Asha'man

What about it? It does nothing to support your case. Nobody in the Talmud mentions an empty tomb in connection with Jesus.

There are numerous mentions of a 'Yesu' (Jesus) in the Talmud, but Yesu was a common name back then.

There are various mentions of a 'Yesu' who was considered a criminal, and who was then killed by the Sanhedrin for his crimes. However, when you are killed under Jewish law, you are first stoned to death, then the corpse is hung from a tree. Jewish law also requires that the corpse be removed from the tree by sundown, or it becomes a curse on the land.

The Talmud mentions both a Yesu ben Pandira and a Yesu ben Stada, both of which appear to have been killed on the eve before passover, and therefore have been misinterpreted to be references to Jesus of Nazareth. However, the first appears to have been killed under the reign of Alexander Janius, which would be around 87 BCE, a century too early. The second appears to have lived around 100 CE, almost a century too late, and was executed in Lud, not Jerusalem.

You may have heard something about Sandhedrin 43a:
Notice that the punishment is clearly the Jewish one: stoned and hanged. The 40 days between trial and execution is wrong, and the number and name of the disciples are wrong. Are you really going to claim that this supports your idea of Jesus??? If so, you might as well throw out your gospels now.

Invoking the Talmud does not support your case, and weakens your credibility.

Asha'man

Scholars agree that the wording we have from Josephus' book was certainly not written by Josephus. There is absolutely no doubt that it was altered by later Christians.

The scholarly disagreement is on the level of the alteration. There are very good arguments that the whole passage was inserted. If you remove the reference entirely, the text flows very nicely from the preceding paragraph to the following. This would mean that he didn't mention Jesus at all. Early church fathers, who quoted Josephus to support their case on other questions, failed to mention the TF entirely, despite the fact that it would have clearly supported their arguments. Why would they fail to quote such an important historical piece of evidence, especially since they clearly had access to the works of Josephus?

Additionally, since we know for a fact that Christians altered the wording, we don't know what it originally said. Maybe the Christians altered it because it described the location and condition of the corpse of Jesus? We can't know, so it becomes useless for historical arguments.

Aumgn

I find odd OF's claim that the Jews/Pharisees/Josephus all knew Jesus rose from the dead but chose not to believe. I mean, that's really weird.

Sauron

1. He may not have known the details of christ's death - it is not a foregone conclusion that because someone knows 2 or 3 details about someone's life, that they must also know the details of his death;

2. He may not have cared;

3. He may have lived in a milieu that had already rejected the resurrection, and believed that Christ died a normal death (or was otherwise disposed of). In that situation, he would not be expected to say, "Oh by the way, this guy didn't rise from the dead, either." In such a milieu, that would have been stating the obvious that everyone already accepted; you can't expect Josephus to state the obvious.

I suppose there are about a dozen others I could list with effort, but I think you get the idea.

gregor

OF
When will you realize that your cut-and-paste internet apologetics doesn't fly here with people who know the holes in your arguments ?

Has your church started an internet witnessing program?

FatherMithras

Not here to refute much, since OFT is being smashed so bad. However, my namesake was a resurrected God that Paul knew all about and even refutes in some of his letters. Mithras was the god who Christians usurped the eucharist, magi story, apostles etc from, and Paul thought they were copy-cats (despite being older then yeshua by centuries). OFT clearly hasn't read much history about the bible, which becomes evident in his testimonies about the gnostics, the consensus of the early xians, and their relation to other religions.

FatherMithras

IE the people writing to support christianity write that no one disblieved his resurrection. Despite the factwe cannot clearly see that these were written by Luke and that the concensus is that they weren't. Your knowledge of scriptural history, like your general knowledge of the era, has proven to be horrible.

Cognitive dissonance is incredibly powerful. Delusions will elad you to misrepresent fact as truth through your own lens of truth, regardless of the validity of doing so. Not liars (fr the most part) simply incorrect, and only showing selective evidence.

That claim is so ridiculous it borders on being a total lie on your part. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you have almost no knowledge as to the truth, due to not reading enough history, something you've proven prone to

Destruction of the temple is mentioned in the earliest ones. So your assertion is ridiculously false. The earliest they could possibly appear is 70 AD and that's not the general consensus. READ HISTORY.

Gnostic Gospels lol.

Mass hallucinations based on religious fervor happen all the time, even in churches, voudoun "raves" and cult movements. Ridiculously uninformed assertion.

Too bad the evidence doesn't line up with that. Burden of proof again.

There were gnostics who thought he never even died. So this claim is BS. Please read and understand your history. The Christian cult was not large enough for anyone to dispute it at the time, and regardless if anyone had, the chances of these records surviving are very small, since xian Rome burned everything that violated their interpretation of the legend. Also, your using the Bible to see if anyone disputed the claim. the bible has been shown to be a terrible source for history as shown by the refutations of Luke above, and it wouldn't include arguments that invalidated its own claims. AND they were written at LEAST 4 decades after the fact. =)

Go actually read about the Flavium testimonium will you? He does dispute it in translations of the work as "They believed he was the christ" etc. ALSO we can make no assertions about whathe actually said due to the corruption of the text AND the fact it was written AFTER the fall of Jerusalem. History again ...

Science have proven you cannot raise a dead body. You claim that a God with no evidence of his existence could. Burden of proof again. You continue to make the same logical fallacies over and over again. You continue to show a lack of knowledge of history as well, sputing unsupported assertions by apologetics (some of whom support ID and are thus show to be liars or incompetent by your own admission in other threads!!!). I suggest you take a few months off the board, read up on actual history and THEN come back to make valid arguments. Also, you keep using reftued arguments over and over again when we show their falsehood. Maybe you could read ALL the posts during this break

The othrodox church is not really evangelical. They don't want their doctrine corrupted by mass converts. OFT has most of his ideas grounded against the church, including his belief they accept all science. They still claim scientists can't explain epilepsy and other demon posession stories, though scientists don't do this at all.

FatherMithras

I am now glad I'm studying Josephus and the rebellions in Rome from his people.

FatherMithras

Oh yeah. I also forgot there wouldn't have been an empty tomb since the Romans through the crucified into piles to be eaten by dogs. This would explain the empty tomb pretty easily.

Mageth

Another plausible explanation I've heard is that, if a rich man named "Joseph" really allowed Jesus' body to be placed in his tomb, that may have only been as a temporary arrangement to accomodate Jewish religious restrictions because the tomb was nearby. At some point after the Sabbath, perhaps Saturday evening, Jesus' body may have been moved somewhere else, e.g. to an unmarked grave or to a less elaborate tomb, the details of which were lost.