fta

How do we know that the text about "500 witnesses" wasn't slipped into the text by some evidence-mongering scribe?

Peter Kirby

And now for something tangentially related...

When is the "500 witnesses" line first used apologetically in Christian literature?

thanks,
Peter Kirby

Johnny Skeptic

Peter Kirby wrote:

And now for something tangentially related...

When is the "500 witnesses" line first used apologetically in Christian literature?

Johnny: Good question. Dr. Robert Price told me “The astonishing absence from the gospels of anything remotely like the appearance to the 500 is fatal for the early date of this tale! Surely such a ‘report’ would be well-known (by definition, if it began with half a thousand people!). Needless to say, outside of 1st Corinthians there is no reference to it anywhere until a variant reading in a copy of the Acts of Pilate/Gospel of Nicodemus from the 4th century!�

There you have it readers. No confirmation of Paul's claim in the New Testament, and no corroboration in Christian literature for over 250 years in spite of the fact that early Christians had a proven penchant for copying documents that were friendly to their cause, and by the way a penchant for destroying as many competing documents as possible, as Elaine Pagels and Larry Taylor have told us.

Toto

Peter - are you asking which modern apologist was the first to use this argument (e.g, Josh McDowell?)

Steven Carr

And a very different sort of claim to having named eyewitnesses sign their names at the time to having seen something.

rlogan

I'd like that clarified too because the text itself is using it, and by definition anyone preaching from that chapter likewise.

The whole thrust of that set of passages is establishing that Christ rose and therefore anyone saying there is no resurrection of the dead has to be wrong. Why - look at all the witnesses. Er, well, at least I'm claiming there were some.

So this is immediate apologetics as soon as the ink is dry.



Johnny Skeptic already pointed out what I was going to say. This passage is strong evidence against mid first century dating. At least for the story.


Note that it is an appearance before 500 bretheren.


It would be foolish enough to make a contemporaneous claim of 500 run-of-the-mill people. That would mean thousands more who had spoken with a direct witness and an order of magnitude greater still who had heard of it.

Too much room for the skeptics to run you through with the lack of anything to back your claim. And I submit to you there were not 500 people who saw a dead man giving a speech or whatever. So the question is when can you get away with telling such a fib.

But consider now the additional feature of the 500 bretheren. That there was even a gathering of 500 bretheren some place is a pretty remarkable claim. Woodstock '33.

That makes the escape of attention by contemporaneous historians yet another miracle of the Christians. Apparently they had cloaking devices. They kept meetings of historical size and effect invisible to the eyes of both scholars and the government.

Peter Kirby

No, because there are ancient and medieval Christian apologists.

Rlogan, whether (or not) the author of 1 Cor 15:5 is using this reference apologetically doesn't answer my question.

best wishes,
Peter Kirby

Killer Mike

What about the 500 eyewitnesses who have seen Superman in Superman stories? That must mean Superman is real and does all those amazing things:Cheeky:

JoeWallack

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these cars. Please buy these cars. Take this 1999 Dodge Saint Regis.
Please. Take it! Look at this resurrected 2000 Christler Cordoba
which we guarantee will be the last car that you'll ever need (for
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Father O'Roarke: Be quiet Tatoo.

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JW:
"1 Corinthians 15: (KJV)
6 "After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of
whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen
asleep."

Paul never met the pre-resurrected Jesus even though Paul presumably
would have been in Jerusalem for Jesus' annual Passover pilgrimage
and based on the Gospellers account of the final Passover for Jesus
seems like he would have been hard to miss. (all good evidence that
there was no historical Jesus). The Greek word Paul used to describe
his Yeshua sighting generally means "vision". How would Paul know if
he saw the resurrected Jesus if he never saw the pre-resurrected
Jesus?

Regarding Paul's claim that over 500 people saw the resurrected Jesus
1 Corinthians is a letter not a record of a conversation so the
letter was Paul's opportunity to provide the names of some of these
500. Generally, the early Christians were lower class people (a
common characteristic of most religions, like the spread of Voodoo in the Louisiana Bayous and Texas Legislature.) Ch, chh, change. What were
they suppose to do to verify Paul's claim, hire an Aramaic translator
and take the Freiggin A Train to Nazareth?

What's interesting is that "First Clement" which is generally thought
to be a genuine letter by Clement, the fourth Bishop of Rome, who
probably would have been the most important Christian of his time,
parallels 1 Corinthians in trying to convince the Corinthians that
the resurrection of Jesus was an actual historical event (really). In
it Clement cites as proof of Jesus' resurrection, the "resurrection"
of the Phoenix:

http://wesley.nnu.edu/noncanon/fathe...t/1clement.htm

"25:1 Let us consider the marvellous sign which is seen in the
regions of the east, that is, in the parts about Arabia.
25:2 There is a bird, which is named the phoenix.
25:3 This, being the only one of its kind, liveth for five hundred
years;
25:4 and when it hath now reached the time of its dissolution that it
should die, it maketh for itself a coffin of frankincense and myrrh
and the other spices, into the which in the fulness of time it
entereth, and so it dieth.
25:5 But, as the flesh rotteth, a certain worm is engendered, which
is nurtured from the moisture of the dead creature and putteth forth
wings.
25:6 Then, when it is grown lusty, it taketh up that coffin where are
the bones of its parent, and carrying them journeyeth from the
country of Arabia even unto Egypt, to the place called the City of
the Sun ;
25:7 and in the day time in the sight of all, flying to the altar of
the Sun, it layeth them thereupon;
25:8 and this done, it setteth forth to return.
25:9 So the priests examine the registers of the times, and they find
that it hath come when the five hundredth year is completed.
26:1 Do we then think it to be a great and marvellous thing, if the
Creator of the universe shall bring about the resurrection of them
that have served Him with holiness in the assurance of a good faith,
26:2 seeing that He showeth to us even by a bird the magnificence of
His promise?"

The early Church Fathers were generally converted Pagans and not
converted Jews (hard to even find an early Church Father who knew
Hebrew. Perhaps the greatest Irony of Christianity is that it couldn't read the original language of the Scriptures it claimed to be based on without the help of "The Jews" it Demonized) and Clement's Pagan Roots are showing here. Personally, seeing as Clement believed in the resurrection of Jesus as well as
the resurrection of the Phoenix and also did not know that Omar was a
stool pigeon, I say his judgment stinks and I wonder what other
mistakes he made (on the other hand I myself never believed in any Type of resurrection until I saw John Travolta in Pulp Fiction). But the identification of
the 500 year life of the Phoenix is interesting. The early Christians often picked typological numbers from Judaism and Paganism and wrote their stories to show that Jesus either equaled or more often exceeded those numbers. Of all known Christian authors only Paul
reports "over 500". Was this just a typological "Son-Upmanship" of
the Pagan Phoenix myth?

You be the judge.


Joseph

MYTHOLOGY, n.
The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its origin, early
history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true
accounts which it invents later.

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