The biblical documents have been transmitted well enough to give us a reliable text that is well documented to be from eyewitnesses of the events described. And this is not a singular book, but 66 books over a thousand years from many different authors. Despite that the biblical writings display a remarkable level of unity and consistency with arguably no contradictions. And naturalistic explanations do not explain this pattern. So the best explanation is that the text is divinely inspired. Therefore the christian God exists.

lets take our time to rebut each claim made in my opponents argument. First of all there is nothing contradictory in the Judas account. Neither negates the possibility of the other. Traditionally it is understood that he hanged himself, then he fell down. Matthew describes the means of death, Acts describes what happened to his body. as Apologist Matt Slick from CARM puts it "what happened here is that Judas went and hung himself and then his body later fell down and split open." Genesis 1 and 2 describe different aspects in the creation account(genesis 2 going more in depth then chapter 1.). David killed Goliath, the supposed contradiction is a scribal error in a specific text that is actually saying Elhanan (son of Jair) the brother of Goliath the Gittite. the lineage's in Matthew vs Luke are not both Joseph but one is Mary's. And Scholar's disagree on who wrote what book. we even have books we dont know who they where written by. And the examples of textual variants are not disproving anything. I agree the long ending of Mark and the Adulterous Women are not original and are 5th century editions to the manuscript tradition. But even critics such as bart Erman admit the bible is the most attested to work in antiquity. The textual transmission allows us to find the erros and note when they happened! Now the claim that it reads as different authors and different time periods is true. Paul says God inspired the human authors. God didnt dictate the books so each one sounds like the person who wrote it. And it shows very different time periods because it was written in very different time periods! Moses in writing Exodus in the wilderness of a desert is not going to sound the same as Paul, a roman Jew living in the roman empire a thousand years later. The scriptures contain a coherent consistent narrative throughout the whole and it all leads to the death of christ for the salvation of the world. The issues my opponent has raised are non issues as we have just shown. So my thesis still stands. Lets also not exclude the evidence of prophecy in scripture such as Destruction of the Second Temple which was fulfilled in 70 AD many years after it was written.

"Olympic level mental gymnastics" Is a stretched claim. many biblical scholars agree that these are very plausible explanations. Your claim of "third" narratives assumes that harmonization between accounts is impossible. But many Of these are valid explanations. Now with contradictions. As Matt Slick puts it "A contradiction occurs when one statement excludes the possibility of another. The Second Law of Logic, the Law of Non-Contradiction, (LNC) says that something cannot be both true and false at the same time and in the same sense. It is not a contradiction to describe something differently" Now are the things you repeated contradictions by definition? No because possible explanations exist. But you presuppose that the accounts are not able to be harmonized. We do not create a third narrative, we just look at the data and see that Judas hanged himself, then his body fell and burst open. And the field is explained by the fact that it was common to attribute an action to a person if it was done on their behalf or with their resources. The priests bought the field, but with Judas’s money. So in a real sense, Judas “acquired” it. This is a common idiom and appears in other texts such as John 4:1–2, where Jesus is said to baptize, though his disciples did the baptizing. Along the same lines The accounts in genesis are solved easily. The Hebrew word yatsar can be translated as "formed" or "had formed" And even while some translations such as the KJV render it as formed. the context of the previous chapter shows that the correct rendering is "Had formed" so this is just a issue with translation that modern translations do fix. You also misunderstand the nature of manuscript tradition. Up until the time of the printing press it was very hard to copy manuscripts since it was done by hand. and that allows errors to occasionally get into it. But because of the nature of the free transmission of the bible we can see when the errors pop up and know with certainty they are not original. for example the first manuscripts with the adulterous women story appear around 500 ad. and we know its a addition because sometimes it appears in luke, other times it appears in John. so it and the long ending of Mark both have clear signs it is additions. This is a good textual transmission in comparison to other texts from the same time. Because today we can look at the thousands of manuscripts we have and find what the originals said. It is not "So corrupted" It has the best transmission of any ancient text! The more manuscripts you have the more variants you will have amongst them. But having manuscripts coming from different areas at different times yet all testifying to the same text is strong evidence that you possess the document in its original form. You say I misrepresent Erhmans body of scholarship. But what did I actually say? i said That Erhman agrees with the statement "the bible is the most attested to work in antiquity." Which is true. We have 1.3 million pages of handwritten text for the new testament. This is more then any other work of literature in antiquity. I quoted Erhman to show that is a fact. Not to agree with his conclusion. lets also note the type of variants that are in the text. the Vast majority of them do not change the meaning and/or are non viable(0 chance of being original). There are only around 1500-2000 viable and meaningful differences in the text. 1% of the new testament text. Bart Erhman in his book misquoting Jesus also agrees with this. - "Most of these differences are completely immaterial and insignificant in fact most of the changes found in our early Christian manuscripts have nothing to do with theology or ideology far in away the most change is the result of mistakes pure and simple slips the pen accidental emissions inadvertent additions misspelled words blunders of one sort or another when scribes made intentional changes sometimes their motives were as pure as the driven snow and so we must rest content knowing that getting back to the earliest attainable version is the best we can do whether or not we have reached back to the original text the oldest form of the text is no doubt closely very closely related to what the author originally wrote and so it is the basis for our interpretation of his teaching" The difference between Bart Erhman and a apologist Such as Dr James White on this subject looking at the same evidence is the interpretation of it. both you and Erhman assume harmonization is not possible. And that if any text is disputed it rules out inspiration. But why would that be the case? Is God supposed to violate peoples free will to make them copy every word perfectly? Is he supposed to strike down any scribe who makes a mistake? The fact is the debate this afternoon comes down to the presupposition that harmonization is impossible from the opposing side. he has presupposed his conclusion from the beginning. That is the issue.

First of all you are attacking a claim of absolute perfection that I never made. I already agreed copyist and scribes allowed errors in round 2. this is a straw-man. The books are coherent and arguably perfect. ofc you will not accept any answer I give to the alleged contradictions. So my question is what would suffice as evidence? You are also factually wrong. The core claim is not under textual dispute in the slightest. You say "The core claim of Christianity, being Christ's resurrection, within the earliest gospel is a 5th century fabrication." But that is false on multiple accounts. The resurrection is in the short ending of mark, in Matthew, in Luke, and in John. And the long ending is not even 500 AD. Irenaeus quotes Mark 16:19 in his Against Heresies that was written around 180 AD. And to add to that, the core claim of christianity does not rest on any disputed text. it is rested upon 1 Corinthians 15:3-8. Paul in the 50's wrote about the tradition he received, and this was before the gospels where even written! In fact Ehrman agrees that the creed inside the chapter is pre-Pauline. Meaning it was around earlier then the letter was! Now lets focus on the core claim. Since this is where the debate lives or dies. No one disagree's historically how christianity started, the tradition is found in the biblical writings as early as 50 AD. Even. Erhman agrees with this.And no major secular theory can provide a natural explanation for the key claim without sounding absurd. Grief visions dont make sense as hallucinations are private. And Paul refers to the 500+ brothers who saw the risen christ and are still alive in his letters. If it was a Conspiracy there was no reason for the 12 who started it to die brutal deaths to protect that, And no Jew would have ever invented a crucified Messiah due to Deuteronomy 21:23. Cognitive dissonance fails as if it where the case how could skeptics such as Paul been converted? There is no naturalistic explanation for the movement doing what it did. Also you said the quote from Ehrman was"whether or not we have reached back to the original text" means "no way of knowing if the manuscripts were reconstructed properly." But look at the full quote which you seam to have missed"whether or not we have reached back to the original text; the oldest form of the text is no doubt closely, very closely related to what the author originally wrote." So you have misread what he said and ignored the context. As. Erhman admitted in his debate with James White on this subject, No variant changes essential doctrine. Also your example undermines your claim. Lincoln was shot at the theater and died in the hospital next door. So a careless source saying "died at the theater" and a precise one saying "died at the boarding house" are both true. One is just more accurate then the other. So if we apply the same standard a source saying Judas died by hanging and another saying he fell and burst open, could it not be possible that both are true as in the above case? Again this all comes down to the fact that you refuse to let harmonization exist within the text. Lets also pivot back to what I mentioned in the second paragraph. The empty tomb is the core claim. Now even if we assume everything else in scripture is false(Which it is not. and the textual data shows we have the original message), if the empty tomb is true then this debate is over. The Women found the tomb empty, they told disciples, they found it empty. Jesus appeared to 500+ people. He appeared to Paul and somehow changed the biggest hater of christianity into its biggest supporter. What natural explanation explains this? There is none. I will gladly hear you out on this but the evidence points to the fact that the event that undeniably proves the christian God is real did happen. The text telling us this being preserved attests to this as well. So everyone I ask you to judge my opponents next rebuttal closely. Since these are issues that must be addressed before the end of the debate. Thank you.

First of all its dishonest to frame this as "you made a new argument, therefore you conceded" You are the one who brought up the resurrection in round 3 by saying "The core claim of Christianity, being Christ's resurrection, within the earliest gospel is a 5th century fabrication.". And in round one I said "it all leads to the death of Christ for the salvation of the world." The unity argument was the foundation, not the whole house. The resurrection was there from round 1. Now to your primary arguments. First you are right, the list of explanations alone doesn't prove the resurrection itself as you can presuppose any of the conclusions like O'Connor says. But each elimination must rest on the evidence that you have not disputed. Theories of hallucination need to account for why the belief came to take the form of bodily resurrection because in first-century Judaism it was common to see visions of one’s departed loved ones and no one referred to them as resurrection, since resurrection imagery referred to the body. Plus applying it to a crucified man required actively reinterpreting Deuteronomy 21:23's curse. Which the jews would not normally do. Also lets note that you have presupposed "no resurrection" as a premise. But my case doesn't presuppose anything. I asked you to dispute specific data. Which, you have not done nor claimed a theory that explains what really started the christian movement. All you have done is attack the method. yet you did not provide what I asked. You didn't claim hallucinations, or conspiracy, or legend. There has not been positive naturalistic account for the event. Now onto your claims on what the texts say of the resurrection. You are trying to build a legend case saying that with each gospel more appearances of Jesus happened, meaning it is a sign of a legend developing over time. But the flaw in this argument is we have a pre gospel account of the tradition in 1 Corinthians 15 from the 50's that lists 6 post resurrection appearances to Cephas, the Twelve, the 500, James, all the apostles, and Paul. So the apparent growth in appearances between the gospels are just selective authorship choices of the account. It's the selection of narration from an established, prior, full list. Mark's "zero" is not saying none happened. In fact, Mark 16:7 guarantees appearances "there you will see him" but does not narrate them. Adding up narrations and counting that as tradition development Fails to look at the entirety of the data. Saying that not all the apostles are martyrs, that is fair. But you agree that at least James(son of Zebedee) and Peter died. And we can note that how they died is irrelevant to the claim so we dont need to debate Peters traditional death. We also have really good evidence for James(brother of jesus) as you noted, Josephus, a Jewish historian writing for Rome, records that he was executed around 62 AD. We also have early attestation to Pauls Martyrdom as well in 1st Clement, though you do not have to agree with that. But the problem is that we still have people dying for something that if it was faked/a hoax they would have known. Why would 3-4 people who claim to have seen the risen Christ die with that if they faked it? Why were there Zero confessions under Roman Pressure? And sure, 500 unverified witnesses. We dont need to go there since if you wont accept them fine. But Paul still lists real living witnesses such as Cephus, James, Paul, and the 12. Those are the ones we need to focus on. We have now reached the end of what the transmission debate can decide. He has not disputed that the text is reliably transmitted. He has disputed what it would prove even if it were. So let us follow his own lead and move to where he says the debate belongs. And that is the resurrection itself. The resurrection is not merely a miracle. It decides this debate. A man publicly claimed divine authority, was executed for it under the curse of Deuteronomy 21, if the tomb was empty and the witnesses were real, God Raised him three days later. And if that happened, there is only one explanation The Christian God rose christ from the dead. When looking at his closing pay attention to my opponent. Did he dispute the early dating of the creed? Did he finally tell you what he thinks happened? A mechanism, any mechanism, for how this movement began? We have not heard one. Did he answer my question about what evidence would suffice? If the answer is "none" his position is not skepticism, it is commitment. Four: did he retract '"the core claim of Christianity is a fifth-century fabrication" After multiple demonstrations that it's false? Score his close against those four questions. Before we close I also want to mention that my opponent has been really good. This is the best debate I have had on this site. So thank you for that. And I look forward to your final rebuttal. Thank you, Thank you all, and goodbye, good day, and goodnight.