I will examine Craig’s reasoning and respond to the claims he makes regarding the historical evidence for Jesus.
In this article, I will respond to an argument put forward by Prof. William Lane Craig concerning the historical Jesus. The argument I will address appears, as far as I am aware, in an article published on the ReasonableFaith.org website.
WLC: Prof. William Lane Craig
NT: New Testament
Synoptic gospels (Synoptics): Mark, Matthew, and Luke
Janaza: Muslim prayer for a deceased Muslim.
I wanted to write about the historical Jesus for a long time now, but I did not find the time to sit and do it, so I would like to thank WLC for expediting the process. WLC is a philosopher, and the topic at hand pertains to history; that gives a first warning sign he will take a pseudo-historical approach. Since I started looking at the historical record of Jesus, my motto was, “The more we know about the historical Jesus, the more Muslim he becomes.”
WLC posits two main premises in his argument; The first is that the Bible, or Christianity, is more in-line with what we know about the historical Jesus. The second is that the Quran, or Islam, paints an entirely ahistorical figure of Jesus. My approach is to refute both claims by showing how the Biblical and Christian views of Jesus contradict what we know about the historical Jesus from an utterly historical perspective. And to show that the Islamic conception of Jesus is more in-line with what we already know about the Messiah of Nazareth.
Right off the bat, we see that the NT has an internal conflict about the personality, life, and teachings of Jesus; The synoptic gospels differ significantly in its emphasis and general portrayal of Jesus from the Gospel of John. We all come to know that Mark was almost certainly written first and that Matthew and Luke copied and paraphrased the majority of his work. Those synoptic gospels portray Jesus as a human Messiah whom God has exalted and adopted as His son. Perhaps Peter summarized it well in the book of Acts, or as the author alleges.
Contrast that with John’s theologically driven Gospel that portrays Jesus as the incarnate, yet subordinate, Son of God. John explicitly says in his prologue that Jesus is an incarnation of God’s logos. And in chapter 17, John gives us the most glaring evidence that he believes in the subordinate pre-existence of Jesus. John believes that Jesus pre-existed the creation of the world, not as God Himself, but as a lower level divinity.
We can see that the Synoptics and John conflict with regards to Jesus’identity or Christology. To give one conflicting example; Was Jesus calm and collected while approaching his last day? According to the Synoptics, Jesus went to Gethsemane and grieved several times to God to save him from death. But in John, Jesus brushed off the mere thought of regret.
Coming to the actual response. WLC said that he would discuss the topic from a secular historian’s perspective with no interest in the theological implications of either book, free from “Bible difficulties or Qur’anic inconsistencies.” I would not say WLC is not an authority on the Quranic or Biblical historiography and dismiss his claims wholesale, but that gives you an indication that he is diving outside of his expertise.
WLC decided to use Prof. John Meier’s criteria to assess the historical reliability of both books;
WLC argues that the historical Jesus had a completely different conception of himself than what we find in the Quran and argues that Jesus of the Bible is the accurate depiction; He says that the historical Jesus believed himself to be the divine Son of God.
He appealed to the title, “Son of man,” that Jesus allegedly used for himself to link with, “with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man,” in Daniel 7 to support that Jesus thought of himself as divine. WLC claimed that it is supported by the first two criteria of historical reliability; Multiple independent sources and dissimilarity.
Strangely, WLC did not present an argument as to why he believes this criterion supports the authenticity of the title of Jesus. Still, I can formulate one based on the “layman” statement that he gave. For the criterion of dissimilarity to apply, the title must not be something that the author could come up with to support his Christology.
Here WLC wanted to argue that the title “Son of Man” could give, to the inattentive eye, the impression that the statement makes Jesus a human, which is dissimilar to what the Synoptics’ authors thought of Jesus?
That reminds me of the meme that labels a bug as a feature. With sleight of hand he conditioned the readers to not question whether the author really wanted to present Jesus as human, the exact thing WLC didn't want you to Although it could be argued that way, we can still say that the authors knew precisely what they are writing; they wanted Jesus to claim the title of “Son of Man” mentioned in Daniel 7. I have two responses for this, and I acknowledge that it could be a strawman because WLC did not argue that, but this is my inference.
Again, WLC did not explain the other criterion for the authenticity of the “Son of man” sayings attributed to Jesus, and also, I will infer it. WLC is alluding to the fact that the Synoptics’authors mentioned that Jesus referred to himself as “son of man.” Now, let us examine who could have been the witnesses of those narrations.
One type of witnesses is those believed in Jesus, such as the disciples and those who heard and believed him. The other type is those who were with Jesus during the trial, who could listen to and relate what Jesus has said? I have argued that the High Priest and those present at the trial would have never been faithful to Jesus as they wanted to kill him anyway. If the author of Mark interviewed the High Priest to know what had happened, there is an infinitesimal chance that he would be impartial. Plus, the testimony of Jesus is not equivocal, by any stretch of the imagination, and could be interpreted to support the Muslim view, Unitarianism, and Trinitarianism.
Moreover, Mark’s author was writing more than forty years after the event; The event could have gone like this, “Then the high priest stood up before them and asked Jesus, “Have you no answer? What is this that they are testifying against you?” But he was silent and did not answer.” Period. And Mark could have, easily, inserted verses 61 (after, “no answer”) to 64; There was no way anyone could expose this story if it was forged, as the author was writing after more than forty years in a completely new milieu.
The parable of the vineyard strangely conforms with Mark’s theology and could have been forged by the believers; therefore, it fails the dissimilarity criterion. And I am not aware of any other independent source that mentions the parable of the vineyard. Consequently, it fails the other criteria of independent attestation.
If you read Daniel 7 from the beginning, you would notice that the author used “like a ..” multiple times, and none of them referred to a title, thus, written in lower-case; “like a lion…like a human being…like a bear…like a leopard…like a son of man.”
Daniel 7 does not use the definite article, “the,” for that “ son of man” saying. Nevertheless, if we take that as a title, the Jewish understanding of “son of man” is referring to, mainly, the nation of Israel. See the footnote of the Protestant NET bible regarding Daniel 7: 13;
Even if we take that as referring to Jesus, you would be surprised to know that we are not in as big of a dispute as you might think. Prophet Mohammed told us ten signs of the last Hour before the judgment day, and he mentioned the forthcoming of Jesus.
And regarding how Jesus would descend, Prophet Mohammed said;
And finally, Jesus will rule the earth for forty years before he dies, naturally, and the Muslims will pray the djanaza for him. These narrations could be reconciled with Daniel 7 about Jesus, but without making him a divine figure. I would stress again that I don’t believe in Daniel 7, and the authentic hadith is sufficient for me to acknowledge that Jesus is coming back.
Here we go again, the most evident proof that Islam got history wrong, or how Christian apologists make it seem. Several independent sources have indeed attested to the event of crucifixion, but the real surprise to you is that the Quran attests to the fact as well. Most Christian apologists use a deceptive tactic to say that Islam denies the crucifixion of Jesus while implying that Islam rejects the event itself.
Islam, unambiguously, denies the crucifixion of Jesus, but it doesn’t deny that the event of crucifixion happened historically. In fact, the Quran implies that it happened. The Quran says that Jesus was not crucified, but the telling sign that the Quran doesn’t rule out the crucifixion event is the phrase, “وَلَٰكِن شُبِّهَ لَهُمْ” which means “ it was made to appear.”If you ask any learned Muslim whether they believe the event of crucifixion occurred in history, they will, without hesitation, say yes.
The doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the single most crucial doctrine in Christianity that will render the faith either absolutely true or false. WLC argues that the resurrection of Jesus is provable given three "uncontested facts";
That one is pretty easy to refute, not that most scholars think there was an empty tomb, which is disputed, but that the Bible does not support this first point. If the tomb was discovered empty on Sunday, then the gospels are wrong about the historical Jesus being raised after three days. Even though the Gospels agree on their gender, they differ in those women’s identities. To quote me in the article, “Why I don’t believe in the deity of Jesus Christ?“
Atheists, excluding the mythicists, believe that Jesus was crucified and died for good, so they reject that Jesus could have appeared to the disciples after the crucifixion. Still, Muslims do believe in the supernatural, and it’s not implausible that Jesus appeared to the disciples after his ascension. WLC uses some sleight-of-hand to make the second point look like a proof for Christianity against Islam; He smuggles the phrase “alive from the dead” to make it seem that the vision of Jesus could only happen if Jesus were crucified and raised.
However, Muslims do fundamentally disagree with the appearance narratives that Luke and John record; this shows that the appearances of Jesus, if historical, do not favor Christianity over Islam.
This is by no means proves for the historicity of the resurrection because you can use the sincerity of the followers of any movement to claim it is true. Take the first Muslims who started a series of conquests just after Prophet Mohammed died. If we apply the same logic, WLC should accept Islam. If true, the point proves itself only; that the disciples sincerely believed that Jesus rose from the dead.
WLC is correct according to Luke-Acts, but according to the vast majority of NT scholars that’s a single author. Thus, fails the three criteria of historical reliability; It fails the criteria of multiple, independent attestation because the unequivocal proof comes from a single partisan. It also fails the criterion of dissimilarity because multiple group visions of Jesus would not be dissimilar to the author’s preconceived belief. The other criterion WLC mentions is “embarrassment,” which is similar to the dissimilarity criterion that it is not embarrassing to believe that he rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples.
WLC has compared with the Quran only, but Islam does not depend solely on the Quran for its theology; Islam still has the historically faithful sayings of Prophet Mohammed that expands on the Quran. I will, however, focus more on the Quran as the least contested book. So what does the Quran tell us about Jesus? I would strongly recommend that you visit Quran.com, and search for the word “Jesus,” and see the results yourself as I’m not going to include all 20 explicit references to Jesus here. Keep in mind that the Quran rarely talks about history.
As Bart Ehrman puts it, miracles are the least probable events and appeals to the supernatural every time. Even if a miracle indeed happened, say Moses parting the sea, you cannot prove it happened using the historical method. Because Islam and Christianity alike believe in the miraculous birth of Jesus, healing the sick, the blind, resurrecting the dead, and others.
However, Muslims believe that Jesus was saved from the crucifixion, and someone else was crucified; instead, this is another supernatural event. Thus, historiography cannot prove or disprove that. We are not interested in these when we are talking about the historical Jesus. With all of the miracles out of the way, what are the facts that the Quran present about Jesus?
The Quran presents Jesus as an Israelite prophet sent to revive and update the teachings of the Torah of Moses that his people were bound to follow. And that’s precisely what the secular historians acknowledge the man Jesus preached. Although they believe Jesus was caught and executed, the Islamic position is theological; They could be correct, and the Islamic view would still be accurate.
Historians also think that Jesus was a wise man preaching a version of the Law that was not practiced then. That’s why he was resented by the Jewish leaders and eventually lead them to try killing him. The Quran indicates that Jesus was a prophet who re-explained the Law that the Jews of that time had disputed.
The Quran expresses on multiple occasions that Jesus did teach the doctrines that the prophets came with before him; Jesus declared,
We mentioned before that the NT historians believe that the historical Jesus was betrayed and put on trial. You could also say the Quran hints that Jesus was betrayed. But contrary to the NT, the Quran says that God saved him. The Islamic claim is theological and supernatural; it could be dismissed here unless Islam denies a crucifixion event, which it does not deny.
We have seen that if the historical Jesus referred to himself as “the Son of man,” it is likely that the reference is not referring to Daniel 7 because the son of man in the OT does not refer to a person’s title, but a race or group. And it does not fulfill the two most essential criteria of historical reliability that WLC championed in his article, namely dissimilarity and multiple-independent attestation.
The trial did not follow the criteria as well. We have no independent source that’s disinterested to relate to us what the man said. Josephus and Tacitus both independent sources, but they tell us nothing more than Jesus was put on trial. Adding to that, Islam does not suffer from the trial’s historical reliability if it is reliable; because the replica could be there instead.
We have also seen that the resurrection narrative does not follow the criteria WLC presented; The reports are not dissimilar to what the Christians in the late 1st century believed, nor do we have independent sources, let alone multiples. And the amusing thing is that all four accounts in the canonical gospels contradict each other in significant ways. And we have also seen how the Islamic view of Jesus, on purely historical grounds, is closer to the actual Jesus than the Christian one.
