Richbee

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Racer X

Do you realize this assertion makes the opposition's point?

Richbee

Do you have any evidence to support your POV based on empty doubt and unbelief?

Philosophical Naturalism?

Or, worse, Atheistic curmudgeon sour grapes?

Back on track.............

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.

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]

Richbee

Horse hubris.

Pony up and post any and all facts contradicting the resurrection of Jesus Christ, or sit down shut up!

Richbee

History has a long track record of idiotic Skeptics.

A Dime a Dozen, so.............


Follow along....

Curmudgeon - Date - False Premise

H.S. Reimarus: 1778 - Claimed disciples stole the body of Jesus, and made up the resurrection story

David Friedrich Strauss: 1835- - In Life of Jesus, doubted historical accuracy of gospels

Bruno Bauer: 1882 - Denied that Jesus actually lived

William Wrede: 1901 -- In Messianic Secret, claimed that the evangelists had put words in the mouth of Jesus to make theological points

Albert Schweitzer: 1906 - In The Quest of the Historical Jesus, denies that Jesus was the Messiah

Religions-geschichtliche Schule: c. 1900 -- Drew parallels between Christianity and other religious sects in the Mideast

K.L. Schmidt: 1919 - Claims details of time and place in the Gospels are fabricated

Elizabeth Clare Prophet: 1984 -- In Lost Years of Jesus, pictures Jesus as a mystic traveling in India for 17 years.



A Theosophist!

Michael Bagent, Henry Lincoln: 1982 - In Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Jesus as the husband of Mary Magdalene

G.A. Wells: 1971, 1975, 1982 -- In three different books, questions whether Jesus ever existed

John Dominic Crossan - Jesus Seminar: 1993 - Panel members voted on which words of Jesus are "accurate"; The Five Gospels claim that only 18% of the words attributed to Jesus are verifiable

Gardner, Laurence: 1996 - - In Bloodline of the Holy Grail, Jesus as 1) husband of Mary Magdalene 2) an Essene teacher 3) brother of Joseph of Arimathea

Interestingly enough, though, modern archaeology, and ancient history do verify much of the historical panoply of the Gospels.

Why study the historical Jesus? - A Lesson for the so called "skeptics". - Click HERE

Kosh

More of the same old tired apologetics which have been discussed to death and proven ridiculous in many threads here.

Suggest you do a little reviewing of the archives.

Racer X

Fact: People don't rise from the dead, regardless of what superstitious, ignorant goatherders from 2,000 years ago may have alleged or believed.

Back to you.

Vorkosigan

\

Is this post meant as parody? It certainly doesn't make sense as a serious post......

Vorkosigan

The Bishop

Onto a different argument.
On the contrary, people so automatically know that life expectancy was shorter, that they mistakenly extend that to the entire population. Yes, life expectancy was certainly less than 60 in the first century. That doesn't alter the fact that there were always a few people who lived into their eighties and nineties.

I know this has been done to death, but what we have here is one person arguing a minority position, and has to denigrate all the other scholars in order to emphasise the point that he's right and everybody else is wrong. This problem arises to this day in scientific and pseudo-scientific circles - mainly people who wish to argue against Einstein. It does no good to pay any attention to these people. Doubly so for anyone whose opinion was formed as long ago as that. Learning and scholarship - religious and secular - has come a long, long way since then. Triply so for someone who patently lets his Christian beliefs outweigh everything else. That same point goes for Thomas Arnold and Simon Greenleaf as well.

Not certain that you'd get much support from Protestant Evangelicals today, many of whom use G.John almost exclusively.

I followed the link in the Christian Courier site which provided these arguments. They all presuppose that Matthew really was the Apostle and tax collector, and G. John was written by John. The actual substance of what they wrote is what mitigates against these being the people that doctrine claims them to be (and certainly nothing in Scripture does). G. John in particular is a great work of philosophy and theology that does not sit easily with the concept of being the work of any of the simple fishermen who were Jesus's immediate coterie. It is the overtly philosophical nature of John that prohibits it being taken seriously as a historical source, although in certain respects it contains certain items that might indicate a closer acquaintance with the events than the Synoptics. It's possible that John is the only reliable witness, and simultaneously was written by a philosophical genius. But it's not terribly likely, I'm afraid.

Here's a mystifying extract from the Christian Courier article from which Richbee got his previous quote:
Wh-what? I don't get it. Are they witnesses, or aren't they witnesses?? This guy needs to get his own story straight, let alone the Resurrection story...! When criticising "Mr Matthews" does he mean "St. Matthew", I wonder...


With all due respect, that is all that any of us are doing! The fact that the writer is a Christian Apologist is the crucial point, not that he's examining the writings of two ancients 1800 years later! Otherwise we wouldn't be here!!
We're getting into a real muddle here. Anduin is trying to impose a real eclipse in Matthew's lifetime in order for him to have written about one in his Gospel account, whereas Jack is somehow trying to imply that Matthew was unreliable because the eclipse didn't happen for the duration or at the time of year that was supposed to occur at the time of the crucifixion. I'm afraid that my stunned conclusion from the discovery that there really was an eclipse over Palestine in 29 CE(!) is that evidently Matthew derived at least some of what he wrote from eyewitness accounts! I personally am as loth as anyone to admit this, because Matthew is so often patently full of bullshit (viz the Night of the Living Dead scenario painted at that exact point in the story, plus the virgin birth, wise men and escape to Egypt story, plus the outright lie about "Thus it was said, he shall be called a Nazarene").

But the eclipse is significant. That Jesus-people conflated two different things - a very notable astronomical event and, in the same year (independently attested by Luke, please note), the crucifixion of Jesus - is not that surprising. Neither is the discrepancy of months or the duration of it. This is actual evidence for reliability, not unreliability.:frown:

Jack the Bodiless

Richbee, Simon Greenleaf was blown apart on this thread: The Gospels put on TRIAL....
I have seen MUSLIMS use this argument as PROOF of the Koran.

Mohammed couldn't read or write. Therefore he couldn't have just made it up, because he couldn't have written it down. Gabriel must have guided his hand.

However, your inability to provide any evidence contradicting what the Koran actually says is noted. Will you become a Muslim now?
Typically fuzzy thinking. Supposedly, everyone present saw Christ's body: on the cross. Presumably it would have remained visible until it was disposed of. But when the stories of his resurrection started circulating (after an unknown period of time, quite possibly years)... no recogznizable "body" could be produced.
This is PART OF THE STORY.

Why would Frodo Baggins and Sam Gamgee travel all the way to Mordor, at great hardship, if they were NOT carrying the One Ring to Mount Doom? Obviously, the One Ring must have existed, therefore Lord of the Rings is a true account!