Paul's Conversion Story Grows

Story 1

This first version is presumably based on a story Paul told Luke.

Acts 9:3-7 “As he was traveling, it happened that he was approaching Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him; and he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?' And he said, 'Who are You, Lord?' And He said, 'I am Jesus whom you are persecuting, but get up and enter the city, and it will be told you what you must do.' The men who traveled with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one.”

The men with him hear a voice, but see no light and remain standing.

Story 2

The second version is probably Luke's eyewitness account of what Paul said while in the temple.

Acts 22:6-9 “But it happened that as I was on my way, approaching Damascus about noontime, a very bright light suddenly flashed from heaven all around me, and I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?' And I answered, 'Who are You, Lord?' And He said to me, 'I am Jesus the Nazarene, whom you are persecuting.' And those who were with me saw the light, to be sure, but did not understand the voice of the One who was speaking to me.”

The men with him hear a voice and see the light. It is implied that they are not knocked to the ground.

Story 3

The third version is probably Luke's eyewitness account of Paul's testimony before King Agrippa.

Acts 26:13-14 “At midday, O King, I saw on the way a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining all around me and those who were journeying with me. And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew dialect, 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.'”

This time, the men with him are knocked to the ground. It is implied that his friends see the light and hear the voice.

If someone is in a group when they see/hear something noteworthy or miraculous, a really important first question to ask the witnesses is what everyone else saw/heard. It might be the case that it was real yet only one person saw it, but this is a pretty crucial detail. Whether intentional or not, this shows that Paul sometimes stretches the facts when trying to convince someone Christianity is real. This is worth keeping in mind when reading his list of Jesus-sightings in I Corinthians 15, or reading about the “third heaven” in II Corinthians 12.

What did the Voice say?

In the first version, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? ... I am Jesus whom you are persecuting, but get up and enter the city, and it will be told you what you must do.”

The second version is essentially the same, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?' ... I am Jesus the Nazarene, whom you are persecuting. ... Get up and go on into Damascus, and there you will be told of all that has been appointed for you to do.”

But in the third version, the voice says, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads. ... I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. But get up and stand on your feet; for this purpose I have appeared to you, to appoint you a minister and a witness not only to the things which you have seen, but also to the things in which I will appear to you; rescuing you from the Jewish people and from the Gentiles, to whom I am sending you, to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me.”

Due to paraphrasing, maybe Paul just left these details out at first. But based on the information available to me, it looks like Paul was told far, far less on the road to Damascus than he reported the voice as saying while before Felix.

Story 0, aka, Guessing at the Truth

How big of a story would it have taken for Paul to come up with the Acts 9 account? Maybe he looked at the sun, had a heat-stroke, and a nightmare about Jesus that he took a little too seriously. Of course, this is just a guess.

However, what must be recognized is that our only source of what actually happened to Paul is in Acts 9 and presumably based on the testimony of Paul. And in two instances appearing in Acts, Paul exaggerates the story. This should profoundly influence the degree to which his first story is believed.

Lazarus and Lazarus, or just Lazarus?

The primary skeptical alternative to apologists' arguments from the Gospels is that the stories of Jesus were legends that may contain an ounce of truth, but have grown enough to be unreliable.

Here, I will continue to make this case, again with a purely biblical argument. In particular, I will be comparing two stories that I believe to be parallel, although Christians will certainly disagree.

The first is Luke 16:19-31. This is a fictional story Jesus told. (I've heard Christian and skeptic alike argue that this was meant to be a true story. For the sake of this particular argument, it matters little.) It concerns Lazarus, a beggar who dies and goes to heaven, or somewhere similar. While in heaven, he has a dialog with an evil rich man who has died and is in a place similar to hell. The main point, or at least a main point of the parable is the final piece of dialog, where the rich man pleads to Abraham for Lazarus to be sent back from the dead and warn his brothers. Abraham replies that they have the Scripture, and if they are not convinced by the Scripture, they will not be convinced by Lazarus returning from the dead.

The second is John 11:1-53. This is presented as a true story, and contains the Bible's only other [mention of] Lazarus. Lazarus dies but is then brought back from the dead. Despite this, the chief priests who know the Scripture better than anyone do not believe in Jesus, but instead try to kill him.

There are three ways to look at this:

1. It's a coincidence that Luke has a hypothetical Resurrection of a Lazarus and John has a Resurrection of a real Lazarus.
2. Some other non-coincidental explanation.
3. Lazarus' Resurrection is a fish story that grew out of Jesus' parable.

At a glance, it would make sense to suggest that Jesus intentionally used the parable to foreshadow a real event. Until you consider what this would imply about Luke and his research.

This would mean that Jesus actually raised a man from the dead, many people believed because of this, this was the key event in Jesus life leading the chief priests to their murderous rage, and yet somehow Luke couldn't find a single witness to justify writing about this! And yet somehow, he found a witness who remembered the details of Jesus parable, all the way up to the name of the character Jesus used in his parable.

Furthermore, Luke 19:45-47 suggests that the chief priests wanted to kill him after he drove out the money changers. This suggests that Luke would have disagreed with what John thought the reason was. John also mentions that the money changers were thrown out in John 2:13-21. Do you see what John just did there? In Luke the key reason was the cleansing of the temple and in John the key reason is the resurrection of Lazarus, so John moved the temple cleansing to the beginning of the story.

Of course, Jesus could have cleansed the temple twice, and I'm not suggesting that anything is implausible about that. What I'm suggesting is that the Gospels fit together better from the perspective of “how are these stories changing with time?” rather than “how can I make these events fit together?”

A misconception apologists often have is that skeptics discount biblical miracles simply because they are naturalists. That is not the case. Here, I have given a purely biblical reason to think the resurrection of Lazarus never actually happened.

Matthew, the Colt, and the Donkey

Matthew 21:2-5: “[Jesus said] to them, 'Go into the village opposite you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied there and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to Me. If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, 'The Lord has need of them,' and immediately he will send them.' This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:
'SAY TO THE DAUGHTER OF ZION, 'BEHOLD YOUR KING IS COMING TO YOU, GENTLE, AND MOUNTED ON A DONKEY, EVEN ON A COLT, THE FOAL OF A BEAST OF BURDEN.''”

The first thing to notice is that Matthew is telling us about a colt and donkey, while Zechariah 9:9 mentions a colt and donkey as well. That's probably not a coincidence.

However, Zechariah was actually talking about one animal, not two. The first part of the prophecy shares the surprise that their king would ride a mere donkey rather than a horse. In the second part, the word “even” is adding to this surprise; the extra detail of its age makes it even less majestic.

The authors of Mark, Luke, and John seem to have figured this out, as all three refer to the one animal on which Jesus rode. Mark 11:2-7 and Luke 19:30-35 say it was a colt. John 12:14-15 says Jesus found a “little donkey” and then paraphrases Zechariah 9:9 to say that a donkey's colt was to be ridden. This is a double affirmation, as John used little donkey and donkey's colt interchangeably, and also thought that a paraphrase of Zechariah involving one animal was accurate.

So if Zechariah was talking about one animal, and it's not a coincidence that both he and Matthew mention a colt and donkey, what are the alternatives?

One possibility is that the author of Matthew was intentionally describing Palm Sunday in a way that made Jesus look like a fulfillment of prophecy as much as possible. He wanted people to believe that Jesus fulfilled prophecies, and this was more important to him than limiting the details of his story to things that actually happened. The beginning of Matthew is already sufficient to reveal that convincing people was more important than not saying false things about the OT. Here, I'm suggesting that convincing people was also more important than not saying false things about the events in Jesus' life.

Another possible source of the story is poor reasoning that does not involve intentional deception. Suppose Jesus actually rode on a colt, and an early Christian heard this story. But then they looked at Zechariah, and mistakenly thought that it spoke of two animals. Here's their train of thought: “Zechariah is true, Zechariah prophesied about a colt and a donkey, therefore Jesus' triumphal entry involved both a colt and a donkey.” And so when the story was retold, a second animal was added. With this possibility, the person who made up the detail sincerely believes it to be true, and the author of Matthew need not be the one who misunderstand Zechariah.

This is a concern whenever a prophecy's fulfillment is only reported by people who were already certain that the prophecy was true. The prophecy itself is enough to convince a true believer that its fulfillment occurred. This results in a story that the teller honestly believes, despite that fact that they observed nothing.

Which Resurrection Account?

When someone tells me that they believe based on the testimonies of the Gospel writers, my question is “Which one? When they contradict, how do you decide what to believe?”

The apologetic rebuttal to Gospel contradictions is that is actually adds to the credibility of the stories, in that it shows that they didn't conspire together to lie. Honest testimonies from different perspectives will often contradict due to imperfections in observations and memory. While I agree with the argument in principle, the question simply becomes to determine what level of contradiction is present – a low level supports the stories' honesty, a high level discredits the stories' accuracy. For this reason, I will be disregarding the minor contradictions and focusing on the big ones.

One point that is import is that Mark 16:9-20 is not part of the original. Conservative theologians agree with this, otherwise I would feel the need to defend this claim.

The Empty Tomb:

In Mark, the women come to the tomb where a young man tells them Jesus is risen. They tell no one (Mark 16:8) – this detail clashes badly with all three other Gospel accounts. How did the disciples hear about the Resurrection? The testimony of the women is only relevant if we know what their story was.

(I have since backed away from this argument.)

In Matthew, the women come to the tomb and speak to an angel on the stone (28:5). Here, the women follow instructions and tell the disciples (28:11).

In Luke, the women report to the disciples (24:9 - note Peter in particular) that they have seen the Resurrected Jesus. This again clashes with Mark 16:8, but it gets far worse when we look at John.

In John, a highly upset Mary Magdalene tells Peter and John that Jesus' body has been stolen. This is not to be confused with Luke 24:9 when all the disciples were present and the news was incredibly good rather than upsetting. Peter and John find Jesus' tomb on their own (20:8). The Mary tells the rest of the disciples. Surely this time much line up with Luke 24:9. But in Luke, they don't believe her, so Peter leaves to check it out for himself (Luke 24:12). In John, Peter has already been to the tomb, because he saw the tomb before Mary sees Jesus (John 20:11). Therefore, either Luke 24:10-12 is fictional, or the classic Sunday School story of “they have taken away my Lord” never happened.

Location of Appearances:

In Matthew, both the angel (28:7) and Jesus (28:10) tell them to tell the disciple specifically to go to Galilee, just as in Mark 16:7. In Luke, the angels remind them that while Jesus was in Galilee, he told them he would be Resurrected (24:6-7). Now, if you're not paying close attention, you just missed like I missed it the first hundred times I heard the story. In Matthew and Mark, the young man/angel/Jesus tell the disciple to go to Galilee, while in Luke, Jesus told them something while he was in Galilee.

Remembering what was said exactly is not that big of a deal. (It's a good rebuttal to the reasons to believe the story as a decent part of the testimony is what was said, but it's not a reason to disbelieve.) The big deal is that Matthew, Luke, and John's Resurrection appearances need these words to be as they appear in each book. In Matthew, Jesus is seen in Galilee, which is fifty miles away from Jerusalem, while in Luke, Jesus is seen in and around Jerusalem.

So did Jesus tell the Marys to tell the disciples to go the Galilee? Notice how wrong one story must be. Matthew repeats the instructions twice and Mark once – if they're wrong, then the accounts of the “young man”, the sighting of an angel, and the sighting of Jesus contain only words that were not actually spoken. If Luke is wrong, then he changed the words of the risen Jesus to make his story flow.

The Story Grows:

The order of writing was Mark, Matthew, Luke, then John. In Mark, there are no Resurrection or angelic appearances, save for the passage which is known to have been added. In Matthew, there is one, in Luke there is three, and in John there are three with far more details.

The Role of Women:

Also, as time goes on, the role of women is demoted. Now, as apologist tell us, women's testimony was not considered to be reliable at this time. The reason apologists tell us this is that the best reason for the Gospel writers to have for including women if it was true. I agree to a point – the Gospel writers didn't make up the stories, but rather used stories that they were circulating. But the testimony of the women is the part of the Resurrection accounts that differ the most sharply, so it's hardly the place to look for strength.

Also, consider the evolution of the stories with time: In Mark, women's testimony is 100% of the evidence. In Matthew, this is thinned out a bit as men see Jesus as well. In Luke, Peter makes it to the tomb himself at the prodding of Mary. In John, Peter and John make it to the tomb before Mary finds out herself. Seen in the light of “women are talebearers,” the story is growing and shows evidence of changing.

Other Details:

Is it not odd that Mark only records Mary talking to a “young man?” A harmonization would require Mary to have spoken to both angels and Jesus himself, yet Mark only bothers to record her conversation with an angel while somehow failing to mention that it was an angel. This falls short of a contradiction, but also short of believable narratives.

Luke and Matthew end the story with Jesus speaking pretty much the same words (Act 1:8 & Matthew 28:18-20). The problem is that they are fifty miles apart. While it is true that Matthew's account does not absolutely end through Jesus' ascension, if we begin by reading the Gospels like any other historical document, the best explanation is that the story was changed. My guess is that first Matthew wrote his book, then Luke wrote his book. Next Luke read Matthew, or heard about the Matt. 28:18-20 story and wanted it in his books, so it gets added at the beginning of Luke's next book. But Luke already has Jesus in Jerusalem, so he changes the location. (Also, the story gets bigger when Jesus rises into heaven.) (Refuted by Claire)

Conclusion:

The contortions an apologist must go through to defend the Gospels' reliability are greater than what must be supposed to conclude that many or all of the alleged sightings of Jesus didn't ever occur, and the remainder were whatever it is that all other religions and cults are based on. Once one fully understands why they don't take seriously the miracle stories of any other religion, they will understand my hesitancy to believe the Bible's contradictory accounts of the extraordinary.

It is easier for me to make sense of how an explosive religion could start without the Resurrection than it was for me as a cessationist to make sense of sincere Pentecostals. There are options other than someone is tell the truth, telling a lie, or is insane. Sometimes people are just wrong.

If I place the ideas that the testimonies are/aren't reliable on a 50/50 level, the contradictions point to unreliability. This does not even employ an anti-supernatural bias and overlooks the fact that Christianity has the burden of proof, or at the very least, the burden of evidence.

Even the Biblical accounts give poor evidence for the Resurrection. If Christianity has a strong point, this should have been it. In my case, it was these arguments in particular that broke the camel's back. I became an evidentialist three years ago because I saw the flaws of presuppositionalism. But now I saw that many are presuppositionalists because they see the flaws in an evidential approach.

Now I was neither one.