TomboyMom

Richbee: Are you still claiming that the statement in your OP is true...that the general consensus of modern scholarship accepts the listed ten statements as established historical facts? If so, please provide some evidence that this is the case, as it is the opposite of what I have been told by others knowledgeable in this field. My understanding is that the general trend of modern scholarship accepts that there was such a person as Jesus, that he preached in the area known as modern Israel, had followers, and was executed by the Romans, and nothing else. Even this could not be called a consensus, as a significant majority believe that there is insufficient evidence to determine that Jesus ever existed.

buckshot23

Really? That is new to me.

TomboyMom

Oops, my mistake. I meant to say significant minority. The majority believe what I posted above. Now are you O.K. with it?

buckshot23

Yes.:wave: :Cheeky:

Richbee

Do you have any facts to contradict the Bible on this topic?

Richbee

I guess that might depend on your list of "scholars"?

But, that isn't really the topic here!

In conclusion:

Jewish and Roman sources both testify to an empty tomb. Matthew 28:12 13 specifically states that the chief priests invented the story that the disciples stole the body. There would be no need for this fabrication if the tomb had not been empty. Opponents of the physical Resurrection must account for this. If the tomb had not been empty, the preaching of the Apostles would not have lasted one day. All the Jewish authorities needed to do to put an end to Christianity was to produce the body of Jesus.

Along with the empty tomb is the fact that the corpse of Jesus was never found. Not one historical record from the first or second century is written attacking the factuality of the empty tomb or claiming discovery of the corpse. Tom Anderson, former president of the California Trial Lawyers Association states,

Let's assume that the written accounts of His appearances to hundreds of people are false. I want to pose a question. With an event so well publicized, don't you think that it's reasonable that one historian, one eye witness, one antagonist would record for all time that he had seen Christ's body? . . . The silence of history is deafening when it comes to the testimony against the resurrection.

Second, we have the changed lives of the Apostles. It is recorded in the Gospels that while Jesus was on trial, the Apostles deserted Him in fear. Yet 10 out of the 11 Apostles died as martyrs believing Christ rose from the dead. What accounts for their transformation into men willing to die for their message? It must have been a very compelling event to account for this.

Third, the Apostles began preaching the Resurrection in Jerusalem. This is significant since this is the very city in which Jesus was crucified. This was the most hostile city in which to preach. Furthermore, all the evidence was there for everyone to investigate. Legends take root in foreign lands or centuries after the event. Discrediting such legends is difficult since the facts are hard to verify. However, in this case the preaching occurs in the city of the event immediately after it occurred. Every possible fact could have been investigated thoroughly.

Anyone studying the Resurrection must somehow explain these three facts.


Source:: Hotlink: The Guard at the Tomb

The apostle Paul once asked King Agrippa,

[verse=Acts 26:8]“Why should any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead?”[/verse]

pharoah

What Roman sources mention an empty tomb?

This is an extremely weak argument. For it to hold any water we would first have to have good reason to believe that the author is reliable. Otherwise we could take a plunge through Greek, Roman and Norse mythology (not to mention the noncanonical Jewish and Christian writings) and see all sorts of little clever details that would make us ask "Why did the author include this detail if the event that he's describing really didn't happen?".

Speculating about Matthew's motive for writing this is largely futile. It's like speculating about how did Homer know about the converstions of various characters in the Illiad. It's just a plot device. It's my firm belief that the author of Matthew knowingly wove fictional details around the Jesus narrative that he picked up from Mark and other sources. In my opinion, the author and his community were at odds with Jewish leadership, and he, like most of the other NT writers, seized the opportunity to scatter anti-Semite invective throughout his tale.

All 6th century Xianity needed to do to put an end to Islam was to produce the body of Mohammed. All Protestants need to do now to put an end to Catholicism is to produce the body of the Virgin Mary. Christians themselves have refuted most of the claims of Mormonism, but that certainly has not slowed the growth of that religion. All we needed to do to stop the Heaven's Gate suicides was to show the followers the folly of their beliefs.

Do you see the weakness of your argument? People believe what they want to believe. Would you go the extreme of exhuming a corpse to refute someone's religious beliefs? Why in the world would you think that this was a rational notion for Jewish leaders of the 1st century? Even if they did do something so outlandish, how could they hope to convince fanatics that it was the body of Jesus?

Who ever looked for it? Assuming that he ever lived, his corpse had completely rotted away by the time the empty tomb claims started decades later. This is just a silly argument. People of ancient times had no means to identify a corpse, so why would they ever look for one?


There is no evidence that any "apostle" died a martyr death. The evidence for the existence of the 11 apostles is shaky at best.

What compelled Joseph Smith to risk his life? David Koresh? The Moslem sucide bombers? The Japanese kamikaze pilots? History is full of religious fanatics risking their lives in the service of their god(s).

What's your evidence for this other than the fictional book of Acts? And before you object to my use of the term "fictional", I would like you to give me a good reason why we should reject all of the other Christian 1st and 2nd century writings about the acts of the apostles as spurious and treat this one case as historical.

Jack the Bodiless

Richbee, why do you resort to mindless repetition whenever you lose an argument?

You aren't going to win it next time around if you just keep posting the same stuff all over again.

Dargo

It's interesting that Acts itself claims that the apostles didn't start to preach about Jesus's resurection until more than a month after the crucifiction. Even at this point, the body would have probably been difficult to recognize. Anyway didn't the Jewish law forbide digging up corpses?

Vorkosigan

Yes, and the fact that Frodo's body was never found supports the story that he was taken bodily up to the isle of the Valar.

Vorkosigan