Steven Carr

CARR


Of course,not a single Christian in the first century put his name to a document saying he had even heard of Thomas, but Wright can be 'sure' that Matthew 28:17 is not pure fiction, as he has this scientific methodology , which lets him know that every story in the Gospels is true.

How many documents should the Bush administration have written about their planning of 9/11?

Don't tell me.The Bush administration covered it up.

Happily, some people know what went on in the Bush administration and knew there had been a cover up. They can tell us about the meetings in the Bush administration where this had all been planned.

Just like the author of Matthew knew the Jewish administration had covered up the resurrection, and told us about the secret meetings where this had happened.

What could they doubt? I thought these people had been transformed by the resurrection.

And why does virtually the entire cast of Gosepel characters disappear from Acts and from *Christian* letters, in much the same way that the second gunman disappeared from history after he shot JFK, or the way that the aliens disappeared after landing at Roswell?

squiz

As a non-believer, it is tempting to reject him as a scholar based solely on his status as a bishop, nevertheless, he has some impressive academic credentials. I am in a discussion with a seminary student, who recommends that I read Wright. I cannot (nor do I want to) reject what he says because it doesn't fit into my preconceived ideas, which might very well come from popular level books, compared to the thorough scholarship that I am told Wright apparently represents. From what I have read, his conclusion regarding the resurrection seems ridiculous, but apparently he bases it all on sound scholarship.

Steven Carr

So Jesus left the tomb with one body on top of another, the way you would put one house on top of another, or the way people change jackets by having ''a new and larger suit of clothes to be put on over the existing ones'?


What 'sound scholarship' does Wright give for the fact that even the Christian converts in Corinth were apparently mocking the idea that their god would choose to raise corpses?

Toto

This sounds like a comment on "sound scholarship" in the NT world, does it not?

I gather that a lot of scholars would pay some respect to, or at least take seriously, Wright's intermediate conclusions and his analysis of the texts. But going from there to the conclusion that the Resurrection actually happened in real time history is a leap of faith, at least.

I don't know of a single response to Wright, but you can check out this debate, where Jake O'Connell appears to rely on Wright, and Richard Carrier opposes his ideas.

But you can read Wright for yourself. He is a theologian, preaching a sermon. He constructs vast edifices of inspiring rhetoric that seem to be meant to lull the church goer in the pew into sleepy acquiesence. But if he reaches a ridiculous conclusion, what does that tell you?

squiz

I am especially interested in the claims that the gospel accounts can be taken seriously as historical sources. In another thread on this board, it is mentioned that Ehrman seems to think that they can. William Lane Craig constantly states that the majority of scholars agree with this.

Steven Carr

So the majority of sources think that if an anonymous author claims the fetus John the Baptist leapt for joy in the womb when the fetus Jesus entered the room, then this can be taken seriously as an historical source?

Incidentally, the anonymous author of Luke/Acts goes out of his way to show the family relationship between John the Baptist and Jesus, yet airbrushes out of history all hints that the church leader James had ever had any connection at all with Jesus.

Toto

Craig likes to pull sleights of hand like this. The majority of "scholars" think that there is some historical basis to the gospels, but this ranges from evangelicals who think the gospels were newspaper reports to the Jesus Seminar members who think that a small amount of history can be extracted from the gospels. But most of these scholars are not historians and have no training in history.

Steven Carr

Incidentally, Wright thinks we should read Homer and Herodotus to find out what the background culture of what those non-Jews thought before converting to Christianity, although everybody knows that finding parallels between Christianity and Greek thought is 'parallelomania'

On page 180 Wright can find allusions to Euripides in Josephus Wars of the Jews.


Luke also seems to have based some of Acts on classical Greek literature, especially Euripides' Bacchae. In Acts 26:12, Luke says that Paul heard Jesus say , in Aramaic or Hebrew, 'It is hard for you to kick against the pricks'. 'Kick against the pricks' (laktizo pros kentron) was a well known Greek saying, which first seems to appear in line 790 of Euripides' Bacchae.

In Euripides' Bacchae, line 447, we read the following 'Of their own accord (autamato), the chains were loosed from their feet and keys opened the doors (thura) without human hand.' In Acts 10:12, we read how doors opened for Peter of their own accord (automatos) and in Acts 16:26, we read how an earthquake loosed the chains from everybody and all the doors opened by themselves.

Did an earthquake really loose a chain from a prisoner, not a noted result of seismic activity? Or did Luke base his account of Peter and Paul's escapes on Euripides' play about the persecuted followers of a persecuted and misunderstood deity, the son of Zeus and a young , mortal woman?


Just out of curiosity, Euripides play 'Alcestis' is about a person who dies voluntarily in the place of another and then conquers death by being raised from the dead by a god. This is speculative, but perhaps 'Alcestis' is what first drew Euripides to Luke's attention.

None of this is mentioned by Wright, who can easily find references to Euripides in non-Christian work, but will ignore blatant references in the New Testament.

Because his readers just don't want to know about the closeness of Acts to works of Greek fiction. So Wright either leaves it all out or totally downplays any connection.

renassault

It's more likely to be authentic than not due to the reasoning given above. This type of methodology is used to prove/disprove any narrative when there aren't enough sources.

Not sure what your point is, but my point was that we can't expect to have many Christian writings from the first century.

Christians were there, including Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and who knows who else.

It could be anything; speaking strictly from form criticism, it could have been doubting some early Church doctrine (made in the 30-50 period), or something else, though I don't believe that's the case.

In the epistles they don't have much of a role since the epistles were written probably very far from where Mary Magdalene, etc., lived (if they were alive) and are not biographies of who knows who. As for Acts, the same applies; they obviously didn't have a large enough role for the author to mention them, who isn't writing an encyclopedia of Christianity 30-62, but is talking about the Spirit's working power. Acts mentions all significant people mentioned in the epistles with the exception of Titus.

Steven Carr

'Christians were there, including Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and who knows who else.'

How come no 1st century Christian put his name to a document saying he had ever heard of them? I thought Lazarus was famous? Nobody heard of him....

And these Christians found out about these secret meetings just like people were there to hear about the Bush administration talk about planning 9/11?

And all those people were there to tell the Gospel authors, like Luke, who never mentions them from Acts 2 onwards because they did not have a large enough role for the author to mention them.


Acts, of course, mentions all the people in the epistles, almost none of whom are Gospel characters. I guess that group of people took over Christianity , relegating the Gospel characters to meaningless roles, and the people in the Epistles vowed never to mention anybody like Judas, Thomas, Joseph of Arimathea, Mary Magdalene, Nicodemus, Joanna, Salome etc etc.

That all makes sense.

Virtually all the Gospel characters disappear as soon as there is a public church, just as quickly as the Angel Moroni and the Golden Plates vanish from Mormonism.

While, of course, remaining unnoticed in the background to supply eyewitness information about all these Gospel events.

And meanwhile the government is engaged in a cover up, just like there was a government cover up of who really shot Kennedy, who really planned 9/11, what really did happen at Roswell etc etc

Christianity is nothing more than a bizarre conspiracy theory, featuring government cover ups, people whose existence cannot be traced, extraordinary events that are unbelievable, anonymous friend of a friend writings that cannot be traced to people who were there.

Why do people give it any more credence than similar conspiracy theories like the Bush administration planning 9/11?