greyline

But norma, you kill your own argument because not a single one of those 500 people DID write it down. In fact, no one at all wrote anything about it for decades.

norma98026

Well, I've been known to shoot myself in the foot before but hopefully not this time. Either the people who saw Jesus alive after he had died did write down their observations, or they didn't, right? It has to be one way or the other. How can we be certain which it is? Does the information still exist? One place to look is on the the Web. It's my understanding that thousands of copies of the New Testament, which contains the eyewitness documents, are kept today in reputable repositories such as the British Museum and museums in Israel and in US university libraries. As in other disciplines, we depend on the scholarship of experts in ancient documents and languages. Their consensus, whether or not they are believers, is that the copies are authentic; that is, they are true to the originals. But those writings of over 1900+ years ago are not the main cause of people accepting as fact the events of Jesus's life, especially the resurrection.

More important in our search for truth are our own personal perceptions when reading the Bible. No other book claiming to be from God paints such an accurate picture of human nature by showing the flaws as well as the accomplishments of those who followed Jesus. For example, Peter's impatient retort to Jesus while fishing, his impetuous slicing of an ear in the Garden of Gethsemane, and his cursing and denial of Jesus in the courtyear outside the trail are all recorded, much to his chagrin we might imagine. These failures could easily have been whitewashed by would-be conspirators of a new religion. Instead, the truth is in the details, such as the geographical places where Jesus lived and died and was seen alive that are verifiable and recognizable (even to a nonhistory major like me), because most of the places (including Bethlehem, the Sea of Galilee, Nazareth, and Jerusalem and others) are still in existence today. The thing that compells me the most, however, are that Jesus taught --

"before Abraham was, I am" and
"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no one can come to the Father except through me" and
"No one takes my life from me, I lay it down myself" --

things so preposterous that were he not God in the flesh, he'd be pronounced deluded or worse. When I first saw how the events of his life compared with what had been predicted hundreds of years before by Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Micah and others, everything came together and made sense, which of course it would if the Father and Jesus and the Holy Spirit were working together down through history. It was like a light came on.

I know why the resurrection so important to Christians. But why does it interest Atheists?

Norma

greyline

The accuracy of the copies isn't the issue. The issue is whether or not the originals were eyewitness accounts.

I'm interested in your answer to this:


This is important in your search for your faith. Personal feelings have nothing to do with historical truth.

Jack the Bodiless

...Whew. So many references to "evidence" that has yet to be presented!

Unless you believe that you HAVE presented it? It's not at all clear whether "Eusebius said so" or "this Christian apologist believes thusly" IS the "evidence" that you are presenting.

What else is there?

"Fulfilled prophecies"? As already noted, none are apparent. "Double fulfillment" is a Christian apologetic doctrine with no Biblical support whatsoever, we already know all about Daniel (and the fact that he isn't even mentioned as a prophet in Hebrew texts prior to the 2nd century BC should be a clue), and then there are all the failed prophecies which prove that the Bible isn't divine (the apologetic doctrine that these were "conditional" is, again, entirely unsupported).

And you haven't even proved that Jesus actually WAS born of a virgin! Paul neglected to give details of his birth, and Mark (who was suppsedly a biographer of Jesus) didn't think this worth mentioning either. Matthew and Luke give hopelessly contradictory accounts, and John ducks the issue (but mentions that Jesus wasn't from Bethlehem).

As for the resurrection: Paul mentions it but gives few details (but mentions a mass appearance to 500 people that nobody else considered to be worth mentioning), Mark gives a detailed account that ended with the empty tomb (i.e. no actual post-death appearances) until the ending of John was grafted on, and Matthew and Luke give accounts that contradict each other and Mark/John! And then there's the zombie incursion that was considered entirely non-newsworthy by Paul, Mark, Luke AND John...

I think we can track the growth of the myth. Paul, the first of our sources, was clearly a fantasist: he never knew Jesus, but went on to write more of the NT than any other author, inventing Christian theology wholesale. This must surely have irked those who HAD known Jesus (if he DID exist): but none of that has come down to us, except passing references to the circumcision issue and suchlike.

By the time of Mark, a detailed biography had emerged that Paul had apparently been unaware of (possibly because it hadn't been invented yet): but still no Nativity, and a miraculous bodysnatch rather than a Resurrection (though Paul had mentioned one: maybe Mark thought Paul lacked credibility on that?). Then we have Matthew and Luke both blatantly ripping off earlier accounts and tossing (contradictory) Nativities and Resurrections back into the mix, and John feeling uneasy about the Nativity accounts but sticking with a divine Jesus and a Resurrection laden with symbolism (moving on from the "I can't believe he's dead, say it ain't so!" wishful-thinking).

Was there a HJ? I'd say "probably yes" if it wasn't for Paul. Instead, I'll say "insufficient data". If there WAS a HJ, it becomes harder to see why Paul gained such prominence over those who would have known Jesus themselves.

Diogenes the Cynic

This is a tautology. If X is impossible, it is not a solution to hypothesize an entity who can DO the impossible. That's just a regression of the same impossibility.
There is no evidence for this. Nobody "recorded" it.
Because it's impossible. Why is it unreasonable to suppose that impssible things are impossible.
They didn't.
I suppose, hypothetically, there is an eyewitness account extant in the world somewhere but it hasn't been discovered. Nothing we do have is an eyewitness account.
There are no eyewitness "documents" in the NT. Nothing in the NT was written by anyone who ever met Jesus.
You haven't read much religious literature. It ALL contains portaits of human weakness and failure. Try reading Homer or the Bhagavad-Gita or Gilgamesh.

There is also plenty of mythology which contains real place names. There really was a Troy. It proves nothing at all about the historicity of the Iliad. Don't be too cocky about the geographical accuracy of the gospels, by the way. They make mistakes. For instance, do you remember the story where Jesus goes to Gesara and drives some demons out of a dude and into a bunnch of pigs who run into the lake and drown? The problem with that story is that Gesara is almost 40 miles from the lake. Oops.
There is no proof that he said these things and no reason he couldn't be a nutcase if he did.
What do you imagine was "predicted" about Jesus in the Tanakh? He certainly did not fulfill any of the Messianic prophecies.
Why does Greek mythology interest atheists?

Everyone is going to have a different answer but for many of us, the interest is historical. History is interesting. We're curious about how a particular religious mythology got started.

Vivisector

The explanation that works best for me right now is that, only Jews (and not many of them) were going to buy what those who knew him (e.g., James and the "Pillars") were selling. The Greeks and "God Fearers," though, could buy what Paul and Christ Culters were selling. Add the First Jewish War to mix and you've got a more marketable product and a much larger audience.

Just another idea.

Rick Sumner

Tell that to E P Sanders, or Bruce Chilton. His heavy reliance on Jewish scripture doesn't strike me as terribly Greek.

Why would a Greek care if he was blameless under the Law? It's certainly a point Paul takes pride in.

For an easy example, Paul's eisegetical arguments regarding justification are purest Rabbinic prooftexting. We wouldn't expect a Greek to be familiar with this type of eisegesis. Certainly in a less refined form than we find later in the Mishnah, but unmistakable nonetheless. Ignoring Macoby's presupposed continuity, it's about what we should expect to find.

This all depends on how one wants to define Pharisee. Macoby envisions an unrealistic continuity between first century Pharisaism and the Rabbis.

Are you going to argue the case? Or just point at Macoby?

This still depends on how one defines it.

Lots of claims, not a lot of argument.

This depends on how we take "servant." Besides which, the High Priest carried such authority that Rome locked up their vestments, because the people would obey unquestioningly when the High Priest wore them. The notion that Pharisees would not serve the High Priest is based on presupposition, not evidence.

Where do you see him demonizing Pharisees?

We don't know nearly enough about first century Pharisaism, what exactly it was, and how it compared to Rabbinic Judaism to make this sort of statement with any measure of certainty. Paul's claim to be a Pharisee is prima facie reasonable. You need to provide doubt.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

MrDarwin

But how do you know that Jesus actually said these things? That is the heart of the matter, because all we have to go on are copies of copies of manuscripts whose originals are no longer in existence, written years after the events they describe occurred, by unknown authors. Those facts are not in doubt, even by Christian scholars. The dramatic differences between the gospels prove that they are based on hearsay, that at least some of the events described in them are not accurate.

Because Christians keep trying to convince us that it really happened.

Clivedurdle

Originally posted by Rick SumnerI have started another thread about Alexander and was fascinated by the above assertion, that seems very common, that somehow the Greek and Judaic worlds were kept separate.

Are we so sure the Greeks did not understand Hebrew arguments backwards? It could have been a popular debating game, to introduce ideas from as many different types of culture as possible. The Greeks loved debate, they would have studied in detail rabbinical thinking, and the two would have co-evolved together.

Rick Sumner

We actually have a pretty good idea of how the two "worlds" viewed each other, and a reasonably good idea as to how much they influenced each other.

Are you aware of any evidence that they did? It's not as though we have no writings from the era, if the influence was as powerful as you suggest below, don't you think some writings should show that influence? Even Philo, for example, is unmistakably a Jewish apologist.

You don't get to presume that these things occurred, you need to evidence them--it's not an argument from silence if we should expect to hear a sound.

Regards,
Rick Sumner