Johnny Skeptic

I ask readers for their opinions regarding how important the claim of the 500 eyewitnesses is to the claim that Jesus rose from the dead.

Unaffiliated

It is completely irrelevant. There is simply one passage that says there were 500 witnesses, nothing to corroborate the claim. It is from a completely unreliable source (the bible). It is no different from saying 500 people saw my grandfather rose from the dead, with no interviews from the witnesses, or even their names it is meaningless.

Dean Anderson

Apologists are fond of claiming that this is good evidence - because 500 eyewitnesses can't all be wrong.

However, we don't have 500 eyewitness accounts. We have one account telling us that there were 500 eyewitnesses.

And that one account is not reliable.

Hawkeye

The 500 eyewitnesses are a somewhat unreliable source. There are no eyewitness accounts on Jesus raising from the dead. The entire point of having eyewitnesses is to be able to ask them about the event directly or read some account they've given. Otherwise you don't have much use of them.

Chris Weimer

There were no 500 eyewitness accounts. If anyone tells you that there were, ask them to show you all 500 accounts.

chapka

They're significantly less credible than the eleven witnesses to the authenticity of the Book of Mormon, who we at least have names for.

So if you're willing to accept the historicity of Jesus from the account of the 500 witnesses, then you pretty much have to go Mormon for consistency's sake.

Anat

Let's not forget 600,000 eyewitnesses (women don't count) claimed for the revelation at Sinai! The only problem is that anyone can write a single account and claim any number of witnesses as s/he pleases.

andrewcriddle

Since Paul claims that most of the 'over 500' are still alive he is claiming that there are say 300 witnesses still alive at the time 1 Corinthians was written, circa 55 CE.

This is a rather different sort of claim than a claim that there were at the time very large numbers of witnesses but they are all long dead.

Andrew Criddle

chapka

It may be different in the abstract, but how different is it, in practical terms, to the people in Corinth, when the "eyewitnesses" were presumably far away in Jerusalem?

andrewcriddle

From Paul's letters to the Corinthians there appear to have been significant numbers of Christian evangelists with varying views visiting the church at Corinth. Paul regarded them as potentially a disruptive influence.

One was Peter/Cephas who Paul clearly regarded as being a witness to the resurrection. Some of the other unmamed preachers may well also have claimed to have encountered the risen Christ. (The fact that Paul calls them 'apostles' which for Paul seems to mean a witness to the resurrection would support this.)

Paul's vulnerability in Corinth to other preachers with somewhat different messages, generally suggests that Paul was not the only evangelist in Corinth claiming to have seen the risen Christ. Paul never uses his resurrection experience as a basis for claiming a greater authority than his rivals at Corinth which suggests the same thing.

Andrew Criddle