(8 of 9)
While conservatives dismiss the theology of the Jesus Seminar members, middle-of-the-road Bible professors reject their scholarship. They use the same rigorous standards of inquiry to prove the very assertions that liberals are so quick to reject. First, they argue, the skeptics assume the New Testament was written long after the Crucifixion occurred, and so reflects the agenda and faith of the second generation of Christians, not events as experienced by the original apostles. That whole approach is undercut by the purported discovery announced in January of what would be the oldest manuscript of a Gospel, which dates to A.D. 70, when many eyewitnesses would have been around to protest any inaccuracies.
If scholars need multiple, independent sources to prove that an event occurred, the evidence is much stronger for Jesus' miracles than for many other ancient events that are never challenged, says Murray Harris, a conservative Bible professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. "We have the empty tomb in all four Gospels, representing three if not four independent sources, and appearances of the risen Christ in three Gospels. And they're clearly not copying one another." Harris gets impatient with the questioning of the standards of proof applied to the Gospels. "We have only two first century accounts of Hannibal's unlikely crossing of the Alps with 38 elephants in tow, but no one doubts it happened."
While liberals use first century sociology to prove that the Gospel writers were inventing stories about Jesus to consolidate their power, Harris reaches the opposite conclusion. Why, he asks, were women given such a prominent role, if the accounts of the Resurrection were all made up? In the Gospels they were the first to see the empty tomb; Mary Magdalene received the first appearance. No one would invent the story this way, Harris argues, "given the fact that in Jewish law of the time a woman's testimony was unacceptable except in a few circumstances. This would have been the kiss of death. A fabricator would have had Peter or the disciples at the tomb."
Finally, he adds, how likely is it that the disciples would have conspired in a fantastic lie for which they would lay down their lives, "and that at no point did the truth emerge from the conspirators to blow the story, no leak at any stage?" By all accounts, the disciples came away from the Crucifixion frightened and doubtful about Jesus' Resurrection. And yet their lives were transformed; the cowards became courageous; they established his church in spite of themselves, through grace.
To simply dismiss all the corroborating accounts of the miracles, moderates argue, requires a kind of greasy logic that determines the outcome before the inquiry even begins. If miracles are defined as things that can't possibly happen, then of course the Bible's miracles must not have. "There is an anti-supernaturalist bias," says Harris. "Even if we had a sworn affidavit from a pathologist that Jesus was alive and well, a person would not believe it if he believed in principle that no dead man could ever rise. No evidence would possibly be sufficient.''