On the Ask NT Wright Anything show, Justin Brierley recently read a write-in question that challenged Anglican apologist N.T. Wright on a claim he’s made that I’ve thoroughly debunked: his claim that women would never be invented by the author of Mark as “witnesses” to the empty tomb, because no one trusted women as witnesses back then, therefore Mark’s account of the empty tomb is real honest-to-God history. Indeed, Wright insists, not just Mark’s, but all the ridiculous embellishments to it by Matthew, Luke, and John are real honest-to-God history, even though Mark had no knowledge of any of the wild and crazy things they added, many of which implausible or directly contradict Mark. But we’ll set that digression aside today. Here I’ll just focus on point one.

I published my debunking of Wright’s argument in Chapter 11 of Not the Impossible Faith. Though it’s to an earlier version Brierley calls Wright’s attention, prompting him to attempt a response. Here’s how that went…

First, Some Handwaving

Wright first tries to shore up his argument by appealing to claims he makes unrelated to the one he’s being asked about. For instance, he claims “the absence of Old Testament exegesis” in the empty tomb story, unlike in the crucifixion story, evinces the empty tomb story predates the crucifixion story and is true. This is a non sequitur; Gospel fiction did not require “Old Testament exegesis” so its absence is in no way indicative of earlier composition or historical sourcing (Wright can produce no non-circular examples of that being the case). It’s also factually untrue: several components of Mark’s story, and Matthew’s even more so, are adapted from the Old Testament, and have intentional Old Testament significance and meaning. I show this extensively in The Empty Tomb, in the second section of my chapter “The Spiritual Body of Christ and the Legend of the Empty Tomb.” Only some of which I discuss in my recent article Why Did Mark Invent an Empty Tomb?

Similarly, Wright’s claim that because Mark doesn’t include a theological inference at the end, that therefore his empty tomb story is true, is another non sequitur. “Story lacks explicit exegesis, therefore it’s true” is not even remotely logical reasoning. And Mark did not compose like a historian or exegete anyway. He wrote allegory. All his messaging is in symbol, not words (see Mark’s Use of Paul’s Epistles as well as, again, Why Did Mark Invent an Empty Tomb?). There is no way to claim Mark did not believe or intend his narrative to support existing Christian preaching that as for Christ, so for us. That he doesn’t explicitly say it is because Mark doesn’t explicitly say anything. He even tells you that. Later authors continue that practice because they clearly agreed the significance of all their stories was to be taught orally, in person; not in the text. And so it almost never is—until John, the first explicit literalist, took over the narrative (e.g. John 20:31).

Then, Some Doubledowning

“In the ancient world women were not regarded as credible witnesses.” Thus N.T. Wright repeats the claim I’ve thoroughly debunked as false.

The first argument he now makes in response to me is even more wildly illogical: because Paul doesn’t mention women seeing Jesus, the women invented by Mark a lifetime later must have been real. Huh?

This honestly doesn’t even deserve a reply. Moving on.

His second argument is that Mark would try to match the account in Paul. But Mark never describes appearances at all (Jesus does not appear to the women), and Paul never mentions an empty tomb. So there is no overlap between them. So how can it be that “Mark would try to match the account in Paul”? Mark isn’t giving an account of anything in Paul. Meanwhile, later authors, unsatisfied by Mark’s restraint, try adding appearance narratives—that never match Paul’s. The sequence in Paul is: first Peter sees Jesus, then “the twelve” get to see Jesus, then “over five hundred” get to see Jesus, then a “James” (which one Paul doesn’t say) gets to see Jesus, then “all the apostles” do (and then only after all that does Paul get to). This sequence was never used by any Gospel author. It’s not in Matthew. It’s not in Luke or Acts. It’s not in John. So Wright’s own Bible refutes his premise. They simply didn’t do this. So he cannot insist they “would” have. Meanwhile, Paul’s account mentions no women—so we have no evidence there were any. That appears to have been invented later.

It’s at this point that Wright circles back to his original argument: that women wouldn’t be invented later, because no one trusted women as witnesses. In other words, surely no one would invent a story presenting women as witnesses. But there are numerous things wrong with this argument, all of which I point out in NIF, almost none of which Wright even mentions here, much less answers. He just ignores nearly every point I make, pretends I didn’t make them, and simply repeats the statements I debunked. This is so flabbergasting a tactic I have to simply reiterate every point I made in NIF that he ignores—just to expose the fact that he is ignoring them, and apparently has no reply to them. Indeed, apparently, he doesn’t even want you to know those points exist. Even the scant few points he mentions and even tries to address he ignores almost the entire substance of.

Let’s take a look…

Irrational from Top to Bottom

Wright’s illogicality is revealed early on when he claims it is “far more probable” that the women got “airbrushed out” of the earlier tradition in Paul. Even though Paul never mentions an empty tomb tradition at all, nor does Mark ever say Jesus appeared to any women—Wright is conflating a bunch of things here, making a total hash of his own argument. Already that’s two premises his argument depends on that are false. Paul did not mention any empty tomb tradition to exclude women from; and Mark did not list women as witnesses to the risen Jesus.

But worse than that, Wright’s argument is inherently self-refuting: any impulse that would erase the women earlier in the tradition, would have even more surely erased them later in the tradition. In other words, Mark would never have heard of it; nor, on Wright’s own premises, would Mark even want to reinsert it if he had heard of it. Wright is thus depending on a highly convoluted set of contradictory premises: that “everyone” thought citing women witnesses was a bad idea, except for some reason every single author of any Gospel; and that everyone erased the women from the story, except for whoever kept preserving them in the story for so many continual decades that every single Gospel author heard of it. These are directly contradictory suppositions. Of course, Wright is also presuming there was an oral tradition at all; as all these kinds of apologetic arguments do, they rest on unproven suppositions that circularly entail their conclusions.

All of this reasoning is just irrational from top to bottom. But it also gets facts wrong…

Now to the Falsehoods

The continual theme of Chapter 11 of my book Not the Impossible Faith is that literally every single thing Wright says about this is false. I’ll start with two examples that require more explication, then list the rest.

Exhibit One: at this point in the video clip Wright claims I did not address a passage Origen quotes from Celsus in which Wright claims Celsus says something like “oh it’s all based on the testimony of one hysterical woman.” And this therefore proves no one trusted women as witnesses. Not a single thing in that statement is true. Beginning with the claim that I never address this passage. In the version Wright is reading are these words, in endnote 3:

For example, the oft-cited passage from Origen, Contra Celsum 2.59-60, does not show Celsus objecting to Mary’s testimony because she was a woman, but because she was not of sound mind; hence Celsus dismisses the testimony of Thomas and Peter on exactly the same grounds.

Notice how in one single sentence I refuted everything Wright attempts to do with this passage: Wright falsely claims Celsus attacked the testimony of a woman because she was a woman; but that he attacked the testimony of men as well on the very same grounds (of being emotional or insane) completely disproves Wright’s inference. What does Wright have to say in response to this point? Nothing. He wants you to believe I never said it. I also added counter-examples in the text of the article Wright claims to have read, e.g. Josephus confidently citing women as sole witnesses to important events, without apology or any imagined resistance, also disproves Wright’s entire inference. What has he to say about that? Nada. He doesn’t even mention it. Clearly, he doesn’t want you to know any of this evidence refuting him even exists. Probably because he has no response to it.

Exhibit Two: Wright quotes a passage in Josephus that he mistakenly thinks says women’s testimony was not trusted. He simply ignores most of what I myself said about that same passage, and tries to push back on my decorum argument instead (that Josephus is likely talking about women appearing in court, not women’s testimony not being trusted). Here is what I wrote, most of which Wright is ignoring:

[This passage in] Josephus? In fact, that confirms everything I’ve been saying. When Josephus summarizes the law of testimony, he says two or more witnesses were always required to establish a fact at trial, and then says “there shall be no testimony of women, because of the levity and boldness of their gender.” Then he says slaves should not be allowed to testify because they were likely to lie. It’s notable that this is not the reason he gives for excluding women, and therefore he does not mean women were untrustworthy. Unlike slaves, Josephus is saying that women should not appear in court simply because it was unseemly—essentially saying that women were liable to giggle or scold or otherwise violate the proper demeanor of the court. Therefore, even this passage from Josephus offers no support to the view that the testimony of women was not trusted. As we saw above, Josephus [himself] certainly trusted the testimony of women. And the Talmudic and Mishnaic evidence confirms their testimony was trusted in court as well, even as much as a man’s—just as it confirms the view that women appearing in a courtroom was improper. But that is not the situation in the Gospels.

Note, this passage makes clear neither Josephus nor Jewish law regarded women’s testimony to be unreliable; and several other passages make clear Josephus himself assumes women’s testimony was generally regarded as reliable, and readily relies on it; and both facts soundly refute Wright’s claims to the contrary. Wright ignores both these points and just repeats his reading of the passage, despite my having shown that it is demonstrably incorrect, and contrary to evidence elsewhere in Josephus, and even every other legal source we have.

Wright instead says he doesn’t want to accept my ancillary conjecture, that what we have here is more likely Josephus describing a practice that I also showed had been typical in Classical Athens (roughly the same period Josephus is talking about in this passage with respect to Jewish history): women were prohibited from appearing in court, but could give their testimony through a male proxy. But the Mishnah is full of examples of women not only giving testimony but even appearing in court to do so, however—and never mentions there ever having been any prohibition on women as witnesses or as testifying (nor even does the Talmud)—so clearly Josephus can’t have meant that the practice of women testifying by proxy (or not at all!) was still standard. As this was in Book 4 of the Antiquities, which describes antiquated laws in long distant history, it’s possible he never meant every detail to be taken as describing current practice. Or else he is punting for his team, as a conservative Pharisee, and thus not representing the law as it actually liberally was by his time. But even if neither is the case, Josephus still doesn’t say women’s testimony wasn’t trusted, and he clearly indicates he trusted women’s testimony on multiple occasions! So this passage doesn’t support Wright’s premise.

Wright ignores that point, and pretends it’s about that other point (whether Josephus means rules of decorum rather than admissibility), and thus nothing more need be said. This is quite disingenuous. Wright simply has not responded to my refutation here.

Comparing My Refutation with Wright’s

And it’s all down hill from there. This is a line-by-line summary of all the other arguments I make in NIF (which all exist in the earlier version, in some form, that Wright claims he is responding to):

• “There is no evidence Christians ever used any female testimony to promote the Gospel.” Wright’s response: never mentions this point.
• There is no evidence of anyone leaving Christianity or refusing to convert because the Gospels put women in their story. Wright’s response: never mentions this point.
• Mark never cites the women as witnesses to begin with. He never says they are his source. No author does. Wright’s response: never mentions this point.
• “The involvement of women in Christianity’s [narrative] was no greater than in the [mythology] of Israel, from Mariam to Sarah to Ruth” and “the Prophets Deborah (Judges 4) or Huldah (2 Kings 22:12-20), or Rachel the Mother of All Israel (Genesis 29-35).” No Jews ever balked at this. Wright’s response: never mentions this point.
• “Several historians argue that ‘many more females than males were converting to Christianity in its first centuries’, and recognize ‘Christianity’s appeal to women as an important factor in its success’.” And women were even holding offices in the church, and many were major benefactors being recruited to fund it. Wouldn’t this make it probable Christians would start adding women prominently into their mythology to appeal to the very market they were now targeting? Wright’s response: never mentions this point.
• “[N]ot a single item of the Gospel Paul preached depended on these women, and their role is consistently secondary and subservient. Christian women in the Gospels all behave exactly as women ought to in the eyes of the Mediterranean cultures of the time … And no stigma could ever result from depicting women behaving exactly as men expected them to!” Wright’s response: never mentions this point.
• Women had prominent roles, both in fact and mythology, in nearly every other religion among the peoples Christians most successfully recruited from (which was not the Jews, BTW, among whom they were quite unsuccessful). So why wouldn’t Christianity? Wright’s response: never mentions this point.
• “Just because it was unseemly for a woman to appear in court does not mean her testimony wasn’t trusted. Confusing the two is a popular error made by many Christian apologists.” Wright’s response: never mentions this point, much less the abundant evidence I adduce for it.
• “The evidence does not support such a blanket distrust of female testimony, but shows instead that female testimony was often trusted, even in a court of law,” whether Jewish, Greek, or Roman. Wright’s response: apart from his vague claim about non-existent “studies” (more on which below), he never mentions this point, nor addresses any of the abundant evidence I adduce for it.
• “[I]t’s already improper to argue from court-room decorum to everyday credibility. The Gospels are not court documents.” Whereas when it comes to “using women as sources for historical claims, there is no evidence of distrust” anywhere in antiquity. Wright’s response: never mentions this point.
• “[E]ven the Gospel of John attests to how readily the testimony of a woman could be accepted,” with the line: “many of the Samaritans from that city believed in Jesus because of the account given by the woman who testified” (John 4:39). Whether that’s a made up story or not, either way, it attests to exactly the opposite attitude toward women’s testimony. Wright’s own Bible refutes him. Wright’s response: never mentions this point.
• Even “when a pretentious bigot harrumphed at such a thing,” if even any did (we have no examples), “he could always invent male testimony to replace a woman’s, exactly as later Christians did.” Even if not for that reason, “John 20 and Luke 23-24 both add multiple male witnesses to the empty tomb, a fact not attested by Mark or Matthew.” So contrary to Wright’s thesis, having women in the story would have no effect even with arch-conservative readers. Wright’s response: never mentions this point.
• “Luke (and Luke alone) has the men doubt the women because what they said sounded ‘silly’,” but “we can’t just assume this was because they were women, rather than because their story was in itself incredible—if men had reported it, they may have been thought just as silly.” And indeed, Thomas did not believe even ten men on the point (20:24-25); Matthew says Disciples didn’t even believe Jesus (28:17); so clearly we find no consistent connection between gender and disbelief. Wright’s response: never mentions this point. He just repeats the same mistake—by citing an example in Jewish myth of an extraordinary prophecy by the legendary Miriam not being believed: but there is no evidence this was because she was a woman, rather than simply because the claim itself was incredible. Wright is here arguing in a circle: presuming his conclusion in the example to use the example as evidence for his conclusion. To see what I mean, notice what Wright doesn’t: this made-up story about Miriam actually emulates a parallel story about Abraham: when Abraham didn’t believe a similar prophecy despite it coming directly from God himself (Genesis 17:15-22). So, Dr. Wright, are we to conclude Jews therefore wouldn’t trust the testimony of God because he’s a god—or because the claim itself isn’t believable? Catch-22, right? Obviously your interpretive heuristic is broken here. By contrast, when Samson’s mother reports her prophetic dream, she is believed (Judges 13). So again there is no consistent link between gender and believability.
• The sources usually cited for the false claim that women’s testimony wasn’t allowed in courts of law is usually for the wrong socio-historical context (e.g. Classical Athens, not Imperial Rome or even Roman-era Judaism) and thus incorrect. Wright’s response: never mentions this point.
• Those sources didn’t say that anyway (e.g. women’s testimony was trusted in court even in Classical Athens; we have lots of examples). Wright’s response: never mentions this point.
• Some of those sources even describe “something quite different—that, again, it only was unseemly to compel a respectable woman to appear in court, or to let a woman act as a lawyer,” and yet that “very same evidence…actually proves a woman’s testimony was sought in court and was as valid as any man’s, and that in fact many women did engage themselves as lawyers, and even won their cases!” (I give examples). Wright’s response: never mentions this point.
• “Roman law was quite explicit in permitting women to swear oaths and testify in court, declaring in no uncertain terms that ‘women have the right to give evidence at trial'” (that’s a direct quote from the Imperial Roman law code). And the Gospels were not written by nor for Palestinian Jews, so Jewish law and custom is largely irrelevant to their marketability. Wright’s response: never mentions this point.
• “[W]e can find many attacks on women as gullible dupes” (Wright himself digs up an example from Philo) but “gender by itself never comes up as grounds for distrusting what a woman says she saw.” For example, “[A] woman’s incapacity to write her own will,” and thus to testify as to others’ wills, “had nothing to do with her incompetence as an eyewitness, but with the perception that a woman was subject to bad judgment in making decisions” (and I cite ancient sources explicitly saying this). Wright is confusing these two things. Wright’s response: he admits the point, but then changes his argument now to “but I am talking about not trusting their judgment.” No, you are not, Dr. Wright. “I saw the tomb was empty” would be a claim to what a woman saw; it is not a judgment that requires technical knowledge or a special savvy or keen intelligence, or was even believed to. So there is simply no logical basis for Wright’s argument here. He is simply ignoring the point I actually made, and making up an argument instead that isn’t even applicable to the empty tomb as an example.
• Wright conflates Palestinian Jews with Hellenized Jews, conflates conservative Jews with liberal Jews, confuses what market the Gospels were written for (hint: they were written in Greek), and then confuses right-wing orthodoxists as the Christian market, when in fact Christians were left-wing anti-orthodoxists, writing the Gospels outside Judea for non-Judean readers, and thus had no interest in adopting the views of Judean conservatives that Christianity was entirely built to reject. So Wright cannot argue “Conservative orthodoxists would never listen to women, therefore Christians would never give their target audience women to listen to, not even in myth.” That’s an exact reversal of the truth. “To the contrary, thumbing their noses at the corrupt Pharisees and their oppressive laws” and ideas “was exactly the Christian strategy for winning recruits from like-minded Jews among the disgruntled masses,” as well as Gentiles (with whom they were far more successful). Wright’s response: never mentions any of these points.
• “Nevertheless, even the Pharisees,” the most conservative of Jewish sects, who were not the Christians’ target market anyway, “did not regard the testimony of women as inherently untrustworthy—to the contrary, even under their law a woman’s testimony could carry the same force as a man’s.” I cite numerous examples evincing and proving this point. Wright’s response: he claims some “studies” (he never cites any) have shown that women’s testimony was allowed later in Jewish courts. I suggest to you no such studies exist. I searched for all applicable studies on this subject when I was writing this in 2006. I found none that say what Wright is now claiming. I myself cited the most prominent and thorough study I found (by Wegner; below), and it does not say that. To the contrary, it simply refutes Wright (and she published before Wright, so he should have known this). I found nothing that corrected her; and I found no ancient evidence supporting Wright either. Wright never mentions Wegner. He never addresses what she says. He never addresses my use of her findings. He instead just makes up (what appears to be) a false claim about non-existent studies. We’ve been here before. I suspect if you hound him to explain what “studies” he is talking about, all he will adduce (if he adduces anything) are some Christian apologists merely asserting this, not “studies” showing it. Because there is no evidence for it.
• “Rather, just as for the Romans, it was [only] courtroom propriety most Jews were concerned with,” not with whether women’s testimony could be submitted and trusted. I cite numerous examples evincing and proving this point. Wright’s response: he completely ignores this point and all the evidence I adduced for it.
• “Torah Law contains no prohibition against women even appearing in court (and most Jewish sects rejected all law but Torah), while Mishnah Law specifically did not include women in its list of those unqualified to testify.” Wright’s response: never mentions this point.
• Contrary to Wright’s claiming it does (take note), even the Talmud contains no such thing. “Even under” the most ultra-conservative “Talmudic interpretation, scholars conclude ‘women are admitted as competent witnesses'” in matters that would be comparable to the empty tomb story; and objection to any kind of women’s testimony only comes from ultra-conservative Rabbis anyway, who are explicitly overruled in the Talmud by liberal Rabbis (whose school of thought predates Jesus); in fact “we find no blanket distrust of female testimony in pre-Talmudic legal sources” at all (conservative or liberal). Wright’s response: never mentions any of these points.
• “Thus historian Judith Wegner finds exactly the opposite” of what Wright claims, concluding “the Mishnah’s framers grant women the right to bring and defend a lawsuit,” and “the sages acknowledge both a woman’s mental competence and the reliance to be placed on her oath and testimony,” and she cites countless examples of women testifying successfully in Jewish courts, as do I. Wright’s response: ignores all of this; doesn’t even mention any of it.
• Even the minority, ultra-conservative, Talmudic Rabbis who harrumphed at women’s testimony, do “not say what [their] reason was, much less that it was because a woman couldn’t be trusted.” For example, I document that one thing these fringe few expressed distaste for was women testifying in a death penalty case. Which entails even these guys accepted women testifying in non-death penalty cases, which would certainly cover the empty tomb narrative Mark contrives—Mark, after all, was not depicting women testifying for or against anyone on trial for a capital crime. This minority few’s reasoning for death penalty cases could also have had other motives than distrust (such as regulating female power). And they didn’t get their way anyway. Their objection to women testifying in capital cases is not accepted by the Rabbinate. Wright’s response: ignores all of this; doesn’t even mention any of it.
• Needless to say, none of this rigmarole about law courts has anything to do with tall tales about empty tombs; much less tales written by men. Remember, no woman is ever testifying here: this is Mark, a man (so far as we have any reason to believe), inventing women in a bit of fiction; and he has their testimony do no significant work in the remainder of the tale (they tell “no one”); likewise Matthew, Luke, and John (who all have men as witness to the resurrection). So no one is even being asked to believe women about anything in this story; much less in a court of law. So Wright doesn’t even have that premise to stand on here. Wright’s response: never mentions this point.
• And yet the Talmud explicitly says, “Wherever the Torah accepts the testimony of one witness, it follows the majority of persons, so that two women against one man is identical with two men against one man.” In other words, women’s testimony is not only accepted, but as equal to a man’s. (Why did Wright not know this? This evinces he didn’t even check. Take note.) It then adds “But there are some who declare” women’s testimony carries less weight than a man’s—but not that it was not allowed or trusted at all; and this is only “some” (who are neither named, nor even said to be Rabbis), and the Talmud does not side with their opinion anyway. Wright’s response: never mentions this point.
• I then quote all that in detail, showing that even those “some” declared a standard of evidence that would grant full believability to any testimony from women about an empty tomb such as Mark’s story would imply or could be taken to imply, refuting Wright’s claims outright. Wright’s response: never mentions this point.
• “The only evidence that authors like N.T. Wright offer to the contrary fails to relate to the issue of trusting testimony in court, and this is a common problem with Christian apologists: they often don’t check their sources, or the context, before proclaiming something that suits their agenda.” I then survey every example Wright gave, demonstrating this. One of them he tries to cite again now in his defense—as if he never read my rebuttal to his misuse of this passage. Wright’s response: he merely “complains” that I said this; he does nothing to vindicate himself on the point. But Wright’s citations simply didn’t demonstrate what he claimed. And that means he didn’t even read them. And I don’t just “claim” this; I prove it extensively.
• Finally, I devote the whole remaining half of my chapter to numerous compelling literary reasons Mark had for inventing women in his empty tomb story (for a summary of which see, again, Why Did Mark Invent an Empty Tomb). Wright’s response: never mentions any of this.

So here we have thirty arguments refuting Wright’s claim that “no one trusted women as witnesses in antiquity,” all of which he completely ignores but four. And one of those he never even responds to (he just complains that I pointed it out); another he concedes but tries to evade by pretending he meant “no one trusted women’s judgment, therefore no one would invent women as witnesses” which is an equivocation fallacy that in no way rescues his desired conclusion (their “judgment” would not be relevant to any role they are placed in by Mark); for a third, he ignores every strong point refuting him and responds instead to only the least relevant point I made (and uses that as an excuse to ignore the more relevant points, a rather commonplace human cognitive error); and for the fourth, it looks like he simply fabricates a claim of “studies” showing Jewish law changed regarding women’s testimony after the time of Jesus (to my knowledge no such studies exist, and he never cites any).

And that’s what passes for Christian apologetics: ignore all the evidence, ignore all the strong refuting points, make irrelevant rebuttals to a select few weaker points, complain about being criticized, and claim victory.

Conclusion

I confess I do believe N.T. Wright is a bit of a loony. And I mean that. Yes, he’s also incompetent. I’ve found him repeatedly making false claims about the facts or screwing up basic things about history—not only several times in Not the Impossible Faith (in several chapters, not just the one on his argument about women), but I adduce several more examples in The Empty Tomb and its associated FAQs, and recently another with his hare-brained claim that Jesus is as well-evidenced as Caligula! N.T. Wright is an appallingly bad historian. But he’s also a delusional believer in angelic possession and speaking in tongues as a real supernatural power, among other crazy stuff (like thinking that merely talking about Satan puts you in danger of demonic attack, and that demons interfered with his life to try and punish him for writing about it), all based on the most speciously unreliable kinds of evidence (such as, rumor and anecdote, coincidences, and “feelings”). This is not a guy with a sound epistemology. And here we’ve seen that demonstrated again. This is all these guys have. And that’s why we find it all so ridiculous. His arguments here aren’t even logical, and his claims to fact are overwhelmingly disproved by the evidence; even his own sources refute him. And he just never notices any of it.