"women's Testimony" Argument For Truth Of Resurrection Account

[♦ ficino ♦]

I have read recently that some Christian apologists use what I shall call the "Women's Testimony" argument for the truth of the Gospel accounts of Jesus' resurrection. It goes something like this:

 

1. Testimony of female witnesses is/was not accepted in Jewish law.

2. The first witnesses in the Gospels to report that Jesus rose from the dead are women.

3. The gospel writers wanted their accounts to be convincing to first-century readers.

4. Therefore they would not have fabricated an account in which key witnesses are women.

5. Therefore their account of Jesus' resurrection is not fabricated; therefore it's true.

 

This is a weak argument.

A. We have no basis to say that 1) is true. Normative, rabbinic Judaism took shape after the Roman suppression of the Jewish revolt in Palestine in AD 68-72. The Pharisaical party was left to pick up the pieces; after that, codification of commentary on the Law began in the form of the Mishnah and the commentaries upon that, which became the Talmud. We do not have the evidence that allows us to back-date interpretations of the Law in the Mishnah and Talmud to the period before c. AD 70. There was much more diversity within Palestinian Judaism in the early part of the first century AD than there was in ensuing centuries.

B.1. The truth of 1) is doubtful in any case because the texts that we do have show rabbis ruling that women's testimony can be accepted when the event in question occurred in a context in which only women were present: e.g. in the women's part of the synagogue, or in a case concerning menstrual blood. Tending to corpses and mourning over them was a task usually done by women. Women therefore would be the first witnesses expected to be present at the tomb on the morning depicted in the gospels. Therefore their testimony would not necessarily be discounted.

2. 1) is of scant relevance anyway because it concerns traditions that sworn testimony before a rabbinic court needs to come from legally acceptable witnesses, who tradition says are generally adult male Jews. The matter of the women's supposed testimony about the risen Jesus does not concern proceedings in court.

C. The rulings of later rabbis that at least two male witnesses are required to establish a claim as fact in a case at law are based on Deuteronomy 17:5 and 19:15. In 17:5, the context is claims that a man or woman is worshipping "other gods." It would be likely that witnesses to a woman's worship of "other gods" could in many cases only include other women. I think the later rabbinical opinions about witnesses say more about their "patriarchal" biases than they do about legal practices at the time that Deuteronomy was compiled.

D. In any case, there is good reason for the gospel writers to represent women as the first witnesses, because, esp. Mark, they privilege the "last shall be first" theme.

 

Best to all, Ficino

[Guest Valk0010]

I was wondering if you have some sources to back up some of the claims you made, because this is a refreshing take for me at least on the arguement.

[♦ ficino ♦]

Hello Valk, I haven't done serious research, but here's what I came up with before I started this thread.

 

Here is some documentation for my point B:

 

The tradition of not accepting women as witnesses has to do with testimony in court. So the relevance of this tradition for the Women's Testimony argument is already slight, since the women in the gospels were never called upon to give testimony in a court. There is no problem in Jewish tradition with accepting women's accounts as credible; it's rather the narrower issue of whether a woman can fit the legal definition of acceptable witness in court.

 

On the tradition, see Wikipedia on “Testimony in Jewish Law:”

 

“Talmud, in the third chapter of Sanhedrin, delineates the rules governing who may provide written or oral testimony. A valid witness in a Jewish Beit Din must be an adult (see Bar Mitzvah) free man, not a woman or a slave, and not be related to any of the other witnesses or judges. The witness must be an honest person who can be trusted not to lie.”

Also Wikipedia on “Women in Judaism,” in which certain sections of the Talmud are referenced:

“Traditionally, women are not generally permitted to serve as witnesses in an Orthodox Beit Din (rabbinical court), although they have recently been permitted to serve as toanot (advocates) in those courts. This limitation has exceptions which have required exploration under rabbinic law as the role of women in society, and the obligations of religious groups under external civil law, have been subject to increasing recent scrutiny.^{[citation needed]}

The recent case of Rabbi Mordecai Tendler, the first rabbi to be expelled from the Rabbinical Council of America following allegations of sexual harassment, illustrated the importance of clarification of Orthodox halakha in this area. Rabbi Tendler claimed that the tradition of exclusion of women's testimony should compel the RCA to disregard the allegations. He argued that since the testimony of a woman could not be admitted in Rabbinical court, there were no valid witnesses against him, and hence the case for his expulsion had to be thrown out for lack of evidence. In a ruling of importance for Orthodox women's capacity for legal self-protection under Jewish law, Haredi Rabbi Benzion Wosner, writing on behalf of the Shevet Levi Beit Din (Rabbinical court) of Monsey, New York, identified sexual harassment cases as coming under a class of exceptions to the traditional exclusion, under which "even children or women" have not only a right but an obligation to testify, and can be relied upon by a rabbinical court as valid witnesses:

The Ramah in Choshen Mishpat (Siman 35, 14) rules that in a case where only women congregate or in a case where only women could possibly testify, (in this case the alleged harassment occurred behind closed doors) they can and should certainly testify. (Terumas Hadeshen Siman 353 and Agudah Perek 10, Yochasin)

This is also the ruling of the Maharik, Radvaz, and the Mahar"i of Minz. Even those "Poskim" that would normally not rely on women witnesses, they would certainly agree that in our case ... where there is ample evidence that this Rabbi violated Torah precepts, then even children or women can certainly be kosher as witnesses, as the Chasam Sofer pointed out in his sefer (monograph) (Orach Chaim T'shuvah 11)^"

 

Medieval rabbis Gershom and Tam ruled that women’s testimony can be accepted by a court when it concerns places where the only people present were women, e.g. women’s section of the synagogue. See Moshe Meiselman, Jewish Woman in Jewish Law (1978) p. 77. Meiselman also points out, pp. 75-76, that “credible statements” by women are not called into question, since the issue for testimony in court is the legal status of the witness.

 

In the case of alledged accounts of Jesus’ resurrection, there is no question of testimony in court. This fact is another element that weakens the Women’s Testimony argument of Christian apologists.

 

As for my A): I started this thread after the following exchange with a friend of mine, who is a rabbi (not knowing who will read this, I will give only his first name, Chaim). Morton Smith, to whom I refer in my email, was a professor at Columbia, under whom I took a year-long course on Jewish history in the intertestamental period:

 

"The Rabbis use Deuteronomy 17:6, and 19:15 as their proof text that two witnesses are required to establish any fact. They then go on to interpret the verses as meaning only male witnesses. I agree with Morton Smith that the legal conventions of the Rabbis cannot be proven to have existed before the time of the Mishnaic or Tannaitic Rabbbis i.e. 70 - 220 C.E. There are scholars who have worked on trying to delineate just what evidence we have for Jewish legal and ritual practice before 70C.E. This is a very speculative field. For instance Professor Gilat from Israel did a whole book on this. I don't remember his mentioning witnesses. He did show rather conclusively that there was no notion of the age of 13 as the age of majority. He went on to show that that was an idea that somehow entered Rabbinic thought quite late. Perhaps after 220CE. Only a great scholar of Rabbinic literature like Gilat would be reliable for conjecturing about Jewish Law and Ritual in the period before 70C.E

 

Hope that helps,

 

Chaim"

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"Hi Chaim, I hope you're getting a vacation and that it is going happily. I wonder whether you know when the stipulation arose that a witness in a case at law according to Jewish law must be an adult male (except as pertains to the agunah issue?). Some Christian apologists say that the gospels must be correct about the story of Jesus' resurrection because they cite women as the first witnesses to that event--a detail that no one would have invented had the story been a fabrication, since women's testimony would not be regarded as valid by Jewish readers of the story. My question is, is it legitimate to read stuff from the Talmud back into the time of c. 30 CE? Morton Smith always told us that "normative Judaism" was in a sense codified after the Roman sack of Jerusalem and concomitant shock to the Jewish people, when the Pharisaical party was left to pick up the pieces and install itself as rabbinic leaders. I'm wondering whether there would have been enough deniers of the validity of women's testimony in early 1st century CE to make this argument by Christian apologists a strong one. (There are of course lots of ways to spin the problem, since we're not interpreting facts, after all, but are interpreting texts that are already interpretations.)"

 

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[Ouroboros]

2. The first witnesses in the Gospels to report that Jesus rose from the dead are women.

The problem with that argument from apologists is that the women didn't write their "report". Some anonymous author wrote about how the other 12 disciples got the report from those women, and we don't have the list of the names of the women either or any background story to where they came from, who they were, family history, or how long they've been with Jesus. So I think that argument is probably one of the weakest for Christians to use as support for the truth of the story.

[TheBluegrassSkeptic]

2. The first witnesses in the Gospels to report that Jesus rose from the dead are women.

The problem with that argument from apologists is that the women didn't write their "report". Some anonymous author wrote about how the other 12 disciples got the report from those women, and we don't have the list of the names of the women either or any background story to where they came from, who they were, family history, or how long they've been with Jesus. So I think that argument is probably one of the weakest for Christians to use as support for the truth of the story.

No, altogether you have it all wrong because 1) Women never announced his death or resurrection because 2)It was his younger brother Isukiri that died on the cross for him. Everyone knows that Jesus died in Shingo at the age of 106 after fleeing the Holy Land to avoid crucifixion....ahahhhaha http://io9.com/5871071/did-you-know-that-jesus-christs-tomb-is-in-japan

[♦ ficino ♦]

A lot more info on women as witnesses in Jewish and Greco/Roman courts here:

 

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/improbable/women.html

[oddbird1963]

Richard Carrier decimates the argument mentioned in the OP in his book "Not the Impossible Faith." You can download it from Amazon, I believe, for a reasonable cost.

 

Edit: I just noticed ficino linked to an article by Carrier that contains much of the same information.

[kruszer]

The women's testimony argument might hold water if the gospels themselves didn't contradict the resurrection accounts. We can't even be sure which women were at the tomb, when they came to the tomb or what the message was that was given to them by the angel(s). Who cares if women were the first witnesses of a story that already has holes and problems.

[mwc]

Isn't this the argument the same as this one:

Titus 1

 

12 One of their prophets has said, The men of Crete are ever false, evil beasts, lovers of food, hating work. 13 This witness is true. So say sharp words to them so that they may come to the right faith,

We're told that women were not considered trustworthy by anyone at all during that time period and so, it then follows, they must be trustworthy even though they're not really trustworthy.

 

Just like the prophet from Crete is not lying when speaking of those other men from Crete who are liars. Somehow he is exempted himself. The women are likewise exempted. Normally untrustworthy...except...this time. The rare and singular exception we should imagine that they should be bringers of truth.

 

But even the likes of Josephus takes the witness of women in his writings so women could be trusted during this time and in the Jewish community. He took the report of women and passed it along. We would imagine that all things being equal then the disciples took the report of the women and passed it along in the same basic way. I don't know if the story of Ruth qualifies as the witness of a woman or not but it might.

 

mwc

[kruszer]

Interestingly enough, Christopher Hitchens actually accepts the "testimony of women" argument as an indication that the story of Jesus was based on some factual incidents that merely became infused with later mythology. He accepts that there is no plausible reason for men who wanted to fabricate an entire story to write something like that into the story, unless something to that effect did occur. (I wish I could find the video in which I heard him say that... it was a Q & A session on whether Jesus was a real figure of history or not)

[♦ ficino ♦]

Interestingly enough, Christopher Hitchens actually accepts the "testimony of women" argument as an indication that the story of Jesus was based on some factual incidents that merely became infused with later mythology. He accepts that there is no plausible reason for men who wanted to fabricate an entire story to write something like that into the story, unless something to that effect did occur. (I wish I could find the video in which I heard him say that... it was a Q & A session on whether Jesus was a real figure of history or not)

 

Hi Kruszer, interesting about Hitchens. I hadn't thought along his lines because 1) women generally had the job of tending to corpses and mourning the dead, and 2) one of Mark's themes is that Jesus continually touches the "last" not the "first", i.e. those toward the bottom as society sees hierarchies. A third motive for the gospel writers to put women into the story occurs to me now: they want their audience to set aside their critical judgment and believe in the resurrection. So they want to show how the disciplies, like the reader, first did not believe and eventually came out of that mindset into belief. Showing the disciples as at first not believing is more effective propaganda than would be a sudden initial appearance of the risen Jesus to all of them en masse - that would not sound realistic but rather like the usual overblown hagiography that ancient people were used to. The above points of course don't prove that the empty tomb stories are false, but they made me think that the "women witnesses" argument is not a compelling one, since motives exist for the writers to put it in.

 

I'd be interested in hearing what Hitchens said.