Well, to be brief...I'll need to give you a more in depth response once I get home
Absolutely! At your own leisure always, a vacation in the French Alps is way more important than immediate replies to Dirk1540 lol. I'll just reply for the purpose of at least having my posts close together.
I am less comfortable with argumentation for the Empty Tomb, however. I honestly do not trust William Craig Lane, who I have seen use the argument that "most scholars" accept things like the existence of Joseph of Aramathea, and who has been called out for dishonest use of scholarship. (Bart Ehrman accused him of this in their debate.)
Well if William Craig makes 4 arguments in a row like a shady snake oil salesmen, but also makes a convincing 5th argument, I'm happy to disregard the first 4 and give credit to the 5th (avoiding the good old ad hominem argument trap). I quite simply will weigh the points for how well or poorly I like them...I'll even give a thumbs up to a Bart Ehrman point if it makes sense to me. But what bothers me about Bart Ehrman (especially considering his past with Bruce Metzger) is that I really think he should know better with a lot of things that he says.
I have seen him debate and one thing that he loves to say is something that I really feel is a 'Popular level layperson's' argument. He will shout and stretch out the word "SAYS." For instance (I forget if it was against Craig) he will say "Sure, it SAAAAYS that this happened in the NT...or it SAAAAYS that that happened in the NT..." His point being that anyone can say anything, so what! But this is to treat the Gospels as if they were novels that got wrapped up, tucked away for 300 years, then opened up and read.
No this was a major historical movement, if this information was not presented as it occurred then the presence of hostile witnesses would turn out to be the equivalency of legal cross examination. Again like I have said before, THAT THEY SAID such & such, is totally meaningless! THAT PEOPLE BELIEVED such & such is the historic data to include in your inferences. I seriously think Bart knows better than this! He constantly tries to pass off the undeniable history of the sudden belief that sprung up in the middle of the 1st century that God raised Jesus from the dead as 'A Book.' He does it all the time. And he knows better that 'The New Testament' is a collection of separate documents later collected under one cover and labeled as 'The New Testament.' It would be like compiling all of the documents about Alexander The Great, putting them under one cover...then claiming that it's just a book, who cares what 'It Says.'
I believe that many of Bart's arguments are speculations that there were these alternative views of what Christianity really was, but that conveniently all traces of these 'Original Christianity' stories have completely dropped out of historical sight (We're not really doing historical research then are we?). Bart is absolutely an advocate that Joseph of Aramathea was an invention. Hmm, is this a historical stance?? The historical credibility of the burial narrative is most certainly crucial to support the empty tomb because it's important that the burial site of Jesus' grave was known to both Jew & Christian alike. The burial account of Joseph of Aramathea is attested in all 4 Gospels, and there is NO historical trace of a competing burial story. Bart is taking his 21st century theory and injecting it into the 1st century with NOTHING to back it up.
Ok it was attested in a 4 Gospels, so what right? Silmarien, I believe we have previously seen eye to eye on some interesting points about oral tradition (you even pointed me to James Dunn's book). An awful lot of the variation among the Gospel parallels (when you start comparing them) can be accounted for by similar patterns of oral story telling as far as the different 'Tradition' styles go. As for genre, our best example is Luke's prologue (chapters 1-4). He got his information from some who were eye witnesses, and from others who were servants or 'Ministers of the word', those who transmitted the oral tradition. Turn to Josephus Histories and you get a prologue that's about 8 times as long but has most of the identical components. Same is true of Herodotus, Thucydides, etc.
Well the problem with chalking up Joseph of Aramathea as invention inside of the Gospels is that it has an awful lot of competing evidence going against it that the exact opposite is true, that far from the Gospels being chock full of inventions they actually have a reputation of being brutally raw and unrefined. There's of course the 'Hard Sayings' of Jesus. What about Luke 14:26? "If Anyone does not hate his father & mother, his wife & children, his brother & sisters, yes even his own life he can not be my disciple." Fortunately there's a text in Matthew from a different context, but apparently a similar teaching of Jesus, in Matthew 10:37 "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." Ok that's challenging enough! But at least it gives an interpretative grid to understand Luke.
But the question is why did Luke leave it in the form he did, so susceptible to misunderstanding? Maybe there were constraints on his tradition as to making alterations? What about Mark 13:32 "No one knows the day or hour of Christ's return not even the Son."
...well here is one systematic theological interpretation, in the incarnation he voluntarily laid aside the independent exercise of his divine attributes. Ok, but the better question would be this, why not just leave the verse out and spare the church the interpretative problem??
There's the flip side of the hard sayings, the missing sayings/topics that Jesus never addresses in the Gospels. Major dilemmas like adult Greek males interested in Christianity but being told by one segment of Jewish Christians that they must keep the Law of Moses with initiatory rite of circumcision to be saved, in a world without anesthesia! An entire council was convened in Jerusalem according to Acts 15 to debate this...the solution was that you don't have to go through the ordeal.
Why didn't they just add a Jesus quote and just avoid this huge headache and the need of a council?? Apparently nobody knew anything that Jesus said about it. And apparently nobody felt free to invent anything. Speaking in tongues threatened to split the church of Corinth wide open! What did Jesus have to say? Apparently nothing and nobody invented anything.
But along comes Bart Ehrman, and he's trying to sell me on his 21 century argument that Joseph of Aramathea was invented in all 4 Gospels...AND that the original burial story is conveniently lost to history. But worse yet is that I've heard Bart type arguments about WHY they invented Joseph of Aramathea. I've read about reasons such as because that they knew that future generations would know that they need to have this anchor of a 'Burial location' in order to falsely take that argument to the next level into claims of the empty tomb!! SO...they're not even slick enough to invent or to discard a Jesus saying here or there in order to eliminate major IMMEDIATE headaches, or to save themselves from thousands of years worth of 'Contradiction Accusations'...however, when it comes to Joseph of Arimathea they had crafty 2nd and 3rd level thinking going on in order to trick future generations who will research the empty tomb LOL?? Oh AND they were crafty enough to do that, BUT they forgot to have Paul mention him lol??
So yeah it's not that I like William Craig and I don't like Bart, it's that I find Craig's arguments plausible, and I actually see Bart as the deceptive one...even if Craig does have a checkered history of being disingenuous in his debates. Nor do I care at all what percentage of scholars Bart claims, or what percentage of scholars Craig claims...just give me as much data as possible to chew on for myself please, and let me make my own inferences!
How do we know that the burial account is independently attested to when we know that Matthew & Luke were aware of Mark's Gospel (and referred to it)? (John is clearly independent of the Synoptic Gospels). The differences between Mark & Matthew & Luke point to independent sources (besides Mark's source) that are also available to Luke & Mathew. The differences in the burial account between Matthew & Luke & Mark are not plausibly explained as due to editorial changes that Matthew & Luke make to Mark because of several reasons. First of all because of their sporadic and uneven nature.
In Mark the tomb had been described as "A tomb which had been hewn out of rock." Whereas in Matthew the tomb is described as "The tomb which he (Joseph) hewed in the rock." That sort of change is pointless if it's just an editorial change. Also you have the inexplicit omission of events such as Pilate's interrogation of the centurion, which is found in Mark but omitted in Matthew & Luke. If Matthew & Luke were simply using Mark it would be odd that they would both omit the story of Pilate's interrogation. Also Matthew & Luke sometimes agree in their wording in contrast to Mark. Compare Matthew 27:58 with Luke 23:52, it's identical in the Greek. It's enormously improbable that Matthew & Luke would have independently come up with the exact same wording of that sentence which they didn't get from Mark. That suggests that Matthew & Luke are also drawing on some other independent source for the burial account (in addition to Mark). Also the Greek phrase for "He wrapped it in linen" is identical in Matthew & Luke and they don't get it from Mark. Yes I'm sure that you've heard of 'Q' document theory. Well I'm just throwing out some reasons for it at you, just in case you might have simply heard that 'Scholars claim there is a Q source' but you haven't known why.
In addition to this John is independent of all 3 Gospels and yet in John you have the same burial by Joseph of Aramathea in the tomb. In addition you have the ancient Christian formula mediated by Paul to the Corinthians (although you can't explicitly confirm Joseph of Aramathea through Paul, only implicitly). Also Paul was a Pharisee, and he constantly uses Pharisaic language to describe the resurrection of Jesus. The Pharisees believed in bodily resurrection, the Sadducees did not.
You have the description of the tomb as being described as the wealthy bench type tomb
(acrosolia) as opposed to the cheap kind, the very tombs that matches the type in the narratives.
You have certain words and phrases used by Matthew that are not characteristic of him and are unique in the entire New Testament...the phrases "On the next day", "The preparation day", "Deceiver", "Guard (of soldiers)", "To make secure", "To seal." Also the the expressions chief priests and pharisees never appear in Mark or Luke and it's also unusual for Matthew.
What we do not have are early traces of an argument debating the existence of Joseph of Aramathea. You can argue that we don't have much early traces of what the earliest disputes were between the Jews and Christians, but earliest Christian polemic traces that we do have that survive are the debates over why the body was missing, how the emptyness of the tomb is explained. The importance of Matthew's guard story is not to claim that the powerful guard would have prevented the disciples from stealing the body. But rather it's importance is that it shows that the earliest Jewish opponents of Christianity themselves recognized that the body was missing and so they used a story to explain away the empty tomb.
Matthew's guard is not posted on Friday, the guard is posted as an after thought on Saturday. The body could have been already stolen by then, and the stone replaced. So if this is supposed to be Matthew's brilliant attempt to 'Add a guard story' to make the story more impressive, to refute that the disciples stole the body, he does a terrible job at it. He leaves a huge window of opportunity for anyone to steal the body between Friday night and Saturday when the guard was posted.
What the Jewish authorities were not saying is 'Here is his corpse in the tomb!' If that had been what they were saying then what we would expect to find would be Christian polemics aimed at showing that the body in the tomb was not in fact Jesus. That this was somebody else, or that it was not identified as Jesus, etc. But we don't have any traces of that sort of polemic. Instead the polemic that we have that survives is the debates over why the body was missing. In Matthew 28 we have "This story is commonly reported among the Jews until this day." Once again another public appeal to the people's knowledge.
The earliest Jewish polemic did not deny the emptiness of the tomb, rather it entangled itself into a series of absurdities trying to explain away why the body was missing. The pattern of dialog presupposes a tradition history. The disciples begin by proclaiming "He is risen." The Jewish authorities respond to that that the disciples stole his body. The response of the disciples is to claim that the guard at the tomb would have prevented the theft (even though it's a weak come back due to the delay of the posted guard). It is the Jewish response that then says "No, the guard fell asleep." The falling asleep of the guard couldn't have been a Christian invention because that would not serve their polemic, it would make a theft seem MORE probable, the falling asleep of the guard had to be the Jewish response to the claim that the guard would have prevented it. And how do the Christians respond? They say that the authorities bribed the guard to say this. It is noteworthy to point out that the guard story as Matthew tells it is filled with many of these non-Matthean traits that shows that Matthew is not just making this up, he is drawing on a prior tradition, a tradition of a dispute that has been going on between Jews and Christians 'Up until his day.'
...OR we can just go ahead and throw out the earliest sources and instead go with Ehrman's 'Historical' explanation.