Summary
Keith Goode / Ken Thackery (KG) sets out to prove Christianity is based on a resurrection that never happened, and the Gospels record well-meaning but fictional details about a Gospel-Jesus who is a misleading representation of a Historical-Jesus. He thinks this secular narrative is much superior to the traditional orthodox Christian version of history.
KG is not convinced by Jesus mythicists. Jesus lived and was crucified. However, KG complains that no evidence for the resurrection exists beyond the New Testament (NT). He says the consensus of experts agree the Gospels were all written after the death of eyewitnesses. Because there is no proof the resurrection happened, the Christian apologist must therefore rely on the martyrdom of Peter to prove the resurrection. But to KG, you cannot prove Peter’s martyrdom either. The resurrection is therefore unprovable.
KG observes how influential the Pharisee Saul was, and how he moved from persecutor to Christian evangelist as the Apostle Paul. KG decides this can only be explained by the existence of temporal lobe epilepsy. Further, neural science has shown KG that neural wiring is the cause of religious experiences.
Where did Paul’s idea of a resurrected Jesus come from? Unlike the other Pharisees in Jerusalem, KG asserts that Paul was somehow ignorant of the original Christian message, even though he was also personally active in persecuting them. He had to ask the Apostle Peter to help him understand Christianity properly. Because he felt threatened by Paul, Peter lied to him, saying Jesus had been resurrected. It’s not clear whether KG thinks only Peter saw the resurrection, but KG says the lie was perpetrated as a power play by Peter over Paul.
When it comes to the NT, KG asserts the documemts were written many years after the fact. To say otherwise is just a convenience by Christian apologists. KG says the gospels were written after the death of all the eyewitnesses by nameless authors of fiction. KG also claims that the Christian message delivered by Paul was different to the Apostolic message. Over time, KG claims the apostles faded away apart from a few notable people like Peter.
Positive Feedback
Writing a book is hard graft, and so all authors need encouragement for that. Well done to KG for writing a book.
KG has clearly learned a number of things about Church history that he brings to bear when constructing his arguments and his alternative narrative. I can see this in his chapters on the Arian controversy in particular, leading to the Council of Nicea and that creed.
Christianity is an important topic for KG to consider, particularly from the perspective of the first century. Agnostic historian Tom Holland observes that in today’s culture wars, our underlying assumptions about the existence of values, the value of human persons, and the ethical air we breathe is actually uniquely Christian. In every way, Tom recognises he is Christian.[1] If our culture is not Greek or Roman but Christian as Holland says, then it would be valuable to explore just what originally caused that.
Negative Feedback
Unfortunately, KG has come to his project with a predetermined outcome. He has decided there is no God, and so there must be a Godless explanation for Christianity. He doesn’t justify his atheistic position, he just assumes it to be the case. Given the logical problems with this from the off, KG unpacks his secular narrative which he thinks is superior to the orthodox Christian explanation for the birth of Christianity.
If KG had shown willingness to examine the evidence in a balanced way, and then honestly conclude there was no supernatural cause of Christianity, then I would value his process and his decision. Instead – he seems to have tried his hardest to come up with reasons why he was right in the first place that there is no God. He seems desperate to disprove Christianity which he really seems not to like. And he also does not like any claim that Christianity is what it claims to be. He singles out one individual in particular over this behavior. His book seems emotionally driven to me for that reason.
Let me make some commentary on a few of his arguments:
1 – We Don’t Need No Citation
On the one hand, KG is doing a work of history here. Like Holland, he is seeking to understand the past. Unlike Holland, he seems unable to cite scholars to justify his core positions.
First, the non-existence of God. He gives no support but assumes this position. Wouldn’t it help to at least give some reasons here? Second, he asserts the experts all know the gospels were written after the death of eyewitnesses. But who are these experts, and how do we know KG is correctly communicated their consensus position? No supporting evidence is given, so we must simply trust KG is correct. This means we cannot assess his claim as being true or false. He just expects us to go along with it. This seems unfair to his readers. I know many conservative scholars who date the gospels as early. I summarise some of those arguments below in “The Gospels as Fiction.” I also give an atheist NT scholar’s argument for early dating. But my main concern here is the way KG seems to pose as someone with the position, knowledge, and authority to declare a scholarly consensus. And his lack of citations show this is what he is doing. I think he just states a position that helps his case and hopes no one checks up on it. Third, KG assumes the NT documents should never be trusted to tell the truth about the events relating to the origins of Christianity, especially the resurrection. Who thinks this apart from KG? I have no idea based on his lack of citations. And I know plenty of NT scholars, James Crossley and Bart Ehrman among them, who would challenge his blanket assumptions here.
2 – Prove It
KG thinks the job of Christian apologists is one of proof. They must prove to him without a doubt that the resurrection happened if they are going to have any credibility. However, because KG says you cannot prove the resurrection, apologists have no credibility to him. I think this is a basic error in his thinking that I have pointed out to KG on many occasions. The historian does not attempt to prove anything. They gather data and pose arguments. We then assess the quality of those arguments and choose which one seems more likely on the balance of evidence and argument. In fact, KG tries to do this later with some of his own arguments when he tries to interpret Paul’s Galatians text. He even makes reference to some Christian arguments later too.
So – on the one hand KG requires cast iron proof to show apologist credibility, but then on the other hand he is happy to work with historical arguments. This shows profound confusion on the part of the author. It sounds like a straw man view of Christian apologetics. Frankly – I could respond to KG, prove to me there IS no God. Then I might take your book more seriously. But I know that is an irrational requirement in metaphysics and also history.
Interestingly, toward the end of the book, theologian and apologist Gary Habermas is suddenly named out of nowhere as being untrustworthy. I think KG’s anti-apologist axe grinding becomes very clear here…if it wasn’t blindingly obvious beforehand.
3 – Contrasting the Historical and the Gospel Jesus is Outmoded NT Scholarship
KG is stuck in the past on his view of Jesus – the first question for the historical Jesus.
The ideas of the first quest for the historical Jesus were influential between the 1700s and around 1953. Gotthold Lessing had initiated this quest by claiming a ditch separated the two, and Rudolph Butmann widened that ditch further. David Strauss said the gospels were mythical. Yet NT scholars like Robert H Stein and Paul Copan have shown there is an approach we can take to cross Lessing’s ditch. The Criteria of Authenticity is applied to specific problems that present themselves when interpreting literature and understanding history. This involves detection of multiple attestation.[2] When multiple independent sources refer to a past event, this gives the historian grounds to think that this event happened. We do this between literary sources inside and outside the NT. The resulting arguments challenge KG’s distinction between the Christ of history and the Christ of faith. Although – if KG already knows there is no God (how?!), it’s hard to know how to discuss these challenges with him. This is the problem with KG’s type of work – it shuts down discussion rather than opening it up.
4 – Martyrdom Obsession
KG is obsessed with Peter’s supposed martyrdom in Rome. He seems to think if he can disprove this, he can disprove the resurrection. This is a profoundly odd idea to me. No Christian I have ever met thinks this way. It is only KG that seems to think the truth of Christianity hinges on Peter’s martyrdom.
I think KG is confusing primary sources, the NT, with secondary sources. The account of martyrdom of the apostles is not an essential part of the Christian message. It is merely a supportive argument. When you notice how willing the apostles and the first Christians were to face persecution and die for their belief in the resurrection of Jesus (reported inside + outside the Bible), this is merely a supportive argument for the truth of the resurrection. The apostles were witnesses of these things. Why would they be willing to die for something they knew was a lie perpetrated by Peter…or anyone else? The primary data is the text of the NT alone, and KG is simply wrong to think otherwise.
5 – A Low Opinion of the Ancients
KG has a low opinion of significant figures in Christian history. The Apostle Peter is portrayed as a pathological liar. The Apostle Paul is without a doubt the dumbest, and the worst Pharisee in all Jerusalem. Everyone else was well aware of the Christian preaching about the resurrection of Jesus in the days and weeks following the events. This is recorded throughout the first ten chapters of Acts and suggested by the extra Biblical evidence too. But Paul? He knows nothing of any of this. How odd that this idiot Apostle Paul would go on to write words that shaped the civilization that we live in today. Paul was a brilliant debater on Mars Hill, right? No – KG wants us to believe he was Peter’s gullible stooge.
6 – Self Refuting Ideas of Christian Conversion Thru Epilepsy and Brain Wiring
The idea that someone’s religious conversion could be attributed to epilepsy is profoundly disturbing to me. I know many adults who have become Christians later in life, yet they are very physically healthy.[3] I also know epileptics who are committed to a particular religious outlook for very different reasons that predate their epilepsy. I think someone who attempts to pin Christian conversion solely on epilepsy, a legitimate and distressing disease, shows desperation and hard heartedness towards epileptics and Christian believers.
But there are deeper problems with KG’s claim here. It is profoundly self-refuting. He cites neurological studies on religion and in a burst of insight, he declares that religious persuasion is down to neurological wiring alone. A person’s religiosity is down to brain cortex wiring. Well – this means that atheism is also down to wiring, just as Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhist persuasions are. Atheism is a religious position in the same way theism is. But if religious persuasion is down to physical wiring, then the issue of truthfulness in religious matters becomes irrelevant. There is no truth or falsehood. Just wiring. That the author writes an entire book arguing AGAINST a Christian religious belief system shows that he DOES think there are matters of truth and falsehood to consider here. So his neural wiring arguments become completely self-refuting for him. If they are true, his book project is a complete waste of time and he is speaking into the wind.
7 – Confusing the Original Christian Message
The Christian Kergyma is the original preaching of the Christian church. We see this reflected in Peter’s sermon in Acts 2, for example. From the start, they preached Jesus is Lord. They observed Jesus was raised supernaturally from the dead, and the was God’s demonstrated of the truth of Jesus Lordship. The first sermons explained this and called everyone to worship Jesus. (e.g. Acts 2, Acts 10) To KG, however, this must be false because the idea of Jesus resurrection came much later. The resurrection was not the miracle that launched the church. It was a lie perpetrated by Peter, the head of the Christian church, when Paul came to visit him some years later.
I have problems with this idea.
First, if the resurrection was a lie, what was it that the early Church preached about that got them into so much trouble and earned converts and notoriety early on? Why were they persecuted, as recorded in both the Biblical and extra-Biblical historical accounts? The Jews believed in a final resurrection at the end of time. The resurrection of Jesus made the church a threat to the Jewish establishment, and to the Roman authorities who described them as atheists for not worshipping all the Roman gods. Josephus and other sources record the pitiless persecution of 1st century Christians. Why all this trouble if there originally was no resurrection of Jesus? Without a resurrection, Christianity is just one of many 1st century cults that come and go. If the resurrection was a later idea added to Christianity, what was the original Kergyma? What did it contain? The NT is clear the resurrection was front and center from the very beginning. Even skeptical scholars concede the resurrection tradition was early.[4] KG disagrees with them all. The resurrection was a later invention by the church. But KG fails to suggest an alternative original Kergyma that would have been of sufficient importance to warrant Jewish 1st century persecution. We therefore only have a fraction of an idea here. We need to understand the full picture for it to make any sense of the historical data.
Second, why would a 1st century Jew fabricate a resurrection? This is bizarre in the extreme in that culture at that time. Third, why would Peter suggest such a subversive lie that he knew would get him into so much trouble in Roman society? It makes no sense for anyone to do that to themselves. Did Peter lack such a grip on reality, that he welcomed eventual persecution by Emperor Nero (as documented by Josephus) for a mere lie? He had followed Jesus for years and he knew that implications of such a claim. Fourth, if Peter was this much of a masochist, why didn’t the other Apostles (whatever church they served in) all band together to shut him up? After all, they were all implicated in this thing together. If Peter was telling dangerous lies, why didn’t his colleagues shut him down to save their own skin? Why would they go along with Peter’s craziness and collude with such a meaningless but politically dangerous conspiracy?
KG also asserts that the Apostles and the Apostle Paul have a different understanding of Christianity. He thinks the Christian message was different depending on who you listened to. Yet the NT indicates differently. The Kergyma I described earlier is what the consistent message was in the Christian church. We see this reflected in the earliest oral testimony, which is probably located in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7.
I suggest KG confuses the Apostles, who were spreading Christianity far and wide (e.g. Peter and Cornelius in Acts 10), with the Judiazers who thought Christians had to be circumcised and follow Levitical law like orthodox Jews. When Paul challenged this idea, he was writing to the church in Galatia (chapters 4 and 5) who had apparently been influenced by such teachers Paul does not name or identify. Whatever the relationship between Paul and the other Apostles, there is no evidence presented by KG that shows convincingly that Peter and the other Apostles were Judaizers. He simply asserts that the Apostles only preached to Jews (this is contradicted by Biblical and extra-Biblical evidence), and so they must have also preached law observance. The extant evidence of Apostolic preaching in Acts and elsewhere shows otherwise. And the teaching of Jesus that the Apostles were exposed to for three years also says otherwise. Why would they divert from this so quickly? KG doesn’t even notice this as a problem.
8 – The Hanging Sword of Confirmation Bias Cuts Two Ways
In most if not all chapters of KG’s book, he says we engage in confirmation bias if we disagree with his assertions and arguments. The irony here is as follows. Confirmation bias is about getting railroaded in our thinking. It happens if we only stick to what we think, and don’t spend time honestly considering what other people’s contrary opinions are and what they might mean and how we might respond to them. But KGs book reads as someone who sticks to what he thinks and does not consider contrary positions and how to respond to them to show his ideas work better. He simply asserts things. This book is in itself a work of confirmation bias. If he had engaged with other ideas, and assessed counter arguments showing how and why his ideas are better, he would not have engaged in confirmation bias. His book would have been improved considerably if he had engaged with other thinkers and other ideas.
9 – He Corrects History When He Wants To
KG corrects the historical record whenever it does not fit with his supposedly superior secular narrative. For example, in chapter 10 he talks about the meeting with Peter and Paul where the resurrection lie is supposedly shared (mentioned in Galatians 1). KG is obsessed with James, the brother of Jesus, and a leader in the church at that point. KG does not allow James to be present at this meeting, presumably because this makes the telling of the lie unlikely. So even though the Galatians 1 verse states Paul met Peter and James, KG corrects this verse. James wasn’t there after all, and its incorrect to reach this conclusion even tho the text says so. KG’s ideas are shown here to be an exercise in fictionalism and wish fulfilment rather than a valuable interpretation of historical events.
It’s worse for KG however. In chapter 13, KG is forced to agree with Galatians 2 that many of the apostles were present at Paul’s second visit to Jerusalem. What has happened in the in between years? Why do those additional apostles stick with the Peter that got them all into hot water by lying about Jesus being resurrected? And why has the fictional claim of the resurrection taken hold amongst the early church anyway? Why haven’t saner minds shut the fiction down? All it would have taken was someone to get Jesus’ corpse out of the tomb to show it to be a lie. Rather, if the resurrection is on the lips of the earliest eyewitnesses, as the NT says, then subsequent believers would be led by those who actually saw and interacted with him. When persecution came, from the Jewish establishment and Nero, the Apostles were holding something they knew first hand to be true. KG’s secular narrative sounds utterly absurd to me here.
10 – Ignorance of Apostolic Tradition
To KG, most of the Apostles just faded away and didn’t do much of note later in their lives. Honestly – it is like KG has decided not to permit the data from the second century to figure into his thinking. He’s edited it all out. There’s a rich tradition of the spread of Christianity by the Apostles in the first century. You can read about that tradition in The Fate of the Apostles.[5]
11 -Gospels as Fiction
KG claims the gospels were written by nameless writers as works of fiction. He gives no solid argument for this claim. His problem is the arguments for early authorship of the gospels are numerous but he recognizes and responds to none of them. For example, the 2nd century church fathers attest to the gospel authors’ identity, and their statements align with traditional authorship. Are they written very late? Probably not. Historians like Eusebius refer to them in the early 2nd century, the Didache from 100AD, quotes them, Clement quotes them in 90AD, the destruction of the temple in 70AD is not mentioned, the martyrdom of James in 61AD is not mentioned. None of the gospels mention significant events you would expect to hear about beyond 61AD. Further, Paul was still alive at the end of Luke-Acts, and Paul quotes Luke 10:7 in 1 Timothy 5:17 – 18, written around 64AD. So the material had to already be in circulation by then. Even atheist scholars like James G. Crossley think the Gospels are early. He dates Mark’s gospel to the AD40s based on its reference to dietary laws.[6] I pose many other arguments for the early authorship on Luke-Acts in my blog here. These and many more arguments point toward early Gospel authorship during the lifetime of eyewitnesses, affirming the reliability of those accounts in the form of ancient biography.
I think to KG, if he can convince us we are stupid to think the Gospels are early, that that helps his position. But it doesn’t. Even if the Gospels WERE late additions (I don’t think they were) the earliest reported material about the birth of Christianity is not even found in the Gospels. It is located in the NT creeds.
KG dismisses the gospels in chapter 15 as just containing ideas that were around in the first century. Yet he doesn’t realize this is an argument for the reliability of the gospels. He seems unaware of the possibility that this might just be exactly what would have been the case in the first century, the gathering of oral testimony prior to the penning of the Gospels. The Apostle Paul quotes some common and very early creedal statements that summarized Christian belief in the weeks and months following Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. For example, 1 Cor 15, Romans 4:24-25, 1 Thess 4:14, 1 Peter 3:18. These sound like pre-Pauline oral creeds in circulation in the church very early on. These give you a sense of what the church’s oral testimony was.
When the gospels were ready to be written, they were presented in an internationally recognised Koine Greek language, understood by Jews and other nationalities, and then shared amongst the churches along with apostolic authority. By the way – THAT is why they are written in Greek. KG says it’s a mystery on Orthodox tradition. It’s never been a mystery and is not that hard to work out that a missionary movement would write the new post-Jesus “law” in an international language.
In summary, KG describes the period where information is gathered prior to the Gospels but does not consider the possibility that this fact poses a counter argument for him to address. This sounds like another result of his own confirmation bias to me.
Summary
I have come away from this book suspecting this author believes he knows better than:
- The original authors of the NT. Paul didn’t really witness the risen Christ, he was sick in the brain. His statements in the NT are simply false. The Apostles didn’t really witness the risen Christ, they were lying / lied to / mistaken. None of the first Christians ever saw the risen Christ despite what the earliest oral testimony was. The Christian message wasn’t what Acts 1 – 10 says it was. KG knows better than all that.
- The Jewish establishment who challenged the Christian church and made reference to Jesus miraculous deeds later in the Talmud.
- The Roman authorities who thought the Christians believed in Jesus as their resurrected God and so were atheists relating to all the other Roman pantheon.
- The early fathers of the Christian church, some of whom know the Apostles, and had close proximity to the events in the first century.
- The NT scholars of the past one hundred years. KG has such a handle on this subject, he doesn’t have to cite any of them when making his assertions. But this makes his assertions about NT scholarly consensus to be unsustainable.
- His readers. He knows so much better than us that we are downright illogical to disagree with him.
- All Christians who have lived throughout human history and professed faith in Jesus Christ and his resurrection and his transformative impact on their lives.
- Evangelistic preachers and Christian Apologists. Especially Gary Habermas. Ken knows so much better than all of them. Especially Gary.
I’ve got to conclude I don’t think KG is trying to get to the truth. He already thinks he knows the truth, and no one else can see it. I’ve pointed out some of the glaring problems with KG’s “truth” in this review. I think he needs to refrain from posing ideas out of thin air. He needs to ground his statements with proper citations. He needs to engage with legitimate counter arguments. Maybe then – he’s more likely to draw legitimate conclusions and spark constructive discussion about how Christianity began.
[2] Robert H Stein, Criteria for the Gospel’s Authenticity in Contending with Christianity’s Critics: Answering New Atheists & Other Objectors and Robert H. Stein, The Synoptic Problem (Grand Rapids: 1987).
[3] Side B Stories Podcast, https://sidebstories.com.
[4] Dale Allison, Resurrecting Jesus (2005) and R W Funk, The Resurrection of Jesus: Reports and Stories as reported my Michael Licona in The Resurrection of Jesus a New Historiographical Approach, (IVP Academic), 234.
[5] Sean McDowell, The Fate of the Apostles, (Routeledge).
[6] James G. Crossley The Date of Mark’s Gospel: Insight from the Law in Earliest Christianity (2004).
