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“Skeptics in the Ancient World”
Categories: Bulletin Articles, M. W. Bassford
Many modern attacks on the reliability of the Bible depend on the stupidity of the people of the ancient world. Everybody Knows, the argument goes, that we are much wiser than our ancestors. They were foolish, credulous people who were easy to trick with pious frauds. Thus, we should dismiss ancient testimony about the resurrection, the miracles of Jesus, etc., because the witnesses can’t be trusted.
However, this doesn’t reckon with what the Bible itself reveals about the people of Biblical times. Certainly, there were foolish, credulous people who lived 2000 years ago. The Samaritans who were deceived by Simon the sorcerer in Acts 8 come to mind here. Before we sneer too much, though, we should remember that there are plenty of foolish, credulous people in our society too, many of whom are well educated!
Conversely, many ancients were predisposed to reject evidence of the supernatural in their own time. According to Acts 23:8, the Jewish sect of the Sadducees taught that there was no resurrection, no angels, and no spirits. They were no more likely to accept the risen Christ than we are to accept the claims of modern-day miracles that our Pentecostal neighbors make.
We see this rationalistic bias at work in Matthew 28:11-15. There, the chief priests bribe the guards at Jesus’ tomb to say that His disciples stole His body while they were sleeping. There are significant holes in the story. If the guards were sleeping, how do they know who took the body? More seriously, if the disciples stole the body, why are they willing to suffer and die for a Messiah they know is a fraud?
However, Matthew regretfully reports that this tissue of lies, holes and all, was spread among the Jews until the day when he wrote his gospel. This isn’t the behavior of people who jumped at any opportunity to believe wild stories. It’s the behavior of people who would seize any plausible excuse not to believe them.
Nor was such skepticism limited to the Jews. The resurrection seemed every bit as foolish to Gentiles as to the Sadducees. Everybody knew that dead bodies didn’t get up and start wandering around again!
This bias finds its voice in Festus’s outburst in Acts 26:24. When Paul asserts for the first time that Jesus rose from the dead, the Roman governor can’t control himself. He accuses Paul of having been driven mad by too much study. What other explanation can there be when an obviously intelligent, educated man says something so ridiculous?
Despite all this, Acts 6:7 reports that many of the priests (who were Sadducees) obeyed the gospel. In Philippians 4:22, Paul conveys greetings from the Christians in Caesar’s household, the cynical, cosmopolitan heart of the Roman Empire. The gospel didn’t only find a home in people who would believe anything. It also came to those who were won over in spite of themselves. When people like that (Paul chief among them) proclaim that Christ arose, we should pay attention.
