Today's post:
Refuting the Myth Theory: 6 Reasons Why the Resurrection Accounts are True
Kreeft does not merely descend to rock bottom but breaks out the heavy-duty drilling equipment in this piece. Just to list in brief the most egregious claims, we have:
- that the ‘style’ of the Gospels is distinct from that of myths—obviously this is only true if you define ‘myth’ selectively, and regardless it has no impact on the veracity
- that there are “telltale signs of eyewitness description”—and what does Kreeft choose as his example? Jesus writing on the ground in the Pericope Adulterae, a passage which we know is a later interpolation
- that if the Gospel stories were invented, then it would imply that the Gospel authors independently invented a genre of realistic fiction—even though we know that they did not write independently and there are plenty of fictional models in the Old Testament for them to work from
- that the authors of Matthew, Luke, John really were a tax collector, a physician, and a fisherman
- (quoting Richard Purtill) “the Gospels are set firmly in the real Palestine of the first century, [...] the real details that only an eyewitness or a skilled realistic novelist can give”—to the contrary, there are geographical and cultural discrepancies
- that there “was not enough time for a myth to develop”—of the many reasons why this isn't the case, an important one is that separation in space can matter as much as in time when it comes to limiting access to contrary witnesses
- that Paul's letters establish historicity—when Paul himself saw Jesus only in a vision and yet claimed sufficient apostolic authority to dispute doctrine with Peter and James and win, without ever once acknowledging them as having closer contact with Jesus than he did himself
- that the claim that the first witnesses of the Resurrection were women is evidence for historical accuracy—for which I'll just link to this refutation by Carrier
- “The New Testament could not be myth misinterpreted and confused with fact because it specifically distinguishes the two and repudiates the mythic interpretation”—and the authority for this is 2 Peter, itself an outright forgery and for which there is an obvious self-serving motive
- and a whole bunch of ludicrous trash from Craig about the authorship and date of the Gospels, which would leave any serious biblical scholar in hysterical laughing fits