John Kesler

At best it could be said that the apostles died for the belief that Jesus was resurrected, as you admit later when you say, emphasis mine:

So the question is if it is more likely that a man who was dead for "three" days and nights really rose from the dead, contrary to biology and empirical knowledge, or if is more likely that the apostles had a vision, saw someone whom they thought was Jesus, or in some other way were mistaken in their belief that Jesus rose from the dead.

John Kesler

Paul may also have had in mind Hosea 6:1-2:

Regardless of what scripture(s) Paul had in mind, none of the passages actually predicted that Jesus of Nazareth would be killed and resurrected. Rather, NT authors practiced a form of eisegesis popular at the time, midrash, which, while certainly their right to do so, doesn't change original authorial intent.

Diogenes the Cynic

Yes, his creative interpretations of scripture were part of his hallucinations. We agree.
What does that have to do with his "gospel."
His gospel is described in 1 Corinthians thusly:

1 Cor 15:1:Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand:
2: By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.
3: For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures,
4: that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures,
5: and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve
6: After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.
7: After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles.
8: And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.

.
The passage above is what Paul calls his gospel and represents everything he claims was revealed to him by Jesus. Remember, he was preaching all this before he ever met the Pillars and he also claims that he learned none of his gospel from any man, nor was he taught it.
In other words, your assertion is based on nothing? You claimed that the Pharisees took a stance in the first few decades that the body had been stolen. That claim is found only in GMatt (arguably the most shameless fabulist of all the evangelists). Am I to understand that you are saying that you are basing your own claim for this on "silence" and then "corroborating" it with GMatt?

Incidentally, by c. 85 CE. the Jewish leadership DID condemn the Pauline movement as heresy and expelled them from the synagogues. That was right around the time when the claims for a physical resurrection of Jesus first made their appearance in Christian literature. The Jewish leadership was simply not aware of such a claim for many decades because it most likely didn't exist yet. There was no empty tomb until GMark (70 CE or later) and there was no physical resurrection until Matthew (80's CE). Why would you expect the Pharisees to respond to a story that didn't exist yet?
Paul was nothing if not grandiose.
1.Paul doesn't say what it was on account of. We don't even know if he was telling the truth.
2. Silence as to what? What does Paul getting lashed have to do with confirming your assertion that the Pharisees claimed the body had been stolen? How do you get that assertion from Paul claiming he had been lashed? How do you get it from silence? What would you expect to see refuted by the Jews and where would you expect to see it? What did Paul even mean by the "jews?" Pharisees? The Sanhedrin? Mobs of peasants?
No, Matthew is the source of that conjecture.
You are assuming that anyone made a claim for an empty tomb before Mark. There is no evidence that anyone did. Paul certainly did not.
There WAS no claim for an empty tomb, hence nothing to explain.

ynquirer

He had good reason to be so: he put into motion the biggest religion on earth, and one that for the first time was in tone with the modern notion that all men, both Jews and Gentiles, were equal before God – which is a necessary intellectual step to admit that they are equal before their own judgment.

No, it’s not. It is based on Paul’s claim that Jesus was buried (1 Cor 15:4), which is quite independent from the claim that there was an empty tomb, since – as is well known – Paul doesn’t claim anything of the sort. Now, your claim is that such Pauline claim as regard Jesus’ burial was the by-product of one of Paul’s hallucinations. And the main argument to support your claim is that everything Paul claims is such a by-product. Am I fairly depicting your position? I hope I am.

There is a slight bit of a contradiction in your position, if I may say that. On the one hand, there is a claim by Paul to have received thirty-nine lashes five times, as you yourself take notice:

Then, that he had been lashed is, actually, a claim according to you. But a claim that does not belong in the extension of your proposition “everything he claims was revealed to him by Jesus�. Not everything, indeed, for a simple reason:

Therefore, it is not everything he claims but only those claims that belong in the gospel. And we now know that the claim about the lashes does not belong in the gospel – according to you. One would be led to think that the gospel does not encompass propositions about facts but only propositions about interpretation of the scriptures – which BTW is my own position. Yet it for you is not so. According to you, aside from “creative interpretations of scripture� (which are “part of his hallucinations� but do not exhaust the hallucinations), there are facts that also belong in the gospel, while there are also facts that do not. The fact as regard the lashes quite clearly does not – why? because it is a probable lie (see below)? The fact about Cephas and the twelve’s claim to have seen Jesus resurrected quite clearly does belong in the gospel, instead.

And the reason why you claim that Cephas and the twelve’s seeing Jesus belongs in the gospel is

I realize that you really distrust Paul:

All right, if you think that Paul preached Jesus’ appearances to Cephas et al before even going to Jerusalem and speak to them because he had learned of this from revelation by Jesus himself, then you may suspect Paul was a liar.

But again, common sense affords a better explanation. Some Christians in Jerusalem were claiming to have seen, resurrected, a crucified man and called him the Messiah. The leader was one Cephas, backed by at least another twelve. Isn’t it any reasonable that the Pharisees as a sect discussed the issue and that the discussion reached Damascus, Tarsus or wherever the hell Paul the Pharisee happened to be? In all likelihood, his knowledge of the appearances to Cephas et al. was sectarian. If indeed Paul would have wished his audience to believe that he got knowledge of the appearances to others from revelation, he could have convinced only the most stupid Jews – which you really think it happened, don’t you? There was a simpler, more natural explanation.

That is the argument in support of my claim that the gospel that Paul says to have received from Jesus bears no factual proposition (whether about the lashes or about other people’s public claims) but interpretations – “creative,� if you wish – of scripture alone.

Now, my main claim as regard the issue at hand. Paul’s claim that Jesus was buried is a proposition that does not belong in the gospel; it is a factual claim, likewise the propositions about lashes and others’ claims. Why didn’t the Pharisees react, altogether with lashing Paul, by saying: “Burial? What burial do you speak of? How could a mythical hero like that Jesus you have invented be really buried?�

This is my argument from silence.

Vorkosigan

Where was Osiris castrated? Do you think the rock that Rhea had Cronos swallow was limestone or granite? Hephaestus had a forge in the volcano on Lemnos. How real do you think the ancients thought that was?

Vorkosigan

ynquirer

None of those myths challenged Judaism, but Paul´s claims quite straightforwardly did.

Steven Avery

"never uses it" is your addition, and incorrect.

http://www.geocities.com/lauho08/emp..._of_jesus.html
http://www.loveregardless.com/ulr/resurrection.cfm
The Resurrection - The Case for Christ - Lee Strobel
"Only Matthew reports that guards were placed around the tomb," he (William Lane Craig) replied. "But in any event, I don't think the guard story is an important facet of the evidence for the Resurrection. For one thing, it's too disputed by contemporary scholarship. I find it's prudent to base my arguments on evidence that's most widely accepted by the majority of scholars, so the guard story is better left aside."

Craig's view is best represented by his own writing.
http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billc...ocs/guard.html
The Guard at the Tomb - Dr. William Lane Craig

Despite Craig's various equivocations, (which I acknowledge and differ with quite a bit) Craig does in fact use the guard reference as a part of his apologetic.

http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billc...ocs/tomb2.html
The Historicity of the Empty Tomb of Jesus - Dr. William Lane Craig
"The Jewish polemic presupposes the empty tomb. From Matthew's story of the guard at the tomb (Mt. 27. 62-66; 28. 11-15), which was aimed at refuting the widespread Jewish allegation that the disciples had stolen Jesus' body, we know that the disciples' Jewish opponents did not deny that Jesus' tomb was empty."

Matthew 27:66
So they went, and made the sepulchre sure,
sealing the stone, and setting a watch.

This a bit imaginative to conjecture that they would not look inside the tomb before sealing the stone However, checking above, I see that you missed the fact that the sealing was done at the same time that the watch was set.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Johnny Skeptic

Not the sealing, the "alleged" sealing, which is not confirmed anywhere else in the New Testament. Only Matthew mentions the guards, and he does not say where he got his information from, and Willaim Lane Craig at least has enough sense not to make an argument about the guards without any corroboration whatsoever.

In Lee Strobel’s ‘The Case For Christ,’ William Lane Craig mentions “multiple, independent attestations.� Even if there were multiple attestations, what evidence is there that they were independent? I asked ancient historian Richard Carrier (a number of articles by Carrier can be found at the Secular Web) about this. He said “All four accounts are not independent. Matthew and Luke without doubt follow Mark and embellish upon Mark. Therefore, at most we have two independent accounts, not four. But John shows strong evidence of borrowing and modifying material from Luke -- therefore, it is doubtful we even have two independent sources (and there is no evidence they are independent either -- e.g. it cannot be shown that John didn't get the empty tomb idea straight from Mark). It appears there is only one actual source: Mark. Every other source simply follows him, or follows someone else who followed him."

Mark was the earliest Gospel. Craig told Strobel “We can tell from the language, grammar, and style that Mark got his empty tomb story—actually, his whole passion narrative – from an earlier source. In fact, there’s evidence it was written before A.D. 37, which is much too early for legend to have seriously corrupted it.�

Regarding this matter, 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 37AD is absurd.�

Noted 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."

Richard Carrier told me the following:

“1 - We have no actual data on when any of the Gospels were written *or* released. We have no external claims to date, and no internal claims to date. Therefore, all dates you see in the literature are pure conjecture. No one knows. They could all have been written in 100 AD--there is no evidence against that. The dates scholars come up with are based on theories regarding sequence (internal evidence shows Luke and Matthew came after Mark; external evidence places John last, and internal evidence suggests John is post-Luke), content (Luke seems to be well-informed regarding mid-first century socio-political atmosphere and so it is argued he must have written no later than 100; the Gospels seem cognizant of the fall of Jerusalem, placing them all post-70, but this is debated; etc.), and other things that are equally indirect and uncertain. There is external evidence that the Gospels were known to other Christian writers (or at the very least, Luke was known) by 110 AD or so, and definitely all were known by 140-150 AD at the latest. But this does not mean they weren't known before these dates, because we have so little literature to go by, and all the evidence is debated. If it matters to you, I suggest finding a good discussion of how the gospels are dated and what the theories and conjectures are based on. Eerdman’s Dictionary of the Bible gives brief and incomplete assessments. More thorough is Bart Ehrman, The New Testament (3rd ed., 2003).

“2 - Mark is definitely the first--Matthew and Luke practically quote him, while John appears to have been aware of Luke (and thus came after Mark as well). When was Mark written? No one knows. Dates range from 60 AD to 80 AD, some even place Mark later than that.

“3 - Is it possible that the Gospels were not (at least widely) released until a long time after they were written? Yes. Internal evidence of composition can't tell us when the book became available to more than a single church. In the case of the Book of Acts, the evidence is pretty strong that it was not widely released or much known until the mid-2nd century.�

Why do you believe that Jesus was buried in Joseph of Arimathea's tomb? The texts only claim that two men and two women personally saw the body placed in J of A's tomb, Joseph,
Nicodemus, Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary. None of those four people ever wrote about the body being placed in that tomb, and the Gospel writers did not reveal their sources regarding the claim, which might not even have been third hand or fourth hand.

RUmike

How is Joseph of A supposed to have pushed the bolder in front of the tomb all by himself?

Diogenes the Cynic

How does that prove that the Pharisees claimed the disciples stole the body?
No, not every single thing he claims, just that which he defines as his "gospel."
You're flogging a straw man here. Paul's claim that he was lashed was not part of his "gospel." I never said that every word out of Paul's mouth was a product of his "revelations," only those things which HE HIMSELF claims to have "received" in that manner.
My point exactly.
Let me make myself clear. I am only claiming that those things which Paul himself asserted to have received by revelation are "hallucinations."
Because Paul said so. Here it is again:

1 Cor 15:1:Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand:
2: By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.
3: For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures,
4: that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures,
5: and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve
6: After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.
7: After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles.
8: And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.

Paul explicitly claims that he "received" all of the above. His info about "burial" was "received," as were his beliefs about the appearances. He SAYS so, explicitly.
I'm actually taking him at his word. He's the one who said he got that stuff from revelations and that he didn;t learn it from any man. If you don't believe him, then you're the one who doesn't trust him.
Once again, I'm taking him at his word. You're the one calling him a liar.
You are assuming facts not in evidence. There is not a shred of historical evidence to support the claim that any human being ever claimed to have personally witnessed a physically resurrected Jesus. There is no reason to believe the Pharisees were even aware of such a claim. The earliest Christian claims for a physical resurrection do not appear until Matthew's gospel, more than 50 years after the alleged crucifixion. Paul was dead, and Jerusalem was in ruins.
The lashes weren't part of Paul's gospel. Paul defined his gospel clearly and was quite specific about what he got from revelation.
You started off by saying your argument from silence was your defense for your assertion that the Pharisees claimed that the disciples stole the body. You seem to have gotten away from that (or forgotten what you were claiming). No matter. Paul himself claims he got the "burial" from his hallucinations. Paul says his "burial" is part of his gospel.
1. When did I claim that Jesus was a myth? I'm agnostic on historicty, but for the purpose of this discussion it doesn't really matter. Jesus didn't have to be mythical in order for Paul to have hallucinations about him.
2. Paul said he was lashed by "the Jews," not by the Pharisees. Why do yu assume it was Pharisees?
3. Why do you assume that Paul was lashed for anything he was preaching?
4.How do you know that whoever whipped him DIDN"T say "what burial? or "What Christ?" Why would you expect that to be written down?
5. How was anybody supposed to be able to disprove a mythical resurrection event? You're not going to wheel out that creaky canard about how the "Jews could have produced a body," are you? No they couldn't.