hatsoff

The New Testament and NT apocrypha.

Sven

Because the gospels were not published in Judäa, but in Rome and Greece. At the time they became known to Jewish people there, it would have been much too late to dismiss anything.

BTW, do you have any reference that other Messiahs were dismissed as frauds?

Chunk

I was making a reference to Shimeon ben Kosiba (aka Bar Kochba).

How do you know that the gospels were published in Rome and Greece first? Surely it would still require people to accept an unknown person as the Messiah. I admit that people are willing to believe in many things, but an unknown person from a different country being accepted as the Messiah without question? Seems unlikely. For it to be accepted by enough people for Christianity to take off seems even more unlikely.

pharoah

Why is this difficult to believe? People were more credulous, had less scientific knowledge and were largely illiterate then. Consider the situation now. Anyone can look in the Bible and see that the virgin birth story is bogus, see that the geneologies contradict each other and the OT, see that the Flood and Creation stories are completely false and ridiculous, see that Jesus made false claims about his return, see that the various passion narratives are hopelessly contradictory, etc. Yet in this scientific age people STILL believe and rationalize all this stuff. I find that much more mind-boggling than ancient man's beliefs. Ancient man can be excused for lack of knowledge, but what's the excuse for 21st century man?

Malachi151

The beauty of the ressurection:

The beauty of the ressurection is that it provides the justification for why there is no evidece of Jesus... you see, the body is gone.

Jesus "bodily ascended into heaven"... how "convenient", that there is no body remaining on earth to prove his existance.....

The bodily ascention of Jesus is the essential ending to the complete lie.

Zeichman

For it to be considered a lie, someone would have to convince me that the ressurection was originally regarded as a literal fleshly one originally. Evidence, it seems, points otherwise:

Paul seems to be unaware of a fleshly intepretation (1 Cor 15, not differentiating between the appearance to him and to Peter, and the discussion of the ressurection later on in the chapter.)
Mark, Q, Thomas, Signs, etc. seem unaware of it as well.
Matthew gives no indication that it was a fleshly ressurection.
Only in Gentile-centric communities such as the Lukan and late Johannine does it seem that the ressurection was necessarily intepreted as someone walking around in a fleshly body after dying.

Malachi151

If there was no bodily resurrection then why didn't the early Christans worship the grave of Jesus and why wasn't his grave used as evidence that he was not bodily resurrected?

TySixtus

The point I was trying to make was that there is as much evidence for the resurrection as there is for Zeus knocking up a woman.

By that I mean there is no evidence at all, merely stories.

Ty

Zeichman

Because it can't be demonstrated that all Jesus-devotees in early CHristianity believed in the ressurection or centered their worship around him. And why would it be revered? The precedent in Judaism for tomb-veneration does not extend past the patriarchs, as far as I know.

Amaleq13

Well, my expectation of Bible references certainly hasn't been fulfilled so what the hell do I know?

I'll ask in the Mod Conference Room and swoosh it along wherever it is thought most appropriate. Prepare yourself for the move.