A Review Of James White's Debate With Robert Price (Part 2)

White makes another good point when he notes that so many of Price's examples of alleged errors in the Bible are easy to answer. (See, for example, their discussion of Jesus' references to taking up your cross and following Him, which Price claims the historical Jesus wouldn't have said.) Skeptics often appeal to the quantity of their objections, even though the quality of many of them is so poor.

Price repeatedly makes the point that there's "no evidence" in Paul's writings for things mentioned elsewhere in the New Testament. But White explained why we shouldn't expect Paul to mention such things, and simply saying that Paul doesn't mention them doesn't give us reason to reject the claims of other sources who do mention them. Besides, much of what Price claims Paul didn't mention actually does seem to have been mentioned or alluded to in his writings. See, for example, here and here. 1 Timothy 5:18 seems to cite Luke's gospel as scripture (George Knight III, The Pastoral Epistles [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2000], pp. 233-235), which creates a series of problems for Price's view if 1 Timothy was written by Paul or even by an early follower of Paul.

Price has suggested that none of the writings attributed to Paul were written by him, not even the ones commonly accepted as Pauline by liberal scholarship. I've written against that theory at length in the past, such as in the comments section of the thread here. We have other posts on the subject in our archives. The issue came up in the White/Price debate, and Price said the following about early patristic references to Paul:

"Nobody knows a thing about Paul. Justin Martyr never mentions him."

Quotations of Paul's letters aren't the only issue that's relevant here. Allusions would be relevant as well. See, for example, the scripture index in Michael Slusser's edition of Justin's Dialogue With Trypho (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Of America Press, 2003). Oskar Skarsaune writes:

"There is no reason to doubt that Justin made extensive use of Paul's letters, especially Romans and Galatians....Justin can be shown to have borrowed many of Paul's quotations directly from him, as well as some of Paul's expositions." (in Sara Parvis and Paul Foster, edd., Justin Martyr And His Worlds [Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2007], p. 74)

See, also, the notes for Skarsaune's comments on that page, which give examples and further documentation.

Justin refers to "the memoirs which I say were drawn up by His apostles and those who followed them" (Dialogue With Trypho, 103). Notice the plural: "apostles" and "those who followed them". The use of the plural matches our four gospels: apostles (Matthew, John) and those who followed them (Mark, Luke). Justin doesn't cite the number four anywhere, but his comments are consistent with the collection of four gospels that sources living just after Justin's time refer to. Luke was a disciple of Paul, so Justin seems to be referring to Paul as an apostle. Price's claim that "nobody knows a thing about Paul" and his claim that "Justin Martyr never mentions him" are false.

And how does Price get around the references to Paul and his writings in earlier patristic sources? He dismisses First Clement and all seven Ignatian letters as forgeries.

How does he know that First Clement is a forgery? He mentions its length. Supposedly, nobody wrote letters that long. As if there was some rule in antiquity that prevented people from writing letters beyond a particular length. As if violation of such a rule couldn't have occurred if such a rule existed. As if we couldn't just assign First Clement to some other genre rather than assuming that it must be a forgery if it doesn't meet the alleged requirements of the letter genre Price has in mind. Michael Holmes comments that First Clement "closely conforms" to the ancient genre of "a symbouleutic or deliberative letter" (The Apostolic Fathers [Grand Rapdis, Michigan: Baker Books, 2005], p. 24).

Price also says that First Clement's comments about the deaths of Peter and Paul are reminiscent of comments made about their deaths in later sources. First Clement 5 mentions that they died because of the jealousy of their opponents. How does Price know that jealousy wasn't involved? That alleged parallel to later literature is far too vague to support Price's theory. What if the later literature borrowed from First Clement or both borrowed from some other source? Price's defense of his theory about First Clement is absurd. The theory itself is absurd.

What about Ignatius? See here. Price objects that Ignatius wouldn't have been writing letters in a context in which his Roman guards were treating him in the hostile manner described within those letters. They wouldn't have let their prisoner write letters while they were in the process of abusing that prisoner. But as Allen Brent explains, it was common for a prisoner in the Roman empire to be allowed access to visitors and thereby receive food, send letters, etc. Those who visited prisoners would give gifts to the guards, and would relieve the guards of the responsibility of providing food and other necessities for the prisoner, thus giving the guards incentive for allowing the visitors access to the person under their watch. Lucian, a second-century pagan critic of Christianity, confirms the historicity of such practices when he describes the behavior and treatment of Christian prisoners. Thus, there's nothing unlikely about the scenario presented in Ignatius' letters, in which he's in frequent contact with other Christians on his way to martyrdom (Ignatius Of Antioch [New York, New York: T & T Clark International, 2009], pp. 49-51, 110). The guards would abuse him at times, but would be open to giving him some freedom in exchange for gifts from visitors.

Regarding references to Paul and the use of his letters in other early sources, see Bruce Metzger, The Canon Of The New Testament (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) and Clayton Jefford's The Apostolic Fathers And The New Testament (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2006). Price's theory is terribly implausible.

The last question in the audience question segment of the debate was about the existence of souls and an afterlife. I would argue for both of those from the Bible. But there's a lot of extra-Biblical evidence as well. Price doesn't seem to know much about the subject. See, from a non-Christian perspective, Stephen Braude's Immortal Remains (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003).

A lot of other subjects came up during the debate, and Price was more reasonable on some issues than he was concerning the topics I've focused on here. But the general pattern was for him to try to plant seeds of doubt without making much of an effort to convert those seeds from possibilities into probabilities. He accuses Christians of "baptizing the improbable into the probable" (John Loftus, ed., The Christian Delusion [Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2010], p. 289), but he spent most of the debate trying to baptize the probable into the improbable by raising unlikely doubts.