When I first started to get into Islamic apologetics, Bart Ehrman was the big name. Muslims weren’t going to pick up the Bible to read. Why read the supposedly corrupted Bible when you can just as easily read the scholar who shows that it is corrupt. That is of course, Bart Ehrman.
In the last few years, Muslims have been slowly moving away from Ehrman. I think that they know deep down that he won’t help them. To be honest, I think they were desperate for ammunition so they just accepted anything that came along at first glance. It was similar to the 19th century when Truth Revealed was published. That’s the book that said that Pope Leo X invented indulgences in the 16th century. If I were a Crusader who was promised one, I wouldn’t be too happy to hear that.
So, apart from Forged and its scholarly counterpart Forgery and Counterforgery, Muslims really don’t have that much use for Ehrman anymore. Now, Christians like to tell Muslims that Ehrman says that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ is a concrete fact. What do the Muslims do at this point? They produce an answer that’s so incredibly clever.
Here’s the answer that I’ve heard from multiple apologists. I will paraphrase it. Muslims can correct me when me if I don’t represent it properly.
Yes, scholars like Ehrman and others agree that Jesus was crucified. However these scholars are using a secular historical method which says that miracles are impossible. Using this method, they will deny Jesus being miraculously saved as the Quran says but also the resurrection since that’s a miracle as well.
This argument says some true things. These scholars will deny the resurrection since they deny miracles. However, this statement only includes half the story about what these scholars believe regarding the death of Jesus. In the book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, Ehrman writes:
What I think we can say with some confidence is that Jesus actually did die, he probably was buried, and that some of his disciples(all of them? some of them?) claimed to have seen him alive afterward.
A bit later he writes:
…we can say with complete certainty that some of the disciples at some later time insisted that (a) women from their group went to anoint Jesus’ body fir burial and found it missing, and (b) he soon appeared to them, convincing them that he had been raised from the dead.
These quotes are from pages 229 and 230 of Ehrman’s book.
So Ehrman(and other liberal scholars with similar views) say that Jesus died. However it doesn’t end there. They believe that the followers of Jesus had post death experiences of him and came to conclude that he had been resurrected from the dead. Nowhere do these scholars say that he physically resurrected, however the outline that they give is consistent with the Christian claim.
The Christian claim is that Christ died on the cross, resurrected from the dead and appeared to his followers who came to believe it and later proclaim it. Christians believe everything that the secular historian believes. The only difference is that it’s in the context of a miracle. The resurrection is the explanation for all of the concrete data agreed on by both parties.
The Muslim claim is different. Their claim that Jesus was miraculously saved contradicts the data all over the board. No one claimed to believe it and no Christian went out proclaiming the miraculous saving of the Messiah. There is absolutely no consistency with the Islamic claims and the claims affirmed by historians.
Jesus Christ died on the cross. His disciples had experiences after his death and they later concluded that he had risen from the dead and went to preach it. Ehrman and the Christians both believe this. We just believe that the resurrection was the explanation. Let’s look at this from an Islamic point of view.
Jesus died on the cross? No, it was a smoke and mirrors job and 1,400 years later Muslims offer completely outrageous and contradictory explanations for the 40 ambiguous Arabic words from a seventh century illiterate man from deep in the Arabian desert who thought Mary was part of the Christian Trinity.
Disciples of Jesus had experiences of him after the events of his death? Muslims can’t agree with this because they say God raised him to himself, presumably in heaven. It doesn’t work since his followers supposedly knew this.
Followers of Jesus conclude that he’s been resurrected? Islam can’t account for this because there is no reason for that.
Followers of Jesus preach the resurrection? Again, Islam can’t harmonize this historical fact with any of their theories.
This is why their response won’t work. It’s clever, I’ll give it that; but it simply doesn’t work. The Christian position does.
–Yes, scholars like Ehrman and others agree that Jesus was crucified. However these scholars are using a secular historical method which says that miracles are impossible. Using this method, they will deny Jesus being miraculously saved as the Quran says but also the resurrection since that’s a miracle as well.–
I’ve never agreed with James White’s dismissal of Muslims who refer to the work of secular/liberal scholars. It is true that if they took the entirety of the arguments and worldview of such scholars, Islam would similarly be dismissed.
However, it feels to me like a handwave that doesn’t actually address the objections/criticisms raised by those scholars (except for when their argument relies wholly on a presupposition against supernaturalism).
I’ve taken to calling it the Hitler’s London fallacy.
Hitler was a very naughty man (as South Park put it). He held abhorrent views that we should condemn and reject. However, does this mean should we also automatically condemn and reject ALL the things Hitler believed? Hitler believed that London is the capital of England… Do we take a contradictory stance just because it’s Hitler? Do we insist that the sun rises in the west, just because Hitler thought it rises in the east?
Ergo, just because some godless scholars raise objections to the claims of Christianity, does not mean that Muslims cannot legitimately use those objections. We must deal with the objections, THEN use the same arguments and standards against Islam and see how it crumbles by comparison!
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–Jesus died on the cross? No, it was a smoke and mirrors job and 1,400 years later Muslims offer completely outrageous and contradictory explanations for the 40 ambiguous Arabic words from a seventh century illiterate man from deep in the Arabian desert who thought Mary was part of the Christian Trinity.–
The ‘cleverest’ argument I’ve heard is simply that Allah deceived everyone into thinking that Jesus was crucified. So of course all historical evidence points to that (faked) fact.
But that opens up the problems of Allah being a deceiver, and starting the ‘false religion’ of Christianity!
Regarding those 40 Arabic words, Sam Shamoun and others argue convincingly that the standard Islamic interpretation that it denies Jesus’ death by crucifixion is wrong, and goes against other passages in the Quran and other Islamic texts that affirm Jesus’ death.
And as James White has pointed out, isn’t it remarkable that Muhammad had NOTHING to say about those 40 Arabic words in any Hadith?
The Hadith collections have accounts about trivial matters like: Licking your fingers after eating or else let someone else lick them (Bukhari 7:65:366); Muhammad having sex with all nine/eleven wives in a row (Bukhari 1:5:268); monkeys stoning a ‘slutty’ female monkey (Bukhari 5:58:188); Moses not actually having a hernia in his scrotum which everyone knows because a stone ran away with his clothes until he caught up with it and beat it excessively until it still has marks to this day (Bukhari 1:5:277 – perhaps SOME merit to this tale, as Moses did have a history of temper tantrums against rocks!).
But on the huge issue relating to the major rival religion of the time… Nothing. Really???