Godlessness and choice

anonymous person said:

I listed 3 historical facts that critical scholars admit. Where in that list do you see Jesus' resurrection?

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I have read the works of many nt scholars historians. Typically, there is consensus in regards to jesus on 4 things:

Jesus was a real historical figure
Jesus had followers
Jesus was baptized
Jesus was crucified

Beyond that, opinions are all over the place.

anonymous person said:

Apologize?

Lie?

Did I do something wrong?

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Well, you did lie about me. Possibly, in your personal Christian ethics, lieing for Jesus isn´t wrong, though. What do I know?

anonymous person said:

I see you're not serious. When you are we can discuss this further.

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Projection.

anonymous person said:

Apologize?

Lie?

Did I do something wrong?

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And you are telling other people they dont want a serious discussion???

quatona said:

Well, you did lie about me. Possibly, in your personal Christian ethics, lieing for Jesus isn´t wrong, though. What do I know?

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Refer to your signature please.

anonymous person said:

Refer to your signature please.

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Does his signature impact what you say about him?

anonymous person said:

Refer to your signature please.

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Well, it was you who introduced the term "wrong" in your question. So it would be your allegedly superiour and objective morality you would have to refer to.
Nothing to do with me. I merely stated the fact.

Of course, I personally am not willing to have a conversation with a guy who has no problem with being dishonest.

bhsmte said:

Does his signature impact what you say about him?

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Maybe he´s tired of his "objective morality" and is looking for something to replace it with?

quatona said:

Well, it was you who introduced the term "wrong" in your question. So it would be your allegedly superiour and objective morality you would have to refer to.
Nothing to do with me. I merely stated the fact.

Of course, I personally am not willing to have a conversation with a guy who has no problem with being dishonest.

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At this juncture, I will take a page directly from your playbook and simply say that personally, I don't share your opinion regarding what the notion of dishonesty entails.

bhsmte said:

Does his signature impact what you say about him?

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I will take a page from his and your playbook and simply say that you have given me no empirical evidence that would lead me to think you are serious nor am I certain that you are and I personally don't share your or his opinions at the moment, but I am totally open to being persuaded that I should.

Now convince me.

anonymous person said:

I will take a page from his and your playbook and simply say that you have given me no empirical evidence that would lead me to think you are serious nor am I certain that you are and I personally don't share your or his opinions at the moment, but I am totally open to being persuaded that I should.

Now convince me.

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LOL. Read your posts.

bhsmte said:

LOL. Read your posts.

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I don't imterpret my posts the way you do. I respect you have a particular opinion about them sure, but you've given me no demonstrable proof, nothing empirically verifiable that would support the claims you're making. And with a radical constructivist paradigm, notions like lies and apologies and dishonesty seem to be vacuous. So I will wait for you to prove your case.

Silmarien said:

Why is it so hard to believe? Whether or not Jesus was the real messiah has nothing whatsoever to do with establishing his existence, and as Philo was not Christian, it's completely irrelevant to point out that he would have mentioned Jesus had he accepted his claims. Now, all of the other claimants that I'm aware of led military revolts--Simon bar Kokhba even established an independent state before getting killed by the Romans.

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Because of the tale told about Jesus in the gospels. Philo took the time to document minor religious figures who didn't have that huge of an impact on things, but neglected to even mention a major figure like Jesus who was apparently known well enough that the entire city came out to welcome him and was the center of a major public trial overseen by the governor himself? No serious historian could overlook a major event like that.

Silmarien said:

Well, what do we know about Pontius Pilate? Outside of the Christian literature, we've got some mentions by Philo and Josephus and a single stone discovered in 1961. And he was a prefect.

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Philo and Josephus tell a great deal about his time as governor of Judaea, however we don't know a ton about his personal life.

Silmarien said:

Of course they're not separate sources. They're all likely based on oral tradition; they're not eyewitness accounts themselves.

The point I'm making is it's intellectually dishonest to refer to this as plagiarizing, so please stop. If you want to call it a copy or simply state that it's not an independent source, go for it. Just stop making value judgments about it. It implies bias and makes your whole argument suspect.

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If they're just oral tradition, then the gospels have very little value as evidence. As for plagiarizing, it's not intellectually dishonest. It's the accepted view from biblical scholars that Matthew and Luke lifted parts of Mark. Sections are copied word for word, literary devices used in the same spot in the same way, etc. It's not a controversial idea that the authors were working off a copy of Mark.

Silmarien said:

I'd recommend him, then. He's on the liberal side of Christian biblical scholarship--fairly orthodox but not afraid to criticize positions that would support Christianity if he thinks they're one-sided.

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I'll check it out, thanks.

Silmarien said:

Mythicists are not impartial sources either. Plenty of scholars, such as Bart Ehrman, who's quite out to get Christianity these days, are in the middle believing that it was an adaptation, not a forgery.

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I said most, not all. It's rare to find any type of unanimous view in historical scholarship.

Silmarien said:

And others have argued that Josephus might have added the epithet "called the Christ" specifically to distinguish him from Jesus ben Damneus. Nothing about any of this is clear.

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Which is out of character for Josephus. Josephus always described who the people are that he's talking about in any given section of his writings as any good historian would. He doesn't ever do that for Jesus Christ. His readers would be left asking who this christ person is? It's completely unaddressed and sloppy which again is out of character for Josephus but fits perfectly with the idea of an inserted line.

Silmarien said:

In any case, I know that Richard Carrier espouses your view, but could you cite some scholars who are not mythicists? That's a fringe position, and I do not find crusading atheists to be much more credible than evangelical Christians when addressing this particular question. Be careful assuming that all the bias rests on one side here.

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I've stated that I don't know if Jesus existed or not, I'm not arguing a mythicist position. What exactly are you asking me to cite?

Dave Ellis said:

Because of the tale told about Jesus in the gospels. Philo took the time to document minor religious figures who didn't have that huge of an impact on things, but neglected to even mention a major figure like Jesus who was apparently known well enough that the entire city came out to welcome him and was the center of a major public trial overseen by the governor himself? No serious historian could overlook a major event like that.

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Well, the Gospels don't say that the entire city came out to welcome him, nor do they imply that the trial was necessarily public (except maybe in Luke), so you're reading bigger claims into the Gospels than are actually there. I find it quite unthinkable that the early Christians would not have further embellished their stories, so I would assume that actual events were somewhat humbler than they appear in the Gospels, not grander. So this "all or nothing" approach to the question of historicity is strange to me.

Dave Ellis said:

If they're just oral tradition, then the gospels have very little value as evidence. As for plagiarizing, it's not intellectually dishonest. It's the accepted view from biblical scholars that Matthew and Luke lifted parts of Mark. Sections are copied word for word, literary devices used in the same spot in the same way, etc. It's not a controversial idea that the authors were working off a copy of Mark.

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As evidence of what, exactly? I would say that the personality that emerges from the Gospels is coherent and consistent enough to suggest that it is probably based in actual events. I'd also say that it's anachronistic to write off oral traditions as worthless--we can't imagine reliably passing on information in that form now, but we don't live in an oral society.

For establishing actual historicity, though, I would skip the Gospels entirely and go straight to the authentic Pauline epistles.

And it is absolutely intellectually dishonest and historically irresponsible to throw around words like "plagiarism" to refer to the relationship between the Synoptic Gospels. You are making value judgments with that word. Classical composers routinely "borrowed" from other composers--different time period, different concepts of intellectual property. If you would not use the word "plagiarism" to talk about Mozart and Bach, you should not use it here.

Dave Ellis said:

Because of the tale told about Jesus in the gospels. Philo took the time to document minor religious figures who didn't have that huge of an impact on things, but neglected to even mention a major figure like Jesus who was apparently known well enough that the entire city came out to welcome him and was the center of a major public trial overseen by the governor himself? No serious historian could overlook a major event like that.

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Did Philo overlook a minor religious figure like John the Baptist?

Peace,
2PhiloVoid

dp

anonymous person said:

At this juncture, I will take a page directly from your playbook and simply say that personally, I don't share your opinion regarding what the notion of dishonesty entails.

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So - minus the empty rhethoric - you are telling me that telling a lie isn´t being dishonest, in your opinion? Ok.

quatona said:

So - minus the empty rhethoric - you are telling me that telling a lie isn´t being dishonest, in your opinion? Ok.

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We each determine what lying is and what being dishonest is. You have one way of looking at it and I may have another. Your personal opinions don't amount to empirical or verifiable evidence for your view of what being dishonest or lying entails.

That is my answer to you and it mirrors the type of responses you post on this forum to others.

Of course that is not my position. I have been doing this to show you what it is like to talk to you.

You're the type of person that refuses to state your position and defend it. You would rather just make demands of people, demands you don't think can be met.

Being the relativist/subjectivist that you are, you effectively remove yourself from the table of discussion.

Now you either think miracles are possible and that they do happen and can be evidenced or you don't. If you do then I will apologize right now for assuming you didn't.

Going back to the discussion at hand:

From Dr. Craig over at Reasonable Faith

"Christianity, as a religion rooted in history, makes claims that can in important measure be investigated historically. Suppose, then, that we approach the New Testament writings, not as inspired Scripture, but merely as a collection of Greek documents coming down to us out of the first century, without any assumption as to their reliability other than the way we normally regard other sources of ancient history. We may be surprised to learn that the majority of New Testament critics investigating the gospels in this way accept the central facts undergirding the resurrection of Jesus. I want to emphasize that I am not talking about evangelical or conservative scholars only, but about the broad spectrum of New Testament critics who teach at secular universities and non-evangelical seminaries. Amazing as it may seem, most of them have come to regard as historical the basic facts which support the resurrection of Jesus. These facts are as follows:

FACT #1: After his crucifixion, Jesus was buried in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea. This fact is highly significant because it means, contrary to radical critics like John Dominic Crossan of the Jesus Seminar, that the location of Jesus’ burial site was known to Jew and Christian alike. In that case, the disciples could never have proclaimed his resurrection in Jerusalem if the tomb had not been empty. New Testament researchers have established this first fact on the basis of evidence such as the following:

1. Jesus’ burial is attested in the very old tradition quoted by Paul in I Cor. 15.3-5:

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received:

. . . that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,
and that he was buried,
and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,
and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve.

Paul not only uses the typical rabbinical terms “received” and “delivered” with regard to the information he is passing on to the Corinthians, but vv. 3-5 are a highly stylized four-line formula filled with non-Pauline characteristics. This has convinced all scholars that Paul is, as he says, quoting from an old tradition which he himself received after becoming a Christian. This tradition probably goes back at least to Paul’s fact-finding visit to Jerusalem around AD 36, when he spent two weeks with Cephas and James (Gal. 1.18). It thus dates to within five years after Jesus’ death. So short a time span and such personal contact make it idle to talk of legend in this case.

2. The burial story is part of very old source material used by Mark in writing his gospel. The gospels tend to consist of brief snapshots of Jesus’ life which are loosely connected and not always chronologically arranged. But when we come to the passion story we do have one, smooth, continuously-running narrative. This suggests that the passion story was one of Mark’s sources of information in writing his gospel. Now most scholars think Mark is already the earliest gospel, and Mark’s source for Jesus’ passion is, of course, even older. Comparison of the narratives of the four gospels shows that their accounts do not diverge from one another until after the burial. This implies that the burial account was part of the passion story. Again, its great age militates against its being legendary.

3. As a member of the Jewish court that condemned Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea is unlikely to be a Christian invention. There was strong resentment against the Jewish leadership for their role in the condemnation of Jesus (I Thess. 2.15). It is therefore highly improbable that Christians would invent a member of the court that condemned Jesus who honors Jesus by giving him a proper burial instead of allowing him to be dispatched as a common criminal.

4. No other competing burial story exists. If the burial by Joseph were fictitious, then we would expect to find either some historical trace of what actually happened to Jesus’ corpse or at least some competing legends. But all our sources are unanimous on Jesus’ honorable interment by Joseph.

For these and other reasons, the majority of New Testament critics concur that Jesus was buried in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea. According to the late John A. T. Robinson of Cambridge University, the burial of Jesus in the tomb is “one of the earliest and best-attested facts about Jesus.”1

FACT #2: On the Sunday following the crucifixion, Jesus’ tomb was found empty by a group of his women followers. Among the reasons which have led most scholars to this conclusion are the following:

1. The empty tomb story is also part of the old passion source used by Mark. The passion source used by Mark did not end in death and defeat, but with the empty tomb story, which is grammatically of one piece with the burial story.

2. The old tradition cited by Paul in I Cor. 15.3-5 implies the fact of the empty tomb. For any first century Jew, to say that of a dead man “that he was buried and that he was raised” is to imply that a vacant grave was left behind. Moreover, the expression “on the third day” probably derives from the women’s visit to the tomb on the third day, in Jewish reckoning, after the crucifixion. The four-line tradition cited by Paul summarizes both the gospel accounts and the early apostolic preaching (Acts 13. 28-31); significantly, the third line of the tradition corresponds to the empty tomb story.

3. The story is simple and lacks signs of legendary embellishment. All one has to do to appreciate this point is to compare Mark’s account with the wild legendary stories found in the second-century apocryphal gospels, in which Jesus is seen coming out of the tomb with his head reaching up above the clouds and followed by a talking cross!

4. The fact that women’s testimony was discounted in first century Palestine stands in favor of the women’s role in discovering the empty tomb. According to Josephus, the testimony of women was regarded as so worthless that it could not even be admitted into a Jewish court of law. Any later legendary story would certainly have made male disciples discover the empty tomb.

5. The earliest Jewish allegation that the disciples had stolen Jesus’ body (Matt. 28.15) shows that the body was in fact missing from the tomb. The earliest Jewish response to the disciples’ proclamation, “He is risen from the dead!” was not to point to his occupied tomb and to laugh them off as fanatics, but to claim that they had taken away Jesus’ body. Thus, we have evidence of the empty tomb from the very opponents of the early Christians.

One could go on, but I think that enough has been said to indicate why, in the words of Jacob Kremer, an Austrian specialist in the resurrection, “By far most exegetes hold firmly to the reliability of the biblical statements concerning the empty tomb.”2

FACT #3: On multiple occasions and under various circumstances, different individuals and groups of people experienced appearances of Jesus alive from the dead.

This is a fact which is almost universally acknowledged among New Testament scholars, for the following reasons:

1. The list of eyewitnesses to Jesus’ resurrection appearances which is quoted by Paul in I Cor. 15. 5-7 guarantees that such appearances occurred. These included appearances to Peter (Cephas), the Twelve, the 500 brethren, and James.

2. The appearance traditions in the gospels provide multiple, independent attestation of these appearances. This is one of the most important marks of historicity. The appearance to Peter is independently attested by Luke, and the appearance to the Twelve by Luke and John. We also have independent witness to Galilean appearances in Mark, Matthew, and John, as well as to the women in Matthew and John.

3. Certain appearances have earmarks of historicity. For example, we have good evidence from the gospels that neither James nor any of Jesus’ younger brothers believed in him during his lifetime. There is no reason to think that the early church would generate fictitious stories concerning the unbelief of Jesus’ family had they been faithful followers all along. But it is indisputable that James and his brothers did become active Christian believers following Jesus’ death. James was considered an apostle and eventually rose to the position of leadership of the Jerusalem church. According to the first century Jewish historian Josephus, James was martyred for his faith in Christ in the late AD 60s. Now most of us have brothers. What would it take to convince you that your brother is the Lord, such that you would be ready to die for that belief? Can there be any doubt that this remarkable transformation in Jesus’ younger brother took place because, in Paul’s words, “then he appeared to James”?

Even Gert L¸demann, the leading German critic of the resurrection, himself admits, “It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus’ death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ.”3

FACT #4: The original disciples believed that Jesus was risen from the dead despite their having every predisposition to the contrary. Think of the situation the disciples faced after Jesus’ crucifixion:

1. Their leader was dead. And Jews had no belief in a dying, much less rising, Messiah. The Messiah was supposed to throw off Israel’s enemies (= Rome) and re-establish a Davidic reign—not suffer the ignominious death of criminal.

2. According to Jewish law, Jesus’ execution as a criminal showed him out to be a heretic, a man literally under the curse of God (Deut. 21.23). The catastrophe of the crucifixion for the disciples was not simply that their Master was gone, but that the crucifixion showed, in effect, that the Pharisees had been right all along, that for three years they had been following a heretic, a man accursed by God!

3. Jewish beliefs about the afterlife precluded anyone’s rising from the dead to glory and immortality before the general resurrection at the end of the world. All the disciples could do was to preserve their Master’s tomb as a shrine where his bones could reside until that day when all of Israel’s righteous dead would be raised by God to glory.

Despite all this, the original disciples believed in and were willing to go to their deaths for the fact of Jesus’ resurrection. Luke Johnson, a New Testament scholar from Emory University, muses, “some sort of powerful, transformative experience is required to generate the sort of movement earliest Christianity was . . . .”4 N. T. Wright, an eminent British scholar, concludes, “that is why, as a historian, I cannot explain the rise of early Christianity unless Jesus rose again, leaving an empty tomb behind him.”5

In summary, there are four facts agreed upon by the majority of scholars who have written on these subjects which any adequate historical hypothesis must account for: Jesus’ entombment by Joseph of Arimathea, the discovery of his empty tomb, his post-mortem appearances, and the origin of the disciples’ belief in his resurrection."



Read more: The Resurrection of Jesus | Reasonable Faith

StTruth said:

Hi, Sorry to interpose like this but what you mentioned is of great interest to me. You wrote this:



Which post number was it where you supplied the documents? I'm asking not to discomfit you but I ask because I'm genuinely interested in such evidence. I was not aware of such evidence.

Thanks.

Cheers

St Truth

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