Steven Carr

This is not news. We all know the Biblical prophecies about the *real* Messiah.

Steven Carr

And decide to go back to their old job of fishing....

Johnny Skeptic

Message to Jane H: The odds against an entire group of women forgetting that Jesus said that he would rise from the dead in spite of the fact that he had raised Lazarus from the dead, and ALSO going to the tomb early in the morning and expecting to find someone to roll the stone away from the entrance to the tomb are astronomical.

You made a blunder. You said:

You will not be able to get away with that. John 11:39 says "Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days." I would sure like to see some comparable news stories.

We also have news stories about Sasquatch, abductions by aliens, flying saucers, and the Loch Ness monster. How many of those stories do you believe?

Consider the following Scriptures:

John 11:43-48

"And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go. Then many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on him. But some of them went their ways to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus had done. Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? for this man doeth many miracles. If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation."

Regarding "We’ve all seen the news stories, and I’m sure they happened then," which news stories are you referring to that have caused the same kinds of results that are mentioned in John 11:43-48? Are you claiming that it was common for people to rise from the dead during the time of Jesus? If it was common, then all the more reason that the women would have remembered that Jesus said that he would rise from the dead, and would have expected him to rise from the dead. The book of John says that when Mary Magdalene saw the empty tomb, she thought that the body had been moved, and that Peter went away from the tomb confused. That certainly does not make a good case for "We’ve all seen the news stories, and I’m sure they happened then."

Today, millions of Christians disagree as to what constitutes a miracle healing. Why do you believe that it was any different back then?

If a God exists, and wanted to communicate with humans, all that he would need to do would be to telephatically communicate the same messages to everyone in the world, thereby discouraging dissent instead of inviting dissent.

Jane H

Amaleq13-
1) We agree on the denial as very plausible; I see no reason at all why it shouldn’t have happened three times.
2) I’m not claiming the back from the dead stories are miraculous. Quite the opposite. My point is exactly that these happen normally (BTW there’s a lot more similar references at the bottom of the Times article.) It was something about the quality of the Jesus resurrection that was different (See the various ‘back from the dead’ accounts in Acts for a further contrast.)

SC-
1) The women didn’t make a mistake, and there is no suggestion they did. They came to a perfectly sensible- in fact the only possible- conclusion, given the available information, which only additional information was able to alter. In fact rather than highlighting the women’s ‘error‘, John is stressing that the obvious conclusion, of the body being taken, was the wrong one. Further, you certainly would not, ever, make the first resurrection appearance to women, if you were concocting a story in C1 Israel.

2) The belief of a C1 Jew was that Moses parted the Red Sea, got manna and quails from nowhere, and got a fabulous facial when he produced the ten commandments. Then he died, and stayed dead, like everyone before and since. Jesus produced Moses, then died. The expectation was that he would stay dead. The idea of resurrection was a controversial belief on the fringes of C1 Judaism, which if it happened at all would be at the end of time. I must stress again that we are looking from the other side of the resurrection. I’m sorry, I don’t find it remotely unlikely that seeing their Messiah die would send the disciples running for cover, especially given the comments in the gospels about their lack of understanding about what Jesus meant.

3) You really find it unlikely that in a society without a social support system the disciples went back to fishing?

JS- I’m sorry, I just can’t see the problem with the stone removal problem being unlikely. I’m probably being thick- with apologies. The part of the problem I do understand I’ve talked about above, which apply to many of your other points. My ‘blunder’ is even less apparent to me. The news stories linked to are about ordinary people who had been dead and came back to life naturally (three days in the case of George Rodonaia). See above, again.

Yeti- no, Nessie- no, aliens- no (although given our Government funds a civil service dept to investigate, it perhaps has a little more about it).

I don’t think there’s any such thing as a miracle healing. I think that it ‘all’ is worked by God. Sometimes we notice Him, usually we don’t. I agree that a scenario exists in which God could control us all telepathically, and we could be like characters in a single player computer game. However I believe there’s much more going on under the surface of reality than we can ever imagine.

Steven Carr

Apparently that is true, and only Jesus believed it and the people he taught about his forthcoming resurrection ,that is, the people who had been given the power to raise the dead and who had been given the secret of the kingdom of God, and who had seen the greatest ever prophet in their nation's history return from the dead, never to die again.

Steven Carr

And how did they preach a resurrection 'in a society without a social support system', without being able to fish?

They had managed for 3 years without fishing, and allegedly managed after that without fishing.

It seems the only thing which sent them back to fishing was being told of the alleged resurrection of Jesus.

If I was writing a fake document about the resurrection, I would make sure that the first person who told the reader about the resurrection was a young man, an angel from god, two men in dazzling clothes, or Jesus himself.

And that is what the Gospels do.

All this talk about women being the first witnesses is nonsense.

Steven Carr

Yes, Jesus was the only one to take off into the sky like a Saturn 5 rocket.

The others stayed on the ground, rather than enter the ionosphere in a mistaken belief that that was the direction to Heaven.

Johnny Skeptic

But this thread is not about Jesus' resurrection. It is about the women at the tomb.

You said:

John 11:39 says "Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days." Is that the kind of normal news stories that you are talking about?

If returns from the dead were common, why did Mary Magadalene think that the body had been moved, and why did Peter go away from the tomb confused?

You have conveniently tried to divert attention away from the main issues in this thread. The main issues in this thread are as follows:

1 - An entire group of women forgot that Jesus said that he was going to rise from the dead in spite of the facts that Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead, and that you said that returns from the dead were common.

3 - An entire group of women went to the tomb early in the morning expecting to find someone there to help them remove the stone from the entrance to the tomb, or without remembering that large stones are put in front of entrances to tombs.

In my opinion, it is very improbable that those events happened.

Sheshbazzar

This is representative of the mindset in most discussions of the Bible's contents, and is based upon a consistently fundamental error.
The gospels ARE NOT "historical documents", they ARE religiously motivated propaganda documents, that are only "historical" in the sense of having been around for a long time.
They DO NOT accurately record ANY actual conversations, and vey little that is actual history, but were composed with the singular purpose of, by deliberate deception, to cause the gullible to believe and accept their contents at face value.
The anonymous writers have led you into believing that "Peter", a plot character in their story, is an actual historical person and that he actually spoke the words that -the writers, -alone- put into his mouth- within the script.

Just who in the hell do you think it was, that was present and just standing around waiting on every occasion, to exactly write down every single word spoken in all of those private conversations?

I'll give you a clue, it wasn't a "Gawd", only the creative imaginations of the hundreds of much latter writers with their religious agendas to implement through the medium of their religious propaganda documents.

Steven Carr

Paul constantly has to prove that he is a real apostle , equal in authority to the likes of Peter.

Is it not strange that he never throws around the fact that these 'so-called super apostles' deserted and denies Jesus?