In this episode, Jimmy interacts with YouTuber Dan McClellan, who supports a skeptical school of scholarship and regularly makes videos critiquing people with traditional Catholic positions.
Jimmy looks at Dan mocking the claim that the Crucifixion of Jesus is “the best-established fact about the ancient world” and Dan’s rejection of April 3, A.D. 33 as the most likely date for the Crucifixion.
How much truth is there in what Dan says? And how much is Dan criticizing things he doesn’t know about?
TRANSCRIPT:
Coming Up
DAN MCCLELLAN: Hey everybody. Let’s take a look at some claims about Jesus’s crucifixion.
All right. Let’s see it.
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Howdy, folks!
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Introducing Dan McClellan
Today, we’re going to be interacting with a YouTuber named Dan McClellan.
DAN: I’m Dan McClellan. I’m a scholar of the Bible and religion.
Dan supports a skeptical school of scholarship, and he often makes videos critiquing people with traditional Christian views.
He’s also a member of the Latter-Day Saint or Mormon church
DAN: A question that inevitably comes up after my Mormonism is brought up as whether or not I apply the same academic rigor and critical eye to the text and the traditions of Mormonism. And the answer is absolutely I do.
In light of the skeptical scholarship he supports, it’s not clear to what degree he does or doesn’t agree with the teachings of his church.
For example, he felt the need to say this:
DAN: You will see that I am not and never have been an atheist.
Even though he identifies himself as a scholar
DAN: I’m a scholar of the Bible and religion.
He frequently doesn’t display a scholarly demeanor.
Instead of engaging with other viewpoints in a friendly or at least a dispassionate way, he regularly comes across as angry and dismissive of other people when interacting with their views
DAN: And the answer to that question is, ha ha. Of course not. Please pay better attention.
and he sometimes just heaps abuse on them.
DAN: You need to grow the hell up and do so much better.
Of course, scholars aren’t always acting in the role of a scholar, but if you’ve just advertised yourself as a scholar
DAN: I’m a scholar of the Bible and religion.
Then you shouldn’t quickly descend into heaping derision and abuse on others
DAN: Ha ha. Please pay better attention.
DAN: You need to grow the hell up and do so much better.
Lest, y’know, you make scholars and scholarship look bad.
Or, if you’re a Mormon,
DAN: My Mormonism
Lest you make Mormons and Mormonism look bad.
And—lest anyone wonder if as a Christian and a Catholic I’m letting those groups off—no, I’m not. There are lots of Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic YouTubers who act like jerks, too, and they make their groups look bad.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a scholar, an Atheist, an Agnostic, a Mormon, a Protestant, an Orthodox, a Catholic, or anything else—being a jerk is just a bad idea.
Also, you’ll be more persuasive if you treat the people you’re interacting with with respect.
As your momma may have told you, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
Claims About Jesus’ Crucifixion
Today, we’re going to be looking at one of Dan’s videos titled “Responding to Claims About Jesus’ Crucifixion.”
Which is strange, because almost none of the video is devoted to claims about Jesus’ crucifixion.
Instead, most of it is about claims having to do with the Shroud of Turin, which is a different subject.
I mean, if Shroud advocates are correct, it’s more about Jesus’ resurrection than his crucifixion.
But I like to keep my categories straight, so I’m going to be looking at a couple of responses Dan makes to claims that are about Jesus’ crucifixion.
Let’s get into it.
Claim #1: “The Best-Established Fact of the Ancient World”
The first claim about Jesus’ crucifixion is that it’s the best-established fact of the ancient world.
Dan finds this claim in a short featuring Dr. Jeremiah J. Johnston, who says:
JEREMIAH JOHNSTONE: We can date based on the historical record, Jesus’ death by crucifixion, which is the best established fact of the ancient world.
Dan responds to this claim by saying:
DAN: The notion that Jesus’ death by crucifixion is the best established fact of the ancient world, is just an absolutely laughable falsehood. That is not true in any way, shape, or form whatsoever. While virtually all relevant scholars agree that Jesus most likely lived and was killed by Roman crucifixion, this is based on a weighing of evidence and probabilities. And that conclusion, while I think right and very strong, absolutely pales in comparison to numerous facts about the ancient world that are conclusively established through direct material remains.
Okay, so “direct material remains” means things that have been discovered by archaeology—as opposed to what we read in literary sources.
So what kind of direct material remains are we talking about?
DAN: Human remains, inscriptions, iconography, other types of archeological evidence. We have absolutely no direct archeological evidence for the life or death of Jesus of Nazareth. And we have direct archeological evidence for all kinds of other facts about the ancient world, including facts about first century CE Judea. So this is a laughable falsehood.
We’ll get to the laughable falsehood bit in a minute, but first I’d like to focus on the types of archaeological evidence Dan just named.
DAN: Human remains, inscriptions, iconography, other types of archeological evidence.
So Dan lists several types of archaeological evidence:
- Human remains
- Inscriptions
- Iconography
- And Others
And there are other types of archaeological evidence—like rubbish dumps, ancient buildings, and numismatic evidence like coins that have been found.
But these don’t always provide the gold standard of evidence.
I mean, if you dig the mummified body of Otzi the iceman out of a glacier on the Italian-Swiss border, you can tell things like he lived more than 5,000 years ago, that he was 5’3” tall, and that he died about age 45.
But not all evidence is of the same quality.
You can’t always believe something just because it’s old and physical.
To cite a few examples from Egyptian archaeology, it is widely recognized that the pharaohs sometimes left inscriptions claiming credit for their predecessors’ monuments.
So that one pharaoh built a monument, but another falsely took credit for it.
Also, the pharaohs had inscriptions on their monuments that recorded their deeds in battle, and—by a really amazing coincidence—these pharaohs never lost a battle!
Not one!
And they never retreated in the face of the enemy.
They just kept winning battles closer and closer to home.
So just because you’ve got something in an inscription, that doesn’t make it true.
Iconography also doesn’t give you 100% reliable evidence.
The pharaohs were usually depicted using an idealized iconography.
And, judging by that, none of them were unusually short or overweight—even though they had more access to food than anybody else in Egypt.
But let’s focus for the moment on archaeological evidence that comes to us using language—that is, words.
When you think about it, any kind of archaeological evidence that depends on language—like inscriptions and writing on coins—is really just a form of literary evidence.
It may—in some cases—provide us with original editions of what the literary texts said.
But that doesn’t mean it’s truthful.
It’s not automatically superior to literary evidence that we have from later manuscripts to the extent that the later manuscripts are accurate.
So Dan seems to be at risk of overestimating the value of archaeological evidence in many cases.
He goes on to say:
DAN: We have absolutely no direct archeological evidence for the life or death of Jesus of Nazareth.
Unless—of course—advocates of the Shroud of Turin are correct that the Shroud is the actual burial cloth of Jesus, about which Dan later says:
DAN: So it seems to me that Jeremiah is not being entirely above board and is playing a little fast and loose with the data related to the scholarship surrounding the shroud of Turrin, most likely because he just wants to cultivate this impression that it has a lot more going for its authenticity than it actually does.
Now, I’m not saying that advocates of the Shroud are correct, but here Dan himself is refusing to say that there is no evidence that the Shroud is archaeological evidence for the life for death of Jesus of Nazareth.
His earlier claim that we have “no evidence” for this is thus problematic.
In fact, anytime anybody claims that we have “no evidence” always sends up a red flag for me, because this kind of claim is usually untrue.
It may not be convincing evidence, but usually there is some evidence.
DAN: We have absolutely no direct archeological evidence for the life or death of Jesus of Nazareth. And we have direct archeological evidence for all kinds of other facts about the ancient world, including facts about first century CE Judea.
Yes, that’s true. We do have archaeological evidence about first century Judaea. For example, in my own collection I have a bronze coin that was minted in Year 2 of the First Jewish War against the Romans that led up to the destruction of the temple.
But let’s get back to the claim that Jesus’ crucifixion is the best-established fact of the ancient world.
DAN: So this is a laughable falsehood
Well, I wouldn’t put it that strongly—because, y’know, I’m not a colossal jerk—but here comes the twist.
Putting aside the adjective “laughable,” Dan is technically right here. Strictly speaking, it would be a falsehood to say that Jesus’ death by crucifixion is the best-established fact about the ancient world.
JEREMIAH: We can date based on the historical record, Jesus’ death by crucifixion, which is the best established fact of the ancient world.
Yeah, strictly speaking, that would be false. Jesus’ death by crucifixion is a very well-established fact about the ancient world. And even Dan admits that
DAN: Virtually all relevant scholars agree that Jesus most likely lived and was killed by Roman crucifixion.
So Dan admits that virtually all scholars agree that Jesus was killed by Roman crucifixion.
But what does Dan himself think?
DAN: That conclusion, while I think right and very strong.
So Dan thinks that the conclusion that Jesus was killed by crucifixion is right and very strong.
So if virtually all scholars have concluded this and Dan agrees and thinks that the conclusion is “very strong,” I would say that Dan should acknowledge that Jesus’ crucifixion is a very well-established fact about the ancient world.
Is it the single best-established fact about the ancient world?
No. For example, the fact that Jesus lived in the first place is even better established than the conclusion that he died by crucifixion. You have to live before you can die.
So—strictly speaking—it would be false to say that his crucifixion is the best-established event.
But you notice that I keep saying “Strictly Speaking”—why do I do that?
Because as a fan of Linguistics, I’m aware of a mode of speech known as Hyperbole—which is exaggeration to make a point. Like if someone says, “Joe lost a ton of weight on his new diet,” they don’t mean Joe literally lost 2,000 pounds on his new diet. They’re exaggerating to make the point that he lost a lot of weight.
And you’d think that Dan would be familiar with hyperbole, too
DAN: I wrote my thesis under the supervision of Dr. Craig Broyles on the conceptualization of deity in the Hebrew Bible through the methodological lens of cognitive linguistics.
So yeah, he ought to know enough about linguistics to know about hyperbole and—maybe—recognize it when he hears it!
That’s what I did in this case. When I heard Jeremiah say that Jesus Crucifixion is
JEREMIAH: The best-established fact of the ancient world.
I took that to be hyperbole or exaggeration to make the point that it is a very well-established fact, which it is.
DAN: That conclusion, while I think right and very strong.
So, we’re agreed that the claim Jesus was crucified is right and very strong, in Dan’s words, or very well-established in my words.
You’d think that Dan would be able to pick up on Jeremiah’s hyperbole, but it doesn’t seem so.
DAN: So this is a laughable falsehood
Yeah, strictly speaking—if you don’t recognize hyperbole and take Jeremiah super-literally—it’s a falsehood, but I don’t think it’s a laughable one.
In fact, Dan, I think you’re using hyperbole when you say this, because the technical falsehood that Jeremiah uttered is not going to literally make very many people laugh.
You certainly showed no signs of laughing. Your tone suggested you were anything but mirthful.
So I think you’re using the same rhetorical device—hyperbole—that Jeremiah was using.
And you certainly are when you say
DAN: The notion that Jesus’ death by crucifixion is the best-established fact of the ancient world, is just an absolutely laughable falsehood. That is not true in any way, shape, or form whatsoever.
Except that—if you recognize hyperbole—it’s certainly not true that what Jeremiah said was a laughable falsehood that was not true in any way, shape, or form whatsoever. When you recognize the hyperbole, it’s not a falsehood at all.
So you were being hyperbolic here, yourself, and as someone who knows something about linguistics, you ought to be able to recognize hyperbole when others use it and cut them the same slack that you’d like them to cut you when you use hyperbole.
Otherwise, someone could say that Dan McClellan’s statement is a laughable falsehood that is not true in any way, shape or form whatsoever.
Claim #2: Based on a Lunar Eclipse
Now here’s the second claim about the Crucifixion:
JEREMIAH: He dies by Roman crucifixion, April 3rd, 80 33, springtime.
And Dan responds:
DAN: No, we cannot demonstrate that that was the day on which Jesus was executed by crucifixion.
Well, it’s going to depend on what you mean by “demonstrate.” If you mean “prove it 100%—beyond any other possible dates whatsoever,” then no, we can’t demonstrate it.
However, if you just mean that we can make a compelling case that Jesus was crucified on April 3, A.D. 33—compared to other proposed dates—then yes we can demonstrate it in that sense.
DAN: That conclusion is based on the notion that it definitely happened on Passover, and it happened somewhere between the late twenties and the early thirties CE. And then based on the notion that when it talks about the land getting dark for three hours, that must have corresponded to an eclipse that happened on April 3rd. But the problem is that eclipse was a lunar eclipse, and it happened in the evening, and so it was not associated with any darkness whatsoever. It was just the shadow of the earth crossing over about one third of the moon in the sky in the evening.
Yeah, Dan, I’m afraid you just don’t know what you’re talking about here. Now, I know that you’re trying to follow the advice in Steve Martin’s Grandmother’s Song:
STEVE MARTIN: Criticize things you don’t know about.
But let me help you out here.
Now, you’re right when you say
DAN: That conclusion is based on the notion that it definitely happened on Passover, and it happened somewhere between the late twenties and the early thirties CE.
Yes. The calculation that Jesus most likely died on April 3rd in A.D. 33 is based on those two clues: That it happened on Passover and that it happened between the late 20s and the early 30s.
But you’re wrong when you say
DAN: And then based on the notion that when it talks about the land getting dark for three hours, that must have corresponded to an eclipse that happened on April 3rd.
That’s just wrong.
I don’t know what Jeremiah thinks about this issue, but if he does think that the darkness the Synoptic Gospels mention during the Crucifixion was caused by an eclipse, you didn’t play a clip of him saying that.
I’m sure that some people somewhere may link the darkness to the eclipse, but I don’t know any biblical chronologers who do that.
I don’t. Jack Finegan doesn’t in his Handbook of Biblical Chronology. Andrew Steinmann doesn’t in his From Abraham to Paul. I don’t know any biblical chronologers who do that.
And there’s a very good reason for that! It’s the one you pointed out! The eclipse that occurred on April 3rd, A.D. 33 was a lunar eclipse that happened at night, so there’s no way it caused darkness during the Crucifixion.
In fact, whatever caused that darkness could not have been an eclipse, because as Finegan points out:
In astronomical terms a solar eclipse can occur only at new moon and is impossible when the moon is at or near the full, thus an eclipse of the sun could not have occurred at the paschal full moon when Jesus died.
So biblical chronologers acknowledge that a solar eclipse could not have produced the darkness during the Crucifixion.
What could have?
Well, any number of things. Some people might just say it was a direct miracle, but Finegan also points out:
A reasonable explanation of the darkening of the sun is a heavy dust storm brought by a powerful khamsin wind from the desert.
And you’re also just wrong when you say:
DAN: So we don’t really have any evidence that firmly establishes April 3rd as the date of Jesus’s crucifixion. We don’t really have any evidence that firmly establishes April 3rd as the date of Jesus’s crucifixion. We just have a pretty ridiculous misunderstanding of the relationship of a story about the whole land becoming dark for three hours and the reality of a lunar eclipse, a lunar eclipse unrelated to the time or the circumstances of Jesus’s crucifixion.
Yeah, that’s just mistaken. In the first place, you’re mistaken when you say:
DAN: So we don’t really have any evidence that firmly establishes April 3rd as the date of Jesus’s crucifixion.
We do have evidence for that, and I’ll show you exactly how biblical chronologers who support the April 3rd, A.D. 33 argue for that date evidentially.
You were right when you said that this date is based on the idea that the Crucifixion happened between the late 20s and the early 30s.
That’s because all 4 Gospels indicate that it took place in the tenure of Pontius Pilate, and the conventionally accepted dates for Pilate’s tenure are A.D. 26 to A.D. 36.
That’s the first clue.
The second clue is that Luke tells us that:
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar . . . the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness (Luke 3:1-2).
So John the Baptist began his ministry in the 15th year of Tiberius. There’s a little play with how you calculate this year, but the most plausible year is A.D. 29.
All four Gospels indicate Jesus began his ministry after John the Baptist did, and so we can shrink the date range to between A.D. 29 and 36.
The third clue is that all four Gospels indicate that Jesus was crucified on a Friday (Matthew 27:62, Mark 15:42, Luke 23:54, John 19:42), which was just before a Sabbath, which was just before the first day of the week, or Sunday (Matthew 28:1, Mark 16:2, Luke 24:1, John 20:1).
So Jesus was crucified on a Friday between A.D. 29 and 36.
The fourth clue is that all four Gospels indicate that this Friday happened in conjunction with Passover (Matthew 26:2, Mark 14:1, Luke 22:1, John 18:39).
There’s a little bit of room for discussion here that I won’t go into for purposes of simplicity, but what we’re looking for is a Friday Passover between A.D. 29 and 36.
So what Fridays were there in that range? Again, there’s a little bit of play because at the time the Jerusalem authorities used a lunar calendar, and there were sometimes complications with sighting the New Moon that began the month, but our best evidence indicates that there were only two Friday Passovers in the date range.
These were Friday, April 7 of A.D. 30 and Friday, April 3 of A.D. 33.
So can we figure out which it most likely was?
Well, if we only had Matthew, Mark, and Luke, you might propose that Jesus ministry only lasted for a year, but John’s Gospel—which is surprisingly good at chronology—indicates that multiple Passovers occurred during Jesus’ ministry.
In that case, we can rule out the A.D. 30 date, because Jesus’ ministry began after John the Baptist started his in A.D. 29, and Passover is an annual feast, so there could not have been multiple Passovers between A.D. 29 and A.D. 30.
But there were multiple Passovers between A.D. 29 and A.D. 33, so we can argue with a good measure of confidence that Jesus was crucified on April 3, A.D. 33.
So it’s just a mistake to say
DAN: So we don’t really have any evidence that firmly establishes April 3rd as the date of Jesus’s crucifixion.
Yes, we do have evidence that establishes that. Not infallibly, but very plausibly.
You’re also mistaken when you say
DAN: We just have a pretty ridiculous misunderstanding of the relationship of a story about the whole land becoming dark for three hours and the reality of a lunar eclipse.
You’re right to say that’s a ridiculous misunderstanding, but it’s a misunderstanding that exists in your head and maybe in the heads of some other people who are uneducated about the arguments actual biblical chronologers use.
Because they don’t use the idea that the darkness during the Crucifixion was caused by an eclipse.
You’ll note that I didn’t refer to it even once in my argument for why April 3rd, A.D. 33 is the likely date.
And I’m not unique in that. Finegan and Steinmann also support that date, and neither of them have the ridiculous misunderstanding that you’re appealing to.
We already saw Finegan saying that the darkness could not have been caused by a solar eclipse, and Steinmann argues this way:
As we have already seen, the Passover at Jesus’ crucifixion commenced on Thursday evening at sundown and lasted throughout the daytime hours of the following Friday.
Thus, Jesus’ crucifixion occurred in a year when, in our terms, the Passover fell on a Friday.
Only two years between AD 26 and AD 36 had Friday Passovers: Friday, April 7, AD 30 was a Passover, and Friday, April 3, AD 33 was a Passover.
Since the Passover of AD 30 was the first Passover of Jesus’ ministry, the date for Jesus’ crucifixion is most likely April 3, AD 33.
So you see that Steinmann is using essentially the same argument that I do, and it has nothing to do with the darkness during the Crucifixion being due to an eclipse.
But you also say that the April 3rd eclipse was:
DAN: A lunar eclipse unrelated to the time or the circumstances of Jesus’s crucifixion.
Whoa! Hold your horses there, Dan!
Competent biblical chronologers don’t hold that the lunar eclipse caused the darkness during the Crucifixion, but that doesn’t mean it was unrelated to the time or the circumstances of Jesus’ crucifixion.
That’s a different matter entirely!
The prophet Joel says that:
The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes (Joel 2:31).
And Luke says that on the day of Pentecost Peter took up this prophecy and applied it to the recent events involving Jesus. He even quoted it, telling the crowd that Joel had prophesied that:
The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the day of the Lord comes (Acts 2:20).
Well, the Sun was turned to darkness during the Crucifixion—not because of a solar eclipse but because of something else.
And our sister planet, the Moon, can look red during a lunar eclipse, so the lunar eclipse that happened on the night of April 3rd, A.D. 33 may have been taken by the first Christians as a fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy that the moon would be turned to blood.
Finegan states:
It is also a fact that a partial lunar eclipse was visible in Jerusalem on the evening of Friday, April 3, A.D. 33, and it is known that in even a partial eclipse the shadowed part of the moon is often red in color. Thus the likelihood that a blood-red moon was seen in Jerusalem at the time in question makes April 3, A.D. 33, even more probable a date for the death of Jesus.
Similarly, Steinmann states:
The lunar eclipse of April 3, AD 33 is an additional verification that this is the likely date of Jesus’ crucifixion. It is the only viable date for the crucifixion that provides the background for Peter’s choice of Joel 2:28-31 as the opening for his Pentecost sermon.
So it’s not that the lunar eclipse of April 3rd is unrelated to the time and circumstances of Jesus’ death. It didn’t cause the darkness during the Crucifixion. Nor is it the basis for arguing for the April 3rd A.D. 33 date. You don’t need the lunar eclipse to make the case for that.
But competent biblical chronologers have seen it as confirmatory evidence in that it can explain why early Christians linked Joel’s prophecy of the moon turning to blood to the recent events of Jesus’ Crucifixion.
If Jesus was Crucified on April 3rd, A.D. 33, and then that night the moon seemed to turn to blood, that’s exactly the kind of thing that the first Christians would have remembered and passed on!
Conclusion
Now, Dan, I know that you’re trying to heed the words of Steve Martin’s grandmother and
STEVE MARTIN: Criticize things you don’t know about.
But you can be really sharp elbowed, like when you fail to recognize Jeremiah’s hyperbole, saying
DAN: The notion that Jesus’ death by crucifixion is the best-established fact of the ancient world, is just an absolutely laughable falsehood. That is not true in any way, shape, or form whatsoever.
When you yourself are using hyperbole in that very statement, and I assume you want others to recognize when you are using hyperbole and cut you slack.
So, I’d suggest that you heed a different part of the Grandmother’s Song and
STEVE MARTIN: Be courteous, kind and forgiving. Be gentle and peaceful each day. Be warm and human and grateful and have a good thing to say. Be thoughtful and trustful and childlike. Be witty and happy and wise. Be honest and love all your neighbors.
At least, that would be my advice.
And the fit for this video has been . . . Superman.
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Thank you, and I’ll see you next time
God bless you always!
SOURCES:
Original Video from Dan McClellan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8ZZJy3blTE
Jimmy’s article on dating the Crucifixion: https://jimmyakin.com/2013/04/7-clues-tell-us-precisely-when-jesus-died-the-year-month-day-and-hour-revealed.html
Steve Martin’s Grandmother’s Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6R8h_KsKyc