The Resurrection as a Historical Problem

[Epiphoskei]

Have you ever been outside for several days without a timepiece? The only hours you can tell are dawn, morning, noon, afternoon, and night. The third hour vrs the sixth hour is a rounding error. Please familiarize yourself with the difference between accuracy and precision.

The rest of your seven points are fairly straightforward examples of false dilemmas. The only thing that contradicts A is !A - you are trying to force a choice between A or B wherein B does not necessarily signify !A. You are making interpretational decisions that restrict the sense of what is being expressed so that it cannot be compatible with the other interpretational decisions made about the other texts. Your interpretations are not necessarily as right as you think they are. Language is rarely as definite and precise as you might like it to be.

 

[OzSpen]

Now, about those 7 points I mentioned before:I actually have pointed tp biblical evidence that contradicts itself. The gospels contradict each other plain and simple. So tell me--which day was Jesus crucified on? Was it Thursday, or Friday? You can't answer it, because your answer would be wrong according to one of the gosepls.

The same gospels don't even agree at what time Jesus was crucified at or even when the temple curtain was torn or do they? If you can't answer that, then the 'evidence' from the 'inspired' scriptures is inadmissible. .

You provided not one biblical reference to support your 7 points. NOT ONE!

Bye, Oz

 

[OzSpen]

While we're on this same them of historical evidence--did Caesar Augustus order that 'all the world should be registered' (Luke 2:1). Guess what--there is not one document in both secular and public records that verify this statement that the roman emperor ever ordered such a thing. Also--this only appears in Lukes gospel, not in the other three. Conclusion--it it made up testimony and therefore is also inadmissible because it can not be substntiated.

Evidence has been presented over and over, ever since the seminal research by Sir William Ramsay over a hundred years ago. But you seem to be censoring that information from your consideration.

Responses to the Caesar Augustus census are in, “Acclaims of the birth of Christ (Luke 2:1-20)”, J Hampton Keathley III

Norman Geisler & Thomas Howe, in When Critics Ask, have provided an answer to the question, “Did Luke make a mistake when he mentioned a worldwide census under Caesar Augustus [Luke 2:1]?” that has already been presented here on Christian Forums.

Archaeologist, John McRay, has responded to allegations about Quirinius HERE, from his book, Archaeology & the New Testament (pp. 154-155).

Regards, Oz

 

[Epiphoskei]

Alright then—what does the Bible actually say regarding the time of Jesus crucifixion:

Darkness was over the land Lk.23:44, Now it was the 6th hour (12:00) and there was darkness over all the earth until the 9th hr. (3:00) Mk.15:33 and Mt.27:45 state the same thing.

Mk.15:25: “Now it was the 3rd hour and they crucified him.”


John 19:14: “It was about the 6th hour he was on trial.”

The difference lies between the synoptic gospels and the Gospel of John. Even though the gospel story is essentially the same—Jesus was captured, tried, carried his cross, crucified and buried. What they do not agree on is what time it happened at.

You're adding significant figures to those hours. Three or six is a rounding error due to imprecise measures of time in the pre-wrirstwatch era. Please familiarize yourself with the difference between accuracy and precision.

According to Mark 15:42, which states that Christ's crucifixion occurred on the day of preparation, "the day before the Sabbath"—which is Friday. Since the Hebrew Sabbath is on Saturday, the Church traditionally held that Jesus was crucified on Friday. The disciples celebrated the Passover together and then Jesus was crucified.

According to Johns Gospel in 18:28, 39, Jesus was on trial before the Passover, not after as it is recorded in the Synoptic gospels. But once again—we still have the basics of the story—Jesus was crucified around the time of the Passover.

One thing all the gospels do agree on is what day Jesus rose from the dead—the first day of the week. This is significant as it shows four witnesses (if they can be called that) who agree on a single event.

This assumes that "passover" means the same thing in both contexts.

An example of this is when there were two criminals on the cross—who reviled Jesus in one gospel, but in Luke’s only one does while the other defends Jesus and is promised paradise. These two accounts contradict each other. The evidence does not support that the ‘saved’ criminal seeing Jesus innocence changed his mind and took back what he said. Both accounts contradict each other.

"Evidence"? That's just another assumption on your part.

All the gospels report that at least one woman named Mary came to Jesus tomb—who was the first person Jesus appeared to. This would be proof, however, the accounts are muddied. How many women actually went:

Matthew 28:1 Mary Magdalene and the other Mary

Mark 16:1 Mary Magdalene, Mary the Mother of James, and Salome

Luke 24:1 Implies women went to the tomb—but no names are given.

John 20:1 Only Mary Magdalene.

If you find me a verse in any Gospel that says "These are the only women who went to the tomb" you'll have a point. Historians are free to omit certain elements of an event when they write their histories.

Each account contradicts the other. Paul gives a list in 1 Corinthians 15 which seems pretty extensive—but notice there is no mention of these women, especially Mary Magdalene who is the central witness in 3 of the 4 gospels.

Again, you assume that Paul intended to be exhaustive, not just extensive.

Early Christianity did not have a completed New Testament until the 4th century—and not every church possessed all the writings found within it. Stories about Jesus, were transmitted verbally. And as we all know, if we had a room full of people and whispered a story in someone’s ear and it went all the way around the room, it would be different at the end. This is why the gospels disagree with each other. It doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, it means that our gospels were written by people, people who make mistakes.

You're implying that verbal transmission was used in the composition of the Gospels. That's another assumption.

Some of you have assumed that I have had an agenda here—I do not, except for the fact that I want someone to honestly look into this and tell me what they think. Instead, I get called a name and am pretty much written off with the damned. Thomas wanted proof, but Jesus didn’t chastise him for it, he instead gave him the proof he sought.

You may not have an agenda, but you employ a historical methodology which was created for the express purpose of tearing down the reliability of scriptures. You conveniently just happen to be assuming that where scripture is unclear, it always means something that contradicts another scripture. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

 

[OzSpen]

Tiberius,

Do you see what you do? You had objections to the census at the time of Caesar Augustus. I provided you with links to information that refuted your view but you said not a word about this refutation, demonstrating that you aren't really interested in a solving of this issue. You are interested in pressing your own agenda.

Now you go on with your own list of objections to the information in the gospels. You could go searching for this information yourself that provides answers to these objections, but you pile objection on objection to make it look like the Gospels are fabricated, invented documents that come with lots of contradictions.

I have been able to resolve all of the alleged difficulties to my own satisfaction. But you don't seem to want to go searching in scholarship that provides answers to your objections.

I am not going to do this research for you any more as you do have an agenda, as demonstrated by the fact that I provided research on the Caesar Augustus census and you did not respond to this information that refutes your view.

Bye, Oz

 

[Epiphoskei]

Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Matthew (becasue Joseph already livied there),

Again, reading things into the text.

 

[OzSpen]

I have a few freinds who are lawyers, and baptist (SBC), and while they defend the physical resurrection tooth and nail, they confess that if the gospels were used in court of evidence, they would be tossed out as inadmissable because of the contradictions mentioned in the scriptures scriptures. Upset by what I heard I decided to look into it--and what I found by doing a horizontal compariosn gave me a new (albeit--different) understanding into the origin of the stories.

If your SBC lawyer friends had a knowledge of history, historical documents and how to assess historical publications, they would not be drawing a parallel between evidence for the contemporary law courts and how to obtain evidence from historical documents. The NT gospels, Acts, etc, are historical documents.

We assess documents from history using criteria of historicity. Historians have assessed these for the NT documents to be:

1. Primary criteria:
a. Embarrassment
b. Discontinuity
c. Multiple attestation

2. Secondary criteria:
a. Coherence (or consistency or conformity)
b. Rejection and Execution
c. Traces of Aramaic
d. Palestinian environment
e. Vividness of narration
f. Tendencies of the developing synoptic tradition
g. Historical presumption
(John P. Meier 1991. A Marginal Jew. New York: Doubleday, pp. 168-184).

Meier labels c, d, e, f and g as 'secondary (or dubious) criteria' (p. 178).

However, the point is that criteria for finding someone guilty or innocent in contemporary courts are very different from criteria used to determine the accuracy of documents from history. John P. Meier notes:

Granted the nature of ancient history in general and the nature of the Gospels in particular, the criteria of historicity will usually produce judgments that are only more or less probably; certainty is rarely to be had. Indeed, since in the quest for the historical Jesus almost anything is possible, the function of the criteria is to pass from the merely possible to the really probable, to inspect various probabilities, and to decide which candidate is most probable. Ordinarily, the criteria cannot hope to do more (pp. 167-168)

Sincerely, Oz

 

[FreeinChrist]

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