Freshly Updated Jesus Resurrection Debate (2)
(Cont’d from previous entry)
Finally, along comes John. Now the legend has grown full flower, and instead of one boy, or two men, or one angel, now we have two angels at the empty tomb. And outdoing Luke in style, John has Jesus prove he is solid by showing his wounds, and breathing on people, and even obliging the Doubting Thomas by letting him put his fingers into the very wounds themselves. And Jesus eats not only fish this time, but breaks bread as well. Like Luke, the most grandiose appearances to the Disciples happen in Jerusalem, not Galilee as Mark originally claimed.
We have no primary sources on what was going on in the forty years of the Church between Paul in the year 58 and Clement of Rome in the year 95, and Paul tells us almost nothing about what happened in the beginning. What I suspect happened is something like this: Jesus died, was buried, and then in a vision or dream appeared to one or more of his Disciples, convincing them he had ascended to heaven, escaping death before the End Times, and then what began in the simple story of Mark as a symbolic allusion to an ascended Christ soon to reveal himself in visions from heaven, in time led some Christians to believe that the resurrection was physical and they heard or came up with increasingly elaborate stories proving themselves right.
Since religious trust was won in those days by the charisma of speakers and the audiences subjective estimation of their sincerity, it would not be long before a charismatic man, who heard the embellished accounts, came into a position of power, inspiring complete faith from his congregation, who then sought to defend the story, and so began the transformation of the Christian idea of the resurrection from a spiritual concept to a physical one naturally calling themselves the true church and attacking all rivals, as has so often happened in history. Lending plausibility to this chain of events was the Jewish War between 66 and 70 AD, which ended with the complete destruction of the original Christian Church in Jerusalem, and much of the entire city[ix]. It is likely that many if not all of the original believers still living were killed in this war, and with the loss of the central source of Christian authority and tradition, legends were ripe for the growing. This would explain why later Christians were so in the dark about the history of their own Church between 58 and 95. Exactly what happened we may never know. However it came to change, it seems more than likely that the first Christians, among them Paul, believed in a spiritual resurrection and not the resurrection story told in the Gospels.
So this is where we end up. We have no trustworthy evidence of a physical resurrection, no reliable witnesses. It is among the most poorly attested of historical events. The earliest evidence, from the letters of Paul, does not appear to be of a physical resurrection, but a spiritual one. And we have at least one plausible reason available to us as to why and how the legend grew into something else. Finally, the original accounts of a physical resurrection show obvious signs of legendary embellishment over time, and were written in an age of little education and even less science, a time overflowing with superstition. And, ultimately, the Gospels match perfectly the same genre of hagiography as that life of Genevieve with which I began. There the legends quickly arose, undoubted and unchallenged, of tree born monsters and righted ships and blinded thieves. In the Gospels, we get angels and earthquakes and a resurrection in the flesh. So we have to admit that neither is any more believable than the other.
So I would reason that a god of all humankind would not appear in one tiny portion of the Earth, in an uneducated and credulous time, revealing himself to a tiny unknown few[x], and then expect the billions of the rest of us to take their word for it, and not even their word, but the word of some unnamed person many times removed. I dont see any reason to buy the resurrection story found in the Gospels.
style=”mso-element: endnote-list”>
id=edn1 style=”mso-element: endnote”>
[i] The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed., s.v. “Geneviève”
id=edn2 style=”mso-element: endnote”>
<A title="" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2" href="http://www.opendiary.com/entryedit.asp?mode=add#
_ednref2″ _edn2>[ii] Appian, Cassius Dio, Plutarch, Caesar, Suetonius, Divus Iulius
id=edn3 style=”mso-element: endnote”>
[iii] Graham Anderson’s Sage, Saint and Sophist: Holy Men and Their Associates in the Early Roman Empire (1994); but consider Paul’s mode of argument in his letter to the Galatians as an example of how assertions of authority mattered more than a presentation and analysis of witnesses and evidence.
id=edn4 style=”mso-element: endnote”>
[iv] Matthew alone records a supposed skeptical attack of Jews, namely the charge that the body of Jesus had “really” been stolen (28:11-15; cf. 27:62-6; 28:4). But this appears in no Jewish writings, of the first century or even later, and as a Christian story it is suspect: it involves reporting secret conversations that no Christian could have been witness to, and Matthew does not explain how he heard of those events. He only says “This story [of theft] was spread around among Jews until today.” But apparently, not in print. However, as I note there, an ad hoc charge of theft could well have been an intuitive response to the story when the story adopted an empty tomb motif, whenever that was (in my opinion, probably after the Jewish War concluded in 70 A.D.), and in that respect Matthew may simply be inventing a story to “debunk” a new charge raised by the adoption of a new empty tomb story a generation or two after the religion began (so that what he thinks or claims is “until today” is really just “today”).
id=edn5 style=”mso-element: endnote”>
[v] Acts 12:2; Tacitus, Annals 15.44 (117 AD)
id=edn6 style=”mso-element: endnote”>
[vi] 1 Cor. 15:3-11 I discuss in the links above, but to that can be added 1 Tim. 3:16, where the necessary elements of the religion are listed as the incarnation, spiritual justification, some connection with angels, the teaching of the Gospel, and the ascension. The physical appearances get no mention. Likewise, Paul’s summary of the Gospel at Philippians 2:6-11 omits a physical resurrection: instead of being raised, Jesus is merely exalted after death by being given a powerful “name.” And Colossians 1:13-29 summarizes the theology of the Gospel, yet makes clear that by giving his body Jesus removed sin (vv. 22), and that after death his “body” became the church (vv. 24; supported by Ephesians 5:30, where it says we are now Christ’s body). This strongly implies that there was no “body” of Jesus after his death, except the power of his name and message, and thus the church itself.
id=edn7 style=”mso-element: endnote”>
[vii] The accepted text of Mark 16 tells of the discovery of the empty tomb (verses 1-8) and the resurrection appearances of Jesus (verses 9-20). But verses 9-20 are completely missing from Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. These manuscripts simply end with verse 8.
That verses 9-20 were added as opposed to subtracted seems most likely: There is no obvious motivation for the deletion of these passages. Moreover, verse 9 seems to introduce Mary Magdalene as if for the first time, when she has already appeared in verse 1 at the tomb, a much more likely error if verses 9-20 were added than if verses 1-20 were composed as a whole and then 9-20 deleted. Also, from Codex Bobbiensis, there is a second, different ending after verse 8 which mentions no resurrection appearances at all.
id=edn8 style=”mso-element: endnote”>
[viii] On Heracles, the references to his ascension on a cloud are found throughout ancient li
terature (cf. K. Galinsky, The Herakles Theme 1972), but most notably in the earliest Christian apologetic work, Justin Martyr’s Trypho 69-70. On Apollonius, cf. Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 8.30. Empedocles is also a paradigm example of a vanished wise man (Diogenes Laertius 8.67-8); citing Heraclides of Pontus, the story clearly predates Jesus–Hermippus had even attempted to invent a clever secular account of the story (Diogenes Laertius 8.69). There are also precedents for this in Jewish scripture: Elijah and Enoch were raised into heaven (2 Kings 2:1-18), and a similar legend was growing among Jews in the early 1st century regarding Moses (cf. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, s.v. “Moses, The Assumption of”).
id=edn9 style=”mso-element: endnote”>
[ix] The Jewish War by Josephus
id=edn10 style=”mso-element: endnote”>
[x] None of the Apostolic lists match exactly (Mk. 3:14-19; Mt. 10:2-4; Lk. 6:13-16), and all the Gospels name among the witnesses various different people, most of whom are not mentioned by Paul (1 Cor. 15:3ff.).
Not only do you get your facts of Christianity wrong…you also seem to be lacking in knowledge of history.
Warning Comment
hope, you could be more vague only by saying, “you are something with regard to the facts.” Let me know if you have anything useful to say, then get back to me.
Warning Comment
Man that was brilliant. I checked the bible..i went back and forth. Brilliant. You captured EXACTLY the logical process behind it all. Dude. I tip my hat. ANYONE and i mean anyone who tries to argue that would be scalling a massive wall. The facts are there. The logic. the process. like disreagard all my other notes about picking on the stupid. you single handedly debunked Christianity.
Warning Comment
I have never read such a concise and intelligent approach. It is probably one of your best pieces. You gotta get yourself published man. Peace.
Warning Comment
hope0500 – Explaining yourself by citing even just a few examples would be enormously helpful. Otherwise, don’t expect anyone to get much out of your comments other than the clear fact thta you disagree about something, whatever that may be.
Warning Comment
What do I disagree with? Well let’s see. How about the fact that the Jews were a backwards, superstitious people. The Jews were one of the best educated civilizations around. And Paul was educated by one of the most advanced teachers of the time. The apostles preached of the resurrection and the empty tomb at a time when it would have been very easy to disprove. (cont)
Warning Comment
All the Pharisees or the Romans would have had to do was to open the tomb and produce the body of Jesus. Christianity would never have gotten off the ground. But they couldn’t because the tomb was empty. As far as the apostles go…there are outside sources which confirm that they were martyred for their faith. But just like everything else…you won’t believe anything that goes against (cont)
Warning Comment
your perceptions. It doesn’t seem to matter to any of you what history really records. You only believe what you want to anyway.
Warning Comment
“You only believe what you want to anyway.” Yeah, sort of how hope clings to childish fantasies in the face of science, fact and a little tiny thing called logic?
Warning Comment
Faith is not contrary to logic, real science or fact. I will be endeavoring to prove on my diary that belief in a God is actually the hypothesis that best accounts for the data we have. I’m formulating a response right now to this entry that I will leave a link to here when completed. I believe the case ATB presents here is faulty logically, and I will show how.
Warning Comment
to fight science with faith is like putting a square peg into a round hole. Eventually you have to pound it in and damage something along the way until one relents. logic can only be flawed when emotion guides it. The Vulcans taught us this. Religion is emotion. Emotion is internal and only true for that person who feels..truth is subjective sciences searches for fact which is OBjective. blabla
Warning Comment
hope0500 – “It doesn’t seem to matter to any of you what history really records. You only believe what you want to anyway.” Is that my approach to things or is that really your approach to things? If I am really that irrational when it comes to historical argumentation you’ll have to show me exactly how and not simply assert as much.
Warning Comment
Of course, I’m not arguing for or against anything right here – I was just merely interested in why you thought BUM’s entry was completely and utterly wrong. “How about the fact that the Jews were a backwards, superstitious people.” That sounds more like your characterization than BUMs. Nevertheless, the Jews were as superstitious as anyone was in those days.
Warning Comment
“The Jews were one of the best educated civilizations around.” Proof? “And Paul was educated by one of the most advanced teachers of the time.” Even really smart people can believe really weird things – so this doesn’t mean much of anything.
Warning Comment
“All the Pharisees or the Romans would have had to do was to open the tomb and produce the body of Jesus. Christianity would never have gotten off the ground.” As if the Romans and Pharisees would have really cared what yet another religious sect was preaching – particularly in a climate where dying and rising godmen were already well-established in myth and religion.
Warning Comment
Even if they did, the gospels were written some 40-100 years after the events they purport to describe. Paul, who preached in the decades following this supposed event, doesn’t even mention a missing body or a tomb or any kind of physical ressurection whatsoever.
Warning Comment
But you only concern yourself with what history really records, so you probably knew all of that already, right? Considering how BUM just wrote a carefully detailed and carefully cited paper, I find it kind of amusing how you are quick to dismiss it all with a single wave of the hand – and then offer nothing more than the pathetic “But people would have disproved it in a heartbeat!” defense…
Warning Comment
…Which to me clearly doesn’t explain all of the facts.
Warning Comment
stuff written by dead guys about other dead guys 100s of years before those dead guys were even born AND THEN asking people to just take it as is…well frankly, logically, HELL EVEN emotionally it doesn’t even stand up to common sense. COme on Hope, you can’t just create a logic map from inconsistent data (religious text) Snake Oils and Healers. 1 dollar will cure what ails ya
Warning Comment
First off…the earliest writings we have of Jesus are within 7-10 years of His death…not 40 or more. And the Jews very much cared what Jesus was preaching….that is why they had Him crucified. So yes…they would have shot down the disciples preaching if they could have. And the disciples were preaching within a very short time after the crucifixition.
Warning Comment
I’m not the one who doesn’t have my facts straight here. But believe what you want…you will anyway. Someday I guarantee you will be sorry though.
Warning Comment
I’m not the one who doesn’t have my facts straight here. But believe what you want…you will anyway. Someday I guarantee you will be sorry though. [hope0500] Hope, continuing in the long tradition of Christians to argue with threats and “one day you’ll be sorries” rather than evidence, logic, rationality, or any other critical thinking.
Warning Comment
hope0500 – “the earliest writings we have of Jesus are within 7-10 years of His death…not 40 or more.” I was talking about the gospels. The earliest writings we have about Jesus are Paul’s letters, and the earliest of those were written in the 50s. That’s about 20 or so years after Jesus supposedly died. But I thought that you were the one with the facts straight?
Warning Comment
Nevertheless, Paul doesn’t mention any gospel details, like a historical crucifixion and ressurection that supposedly happened only a couple decades earlier, nor does he ever quote Jesus when he needs to make a point (he refers to the OT quite a bit, however). Quite frankly, Paul never links his divine Christ with a man who had recently walked across the deserts of Palestine.
Warning Comment
“the Jews very much cared what Jesus was preaching….that is why they had Him crucified…And the disciples were preaching within a very short time after the crucifixition.” These are a few gospel details. The Gospel story, with its figure of Jesus of Nazareth, cannot be found before the Gospels, which themselves were written in the last quarter of the 1st century and probably into the 2nd.
Warning Comment
The only reason that you believe that the Jews cared so intensely about what Jesus preached or that the disciples spread out quickly to teach the Word after the crucifixion is because these late gospel stories (and the equally late Acts) tell it that way. But there is no corroboration for any of this.
Warning Comment
What IS partially understood, however, is that early Christianity, rather than being a cohesive movement fresh off the death of its founder, was actually a highly splintered and diverse set of religious beliefs ranging from a form of Judaism to a form of esoteric Gnosticism. And it was already diverse by Paul’s time, as Paul frequently mentions “other gospels.”
Warning Comment
Early Christianity does not look like the product of a single man who preached and died in Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans. Rather, it was just another part of the evolving mythic and religious landscape of a very cosmopolitan world. This and more can be found in Ehrman’s excellent Lost Christianities.
Warning Comment
I believe that my facts are straight. At least, you have yet to show that they are not.
Warning Comment
To add more fire to the flame: I would not expect a new religion to be so highly diversified as Christianity was not even 50 years after it’s alleged founder laid its basic structure out (unless that founder was simply a very bad teacher). And I’m not talking about minor disagreements here. I’m talking about whole different theologies and perspectives.
Warning Comment
Christianity started out highly diverse and eventually collapsed into a single dominant sect – the orthodox Catholic Church, not the other way around. Orthodox theology was not cemented in place in the days before Jesus’ death or in the days of his alledged disciples. Rather, orthodox theology was not refined until many centuries later.
Warning Comment
You’re on my faves now, love ya ~Bonnie~
Warning Comment
And fyi I am so being way to lazy to read this at the moment I have a migrane and it’s killer love ya ~Bonnie~
Warning Comment
I agree. this is your BEST work *clapping* I loved it. Hope? She needs… well… the Scarecrow can explain.
Warning Comment
I applaud your attempts to prove your stance…you seem to spend a lot of time doing your best to research and back up your arguements. Will you please tell me, why you find it so important to try and discredit Christianity if you do not care for it? The same arguements have been tossed around for centuries…and I believe they will continue to be for many more to come.
Warning Comment
“stuff written by dead guys about other dead guys 100s of years before those dead guys were even born AND THEN asking people to just take it as is…well frankly, logically, HELL EVEN emotionally it doesn’t even stand up to common sense… [The Ride]” Wow! That was brilliant writing. I love how you call it stuff written by dead guys. You’re so convincing! 🙂
Warning Comment
Don’t diss other people’s attempts to defend their faith until you can do it logically for yourself. 🙂
Warning Comment
Mr. Bum, great to see you on a roll again. 🙂 While I don’t have time to sit here and read the entire entry at this moment (I assure you I will finish it this weekend while I’m on vacation), I can offer you a reason as to why all four of the Gospels have different facts in them. All four of these men were from different walks of life. One was a Jew, one was a tax collector, one a doctor…Etc…
Warning Comment
You get my point, right? Well, anyway, they all experienced and saw Christ’s resurrection in different ways. Some of the facts in one Book are in a different order than the others…Well, one explanation is that the Jews wrote history in order of importance (the occurrances of one piece of history, that is), whereas, someone like, say, a doctor, would write things in the logical order that they…
Warning Comment
occurred. Also, think of what happens when a car accident occurs on a busy street…You’re going to get different accounts from different people according to where they were, how much they saw, how they interpreted it, how much involvement they might have had and how much they were affected by it. That does not by any means imply that their accounts are innaccurate.
Warning Comment
Now I must be going so that may attend to some things before I have to go to a class this evening. I promise to do my best to catch up and reply to all of your arguments. 🙂 Have a nice day!
Warning Comment
“You’re going to get different accounts from different people…That does not by any means imply that their accounts are innaccurate.” Um – if people are giving different accounts then somebody is being inaccurate. If an angelic figure appears by a tomb wouldn’t you think that people could remember whether there was one or two?
Warning Comment
“Well, anyway, they all experienced and saw Christ’s resurrection in different ways.” None of the authors identify themselves or claim to be eyewitnesses to anything. All of the gospels are written in 3rd person, like a story would be, not a persons account of something.
Warning Comment
The author of Luke actually states in the beginning that he is working from documents that people wrote before him and not from any memory of actually witnessing anything.
Warning Comment
I skimmed the entry and the notes, and I’m forced to ask; So what? Or if you prefer, Now What? Fair enough of a question?
Warning Comment
Faith is not logical. Faith is beleiving in a God I don’t see but KNOW is there. Faith is beleiving that Jesus was resurected because He is that strong and powerful and because He is God. You throw out random facts and peice together SCRAPS of truth to create nonsense and lies. In the end, it’s not your vague “facts” and knowledge that matter, it’s God and His truth. He’s so much bigger than
Warning Comment
these lies you’re feeding people. I hope that one day you can see the truth. I am praying for you.
Warning Comment