aa5874

Also, the accounts in the Gospels are all considered to have been written well after the supposed resurrection possibly ranging from 70 CE and beyond.

stuart shepherd

Right on!
If something is missing, whether it is a candy bar or Jesus' corpse, there is always a rational reason for the loss....not a supernatural cause.
The supernatural only exists in fairy tales, fables, scary movies, and Bible stories. It is just not real.

Stuart Shepherd

stuart shepherd

A brief journey through the origin of the Disciples’ belief in the Resurrection of Jesus, according to the Gospel of John.

Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb, while it was still dark, and saw the stone already taken away from the tomb John 20:1
Mary Magdalene came, announcing to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord," and that He had said these things to her. John 20:18
So when it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and when the doors were shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, "Peace be with you." John 20:19
After eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors having been shut, and stood in their midst and said, "Peace be with you." John 20:26

So Mary Magdalene discovered the empty tomb, she saw the resurrected Jesus, and she went and told the disciples. Later, Jesus visits with the disciples and eight days later Jesus again visit’s the disciples and shows Thomas the nail holes in his hands and the wound in his side. By this time you would expect the disciples to be comfortable being around their resurrected leader, Jesus.

But look what happens next……….
Simon Peter, and Thomas called Didymus, and Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two others of His disciples were together. Simon Peter said to them, "I am going fishing." They said to him, "We will also come with you." They went out and got into the boat; and that night they caught nothing. John 21:2-3

Even though according to the Gospel of Matthew, the disciples were commanded by Jesus to evangelize the world, they go fishing. They return to the profession which they worked before they met Jesus.

But when the day was now breaking, Jesus stood on the beach; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. John 21:4

Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, "It is the Lord." So when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put his outer garment on (for he was stripped for work), and threw himself into the sea. John 21:7

Jesus said to them, "Come and have breakfast." None of the disciples ventured to question Him, "Who are You?" knowing that it was the Lord. John 21:12

The disciples have returned to their old laborious work of fishing, they meet a man, the text says they know it is Jesus, but the text reveals their unasked, unanswered, question……"Who are You?"
After seeing Jesus more than once in Jerusalem after his supposed resurrection, and considering how well they knew him in their years of traveling evangelism, doesn’t the question seem strange? "Who are You?"

I believe that when Jesus was executed, the disciples were heart-broken, like sheep without a shepherd, their life as evangelists seemed over, so they returned to their old way of life. Sailing on the sea of Galilee, when they saw a man who looked like Jesus on the distant shore, they decided to tell the world that Jesus had risen from the dead, and had gone on to Heaven. No need to ask "Who are You?" They resurrected Jesus, put away the hard labor of fishing forever, and went out into the world to evangelize and fill their baskets with cash and not fish.

The disciples resurrected Jesus, fabricated the story of Jesus’ rising from the dead, and re-entered the lucrative profession of evangelism. It was a lot easier than catching and cleaning fish.

stuart shepherd

Wiploc

Fact = claim.
Highly attested = repeated several times.
Historical evidence = a book shot thru with errors.




That's like saying that the list of people Odyseus saw in Hell is proof that he really went there.




And the people who self-select to become New Testament scholars have what common characteristics?




Magic has probabilities?




They did not take place.



Some guys put together a book. They included lots of contradictions, but they excluded lots of other contradictions. Mostly they excluded anything that would weaken the authority of bishops. And now we are supposed to say, "Look, several of the stories they included are about the same thing! Therefore the thing must be true!"

That's nuts. The same test would prove that all the other religions are true too, and that therefore Christianity is false.




Is punk saying that contradictions are evidence of reliability?




We don't even know whether Paul and James existed. All we know is that some stories in a highly-unreliable book claim they existed, and also claim they saw a dead guy. That's not proof of anything.



After they became believers (assuming they existed at all) then they claimed that Jesus had appeared to them. That nohow indicates lack-of-bias. Only after General Petraeus resigns will we learn what he really thinks about the war.

crc



[QUOTE]

chrisengland

I,m no expert but have all of his arguments come from William Lane Craig?

James Brown

I was thinking Josh McDowell.

stuart shepherd

Jesus' Big Unfulfilled Promise

How can we believe anything about Jesus if he didn't fulfill his promises?
How can we believe that he rose from the dead?

Jesus said..........
Matthew 16:27-28 (King James Version)
27For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.

28Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.

Everyone standing there with Jesus, tasted death without seeing Jesus "come in the glory of his Father with his angels", "coming in his kingdom."
Jesus did not fulfill his promise.

Stuart Shepherd

stuart shepherd

Dear Infidels,
Usually, members of this forum do not comment on their own posts. But I was reading what I wrote and I think that perhaps I missed my own point. So I am trying a second time to zero in .

I crafted a Jesus resurrection story using actual verses from John's Gospel as a theory of what really happened which is an alternate theory of the Christian resurrection story, even though I believe that the whole incident is fiction.
The point is .....using the same set of supposed "facts"....does the Christian version make sense as it relies on a supernatural event, or does my alternate version, using the same "facts" make sense, relying on a common natural explanation of the "facts"?
Perhaps I am prejudiced in favor of my prose, but I think my explanation of the "facts" is more credible.

I invite all to read the "gone fishing" story in the 21st chapter of John's Gospel. What strikes me as overwhelmingly apparent is that this incident reads as though this is the first time that the disciples have seen the newly resurrected Jesus. This is amazing since according to chapter 20 of John's Gospel, Mary Magdalene saw Jesus and told the disciples, and on two occasions Jesus visited with the disciples. Yet here when the disciples are fishing they act like they are seeing Jesus for the first time.

Stuart Shepherd

spamandham

Sean, if you don't reply today, does PFC win by default!?

stuart shepherd

Sean McHugh wrote.........
.

In my opinion this is a key statement in evaluating the evidence for the resurrection.

PFC wrote..........
The Christian position in attempting to explain away the numerous "contradictions' in the gospel accounts of the resurrection is to say that if four witnesses all observe an incident their testimony will be different because each witness will observe the incident from a different viewpoint and each will report different details.

BUT...Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, were not with Mary Magdalene when she went to the tomb on Easter morning. They did not see the resurrected Jesus that morning. The Gospel writers story of Mary Magdalene finding the empty tomb and seeing Jesus is not from the viewpoint of being a witness, but it is from the viewpoint of a reporter telling us what Mary Magdalene said happened that morning.

As Sean said....Mary Magdalene is the primary witness.
So all the testimony concerning that Easter morning rests on the credibility of Mary Magdalene.

So what do we know about Mary Magdalene?
Here is a relevant verse.......
Mark 16:9 (King James Version)
Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils.

What would you expect from a woman with seven devils?
Would you be surprised if she was a crazy woman? Delusional? A first class nut?
It really isn't so surprising that there are so many differences in the reports of the four Gospel writers when you realize that they have all gotten their information from Mary Magdalene, a woman with a track record of poor mental health.

It's impossible to make a case for Jesus' resurrection based on the testimony of a woman who is not credible.

Stuart Shepherd