AB,
And Morison was a declared sceptic before he set out to examine the evidence. It was not what he expected to find.
That’s a falsehood commonly used by Christian apologists. In fact Morrison (whose real name by the way somewhat pleasingly was Albert Ross) was a believer in the Christian Jesus all along, and he just set out to examine the reported events leading up to and after the crucifixion.
In Chapter 1 for example he describes his feelings during his time of supposed scepticism: "For the person of Jesus Christ Himself, however, I had a deep and even reverent regard. He seemed to me an almost legendary figure of purity and noble manhood. A coarse word with regard to Him, or the taking of His name lightly, stung me to the quick".
Whence then the objectivity of the "sceptic"?
Morison actually takes the Gospels at face value throughout the book. He assumes that if the Gospels say X happened, then X happened and that's it. There’s no attempt even once to explain why he thinks that. Instead he just makes repeated claims like “unmistakably historical”, “beyond the possibility of doubt”, “It rings true...” , “the language of St. Mark is to my mind conclusive”, ”palpably true to life”, “it reads from a transcript from life”, “This is obviously a true history” etc. The whole thing in other words is opinion and assertion with no attempt at the tools of historicity.
In Chapter 9 he properly gives the game away when he says: “We have been proceeding rather on the assumption that we can postulate anything of the disciples providing that it accounts, superficially at least, for their behaviour.'”
Some though prefer
evidence to “postulating anything”, which is why this type of guff doesn’t find its way onto History curricula, however much you happen to like its confirmation of your biases.
Anyways, I’m not here.
