Furiae

Presumably someone has made this point before, but I just had the thought, and I wonder what others think of it.

Apologists often make an argument related to the events of the resurrection being (reasonably) accurate eyewitness accounts - at least partly because these stories would have been easily contradicted by people who lived through them and would have seen the gospels themselves, and interacted with the Christian communities that believed these things - ie. Peter, James.

Now, I was recently reading an argument (Habermas & Licona) that James' (brother of Jesus) conversion is an argument for the truth of the resurrection because he had been skeptical before Jesus' death.

Besides the other problems with this argument, it brought another issue to my mind in connection with the idea that there would be a correction of false stories by people who knew better. It is widely believed, even amongst apologists, that the birth stories are not true. This, after all, could be the only explanation for why Jesus' family (including James) were so skeptical.

And yet, we witness the entrance of the birth stories into the gospels in much the same way we see the growth of the resurrection stories. If it is the case that someone like James would have contradicted the resurrection stories that were simply not true - why didn't James, or anyone else contradict the birth story narratives (and really, all the disciples would have know they were not true)?

My point is that this line of 'evidence' for the reliability of the resurrection is not any better than that for the birth stories, which are widely regarded as not plausible.

Thoughts?

Sheshbazzar

Thought. If the story fully takes shape, and is put into writing to be circulated a hundred or more years after the date of the alleged events, there will be no one left ('James' included) to validly contradict any of its claims.
And many already predisposed to believe and recite the old claims, would readily accept and honestly believe them as being the gospel truth.
These people lived in a world of myth, one populated by spirits, angels, and demons;
One where the existence of an actively intervening angry God was an unquestionable paradigm.
Skeptical analysis and critical thinking skills were not the order of the day, fearful superstition and gullible credulity were.

aspronot

The thing that I would ask myself is when did the birth/resurrection stories first appear and how does that correlate with the life spans of James and the other disciples? Were these (alleged) players around to dispute whoever authored the various gospels?

gMark barely has a resurrection story as such (it stops at the empty tomb) and it is widely accepted as being the first gospel. James's death has been dated to 62CE, before gMark according to sources. That might be the answer to the above question.

Of course the same situation applies with the Jesus genealogy stories. I can only assume the latter are less accepted because of their very contradictory telling between the gospels (more so than the resurrection).

aspronot

Let's also not forget what the gospels were for - literally spreading the good news. You would have to assume that the authors would not be including material which detracted from their proselytizing. It would be counter productive.

Toto

Maybe a little off topic, but -
One problem with this, of course, is that we have no record of James' conversion. We have a parable in Mark about Jesus' family, including his brother James, thinking that Jesus was crazy. Then we have a separate tradition of the existence of a leader of the early church named James, identified as the Brother of the Lord. Then we have later Christians who tried to make sense of all of this by filling in the gaps, and concluding that James initially thought that Jesus was crazy, but then after the Resurrection, was converted to a believer. We have no good reason to think that these elements are part of a coherent story, that James was a biological brother of Jesus, or that the parable in Mark is based on history.

I think that's it.

There is no reason to think that the gospels contain eyewitness accounts, or that there was a Roman Skeptical Society that would have fact checked any claims about Jesus.

couch_sloth

Assuming for the moment that some sort of historical Jesus existed...
I don't think we can postulate that the people who lived in an around Jesus would have contradicted the gospel stories of resurrection and miraculous birth of Jesus (if these stories were false), because we can't even say when those stories came about and when they became commonly believed.
We don't know what they actually said and believed about Jesus back then.
For example, When did the story about Jesus's empty tomb start? (e.g. Around the time Mark was written?). Did a lot of Jesus's closest followers just give up after his death? Did some of Jesus's followers believed that Jesus was still appearing to them after his death, i.e. they were having visions of Jesus (and this later morphed into the idea of a physical resurrection)?
We simply don't know.

Given the scenario you've posted I wonder if James grew up hearing that Jesus was literally God's son?

Sheshbazzar

In 1st century Jewish society? not very damn likely.

Furiae

I suppose there is the difference that some kind of resurrection was believed in from the beginning (or near the beginning), whereas the birth stories appear newly formed much later. But this argument still makes it seem that the resurrection stories themselves are just as suspect as the birth stories

Sheshbazzar

From head to tail, all of it is suspect. But there are solid and natural sociological reasons behind the development of the story.

aa5874

There is WRITTEN EVIDENCE from Origen that people of antiquity did NOT believe the miraculous birth of Jesus.

"Against Celsus"1.32
There is written evidence people of antiquity would NOT BELIEVE the resurrection story.

The Jews, the Pharisees, the Saducees and Essenes did NOT believe a man could resurrect in three days.

See Wars of Jews, and Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus.