heymikey80
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum viditur
Then I assume you haven't really listened to the whole thing? Video 2 are generally attempts at discrediting some Christian harmonizations proposals. Calling such things Buls--- is normally considered a demeaning attribution.
The end of Part 2 makes the claim that, "We have no idea whether many of the disciples faced persecution, much less martyrdom." Anyone who's read the Roman Empire's and the Judean reaction to the Christian movement in the First Century can tell you that's false. Josephus, as well as allusions in a history of Rome written at that time, in addition to the known early responses to Christians among th 70 AD and then the 130's convocations of rabbis, makes it clear. Christians were generally persecuted. What we don't have are specific, written, public & published accounts of martyrdom before second century accounts of what came from the early Christian community.
Generally believers successfully navigate dissonance by introducing more convincing ideas into their religion. That is, they don't have common visions of the same visitation by Christ. For instance, JW's attributed their mistake to a new prediction that fit the physical situation. Adventists did the same.
Neither came up with an even more implausible visitation from Jesus, physically, after His death. For instance, in 1 John 1 John writes, "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— 2 the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— 3 that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us". Which by the way, is dead to rights another autobiographical account of encountering Jesus (contradicting video 5). If you want more, they are there. Matthew 28 accounts the disciples' encounter with Jesus, of whom Matthew is a member. John 20-21 recounts John's encounter with Jesus multiple times among the disciples.
The video also makes the assumption that for instance John's account of physical encounters with Jesus was written later, say 90 AD at best, while earlier accounts are "spiritualized", that is in his presumption, non-physical or figurative. However, most paleontoligists point out, John's gospel is the earliest of physical fragments of any public Christian work. The gospels are quoted among the writings of the earliest church fathers (with the pastoral letters a close second). The internal evidence in John points to it being written to Jewish people (people highly familiar with Judaism, particularly with Passover) yet who were not particularly familiar with the movement.
That'd make John early in its writing. Not late. And John's physical assertions would then be early as well.
Secondly, the idea of "spiritual" being "unreal" or "figurative" is not an ancient concept of spirituality, and not particularly a Hebrew concept, either. It's an Enlightenment concept of spirituality. While some things can be hidden behind a figurative view, the fact is that only a few references here can be understood as dissipative of physical dissonance (e.g.: Christ didn't return immediately, physically to reign on earth). And they're explained by something absolutely mind-boggling. Something that, if not true, it would not be centralized by Christ's closest disciples as the primary foundation for their movement: a physical resurrection. I mean, why even go there if you know Christ didn't rise, physically? But going forward everything was centered on it. cf. Acts 2:32, as well as the Gospel accounts above.
In short, the disciples should have left everything figurative after Jesus' death. That Jesus was raised to God, and that they could see Him spiritually reigning, and He helped them by advocating with God just like Christians say He does now.
No physical resurrection. No walking, talking crucified body. No claims they had heard, held, saw Jesus. Just the current, conforming reality. That would've been enough to carry the movement. And it would've made the best cognitive consonance for the disciples. It would've resolved their dissonance, making sense of their loss as well as their new direction.
But something more happened.
Whether or not we accept the video's assumption of timing, you see where this is going. It's a cherry-picked account of the historical progress of the group.
From James' death on (and really before), every disciple recognized that Sanhedrin, and then Agrippa, and admittedly slowly projecting into the rest of the Roman Empire, that they would be persecuted, and they risked death for continuing with their movement. But of course this recognition allows for their now cognitive consonance to become even more committed to what should at this point be so consonant as to create "true believers" of them all. The video's deprecation of "willing to die for the truth" as not the same as "actually died" is also questionable and inconsistent. The disciples could've recanted and walked away. Their recognition of this fact is pretty obvious (cf John 21). They didn't need to pursue this route, which would put them at risk. But they wanted to. Again, the re-consonance would've been a factor here. No objection there. They found a way to sustain their view given the extant physical facts that Jesus was not physically reigning.
The problem I see is that a physical resurrection shouldn't have been needed for this cognitive consonance.
But it's there.
Ultimately, the video's response is itself "a hopelessly muddled, contradictory, and dubious fashion" of argumentation. The issues are historical, and the exceptions brought up are not necessarily collapsing the argument from the Christian movement. They're simply introducing possible apologetics in the other direction. Were I to take on the atheist's argument, I would also find it has numerous approaches, numerous interpretations, and numerous contradictory arguments about different points. But I don't consider the intramural contradictions in atheism an argument against the validity of atheism. So I wonder why such an argument would be considered against Christianity, where human limitations in argument are granted.
Dealing with oral tradition as if it's a dispassionate account in video 7 is silly, as well the video's rhetorical technique is again, demeaning. The whole point of James actually living briefly after a fall from Temple (note, not Temple Mount's walls, but Temple) and thus being clubbed, is just beyond the pale of inanity. So James wasn't knocked out by the fall. His movement led others to club him to death, so he wouldn't revive. The dissipating argument of "the Christ" being the High Priest is frankly implausible. "The Christ" is not a title a Jewish adherent would arrogate to the High Priest. It's Josephus' allusion to the Messiah. Especially so when you realize Josephus' intent is to writing to award this highest of Jewish titles, to the Caesar, Titus. This line of thinking is again an implausible apologetic against Christianity. Which is why it's not generally accepted that Josephus was talking about someone else. Plus -- there's an easier way to write down "high priest" or even "usurper" than to pick the vague (!) "Jesus, the Christ".
The bottom line is that the video is trying to dissipate precisely one assertion -- that nobody can prove someone was unmistakably killed for the reason that they saw Jesus rise from the dead. There are always other motives, attacks you can make on historical recountings, and such like.
And my point is, so what. The fact is that the disciples understood the risk they were taking; that it was a significant enough risk that at least ten of the dozen people have no other accounts of their deaths except a death they could've avoided by abandoning the movement; and that they were aware of the risk and nevertheless took the risk. That they found the risk-taking consonant with their beliefs, that's not surprising. The surprising thing is that their belief included a short-period, physical resurrection of their executed leader.
The idea that "We don't know what happened" is pretty-much his conclusion for the rest of the people. I'd say we know something happened in many of these cases. What we do have is consonant traditions. You can attack the traditions, sure. But you have nothing to replace them with, except the general persecution and deaths Christians indeed did experience under Domitian and Nero.
I point out again, the video's ignoring the risk the disciples took, which is pretty-much the point of the argument being made. "Would not die for a lie" is not "did die for the truth". And the video makes that arrogation very quickly -- yet it's passed by the obvious point, a point which, as a believer, I would predictably by the scholarly material presented, accept, make consonant with my viewpoint, and pass on. But by the same token, the author of the video would make the arrogation consonant with his religious adherence, and pass on with his view intact as well. The disciples would not have died for something they knew was a lie. And apparently they didn't need to hallucinate Jesus' physical resurrection to make any other religious viewpoint consonant with their belief system. That leaves Jesus' physical resurrection looking for a reason for being.
Frankly, I appreciate one thing in this presentation: the scholarly article on religious consonance.
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