The last of this Atheist’s most convincing arguments is probably his weakest. He claims that because:
That this means that Christianity is a fallacy.
The next argument is an appeal to secular history. For the Atheist, the supposed lack of external sources to this event should present a problem to the believer. If something that was that important appeared in a person’s lifetime, it had to have been noticed.
I mean, wouldn’t the resurrection of a person from the dead hit CSPAN? Fox News would probably be covering it wall to wall, while CNN would relegate it to the religion section.
Every student of the Bible knows that in Genesis 3:15 God promised a Savior to Adam and Eve. From that time until Jesus appeared on the Earth, Satan has known the plan as revealed in the Bible and has sought to create alternate Anti-Christs. He will succeed in creating his best yet during the coming judgment.
The Atheist’s attention now turns to the Gospels, but his argument is so weak here that it hardly deserves that much attention.
So, if Mark was written around 50 AD (or even if it were as late as 65 AD), where’s the problem here? Obviously, dating manuscripts is not an exact science. Since the documents themselves don’t bear dates, if we’re in the first century AD, that means that the writers could have been eyewitnesses, since the activities that happened in the Gospels took place between 4 BC and 29 AD. In fact, this bolsters the Christian’s claim.
So Paul wrote his letters—not all of which are included in the Bible—at the same time that the Gospel writers were writing their books. And one of the Gospels was being written by a travel companion of his—the good doctor/historian Luke.
So, why would Paul want to write about something he had second or third hand knowledge of when his friend was researching for a book and had second hand knowledge, and he was in the presence of first hand eye witnesses that were writing as well.
What do you take Paul for? He was a learned scholar, and knew that his place was taking Christianity and helping to form the doctrine from the teachings of Jesus.
And the idea that Paul never talked about the miracles of Jesus—he constantly talked about Jesus rising from the dead. He performed miracles himself. He was constantly preaching and teaching. Did it occur to the Atheists that he need not write in his letter something that He spoke about in public? Since most of the letters were to churches that would have both access to the New Testament Gospels and were already believers—this is the most bizarre argument yet.
The last thing is again an appeal to “if I were Jesus.” Jesus surrounded Himself with twelve men for His entire ministry—and as John said, if they were to try to recount everything that He said and did it would fill “the Earth.” The point being, Jesus knew that the important things He said and did would survive.
Lastly, it make sense that the writings would take place after His death and resurrection because of what the Apostles believed about His return. Misunderstanding, like they did a lot, they believed His return was imminent and there would have been no need to record everything. And yet they started to after they were doing their ministries…
JEDP, I knew you well.
There is scholarship in different circles that tries to discredit the Torah (or first 5 books of the Bible—specifically Genesis) by stating that it was complied by 4 authors—none of which was Moses.
Tackling this head on—there is no problem with a different writer for Genesis. Clearly, it’s not a problem for Moses to have edited documents that he had on hand1 that we do not have access to.
Furthermore, there’s a passage at the end of Deuteronomy that could not have been written by Moses, because it records his death.
Neither of these present a problem for the Bible or its veracity. Since the Bible is a conglomeration of different authors, the question does not lie in “who wrote this” but “what was written.
To fully talk and critique the Documentary Hypothesis would take more space than time allows. For those that are interested, I suggest that you purchase or borrow The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict Fully Updated To Answer The Questions Challenging Christians Today
The Atheist’s next argument is again placing himself in the position of God. His argument is summarized thusly: If I were God, I’d make sure that everyone heard from me personally—I wouldn’t use dead languages over time. That’s just a bad job at revelation.
No discussion with an Atheist is complete without some mention of the “hundreds” of contradictions in the Bible. However, for every contradiction they can come up with, there’s always a reasonable response to them if you take the time to examine the context of the passage and consider the time period and culture.
