aa5874

Fundamentalists and some Christians use those very same SET of Criteria to PROVE Jesus was RAISED from the dead.

But, Bart Ehrman's set of criteria has BACKFIRED. They can be used to show Jesus was probably a MYTH.

1. Virtually Every Gospel writer, and Church writer claimed Jesus was RAISED from the dead.

2. If Jesus was human and known to be human and the Jesus story tellers were truthful then there would have been NO attestation of a PHYSICAL resurrection

3.It is MULTIPLE-ATTESTED or there are multiple claims that Jesus was PHYSICALLY raised from the dead.

4. Jesus of the NT was probably only BELIEVED to have existed .

Doug Shaver

The hypothesis that the gospels record what Christians (or some Christians) believed, at the time they were written, about the origins of their religion practically presupposes Jesus' historicity.

ApostateAbe

Huh, weird.

hjalti

I'm sorry if I'm getting way off topic, but I don't have any idea why Ehrman thinks we can have "complete certainty" that some of the disciples themselves preached the story about the women and the empty tomb.

All I can see in the discussion in Ehrman's book. is that Paul doesn't seem to know about it. I would add that in the oldest source that mentions the story, it seems to indicate that the disciples didn't hear about it. We only hear about the disciples hearing about the tomb in the later gospels. Why on earth would one even think that it's more likely than not that the disciples preached this story?

ApostateAbe

It would follow from the plausibilities that the contents of the gospels reflect early Christian beliefs, and that the early Christian beliefs originated with Jesus and his disciples (evolved from there). The gospel of Mark is the earliest gospel telling of the death of Jesus, and it does say at the very end that women discovered the empty tomb. The earliest manuscripts stop short before telling that any of the disciples found out, but it isn't about relying on the claims of the accounts so much as making the best sense of their contents, and it would be much more difficult to make sense of those beliefs of the women at the tomb if the original disciples didn't share that belief. I would not use the phrase, "complete certainty," as Ehrman does, but I am not sure exactly what is reasoning is, either. His reasoning could be either good or ill, I don't know. The book was only an introductory book on the topic for the layfolk, which I am grateful for, but it probably could have been ten times longer. A single volume might have been spent on the myths of the discovery of the missing Jesus.

Juststeve

I don't think we can know when the empty tomb was first preached other than to say that by the time the Gospel of Mark was written it was preached. From this we can deduce that by the time the Gospel of Mark was written at least some Christians believed in an empty tomb. or Mark was a deliberate liar. We can then ask, if believed, how did it come to be believed, and if deliberate liar, why?

Steve

Toto

We don't have to assume that the story is true or that Mark was a complete liar. Mark wrote a mythic, theological document and may not have intended it to be real history.

There are empty tomb stories in the popular literature of the day. Mark might just have incorporated this as part of his story line, to add a little drama.

andrewcriddle

Hi Doug

Could you expand on that please ?

Andrew Criddle

Juststeve

Toto:

I did not say that the empty tomb story was true or that Mark was a liar. I said either Mark believed the story or he was a liar. Do you recognize the difference between the proposition I asserted and the one your responded to? Mark may have believed a false story and not been a liar, or he may have presented something he did not believe as fact, in which case he was a liar.

In either event we have questions to ask. If he believed the empty tomb story how did he come to believe it? If he didn't believe it, why did he present it as fact?

Steve

Toto

Sorry, I skipped a step. I see no reason to think that Mark was passing on a story. Paul knows nothing about an empty tomb, and the empty tomb story just strikes me as having too many aspects of literary invention.

Why do you think he presented it as fact? He presented it as theologically signficant. He didn't give his sources of information, as he might have if he were writing history. The story doesn't make a lot of sense as straight history.

Even if you think there is a historical core to the gospels, the empty tomb appears to be one of those legendary embellishments.