Johnny Skeptic

The supposed post-Resurrection appearances of Jesus are arguably the most important claims of the Resurrection story, and possibly the most important claims in the entire Bible. In Lee Strobel's 'The Case For Christ,' William Lane Craig mentions "multiple, independent attestions," but are they really independent? The Britannica 2002 Deluxe Edition says that the gospel of Mark “is attributed to John Mark (Acts 12:12; 15:37), an associate of Paul and a disciple of Peter, whose teachings the Gospel may reflect. It is the shortest and the earliest of the four Gospels, presumably written during the decade preceding the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. Most scholars agree that it was used by Matthew and Luke in composing their accounts; more than 90 percent of the content of Mark's Gospel appears in Matthew's, and more than 50 percent in the Gospel of Luke.�

The anonymous Gospel writers always wrote in the third person. None of them ever claimed to have seen the risen Jesus. They did not reveal who their sources were, and their sources could easily have been third hand or fourth hand.

Some Christians claim that details concerning the Resurrection began to circulate soon after the death of Jesus, but the claim is mere speculation. Richard Carrier told me “Craig argues that the Markan empty tomb story predates Mark based on incredibly specious reasoning not accepted by objective experts in the field. His argument is entirely rooted in the presumption that the story is not theologically adorned and that it contains semitisms (i.e. Greek phrases that indicate an underlying Hebrew text or speaker). But the latter evidence is useless, because such semitisms are used even by Luke and others, and so do not indicate date--semitic speakers of Greek were still around and still members of Christian communities for hundreds of years, and so the fact that Mark was writing like a Hebrew tells us nothing about when he wrote. Also, the key Hebraicism that Craig claims to find comes verbatim from the Septuagint, and therefore is not from any pre-Markan empty tomb 'source.' In short, Craig's argument that the empty tomb story predates 37 AD is absurd.

Noted skeptic scholar Dr. Robert Price told me “There is simply no way to know what rumors or reports were circulating ‘soon’ after the death of Jesus. All ‘arguments’ that these were ‘early traditions’ are simply gratuitous and circular. Sheer surmise, taking for granted the very picture of Christian origins they seek to prove.

"The astonishing absence from the gospels of anything remotely like the appearance to the 500 is fatal for the early date of this tale! Surely such a ‘report’ would be well-known (by definition, if it began with half a thousand people!). Needless to say, there is no reference to it until a variant reading in a copy of the Acts of Pilate/Gospel of Nicodemus from the 4th century!�

As Dr. Price suggests, the possibilities that Paul did not make the claim of the 500 eyewitnesses himself and that the claim may have first been made centuries later cannot logically be ruled out. In 1 Corinthains Paul says that Jesus appeared to James, but typical of New Testament writers Paul does not reveal lhis source, which very well might not have been James.

There are other claimed appearances, but the point is that we need some credible, detailed, 1st century, non-Biblical corroboration, but we don't have any.

In Rodney Stark's 'The Rise of Christianity,' he estimates that there were 7,530 Christians in 100 A.D., or in my own words only about the size of several good size high schools. In chapter 1, Stark tells how he arrived at his statistical model. He estimates the size of the early Christian Church at various time periods. As usual, Stark mentions a lot of corroborative sources regarding his statistical model in chapter 1, and regarding the rest of the book as well. His bibliography in 'The Rise of Christianity' is 20 pages long.

If Stark's estimate of 7,530 Christians in 100 A.D. is anywhere near being accurate, then the "many thousands" of Christians mentioned in the book of Acts is a lie. The claim of many thousands of Christians soon after the death of Jesus, if true, would indicate tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of Christians by 100 A.D. I debated Stark's estimate for over two years at the Theology Web with James Holding and some other Christians. I finally got Holding in trouble as follows, but the Theology Web refused to post my reply and banned me on trumped up charges:

Johnny: Do you still claim that 1 Christian per 5,000 people is miraculous? You are actually pretty close to agreeing with Rodney Stark’s estimate of 7,530 Christians in 100 A.D. You conveniently did not respond.

Holding: Sorry, Johnny, but I did already; you just didn't like it. But you say I'm close to Stark? So what? It doesn't affect my point one bit.

Johnny: It most certainly does. You said that in 70 A.D. there were from 100,000 - 250,000 Christians in the Roman Empire in 70 A.D., and that there had to be that many Christians in order to get the Romans' attention. Now you contradict yourself with "But you say I'm close to Stark? So what? It doesn't affect my point one bit." You said that even 1 Christian per 5,000 people would have been miraculous. That would be 10,000 Christians per 50 million people. Some time ago you said that Stark picked his numbers out of a hat, and on another occasion you said that Stark massaged the numbers, but now you are saying "But you say I'm close to Stark? So what? It doesn't affect my point one bit." If you don't mind agreeing with Stark, then there is no doubt whatsoever that by 70 A.D., the vast majority of people had flatly rejected New Testament claims of miracles, including the resurrection of Jesus. If there were no miracles and no Resurrection, then it is to be expected that the Christian Church could not have begun to grow more rapidly until after the deaths of the supposed still living eyewitnesses, which would have been late in the first century. End of quotes.

I would like to ask Christians what in their opinions are the minimum number of claimed eyewitnesses that it takes to make a good case for the Resurrection. What if Paul had claimed 25 eyewitnesses, or even fewer? It is interesting to note that in modern court trials, it is often difficult to reliably ascertain what happened just weeks before, sometimes even with the testimonies of supposed eyewitnesses, let alone reliably ascertain what happened thousands of years ago.

gregor2

Welcome to the forum.

Your post is a bit of a ramble. Is the point to ask how many Xians there were in 100 CE? Or how many followers a resurrected Christ appeared to? Or whether others have opinions about Turkel?

I think most here would share your skeptical tendencies, however.

andrewcriddle

Stark's figure of less than 10,000 Christians in AD 100 is based on a constant percentage rate of increase from the beginning of Christianity c 30-35 CE to the great persecution c 300 CE.

ie Stark has the number of Christians rise by a factor of a 100-200 between 100 CE and 250 CE which is IMO much too large.

IMO Christianity grew rapidly in percentage terms up to the start of widespread official persecution c 100 CE and rapidly during the lull in persecution in the later part of the 3rd century, but more slowly in the intervening period.

IMHO I would estimate 40,000 Christians at around 100 CE.

(See chapter 3 of 'The First Christian Centuries' by McKechnie for a discussion.)

Andrew Criddle

Killer Mike

Think of it this way: what about all those "eyewitnesses" who have seen superman in superman stories? This is the most compelling argument that superman is "real"

Steven Carr

How many of those were ex-Christians?

I do like McKechnies claim that when Suetonious was talking about Jews being expelled from Rome, he was actually talking about Christians.

That is the sort of evidence about the spread of Christianity which is really convincing.

Almost as convincing as his claim that the 3,000 converted at Pentecost might be reliable.

One thing is clear. Christianity only took off when Jesus stopped preaching to the masses.

Johnny Skeptic

Andrew Criddle wrote:

IMHO I would estimate 40,000 Christians at around 100 CE.

Johnny: Even if that was true, Christians would be no better off than Rodney Stark's estimate of 7,530 Christians in 100 A.D. If Jesus did not rise from the dead, then the growth that eventually accounted for a possible 40,000 Christians in 100 A.D. would most likely not have begun to increase more rapidly until after the supposed still living eyewitnesses were dead, which would have been late in the 1st century. Until then, people would have said "Hey, we were there, and we didn't see any risen Jesus." What we need to know the most is how many Christians there were in 40 A.D. and 50 A.D. The book of Acts claims "many thousands" of Christians not long after the death of Jesus. Since Christians cannot provide any corroborative external evidence at all for the claim, it cannot logically be ruled out that possibly there were only a few hundred Christians in 40 A.D., or embarrasing for Christians less Christians in total than Paul's 500 eyewitnesses, fairly calling into question the claim of the Resurrection itself.

Toto

Acts 1:15 states that there were 120 believers after Jesus ascended to Heaven, presumably in 33 CE. (A seeming contradiction to those 500 bretheren.)

Clivedurdle

Ellegard argues that Paul's descriptions of church hierarchies and the existence of ancient hymns point to a much older and maturer church than ten to twenty years before Paul!

I agree with this. I would definitely ask questions about a teacher of righteousness and Essenes.

A reasonable estimate of number of xians may be possibly found by asking how many Jews and how many recognised sects were there, including gnostics etc, but I think it is almost certain there were xians before Jesus is alleged to have lived!

Steven Carr

Luke clearly wants to picture the start of Christianity as only 120 believers in Jerusalem, hence his cutting any reference to Galilee after the resurrection.

And whether it was Josephus or Eusebius who said that the tribe of Christians was not extinct, it would be a strange thing to write if Christians were multiplying in droves by 93 AD.

andrewcriddle

Suetonius says 'He [Claudius] expelled from Rome the Jews who were constantly stirring up a tumult under the leadership of Chrestus.'

McKechnie's belief that this was really a dispute among Jews about the claims of Christ is plausible although far from certain.

(If we accept Acts as reasonably reliable history then the Christian evangelists Aquila and Priscilla were among those expelled from Rome at the time. see Acts 18:1-2.)

Andrew Criddle