OLDMAN

And what is with the Romans placing guards at the tomb? Unless they suspected the body would be removed. Can you imagine a more boring job of guarding a dead guy? I'd be asleep in twenty minutes, and who gives a flute if they take the body? Ahhhh..but then the story plays out just as needed. But obviously, a story.

Johnny Skeptic

If Jesus had not made any personal appearances, how useful would the empty tomb argument have been? Obviously, not very useful. That proves that the empty tomb argument is useless for Christians without "prior" evidence that Jesus made some personal appearances. The Resurrection implies an empty burial location, but an empty burial location does not imply the Resurrection. Even Peter and Mary Magdalene were not convinced by the empty tomb. Thus, the Roman government in Palestine and the Pharisees would not have been convinced either. Surely almost everyone would have concluded that however unlikely it was that the body was stolen or moved, it would have been much more unlikely that Jesus rose from the dead.

aa5874

But according to the author of gJohn, the burial of Jesus was in accordance with Jewish tradition.

Joh 19:40 - But, Paul was aware of gLuke according to an apologetic source and the empty tomb resurrection tale is in gLuke. And the Pauline writers claimed many times that Jesus was buried and raised from the dead.

Now, Paul did not even claim to be the first to write or preach the JESUS CHRIST resurrection story.

Ga 1:23 -

OLDMAN

In the New Testament, Jesus appears to hundreds more than once, and according to the gospel if more than three believers gather and call to him he will appear. Shouldn't be hard to prove his existence then, should it?

mountainman

But maybe he had one of those "disappearing" rings in his pocketses like the modern case of Bilbo Baggins and the ancient case of the two specially resurrected scribes "Lucius and Karinus" - the "authors" of the heretical "Acts of Pilate" (who write identical books and then disappear in the midst of the party).

rhutchin

No grounds for not assuming it.

Paul says to them, "Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ...." (1 Corinth 1:12)

From this, we ought to conclude some familiarity of the people with Paul, Apollos and Peter and that which each of these men preached (otherwise, on what basis do they align with any of them). By the time Paul writes his letter to the Corinthian church, there is no reason to think that they are not completely familiar with the life of Christ and the manner of His death, burial and resurrection.

rhutchin

OK. What method(s) do you propose we (or anyone) be able to use to introduce facts into evidence?

show_no_mercy

You still don't seem to get it. You are still introducing later written gospel material into Paul's letters. What -- in Paul's letters (or any 1st century Christian epistle like James, Jude, 1 Peter, 1,2,3 John) -- makes you think that Cephas or Apollos were "familiar with the life of Christ and the manner of His death, burial"? What -- in Paul's letters (or any 1st century Christian epistle like James, Jude, 1 Peter, 1,2,3 John) -- makes you think that his Christ had any "disciples"?

Johnny Skeptic

Any methods that offer more evidence than Christians have would be an improvement.

An excellent improvement would be eyewitness testimonies from Jesus' critics who saw him perform miracles, but there aren't any. All evidence that Jesus performed miracles is from biased sources who were promoting religous progaganda.

The book of John is not of any value to Christians since it was written in the second century. It is well-known that Matthew and Luke borrowed a good deal from Mark. No one knows where Mark's sources got their information from. Mark does not claim to be an eyewitness, and neither does Matthew or Luke.

Regarding the global flood, I propose that people who are experts in geology, which is less than 1% of the people in the world, evaluate the evidence based upon what they know about geology. The vast majority of geologists, including a lot of Christian geologists, have concluded that a global flood did not occur. Regarding people who are not experts in geology, I suggest that they accept the opinions of the vast majority of geologists unless they have good reasons for accepting the opinions of very small minority of geologists who believe that a global flood occured, most or all of whom are inerrantists. There are not any good reasons for anyone to be an inerrantist.

According to an article at http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_publi.htm, over 99% of American scientists who deal with the earth and its lifeforms accept naturalistic or theistic evolution, and some of the most likely people to accept creationism are female, do not have a high school diploma, and make less than $20,000 a year.

As far as supernatural events are concerned, the ballgame changes since more evidence is required for supernatural events than for natural events.

Johnny Skeptic

Apparently, not many people believed Paul's claims during the first century. In "The Rise of Christianity," Rodney Stark estimates that there were only 7,530 Christians in the entire word in 100 A.D. In Christian apologist James Holding's article "The Impossible Faith," Holding quotes well-known Christian Bible scholar N.T. Wright as saying "This subversive belief in Jesus' Lordship, over against that of Caesar, was held in the teeth of the fact that Caesar had demonstrated his superior power in the obvious way, by having Jesus crucified. But the truly extraordinary thing is that this belief was held by a tiny group who, for the first two or three generations at least, could hardly have mounted a riot in a village, let alone a revolution in an empire."

A Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Apostle says "around 50-52, Paul spent 18 months in Corinth." If Rodney Stark, his many sources in "The Rise of Christianity," and N.T. Wright are correct about the very small size of the Christian church in the first century, the Christian church in Corinth in 50 A.D. must have consisted of only a few dozen or a few hundred people.

What means did the Corinthians have to check out Paul's claims?

Consider the following Scriptures:

How can anyone be reasonably certain when that passage was written, and who wrote it?