing any condemned person until those notable celebrations in honour of the birthdays of the illustrious Augustan house are over… I have known cases when on the eve of a holiday of this kind, people who have been crucified have been taken down and their bodies delivered to their kinsfolk, because it was thought well to give them burial and allow them the ordinary rites. For it was meet that the dead also should have the advantage of some kind treatment upon upon the birthday of the emperor and also that the sanctity of the festival should be maintained.

This passage from Philo seems to indicate that the practice described was rare and performed only in exceptional cases. This seems to conflict with the reports in the Digesta. Ultimately, I find it pretty unclear who to believe—Philo or the Digesta. But the more specific evidence seems to indicate a nontrivial degree of deference to Jewish practices. This argument doesn’t seem very decisive either way; there is, therefore, no especially strong reason to think the Romans would have refused to give Jesus a proper burial.

Many other arguments are made for the burial being fictitious. Dale Allison convincingly rebuts them in his chapter on the subject.

One such argument: Acts 13:29 says of the people of Jerusalem “And though they found no cause of death in him, yet desired they Pilate that he should be slain.” This seems to describe the people burying Jesus, not Joseph of Arimathea. This is, however, unconvincing.

First, Acts was written by the same author as the Gospel of Luke. The author of Luke wrote clearly of the burial by Joseph. Thus, it seems that the author of Luke and Acts was simply engaged in a bit of loose talk.

Second, it could be that Joseph was with other people when he buried Jesus in a tomb. Dale Allison writes:

Even were one to attribute Acts 13:29 to pre-Lukan tradition, it remains that the verse depicts not Romans but Jews laying Jesus to rest. This agrees with Mark. Further, the plurals in Acts (“they took him down…and they laid him in a tomb”) line up with the plural of Mk 16:6 (“the place where they laid him”; cf. also Jn 19:31). Assuming, then, that the Second Gospel presents Joseph as more or less a sympathetic character, the hypothesized rival tradition in Acts would differ only on the issue of motive, and that is scarcely enough to negate the historical core of Mk 15:42-46.

Third, this could be an embellishment by the author of Luke, who was dissatisfied with the idea that the Sanhedrin showed favor to Jesus.

The final argument that moves me the most: I think it’s doubtful there was an empty tomb. This is primarily for a rather straightforward reason: most tombs aren’t empty. While one with a high credence in Christianity should think the tomb was probably empty, if one thinks Christianity is independently unlikely, they should also think the tomb was probably empty. Consequently, they should doubt the burial.

Still, while this argument has some force, it’s not overwhelmingly decisive. The burial narrative could be accurate while the empty tomb true. Additionally, the evidence against the empty tomb is also not at all overwhelming. One could easily go either way. Thus, the burial is still not terribly unlikely.

3 The best arguments for

Probably the best evidence for the burial comes from the creed in 1 Corinthians. This creed dates to just a few years after Jesus’s death on the cross. It’s unlikely they’d have made up the burial just a few years after it allegedly occurred—when people could have easily investigated the matter for themselves.

Similarly, it’s extremely unlikely that Paul would have used the term “was buried” to denote being thrown in a mass grave. Dale Allison notes:

According to the old confession in 1 Cor. 15:4, Jesus “died” and “was buried” (ἐτάφη).88 The first meaning of the verb, θάπτω, is “honor with funeral rites, especially by burial” (LSJ, s.v.). Nowhere in Jewish sources, furthermore, does the formula, “died…and was buried,” refer to anything other than interment in the ground, a cave, or a tomb. So the language of the pre-Pauline formula cannot have been used of a body left to rot on a cross. Nor would the unceremonious dumping of a cadaver onto a pile for scavengers have suggested ἐτbάφη. Such a fate would not have been burial but its denial. The retort that Paul wrote “was buried,” not “buried in a tomb,” is specious. Just as “was cremated” implies, for us, “was cremated into ashes,” so “was buried” entailed, in Paul’s world, interment of some sort.

Jerusalem was a fairly small place—less than one square mile—so whether Jesus was buried or not would have been public knowledge.

Several other features—noted by Allison—point in the direction of Jesus having been buried. First of all, the account in Mark is pretty early. It shows no signs of literary embellishments. In light of multiple early attestations combined with minimal embellishment, the claim looks relatively believable. Allison once again:

Mark’s laconic account contains neither fantastic elements nor explicit Christian motifs. Günther Bornkamm judged it to be “concise, unemotional and without any bias.”111 Ludgar Schenke agreed: “the story is matter-of-fact and without obvious theological ‘tendency.’”112 More than this, if we set aside Aus’ suggestions, it does not appear to be an example of what Crossan has called “prophecy historicized.” The only element in Mark’s adaptation that we might plausibly trace to scripture is burial before sundown.113 This could, one might urge, come straight out of Deut. 21:22-23 (cf. Josh. 8:29; 10:17-18). Yet because Jews in reality tried to fulfill the Mosaic prescription, we can just as easily suppose that the historical actors obediently followed the pentateuchal text. For the rest, and as already observed, it is perhaps surprising, given early Christian interest in Isaiah 53, that Mark’s story of Joseph fails to accommodate 53:9: “they made his grave with the wicked.”

Second, we have no accounts of anyone disputing the burial, even among early opponents of Christianity. While this is by no means decisive, it’s far more expected under the assumption Jesus was buried than on the assumption he was not.

Third, there’s broad agreement among scholars that very few of those present in the Markan passion narrative are made up. Only one other person, plus Joseph of Arimathea, are in serious doubt. In light of this, it’s pretty unlikely Joseph was simply made up out of whole cloth. If he was, there could still have been a burial, just one embellished with extra details.

Fourth, rock tombs, of the sort described, were common in Jerusalem, but mostly had by the wealthy. Thus, it’s logical that Joseph would have one—as described.

I remain a bit uncertain about the burial. I don’t think there are knockdown arguments either way. But overall, our best evidence seems to point in the direction of it being accurate. The most decisive line of evidence comes, in my view, from 1 Corinthians early proclamation, combined with multiple attestation from sources lacking much embellishment. In light of this, it’s decently likely Jesus was buried in a tomb. Whether he remained there is, of course, another story.

4 Commenters

Many people left interesting comments about the article. There were way too many to address them all in detail, but let me just respond to some of them.

In response to my claims about scripture not making sense,

Sean Luke

(blog here) argued that the Bible has a remarkable internal coherence. I wasn’t very convinced by his case—not surprising you can find a few similarities—but I found it thoughtful and interesting. It’s the sort of claim that will probably have to be right for non-liberal versions of Christianity to be true. He also linked to defenses of the Trinity and atonement which I haven’t read yet, but look interesting.

Alec had another interesting comment. He noted that on my view, God is extremely hidden. No one knows much about him—each of the major religions are right. This is a bit surprising; we should expect the God who makes the world to be reachable. Aron Wall (more on him later) added:

One could strengthen Alec's argument (the first one) by making it about salvation and not just revelation. That is, a lot of people have an intuition that there is something deeply wrong about the human race as it exists, and that in some way we need to be rescued from a spiritually bad situation. (As evidence that this isn't just the influence of Christianity, I note that Buddhism agrees with Christianity on this intuition. Even though it isn't necessarily theistic, and even though it has a very different notion of what the problem and solution are, it agrees that people start out in a nonideal situation and that a radical change is required in order to escape.)

If this intuition is correct, then one might think that God, if he exists, would want to provide a means of "salvation" to the human race, or at least to some individuals who earnestly ask him for it. Now, Universalism might mitigate this somewhat, if you think that God basically guarantees a better situation in the next life, and that this is good enough. But you might still think that God should provide something concrete to people in THIS life---at the very least, some sort of assurance of future forgiveness and salvation. And if so, it is much easier to see how that would work in the context of a particular religion like Christianity, rather than generic mostly hidden theism.

I don’t think this is crazy. On theism, we should think it’s decently likely that God would reveal himself. But it’s not guaranteed. There are lots of good things that God doesn’t do in the world—cure cancer, for instance. In light of this, so long as God connects with people across all major religions, it doesn’t seem that shocking that he doesn’t give any one group of people privileged access into his character.

Cjore had another comment that I found extremely interesting:

Great post! I have a lot of thoughts here, but I'll focus on the burial of Jesus... you say "In short, I find these statistical arguments more compelling than the specific accounts."

However, this seems to run afoul of our intuitions about the evidential force of testimony. For example, the prior probability that my friend got in an accident on the way to my house is very small (< 0.01) but his testimony to that effect would be strong evidence that he did, in fact, get in an accident.

Obviously, we can point to dissimilarities (e.g. if you don't think the account of Jesus' burial originated with eyewitnesses, then we don't have eyewitness testimony of the burial) but the general principle stands: we should prioritize direct testimony over background statistical considerations, since things that violate statistical norms happen all the time. There's nothing particularly implausible about Joseph of Arimathea burying Jesus, and the fact that it shows up so strongly in the tradition should make us think twice before letting statistical considerations trump specific evidence.

Regarding specific arguments for burial: from a historical-critical perspective, I find Dale Allison's treatment more even-handed than Ehrman's. He replies to Ehrman directly at a few points, and ultimately concludes historicity (though tentatively).

That said, I'm in the so-called "maximal data" camp, preferring to engage the gospels holistically. I think a fairly strong case can be mounted for their reliability—especially Luke's. But that's a topic for another time. :)

I replied:

Thanks, that's an interesting point !

Testimony doesn't have as much evidential force as you're treating it as having, because it has strictly more evidential force when about more specific things. If someone tells me their phone number, that testimony has a massive Bayes factor, because it's so unlikely they'd assert that sequence of digits if it was false.

It's especially unlikely when there's a plausible account of how it could falsely have arisen. If the early Christians thought that there was a resurrection, it's not surprising that they'd come to believe in an empty tomb.

I'm not much moved by the maximal data argument, but it's way above my paygrade to evaluate as I'm not a historian.

Still, I think Cjore is basically right that testimony has significant evidential force, even when the thing it’s testimony to has limited independent plausibility. Cjore also tipped me off to the point Allison makes about the 1 Corinthians creed pointing to burial.

Hunter Coates replies to me:

Putting aside your views on the inspiration of scripture (because i’m not an inerrantist; I also happen to have higher than a 130 IQ), your a priori evangelical assumption that “atonement” is the reason why Jesus became incarnate (maybe I missed this but you never once mentioned theosis?? Literally the key idea in all the early church fathers??), your incessant need to be rational about things related to God as a “being” so thus your denial of the Trinity (which also I agree can’t be rationalized á la pseudo-Tertullian), your only really damming (shall we say ;)) critique that makes you incapable of being Christian in any way shape or form is your denial of the resurrection.

And I don’t think you gave a probable explanation to explain Paul’s experience (and btw the empty tomb is mentioned in 1 Cor 15; see Graig’s 2024 book which at one point analyzes the grammar) nor does the straightforward “mythical development” jive as much anymore in NT scholarship for good reason (see especially Allison’s 2010 book); and, in the end, like for Paul and the disciples, the resurrection isn’t proven with syllogisms it’s experienced and lived. Or as Badiou puts it beautifully, the resurrection is the ineffable Event.

But as I say in the essay, it’s not just that the Trinity is hard to understand. It’s that it makes various assertions that are implausible but that you can easily see how they’d have come to be asserted in the surrounding context. It’s not just that the Trinity seems wrong—it’s that it’s easy to see how it could have come to be falsely believed.

I agree non-Christians just have to take the probabilistic hit on Paul. Something weird happened to Paul that’s better expected given Christianity than given its falsity.

5 Some later thoughts

For the reasons I lay out in the essay, I think the Trinity and atonement are very puzzling. They’re evidence against Christianity because it’s easier to see how they could arise falsely than truly. However, I’ve had some thoughts about how to make sense of them.

Regarding the Trinity, I think we can make sense of the Trinity as God’s three processions, each with different relations to time. But first, let me whet your appetite for multiple persons with a simple example.

Suppose—for an analogy from Brian Leftow used to explain the trinity—that I time travel back in time and meet my six-year-old self. It seems that I am different from my two-year-old self even though we are the same person. You might think time travel is impossible, but for this example, just pretend it’s possible. The point is conceptual—about how language works.

Okay, now for another example: suppose that B-theory is true and time is relative to a universe. Thus, there might be different universes with totally different timelines. Suppose there’s a copy of me in each universe. It seems that the mes across universes are both me—identical in being—but distinct in person.

This is analogous to how my present self and my past self are both me, but they exist at different times. They’re identical to me—in being—but not to each other. They’re not separate persons, admittedly, but they are non-identical but separate in being. This avoids intransitivity worries.

With this out of the way, we can finally get to the account of the Trinity. The core idea: each member of the Trinity represents a version of God with a different relation to time.

Theists often disagree about God’s relation to time. There are basically four views that I know of:

1. God is simply eternal in the past.

2. God is timeless.

3. God is timeless sans creation and temporal in creation.

4. God existed in a single moment before creating the rest of time—there’s no fact of the matter relating how long this duration was.

The core idea of this account of the Trinity: why not all three? Why not have The Father exist outside of time, then beget the son who is God in the single non-metric time before the rest of the timeline is made. After that, they together—or separately, depending on your views on the Filioque—spirate the spirit, who is God as he exists in time. Because the past is infinite, each of the divine persons are coequal and coeternal.

Each of the divine persons, have identical wills and an identical soul. They differ in persons, just as one would be a different person from the copy of them in a wildly different timeline. (You could also maybe say that there was some distinct proto-time which one of the persons occupied if you don’t like some of the details).

Why three? Well, that’s the maximum number there could be, because that’s the number of distinct “stages” of time. Divine persons are good, so there are as many as there can be. If this is right, the maximum number is three.

Now, I still find this account suspicious. It might also be heretical. But it’s a fun idea to think about, and seems like an interesting account of the Trinity.

On the atonement, I actually have a model that strikes me as more plausible. It’s quite similar to the account that Robin Collins gives as well as the Eastern Orthodox view. In fact, it’s similar enough to Collins’s view that I’m not sure if I just slightly misunderstood his view and this is the real notion. The short idea: God becomes incarnate so he can display every virtue and so that we can come to know him in this life. Were he to remain in the clouds, he could never display courage and self-sacrifice for the sake of others.

As a result of him taking on every virtue, he comes to deeply connect with people—in this life and the next. This connection washes away our sins because we connect with Jesus so deeply, in his great benevolence, that we come to see the error of our sinful ways. Just as being friends with Gandhi might cause you to temper your violent impulses, being deeply connected with Jesus who displays every virtue helps erode our sinful ways.

On this picture, the atonement serves two functions:

1. By allowing Jesus to express every virtue, it deepens the value of our connection with him. A relationship with someone who possesses more virtues is generally better.

2. Jesus expressing the virtues and then connecting to us wipes away our vice. The connection is deep enough that our bad behavior is wiped away—particularly in the next life.

I actually find this pretty plausible. If God is to provide us with the greatest gift, it seems it will involve the best sort of connection with him. It seems plausible, therefore, that he’d take on every virtue so that our connection can be maximally deepened.

On the argument from prophecy: one of my worries has been about false positives. It's easy, in a big corpus, to find things like they point in various directions. So on the hypothesis that the argument from prophecy fails, I'd expect there to be many other passages from ancient literature that sound like they're about Jesus. About 7% of ancient writings from before 200 that have survived are from the Bible, so we'd expect the Bible to contain ~7% of the passages that sound most like they're about Jesus. In fact, it seems the Bible contains all the most impressive passages that sound like they're about Jesus!

Note, this is a pretty rough estimate. It could be quite a bit less or maybe more, but 7% was at the higher end. I got this number from asking AI to do a pretty rough Fermi estimate.

I could find a few others that sounded sort of like they were about Jesus—e.g. this passage in the Republic:

The just man will have to endure the lash, the rack, chains, the branding-iron in his eyes, and finally, after every extremity of suffering, he will be crucified, and so will learn his lesson that not to be just, but to seem just, is what we ought to desire."

If this were in the Bible, it would clearly be counted as a Biblical prophecy—but likely a less impressive example than either Psalm 22, Wisdom 2, or Isaiah 53. This argument, if right, would seem very decisive. If all the passages that most parallel the life of Jesus in antiquity are from the Bible, that would be quite considerable evidence! Certainly this is not at all expected if Christianity is false—if we think that Biblical sources and non-Biblical sources have equal probabilities of containing the passages that most sound like they’re about Jesus, given that about 7% of preserved writing from antiquity is in the Bible, we’d expect all the main passages to be from outside the Bible.

For those skeptical: there’s an easy way to refute this. Find passages in antiquity that sound more like they’re about Jesus than Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, Zechariah 12, and Wisdom 2.

6 Apologetics Squared

I just (at the time of writing this) got off the phone with Apologetics Squared (that is his real name) about the criticisms I raised in my article. I’ve joked that Apologetics Squared is what I would be if I were raised Christian—he and I have shockingly similar philosophical views. There have been many times when he and I have had exactly the same idea for an argument wholly independently—one that has, to the best of our knowledge, been formulated by no one else. Our main disagreement: he’s a Christian and I’m not.

He raised a variety of criticisms of my article. The biggest one was that he was skeptical of inferring Jesus’s non-divinity from passages of him saying weird things. For instance, I cited the passage where Jesus tells people to eat his flesh. Seems weird! But it would be equally weird for a Jew of the surrounding time period—weirder in fact! In context, therefore, it’s pretty clear he was not speaking literally.

In context, the Jews seemed weirdly focused on food. Jesus was giving his teaching about being the source of eternal life. In response, they said:

“Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? ³¹ Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” ³² Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. ³³ For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” ³⁴ They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

Thus, Jesus was saying that he himself was the bread, to divert the conversation away from food! In context, the things he was saying make sense in light of his divine message. There are lots of passages of Jesus saying stuff that seems weird on its face, but it usually has a plausible allegorical meaning. For example, in Matthew 20:15, Jesus tells a story of workers in a vineyard who do different amounts of grace but get the same pay. Clearly he’s not literally talking about how to run a vineyard, but instead making a broader point. He’s saying that those saved by grace shouldn’t grumble about having different amounts of good work, but instead should just be glad that they’re all saved.

I partially agree with this response. I was probably too unimaginative in interpreting the weird-sounding bits of various passages. I leaned too much on “X sounds weird” as being all that was needed for the inference that X was evidence against Christianity.

There are many things that would be bad for a mere human to say but permissible for God to say. For instance “I am God.” In light of this, many of his claims—e.g. about how you should love him more than your family—begin to look more plausible.

Another point he made: philosophy is hard! We can’t do experiments in ethics, so we should expect to often be confused. People in 1200 would be very surprised by our method for building airplanes. For this reason, one shouldn’t be that surprised about the Trinity or atonement—we should expect lots about reality to be surprising.

I think this response has some bite. Still, so long as there’s a more plausible natural account of how these beliefs would develop, they’re evidence against Christianity. It’s a question of relative probabilities. As I explained in the article I think there’s a very plausible natural account of the development of these.

He also made some interesting points about the Trinity that made it seem a bit more plausible. It seems awareness and experience are aware. You can have an experience of X without being aware of that. If this is right, therefore, it’s not clear why one couldn’t have multiple distinct streams of experience connected to one mind—each with their own personality.

Additionally, minds are pretty mysterious—in all of metaphysically possible mindspace, it shouldn’t be that surprising for it to be possible for multiple minds to be one being.

Now the question is, of course, why three? It seems the best number would be infinity as divine minds are good things. But nowhere in the Bible does it say there are no more than three divine persons. Thus, maybe there are more than three and only three make an appearance! Certainly prior to Jesus’s incarnation, it was not very obvious that there was a Trinity. If there was an infinite procession of divine persons, it’s not super obvious they’d all have been mentioned.

(As Aron once pointed out to me, in Revelation there is a mention of 7 Spirits of God. Now, while these might be different manifestations of the Holy Spirit…they might not be).

We also talked a bit about hell. Apologetics Squared noted that even on a universalist view, going to hell is pretty bad. Describing it with frightful imagery—which also serves to deter very bad behavior—thus isn’t that unlikely. While this has some plausibility, Jesus’s teachings on hell are still evidence against Christianity. Descriptions of people burning horribly for failing to follow teachings are quite ubiquitous in ancient religions. It’s more likely he’d assert such things if he wasn’t divine than if he was.

Apologetics Squared made many other points during the conversation. If they were all written down, I suppose the whole world could not contain the books that would be written.

7 Aron Wall

After I wrote my original piece on Christianity, I sent it to Aron Wall, author of one of the best blogs on the internet. Aron’s a devoted Christian with an incredible wealth of Biblical knowledge, as well as general historical and philosophical competence. He wrote a pretty detailed reply, which I then replied to. I’ll quote what he said, and then give my response. I’ll also quote his reply to my replies to him in a footnote, for people who want to go really into the weeds. But let me be upfront from the outset: I got a lot wrong, which I’ve now edited.

Regarding your blog post, I did read it all the way through. It would be hard for me to write a blog post responding to everything, without it being 3 times longer than yours (which I don't have time for). I might be able to write something about why I don't think the doctrine of the Trinity is either logically impossible or extremely implausible, if I can find some spare hours.

But there were a few minor arguments in your post that I thought were just silly, including:

1. Although I'm not inclined to take literally the opening chapters of Genesis, I don't see why you think Genesis 4 and 5 contradict each other when taken literally, as one line gives the geneology of Cain while the other line gives the geneology of Seth. It's a bit weird that several of the names in the two geneologies are similar to each other, but I never read it as referring to literally the same people, do you?

My reply: I think the documentary hypothesis people have a better explanation. There were early similar stories of the birth of humanity that conflicted in various ways. Because of the common stories, the genealogies end up having multiple overlapping elements but also a good deal of disagreement. Now, of course, you can always posit that they're talking about different things and it's not contradictory, but I don't think that's the most plausible reading.¹

2. By definition a set of claims is outside the Overton window for your society, if they crucify you for making them! That's what the Overton window means: what you can say without getting into serious trouble. Perhaps you meant something different from this, but if so you should call it something different.

3. More generally, it's a bit weird to argue that Jesus' positions were too similar to other 1st century positions, while also arguing he said absurd stuff like John 6. Maybe you should pick a lane here: is Christianity too weird to be true, or is it insufficiently weird to be true? Now I understand that in parts of your post you want to argue that Jesus made claims that are implausible to modern people but not to 1st century Jews. (E.g. demon possession). Perhaps so, but John 6 is definitely NOT an example of this, as I'm pretty sure it would have been WAY more upsetting to 1st century Jews than it is to 21st century Americans, given (a) the ritual taboo on drinking any blood, let alone human blood and (b) the 2,000 year history of the Eucharist domesticating the concept. (Yeah, I know practicing American Jews won't eat blood either, but this probably feels more like "this weird rule we have, that other people don't always follow" as compared to "just thinking about this makes me want to vomit", which I assume would be the typical reaction of Jesus' first hearers.) And in general, most of Jesus' hearers seemed to be even more shocked by what he said than modern people are.

My reply: By outside the Overton window, I meant something like: the sort of claim it would have been very surprising for someone to make. I agree Jesus had some surprising teachings, but that's not that surprising in itself. You and I both also think some things that are surprising by societal standards, but I think it would be clear from reading either of our writings that we are not God. In particular, while Jesus has many teachings that are weird, and many that are clearly good, he seems to have few that are both weird to people at the time but clearly good to modern ears.

(Later note: there are some exceptions as FLWAB points out).

This is mostly what one would expect on the hypothesis that Christianity is false, I think; Muhammed also taught some weird things, but the things he taught that were weird were not good and those that were good were not weird, mostly. Now, I think Jesus taught better stuff than Muhammed, but the basic idea is the same. I think you're right that Overton window is the wrong way of putting it and I need to explain the point in more detail—will edit to do so.²

4. I don't see what your problem is with Matt 6:22, even a little bit. I agree that this is one of the more cryptic sayings in the Sermon on the Mount, but only in the sense of "not really obvious what the point is", rather than in the sense of "shocking hyperbole". That is, there are many "hard sayings" of Jesus that are confusing NOT so much because it is hard to extract an obvious literal interpretation, but primarily because that literal meaning appears to be unacceptable (as in e.g. Matt 6:25, or 18:9). But in 6:22 the problem is only that the literal point of the verse seems difficult to grasp. And it is not surprising that there should be a few such sayings in a 2,000 year old book translated from another language! Taking into account that Jesus liked to use metaphors, and that humans often use "sight" and "light" to refer to the mind, I would suggest the following interpretation: "Take care about your epistemology, how you perceive and know things. If that gets messed up, everything else you do and think will also be messed up!" This seems like... something you likely already believe? In any case, if you want to make an argument against Christianity it seems like it would make more sense to base it on passages you think you do understand, rather than the ones you don't! The ones you don't understand could turn out to mean something completely unobjectionable. I certainly didn't feel like I understood this passage the first few times I read it.

My reply: My reading of this was that it was kind of primitive medical advice, according to which your eyes being healthy mean your body will generally function correctly or you will behave well. This seems like how we'd interpret it if we didn't assume every word of Jesus was wise and without error. But now looking more into it, with your interpretation in mind, it seems like a non-literal meaning is more plausible, and so this is an error I'll correct.³

5. As for Matt 6:22 not condemning slavery, well I bet I could also find one or two remarks on your blog which also don't explicitly condemn slavery! The more important question is whether somebody who has fully internalized Jesus' teaching could possibly approve of chattel slavery*, in which person A owns the labor of person B for life, while person B has no correspondingly strict obligation to person A. I think the answer is obviously no, and historically quite a few Christian activists have come to the same conclusion over the past 2,000 years. I could cite several relevant passages (Matt 7:12, 19:21, 20:25-28, 22:39, 23:10; John 13:12-17) but this would be a longer conversation. (I think that among Jesus' orginal Jewish hearers, slave ownership would probably have been pretty rare, except perhaps for a few very rich people, as Jews were not allowed by the Torah to own other Jews as permanent slaves. Jesus does refer to servants in various parables, but it is not always clear if he means wage-workers or slaves, and in any case usually the master/king is usually a metaphor for God.)

St. Paul of course has a more specific treatment of this topic, and infamously he tells slaves to obey their masters, but he goes on to say that masters should do the same thing for their slaves---I suppose he means to obey and serve them for the sake of Jesus---because they share the same master in heaven. This certainly throws a pretty big wrench into the whole institution of slavery, if it gets turned into a symmetrical obligation. However, Paul did also state that it was inappropriate for Christians to allow themselves to become slaves, and that they should take the opportunity to become free if they got the chance (1 Cor 7:21-23). It is hard to avoid the implication that slavery is somehow repugnant to Christian teaching, even if it wasn't practical to abolish it immediately. And we also have an entire (short) letter by Paul whose main purpose is to pressure a master into voluntarily freeing a runaway slave, rather than punishing him (Philemon). One does have to remember that in the 1st century, a blanket statement of the form "Slavery is wrong" could easily be misheard as "Slaves should start a military rebellion against their Roman masters." That last idea, of a slave revolt, certainly was something that popped up from time to time in the 1st century, but it tended to end very, very badly for the slaves in question. (See point 2.) In order for Christian teaching to have universal application, it also has to have something to say to slaves who are unable to immediately achieve liberation, and "slavery is wrong" is not, in isolation, a tremendously useful message in that context.

(* The clarification is important since it should be remembered that the word "slavery" has had a wide range of meanings throughout the ancient and modern world. And certain things that might go by that name, e.g. being temporarily obligated to work, in order to pay off a debt or punish a crime, are much less obviously morally objectionable than other forms. Although banning such arrangements has instrumental value in preventing abuses, it is hard to argue that they are intrinsically unjust in all possible social contexts. Indeed some American institutions, e.g. putting deadbeat dads in jail if they don't pay child support, and certain forms of prison labor, probably do qualify to some extent as being slavery, according to reasonable definitions of the term! Here is an interesting attempt to clarify definitions, although I am not sure it is completely accurate regarding the current state of American law. The point being that a 1st century person saying "Slavery is wrong" would be both under- and over-inclusive, and if you wanted to go back in a time machine and change the culture for the better, it would be better to focus on explaining to people WHY it is wrong, which is what I see Christian teaching as having done. On the other hand, if what slavery means is that if you kidnap a random person, then you are allowed to rape and kill them and their descendents for all perpetuity, then I would note that the Bible does have various verses explicitly condemning each one of kidnapping, rape, and murder considered separately!)

My reply: Jesus could have given a more tempered teaching. He could have said something like "slavery is a wicked institution. One shouldn't own slaves. We should try to get rid of it, but not engage in violent slave revolts, as those backfire." If we think that slavery was likely the most wicked widespread ancient institution, it's odd how infrequently Jesus commented on it.⁴

6. As I think some commenters pointed out in the reply, conditional on Christianity being true, the various passages about the relationship with Christ being more important than family relationships, seem to follow automatically. It is elementary Judaism that God is even more important than family, and if Jesus is truly God (and the source of salvation) then that's how the math works out. Of course this is all said against the background of the 5th Commandment, which Jesus affirmed as valid in other contexts. (I would note that the fact that Jesus often talks as if his relationship with future unseen people is as important as the relationship with the people he had earthly connections to, which is a striking and unexpected feature of his teaching. Most people would have naturally thought that, just as in an earthly court, knowing the king personally would lead to favored treatment.) To be sure, the language of "hate" is shocking (and elsewhere in a parellel passage, Jesus uses the phrase "love more"). While I wouldn't want to be one of the commenters who waters this down (Kierkegaard has an interesting passage about such people in Fear and Trembling), I do think it is important to note that the complex of meanings of the Aramaic idiom seems to be more closely related to rejection than to dislike (unlike what the English word "hate" might suggest). That is, the thing most clearly forbidden by this passage is to refuse to follow Christ because of what your parents might think, which would be placing their opinions higher than what God requires.

My reply: I still find the passages pretty surprising. Like, any sentiment that sounds wrong can be interpreted to not seem implausible. But Jesus telling people to hate their parents—even if we think that means something more like reject—and his rejection of his parents in Matthew 12 seems likely on the assumption that he was not God than on the assumption that he was.⁵

7. I don't think it is right for you to cite Isaiah 49:3 as a possible refutation of the messianic interpretation of Isaiah 53, without also citing Isaiah 49:6 which seems to problematize the Israel interpretation. I've made this point to you at least twice before, so I was a bit surprised you didn't think it was worth mentioning in your post.

(Relevant context: Isaiah 53 is a prophecy that Christians often say is about Jesus—it talks about a suffering servant who is pierced for our transgressions. Sounds like Jesus! Jews generally reply that it’s about Israel, as Isaiah 49:3 says “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will display my splendor.” In response, Aron notes that Isaiah 49:5-6 seems to point to the servant being someone other than Israel, in that it says:

⁵ And now the Lord says—
he who formed me in the womb to be his servant
to bring Jacob back to him
and gather Israel to himself,
for I am^[a] honored in the eyes of the Lord
and my God has been my strength—
⁶ he says:
“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
to restore the tribes of Jacob
and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth

In short, it’s weird to talk about the servant gathering Israel to himself if the servant is Israel—how can Israel bring back Israel!)

My reply: By that point I was about 6,000 words in and still had a lot more to say, so I was just planning on giving a brief overview without discussing everything in detail. I similarly did not discuss in great detail the evidence for the empty tomb. Regarding Isaiah 49:6, I think there are two plausible readings:

1. Imagine you said something like "you America, are lady liberty." Then you went on to say "I was not content for lady liberty to bring freedom just to America, but to all the nations of the world." Here, you're talking in a pretty non-literal way--using a hypothetical being to represent America and then commenting on the being.

2. The servant being the righteous remnant in Israel can also explain the pertinent passages. I also linked to a post where I had a longer discussion of Isaiah 53, though that was before our most recent discussion of Isaiah 49:6. But in hindsight, I think you're right that I should add some discussion of it to the post.⁶

In this email I am deliberately cherry-picking here the arguments I found least convincing, and ignoring the more formidable ones (some of which we've discussed previously). But also there are a lot of important substantive stuff things to discuss. A lot of this is going to depend on how likely you think it is that a revelation of God would have various suprising features; that is would you also be surprised if there were no surprises? Relatedly, on where you fall on the rationalist vs. empiricist spectrum. That is how strongly you weight:

A) philosophical, more strongly prioristic arguments (which may still have some posterior component);

as compared to

B) observational-testimonial, more strongly posterior arguments (which still have a prior component).

In Bayesian terms, I suppose this mostly corresponds to having a "flatter" vs. "more contoured" prior, although there may be other contributing factors as well. I think I fall significantly more strongly towards empiricism than you do. Given the structure of the arguments as you lay them out in your blog post, this makes me weigh more heavily the positive arguments for Christianity in your post, and less heavily the negative ones.

Blessings,

Aron

PS Not sure this counts as a silly one, but I already gave my interpretation of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit in sections VII and VIII of this post. And I do genuinely think this is the best interpretation of the passage, not merely one that I adopt to avoid a weird result. To interpret the passage correctly, it seems important to pick up on the context (what the Pharisees were saying that prompted Jesus' reply) as well as Jesus' contrasting saying about speaking against the son of man. In my view, this refers to a more innocuous form of unbelief, of the sort that any garden variety skeptic might have. But if you see healing miracles taking place right in front of your eyes and your best explanation is that the devil did it, I think it is reasonable to say that you are deliberately choosing to have an epistemically closed position against the Holy Spirit (attributed to the Spirit, because it is the Spirit who enables the miracles, and also leads people's hearts to accept God). And---if one persists in this attitude, I don't think Jesus is concerned with a random stray remark---it could well make salvation impossible. In this sense, the meaning is not unrelated to Matt 6:22! I know that you separately have problems with the doctrine of Hell; but if we conditionalize on that, this passage actually seems to me to make the New Testament more plausible than if this passage weren't there, because it clarifies that not every sort of unbelief leads to damnation, but only a very special (and perhaps rare) kind of unbelief. (And specifically, a type of unbelief that cannot exist in anybody whose primary issue is a mere lack of evidence.) The passage does presumably make Universalism less probable, which would make it still somewhat of a problem passage for you. But as I am sure you are aware since you've previously participated in this game, universalists have various things they say to try to mitigate these implications...

I replied by saying I found Aron’s interpretation of the Holy Spirit passage pretty plausible. I no longer count that against Christianity.

I think you are also aware of my take on the passages which seem to suggest that Jesus would return in the near future. (At the very least, one has to incorporate into the analysis the passages which seem to suggest the exact opposite, that there will be a long delay.)

I disagree with Aron’s take on the delay passages, but I’ll probably have to leave that for another article as I am already, quite literally, at over 9,000 words.

8 Conclusion

Well, there you go. I think many of the considerations I stated originally have considerable bite, but some were overstated. I was too hasty in declaring mere weirdness as evidence against divinity. I also underestimated the case for Jesus’s burial. Despite that, I think there remains a powerful cumulative case against Jesus’s divinity.

1. Aron’s reply

Whether or not you are right at the level of the most plausible origin of the text, I'm not comfortable calling this a "contradiction", since even on a redactor hypothesis there is no contradiction found in the final redacted text of Gen 4-5. (It is easier to find apparent conflicts between Genesis 1 and 2.)

By the way if you want an allegorical reading, I personally find it significant the way that the years of the patriarchs in Genesis 5, while longer than the normal human lifespan, keep falling a bit short of 1,000 years, with none of them ever reaching it. To me this suggests the idea that even if our lifespan were dramatically extended, it would still feel "incomplete" and "lacking". Something to bear in mind in an era where people are hoping for AI driven transhumanism, I guess.

2. Aron’s reply “I think you will want to read The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton. He has a couple of chapters in which he specfically talks about the teachings of Jesus, and whether or not it is a repackaging of 1st century ethics. (Spoiler: he thinks not!) Whether or not you agree with him about the substance, it sounds like you both agree that this is an evidentially relevant question to answer! In terms of apologetics his 2nd most important book is Orthodoxy.”

3. Aron’s reply “Yeah none of the rest of Jesus' teaching looks like medical advice so it would be odd if this bit was.”

4. Aron’s reply “True, but that's why I think it might be somewhat relevant that his immediate audience probably mostly weren't slave owners.”

5. Aron’s reply “It seems like this should all be grouped together with the other "hard sayings"? I mean Jesus doesn't do this just once or twice, it is a consistent feature in his teaching.”

6. Aron’s reply:

This is possible, but even in your example, the allegory only works by there being some conceptual distance between the two terms "America" and "Lady Liberty" (as indeed there is, since America being free is a contingent fact). In any case, as you know, my more important response to this is that the "Israel" and "Messiah" interpretations of Isaiah 53 aren't incompatible and would even suggest each other (to the extent that you think the king of Israel should be a representative of Israel and therefore share similar experiences). BTW today is Holy Saturday and the traditional scripture reading is from Lamentations, which also mixes up Messiah = Israel in a noteworthy fashion.

In any case I think the evidential status of Isaiah 53 is somewhat different if the target audience is mere theism rather than non-messianic Judaism. The Jew is obliged to say there exists some correct interpretation, while the biblical skeptic is not (though conditional on Judaism blah blah...). (The skeptic needs to explain why the passage was written, but doesn't need to interpret it as true.) In either case a sufficiently striking fulfilled prophecy can still count as evidence for Christianity, even if there exists another interpretation, but it would depend on how you judge the numbers. If you run the numbers through Bayes' formula, I think you will find that the mere existence of one other (antecedently similarly plausible) interpretation of the text, can't by itself eliminate a large Bayes factor (>> 2) from a strikingly fulfilled prophecy. (On the other hand, if you don't think the Bayes factor is that large, then the skeptic wouldn't even need an alternative interpretation! A Jew might need one though...)

(Also, it seemed like you were counting the Plato passage negatively by thinking of it as a "control" against which the impressiveness of biblical messianic prophecy is measured. But that doesn't work if it it turns out that this passage in Plato is also divinely inspired!)