Book of Mormon, Golden Plates, Resurrection

How Do the Witnesses of the Gold Plates Compare to the Witnesses of the Resurrection? Part 3

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In part 2, we continued looking at Rob Bowman’s online exposition of how the witnesses of Jesus’s resurrection and the witnesses of Joseph Smith’s golden plates compare to each other.  In part 3, we will compare the lives of the witnesses after their experiences of either the resurrection or the viewing of the golden plates.  Bowman writes:

The witnesses to the Resurrection gained credibility after their experience, becoming consistently reliable, faithful witnesses to Jesus Christ and honorable members of the Christian movement.  Cowardly Peter, doubting Thomas, and persecuting Paul each became unwavering witnesses to Christ and remained so for the rest of their lives.  Peter and Paul were both martyred for their faith, as were some of the other apostles (e.g., James the son of Zebedee in Acts 12).  Not one of the known witnesses of the Resurrection ever undermined his or her testimony.  Not one ever left the Christian church.  Not one was ever excommunicated or excluded from the church.  Not one ever tarnished his or her witness by engaging in wicked behavior.  Not one ever diluted his or her witness by also bearing witness to other religious claims in conflict with the Christian faith.

What about the golden plate witnesses?  Did they live out their lives in a similar fashion?

The witnesses to the gold plates, far from gaining in credibility following their signing the testimonies, lost credibility over the years. Martin Harris diluted his witness by also bearing witness later to the Shakers and the Strangites.  Hiram Page had his own seer stone and claimed to receive revelations that Joseph condemned as from the devil!  Several of the witnesses were excommunicated (some eventually returned, others did not).  Several of the witnesses over the years gave conflicting testimony as to whether they actually saw the plates with their natural eyes or physically handled the plates.  Joseph [Smith] claimed that God had commanded him to take over thirty women, some of them already married to living men, as his wives.  David Whitmer maintained, not without cause, that Joseph was a fallen prophet.  Joseph and Hyrum were killed, not for their testimony to the Book of Mormon, but because of violent mob reaction to their polygamy and other illegal activities.

There is simply no comparison between these two groups of witnesses.  What a stark contrast!  Bowman continues:

Mormons routinely argue that the checkered history of the witnesses all the more underscores the fact that they never disavowed their testimony that Joseph did have the plates.  There is some question about this claim with regard to Cowdery and Harris, but letting that pass, one may accept that Joseph had something like metal plates without concluding that the whole story is true and Joseph really did translate gold plates with Egyptian characters by the gift and power of God.  The lack of credibility of the witnesses is a real evidential difficulty that cannot be turned into an apologetic asset.

In the last post of this series, Bowman explains some final difficulties with the golden plates.  You won’t want to miss it.

Book of Mormon, Golden Plates, Resurrection

How Do the Witnesses of the Gold Plates Compare to the Witnesses of the Resurrection? Part 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In part 1, we started looking at Rob Bowman’s online exposition of how the witnesses of Jesus’s resurrection and the witnesses of Joseph Smith’s golden plates compare to each other.  We pick up where we left off.

Bowman next looks at the “contrast between the makeup of the collection of publicly identified witnesses to the Resurrection and the publicly identified witnesses to the gold plates.”

The witnesses to the Resurrection included at least five women (with Mary Magdalene as the first such witness); the witnesses to the gold plates included no women.

The witnesses to the Resurrection identified as family members of Jesus actually consisted only of, perhaps, two such family members, James and Cleopas (if, as some scholars think, he was the man by that name elsewhere identified as a family member).  An appearance to Jude may be implied, and it isn’t unreasonable to speculate that Jesus also appeared to other family members such as Mary.  Still, the named individuals who functioned as public witnesses to the Resurrection included only one or two family members of Jesus. The rest of the named witnesses were drawn from a dozen or more families, with at most two individuals from any one family (such as Simon Peter and Andrew, or James and John the sons of Zebedee).

By contrast, the witnesses to the gold plates were drawn almost entirely from two families, the Smith family and the Whitmer family.  Hiram Page married into the Whitmer family, which means that all of the “eight witnesses” were from the Whitmer and Smith families.  Oliver Cowdery was Joseph Smith’s second or third cousin.  David Whitmer was one of the “three witnesses.”  Thus, ten of the eleven witnesses were relatives of either Joseph Smith or David Whitmer!

Think about this.  Jesus’s resurrection was witnessed by numerous people who were not related to Jesus.  In the case of the golden plates, the witnesses mostly came from two families, one being Smith’s own – hardly a diverse group.  This puts into question the overall credibility of the golden plate witnesses, and certainly cannot compare to the diversity of the resurrection witnesses.

Bowman next looks at, perhaps, the most interesting comparison of the witnesses – their credibility after their experience.  In part 3 , we will look at the lives of the resurrection witnesses and the lives of the golden plate witnesses.  The contrast is glaring, to say the least.  See you then.

Book of Mormon, Golden Plates, Resurrection

How Do the Witnesses of the Gold Plates Compare to the Witnesses of the Resurrection? Part 1

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Mormons believe that their founder Joseph Smith was shown the location of some golden plates by an angel.  These plates, which were allegedly engraved in a language called Reformed Egyptian, were then translated by Smith into the Book of Mormon.

What is interesting about these golden plates is that they are sometimes compared to the resurrection of Jesus.  The idea is that just as the resurrection of Jesus confirmed him as the Son of God, so also the discovery and translation of the golden plates are a confirmation that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God.  But are these two events comparable?  More importantly, are the witnesses of the resurrection and the witnesses of the golden plates comparable?

First, it must be stated that the actual discovery of the golden plates was only witnessed by Smith himself.  Nobody else was there.  But what of the existence of the golden plates?  What about those who claim to have witnessed the plates themselves?

Apologist Rob Bowman, in an on-line response to a Mormon, lays out a detailed comparison of the witnesses of both.  First, Bowman clarifies the make-up of the witnesses:

In the case of Christ’s resurrection, Christ appeared to at least one family member who had rejected him during his mortal ministry and to Saul of Tarsus when he was the archenemy of the Christian movement.  The two disciples on the Emmaus road had heard about Jesus’ resurrection but were so hardened to the possibility that they were walking away from Jerusalem, where he had appeared, so Jesus came after them and surprised them.  Peter had denied Jesus three times.  Thomas missed the first appearance to the apostolic band and expressed skepticism about the Resurrection, insisting he would not believe unless he saw for himself.

These facts negate the argument, which others have made, that the plates were only shown to select individuals because one had to be worthy in order to be allowed to see them.  That criterion obviously did not apply in the case of the Resurrection.  By contrast, no one saw the gold plates except people who had already agreed to support Joseph Smith.  The contrast is dramatic.

What about the number of witnesses?

According to Paul, Christ appeared to hundreds of people (1 Cor. 15:6), whereas only a dozen people or so claimed to have seen the gold plates (and only four claimed to see the angel).  Even if one dismisses Paul’s statement as puffery (though I know of no good reason to do so), the texts inform us that a fairly large number of people saw the risen Jesus.  These included the five or more women at the tomb; the two men on the road to Emmaus; the eleven apostles; James the Lord’s brother; Joseph Barsabas, Matthias, and others among the 120 that gathered after the Ascension; and later Saul (Paul).  So even apart from 1 Cor. 15:6  we can count at least two dozen men and women who saw the risen Jesus.

Bowman then notes the circumstances under which Jesus appeared in contrast to the circumstances under which people witnessed the golden plates:

It isn’t just the larger number of people who saw the risen Christ that is significant but the lack of any mortal human’s involvement in deciding or orchestrating those appearances.  Jesus appeared to various individuals of his choosing when and where and how he wished.  Those appearances were never announced in advance; no one knew ahead of time when they would happen.  No spiritual “preparation” was needed (recall what is said above about Thomas, the two on the Emmaus road, and Saul).

The appearances took place just outside the tomb, in locked rooms, on open roads, by the lake shore, under varying conditions not subject to any mortal’s control.  By contrast, the eleven witnesses [of the gold plates] were evidently shown the plates with advance notice and preparation, under closely controlled circumstances.

In part 2 of this series, we will continue to look at Rob Bowman’s comparison of the witnesses.  There is much more to discuss!

Archaeology, Church History, Historical Christ

Can Historians Use Anonymous Sources?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

A common complaint about the reliability of the letters and books contained in the New Testament is that we don’t know, for sure, who wrote all of these documents.  In particular, the four Gospels are singled out as being anonymous since there is nothing in the text of the four Gospels that says, “So-and-so wrote this Gospel.”

There are many historical scholars who do believe that we can identify the authors of the Gospels and most of the other letters in the New Testament, but what if we could not?  What if the authors of these documents were unknown?  Would we have to throw out the contents?  Are they worthless, in that case, for historical investigation?

Historical scholar Mike Licona, in his book The Resurrection of Jesus, says “no.”  Licona first answers the charge that the Gospels were not written by eyewitnesses:

Bracketing the fact that a number of scholars have taken a contrary position, this challenge is not unique to the New Testament literature.  No surviving account of the life of Alexander the Great was written by an eyewitness.  Tacitus and Suetonius were not eyewitnesses to the majority of the events they reported.  Nevertheless, historians remain confident that they are able to recover the past to varying degrees without ever knowing who their sources were.

Historian C. Fasolt argues that Paul’s letter to the Roman church is helpful as a historical source “only on the assumption that it was written by Saint Paul.”  Is Fasolt right?  Licona notes historian M. S. Cladis’s response to Fasolt:

This is going to be news to countless social historians of the religions of the ancient Mediterranean basin who investigate archaeological and textual work without always knowing the specifics of the exact agents involved.  Indeed, these historians are investigating the society that shaped the agents, even if they do not know most of the agents’ names (and all that this means).

They collect, analyze, and interpret evidence from a variety of sources—monuments and tombs, literary texts and shopping lists—in order to learn something important about the socio-historical circumstances in which people, like Paul, lived, moved, and had their being.  The historian of antiquity, then, can learn much about the past from the ‘Letter to the Romans’ whether or not that text was actually written by Paul.

Here is the takeaway point: even if we grant that the books and letters of the New Testament are anonymous, we can still gather important historical information from those texts.  Anonymity of the sources is not a death knell for historical New Testament studies, and should not be used as some kind of sweeping indictment of the texts.  We can know what happened to Jesus and his disciples two thousand years ago, using the New Testament documents as our sources.

About the blog

Question for My Readers

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Regular readers of the blog know that I often write blog post series with multiple parts that I publish in sequence.  The reason I do this is because I want to keep the length of each post down to around 500 or so words.  This makes each post easy to read in one 5-minute sitting.

The downside to this approach is that it breaks up continuity for my readers.  You may have to go back and read previous posts to catch up with the latest in the series.

So, my question to all of you is this: Do you like the current approach of breaking up long posts into parts, or would you prefer that I publish longer blog posts and not break them into parts?  Please register your votes by leaving a comment.

I really appreciate your feedback and thank you for helping me make the blog better!

Historical Christ

Will There Ever Be a Historical Consensus that Jesus Was Resurrected? Part 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

If you are a Christian who is waiting for the day when most historical scholars, both Christian and non-Christian, affirm that the evidence does indeed indicate that Jesus was resurrected, I’m afraid you’ll be waiting until the Second Coming, when there will be no doubt.  Why is that?  If, as we say on this blog, the historical evidence for the resurrection is so strong, then shouldn’t every scholar be lining up behind it?

In part 1 of this two-part series, we started looking at the writings of historical scholar Mike Licona on the issue of consensus in historical Jesus studies.  Excerpts are taken from his book The Resurrection of Jesus.  We pick up where we left off.  

Given the challenges of historical consensus, especially with regard to the historical Jesus, what should we expect in the future?  According to Licona,

It is highly unlikely that a consensus will ever exist pertaining to the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. While strong agreement exists regarding a number of “facts” often used as evidence to support the resurrection hypothesis, no consensus will ever exist for the conclusion that the resurrection hypothesis is an accurate description of what actually occurred.

After all, how likely is it that historians who are Muslims and atheists will confess that the resurrection hypothesis is the best explanation or that Christian historians will confess that the resurrection hypothesis is not the best explanation? Yet, either Jesus rose from the dead or he did not; and historians holding one of these positions are more correct than those holding the other.

Because of the uncertainty of historical knowledge, many historical descriptions will never receive a stamp of approval from the consensus of the relevant scholars.  This should not restrain the historian from stating that his or her hypothesis is probably true.

Licona concludes that a consensus that Jesus was resurrected will elude us for the foreseeable future.  This fact does not mean that Jesus did not rise from the dead, only that consensus across a broad spectrum of scholars is impossible given the major influence of worldviews.  After all, an admission that Jesus rose from the dead would usually entail a radical realignment of the worldview of a non-Christian scholar.  Although this may happen from time to time, it is highly unlikely to happen at a high enough rate to create a consensus.

As Christians, where does this leave us?  I think it means that we are free to point out where there is a positive consensus about the historical facts about Jesus, but we must realize that those facts will only give us a minimal list of true facts.  Beyond the minimal consensus facts, we may argue for additional facts using solid historical criteria, but we should not expect non-Christian scholars to always agree with our arguments.

We also now have an idea why there are such divergent views on the historical Jesus.  Although scholars may agree on a short list of facts, many of them feel free to argue for additional “facts” that suit their worldview.  As lay people reading books written by historical Jesus scholars, we must always be on guard for the author’s worldview nosing its way into the book.

Another implication is that reading historical Jesus works from one side of the philosophical or theological spectrum will never be enough to get a reasonable view of the historical evidence.  Readers must force themselves to pick up works from the other side of the spectrum as well. 

A co-worker of mine once told me he longer believed in the historical Jesus of Christian tradition after reading a book by a liberal Jesus scholar.  When I asked if he read works by believing Christians or conservatives, he answered “no.”  He just assumed that the scholar he read had the final word.  As Licona has shown, no scholar has the final word.  We must all engage the evidence for ourselves.

Historical Christ

Will There Ever Be a Historical Consensus that Jesus Was Resurrected? Part 1

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

If you are a Christian who is waiting for the day when most historical scholars, both Christian and non-Christian, affirm that the evidence does indeed indicate that Jesus was resurrected, I’m afraid you’ll be waiting until the Second Coming, when there will be no doubt.  Why is that?  If, as we say on this blog, the historical evidence for the resurrection is so strong, then shouldn’t every scholar be lining up behind it?

Historical scholar Mike Licona addresses this issue in his book The Resurrection of Jesus:

Given the prominent role of horizons [i.e., worldview] in every historical inquiry, we can anticipate that consensus opinions will often elude historians . . . .  Unfortunately, rather than an objective and careful weighing of the data, the subjective horizons of historians, especially historians writing on religious, philosophical, political and moral topics, exert the most influence in their final judgments.  Moreover, many members of the audience to whom historians present their research are no less biased.  Accordingly, what is judged as sound and persuasive research to one group may be viewed as inadequate and overly biased by another.

Licona’s point is straightforward: worldviews (or horizons) of historians exert a strong influence on their interpretations of data.  There may be some historians who can limit that influence, but there are just as many who cannot.  He continues:

A consensus opinion can be valuable for recognizing objectivity when the group is composed of scholars from all interested camps with the exception of some fringe positions.  Tucker cites agreement among historians of the Holocaust: “Jewish and Gentile, German and British, right-wing and left-wing historians agree that there was a Holocaust.”

Here is another important point.  If you have agreement on historical facts from a full spectrum of worldviews, then this is valuable for recognizing objectivity.  However, just because a historical interpretation does not garner assent from a broad spectrum does not indicate that it is not objective.  In other words, consensus across a broad spectrum is a good positive test, but not a good negative test.

With regard to historical biblical studies, Licona offers the following analysis:

A group exhibiting greater heterogeneity is the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL).  Annual SBL meetings are attended by members of many theological and philosophical persuasions: liberals, conservatives, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics and atheists, all from numerous countries and ethnic groups from all over the world.  If a consensus opinion is going to be of any value for historians, it must come from such a group.

However, a consensus from even this group is valuable only when all of its members opining on a subject have personally researched that particular subject.  For example, a consensus opinion of all SBL members on a matter pertaining to a recent archaeological find has little value if less than five percent of all SBL members have a significant knowledge of that find and expertise in the field.  Similarly, little if any value should be assigned to those scholars opining on the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus who have not engaged in serious research on the matter.

Licona argues that consensus opinion on the historical Jesus can be valuable coming from a group such as the SBL because of its heterogeneity.  However, he warns that only scholars who have actually studied the subject in depth should be counted toward the consensus.

In part 2 of this series, we will finish off Licona’s analysis of consensus among historical biblical scholars.

Atheism, Evil, Pain, and Suffering

Do People Become Atheists for Only Intellectual Reasons?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian, Russell quotes the famed philosopher John Stuart Mill writing about his father’s road to atheism.  In the previous post, we looked at the transmission of atheism from one generation to the next.  Today we look at another insight from Mill’s quote.

My father [says John Stuart Mill], educated in the creed of Scotch Presbyterianism, had by his own studies and reflections been early led to reject not only the belief in Revelation but the foundations of what is commonly called Natural Religion.  My father’s rejection of all that is called religious belief was not, as many might suppose, primarily a matter of logic and evidence: the grounds of it were moral, still more than intellectual.

He found it impossible to believe that a world so full of evil was the work of an Author combining infinite power with perfect goodness and righteousness.  His aversion to religion, in the sense usually attached to the term, was of the same kind with that of Lucretius: he regarded it with the feelings due not to mere mental delusion but to a great moral evil.

What is interesting in this quotation is James Mill’s reason for becoming an atheist.  It wasn’t about primarily “logic and evidence,” but about a moral problem – the existence of evil.  For Mill, the existence of a morally perfect and infinitely powerful God is impossible given the evil in the world.  Here is a classical way to state this version of the problem of evil:

1. If God is all good, he would destroy evil.

2. If God is all powerful, he could destroy evil.

3. But evil is not destroyed.

4. Therefore, there is no such God.

How do theists respond to this argument?  Christian philosopher Norm Geisler offers the following solution in his Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (I’ve greatly abbreviated his solution below for space reasons):

Theism holds that even though God could not destroy (annihilate) all evil without destroying all good, nevertheless, he can and will defeat (overcome) all evil without destroying free choice.  The argument can be summarized as follows:

1. God is all good and desires to defeat evil.

2. God is all powerful and is able to defeat evil.

3. Evil is not yet defeated.

4. Therefore, it will one day be defeated.

The infinite power and perfection of God guarantee the eventual defeat of evil.  The fact that it is not yet accomplished in no way diminishes the certainty that it will be defeated.  Even though evil cannot be destroyed without destroying free choice, nonetheless, it can be overcome. . . .

Not only can a theistic God defeat evil, but he will do it.  We know this because he is all good and would want to defeat evil.  And because he is all-powerful and is able to defeat evil.  Therefore, he will do it.  The guarantee that evil will be overcome is the nature of the theistic God.

What is fascinating to me about Mill’s rejection of God is that it is not based on logic.  Philosophers of religion are virtually unanimous in concluding that the logical problem of evil, as stated above, is solvable by theists, and therefore does not demonstrate a true logical problem.

If Mill had used logic and reason, he might have discovered this for himself.  Instead, his failure to apply logic and reason to the problem of evil moved him to atheism.  In fact, as we’ve argued here before, it is difficult to even account for the existence of evil without a perfectly good God.

None of this is to deny that the problem of evil is a question that Christians must answer.  We must take this question seriously and explain how the Christian God can exist with the evil we see in the world.  Norm Geisler and many other Christian philosophers over the last 2,000 years have offered answers to this question.

We don’t know what James Mill concluded about the origins and persistence of evil, but it does look like he failed to consider logical solutions to the problem, and instead relied only on his moral intuitions.

Atheism, Religion

Is Atheism Transmitted from One Generation to the Next?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian, Russell quotes the famed philosopher John Stuart Mill writing about his father’s road to atheism.  The quote is instructive for Christians as it gives a small glimpse into the world of a famed atheist.

My father [says John Stuart Mill], educated in the creed of Scotch Presbyterianism, had by his own studies and reflections been early led to reject not only the belief in Revelation but the foundations of what is commonly called Natural Religion.  My father’s rejection of all that is called religious belief was not, as many might suppose, primarily a matter of logic and evidence: the grounds of it were moral, still more than intellectual. . . .

It would have been wholly inconsistent with my father’s ideas of duty to allow me to acquire impressions contrary to his convictions and feelings respecting religion: and he impressed on me from the first that the manner in which the world came into existence was a subject on which nothing was known.

There is a lesson here about transmission of beliefs.  It is often claimed by atheists that religious views are merely transmitted from parent to child: we are simply born into our religion.  Atheists, on the other hand, come to their beliefs for mostly intellectual reasons, and are not born into their views.

In the case of James Mill, it appears he did buck the family religion and become an atheist against the teachings of his family.  However, if we read on we see that his son, John Stuart Mill, received his father’s atheism.  The younger Mill was clearly taught to be an atheist by his father.

What we can conclude is that in this case, one generation rejected its religious heritage, but the next did not reject its anti-religious heritage.  Mill’s experience is a great example of an atheist parent making sure that his child embraces his particular worldview.  

I’m sure some of you are wondering what the big deal is.  Of course atheist parents inculcate their beliefs into their children.  The reason I offer this quotation is because of the persistent claim that atheism is all about free thinkers bucking their family’s beliefs.  Perhaps this is true of some first-generation atheists raised in a religious family, but that first generation may choose, as James Mill did, to make sure no more free thinking happens with his children.

My guess is that atheist parents pass along their beliefs just like religious parents.  It is time to admit that Christian and atheist parents are pretty much in the same boat – we all want our children to embrace what we believe. 

If the term free thinker is to refer to people who reject their family’s heritage, then there are free thinkers from every religous and anti-religious persuasion (every group gains converts from outside their current community).  Atheists cannot lay sole claim to this moniker. 

There are more lessons to be learned from Mill’s quotation, and I will tackle those in the next post.

General Apologetics, Miracles, Resurrection, Skeptics

Do Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence? Part 4

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In this fourth post of the series, we will examine a final reason why the maxim that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence fails as a paradigm for determining  burden of proof.  Mike Licona argues that even if we accept this maxim at face value, it still has intractable problems.

Let us suppose that I am mistaken on the above and that the maxim remains that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.  We are challenged to define when the evidence may be said to be “extraordinary.”  This, of course, is a subjective endeavor, since what is extraordinary for one may not be enough for another.

Given the subjective nature of determining what constitutes extraordinary evidence, is there any way to make it more objective for historical hypotheses?  Licona thinks so: 

I would like to suggest that, given the paucity of data that often plagues many historical hypotheses, when a hypothesis fulfills all five criteria for the best explanation and outdistances competing hypotheses by a significant margin, that hypothesis may be said to have extraordinary evidence supporting it.

I would also like to call attention to the fact that the requirement for extraordinary evidence cuts both ways.  If a historian proposes a natural theory such as group hallucinations in order to account for the reports of the postresurrection appearances of Jesus to groups, he will be required to present a case for the possibility of group hallucinations.  Since modern psychology generally regards group hallucinations as highly improbable if not impossible, the assertion that group hallucinations account for the postresurrection appearances is an extraordinary claim and thus requires extraordinary evidence.

Anti-supernaturalist skeptics cannot wield the “extraordinary evidence” maxim as a weapon only against miracle claims, because to do so means abandoning historical methodology and instead, doing metaphysics.

Nontheist historians are not licensed to claim that a hypothesis that is terribly ad hoc or that strains the data beyond what it can bear should be preferred over a hypothesis with a supernatural element that meets every claim to historicity.  And those who feel compelled to do so indirectly admit the strength of the data in favor of a miracle.

The nontheist historian may reply that miracles are more unlikely than very rare natural occurrences and thus require a greater burden of proof than an unlikely hypothesis that accounts for the same data.  Accordingly any hypothesis involving an explanation, no matter how improbable or poorly evidenced, should be preferred over a hypothesis involving a miracle. . . . But how does the nontheist historian  know this?  Testimonies of God’s intervention in history occur with every claim to answered prayer.  Although many claims of God’s intervention could in reality be coincidence, many claims of coincidence could in reality be God’s intervention.  This is not to suggest that historians should assign a supernatural explanation when a natural one is available that is at least equally plausible.  I am instead challenging the notion that the historian’s default position is that we live in a world where God does not intervene.

In summary, Licona argues that even if we do require extraordinary evidence for a historical event, we should adhere to a historical methodology which follows the evidence to the best explanation.  Ruling out miracle accounts a priori is not part of historical methodology; it is just a failure to leave one’s metaphysical biases aside and conduct a truly objective investigation of the evidence.

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