Johnny Skeptic

I doubt it. Consider the following Scriptures:

Matthew 24:1-9 Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them. And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre. And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus. And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments: And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again. And they remembered his words, And returned from the sepulchre, and told all these things unto the eleven, and to all the rest.

The women were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee's children. If Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, and told his followers that he was going to rise from the dead too, it is very unlikely that all three of those women would have forgotten that Jesus said that he was going to rise from the dead.

Consider the following Scriptures:

Mark 16:1-3 And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him. And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun. And they said among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre?

So what we have here is that the very same women who forgot that Jesus said that he would rise from the dead even though he had raised Lazarus from the dead, went to the tomb very early in the morning expecting to find someone to roll away the stone from the door of the tomb, and even though (according to another Scripture) Mary Magdalene and the other Mary had seen the stone put in front of the door to the tomb. In my opinion, no sensible person would believe all of that.

Why did Jesus limit his personal appearances after he rose from the dead?

In your opinion, if God telepathically communicated the same messages to everyone in the world, would there be a lot less doubt and confusion than there is?

Please be advised that alleged eyewitnesses is much different from actual eyewitnesses.

stuart shepherd

I agree..."""In my opinion, no sensible person would believe all of that.
I don't believe all that.

Stuart Shepherd
PS Glad to see you commenting on this thread, Johnny Skeptic.
As a Skeptic also, it is a pleasure to see comments from another Skeptic.

stuart shepherd

The ROBE

Sometimes small details can affect the believability of a story.
Examine the following Scriptures to see what I mean concerning details.

Matthew 27:26-31(King James Version)
26Then released he Barabbas unto them: and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.

27Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall, and gathered unto him the whole band of soldiers.

28And they stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe.

29And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand: and they bowed the knee before him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews!

30And they spit upon him, and took the reed, and smote him on the head.

31And after that they had mocked him, they took the robe off from him, and put his own raiment on him, and led him away to crucify him.

The details of the above passage have always seemed to me to be a fabrication because they don't make sense.
Jesus is scourged, whipped, beaten. If that movie by Mel Gibson, ""the Passion of Christ"", is anything like the truth, then Jesus was turned into a bloody mess.

Then the soldiers ""stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe"".
Wouldn't Jesus have already been "stripped" when he was scourged? I have seen many movies and they always whip someone on his bare back rather than whip him with his clothes on. It doesn't make sense if they stripped him, whipped him, dressed him, stripped him, and then put a scarlet robe on him.

Now back in the days of Jesus, clothing was expensive, because it took a lot of work to weave the cloth by hand. Nowadays we have machines to weave cloth and artificial fibers, and you can buy clothing cheaply at Wal-Mart. But back then clothing was expensive. It seems odd to me that the soldiers would put a scarlet robe on the bloody body of Jesus and risk ruining an expensive garment. Scarlet was a royal color because it was expensive and difficult to make the dye to produce a scarlet garment. It does not seem believable that the soldiers would waste money, by getting an expensive garment all bloody with Jesus' blood.

Then ""after that they had mocked him, they took the robe off from him, and put his own raiment on him,"". Now we all know that when Jesus was crucified the Roman soldiers drew lots for Jesus' clothes. They wanted Jesus' clothes because they could sell them because used clothes had value. So why would the soldiers put Jesus' clothes back on him and just like the scarlet robe, get them all bloody with blood stains. They knew they were going to sell his clothes so why ruin their value by getting them stained with blood?

As you can see, there are details of this story which don't make sense.
I see this as evidence of fabrication.

This makes it impossible to believe in the resurrection tale.

stuart shepherd

FireBrandon

I agree totally. I can't believe I never saw that before. It was never addressed at the church I grew up in for sure. Do any apologists have a rebuttal to that contradiction?

Thanks Stuart.

~FireBrandon

stuart shepherd

Dear FireBrandon,
Happy to see you on this thread. I see that this was your first post.

There are several contradictions on this thread. You need to reference the one you are writing about.

Stuart Shepherd

stuart shepherd

The Age of Miracles

Allow me to present something to think about concerning miracles.

The Apostles of Jesus, were with him several years while Jesus traveled around preaching.
They were with him when he cast out devils and healed the sick, walked on water, turned water to wine, healed a paralyzed man, calmed a storm, fed 5,000 with a couple of fish and loaves, and raised the dead back to life.

What an amazing array of miracles.

And yet, when the armed crowd came to arrest Jesus in the garden of Gethsemene, the Apostles ran away.
Who did they think that they had been hanging around with these past years?
They had heard Jesus say several times that he had angels at his disposal.
Jesus performed many awesome miracles in the company of the Apostles, and yet the Apostles ran away when an armed crowd showed up.

WHY? Didn't they think Jesus who had raised the dead and walked on water could protect them?

I think that the Apostles ran because they did not know about these miracles. Jesus was just a man, a charismatic preacher, who traveled around preaching and teaching but didn't do any miracles. After Jesus was executed by the Romans people spoke of him and told and retold the stories of Jesus' preaching and as the story was repeated many times, story tellers embellished the story with miraculous deeds.
I think this is what really happened and the evidence is in the reaction of the Apostles. When danger arose they ran, because they knew that Jesus was just a man whose only special powers were a quick wit, a great knowledge of the Scriptures, a golden tongue, and a love for his fellow man.

If Jesus didn't perform miracles, neither did he rise from the dead.
Think about it.

stuart shepherd

FireBrandon

I apologize for my ambiguity. I meant the issue of the expensive robe that the Roman soldiers gave Jesus. I was inquiring as to how some of the eminent Christian apologists would seek to explain the motive for wasting the expensive robe on him. Maybe because he proclaimed himself the "King of the Jews". I don't know.

Also I noted another possible contradiction: In Mark 15:16-17 Pilate's soldiers take Jesus out into the "hall called Praetorium" and clothe him in purple. However, Luke reports that Herod Antipas is the one who bestows the "gorgeous robe" (Luke 23:11 NKJV) upon Jesus before sending him back to Pilate.

Maybe Luke created this additional appearance before Herod because...
1. He wanted to include Herod into the story since the Herodians didn't have that great of a reputation in the Jewish-Roman world. Thus Jews and Christians would more readily accept Jesus since Jesus clearly was an opponent of the rich, bloodthirsty, controlling, and powerful leaders of Palestine like the Herodians.
2. Or to further establish the blamelessness of Jesus since Herod did not condemn him either.
2. Or maybe he did it as supporting evidence that Jesus "fulfills" Isaiah 53 by being silent before his accusers.

Are any or all of these options plausible?

I did read somewhere recently that it is normal for police to ask for the story of a jailed criminal over and over to see if any differences show. If their alibi keeps getting more and more elaborate then the truthfulness of their story is to be doubted. In his book "A Ready Defense' Josh McDowell claims that Jewish and Christian oral tradition are extremely trustworthy and accurate down to even single words, so then why do these contradictions and elaborations keep surfacing in the gospels? It seems to me a lot like the telephone game or embellished storied that get grander in each telling. I do believe that they had better oral transmission than we do today, but the Jews also had a lot of Pseudonymous writings, which implies that just because a story exists and is transmitted, like Bel and the Dragon, does not imply its truthfulness or that the story was not embellished.

Richard Carrier has some stunning works on the Resurrection and how Mark, Matthew, Luke, and then John each get more and more grand and physical in their stories of the resurrection. The physical emphasis on Christ's resurrection seems to have been proportional to the undesired spread of Gnostic ideas.

~FireBrandon

stuart shepherd

Dear FireBrandon,
You made some excellent points in your commentary. I'm happy that you have joined this forum.
At this point it seems impossible to separate the truth from fiction, if in fact any part of the story is true.
It seems that the later Gospel writers improved and embellished the story told in the gospel according to Mark. The gospel writers contradict each other and seem to veer off on their own theological path.
The Gospellers attempt to craft the story in order to force fulfillments of OT verses that are not prophecy.

IMO the only thing that we can be sure of is that Jesus did not rise from the dead and the resurrection is just a "fabulous fiction".

Stuart Shepherd

Johnny Skeptic

Edit: Deletion of duplicate post

Johnny Skeptic

Based upon what evidence?