Amaleq13

I never said it was. This is your straw man.

Stop embarrassing yourself. You've haven't been tracking appropriately since you jumped into the discussion. You continue to waste enormous portions of your posts arguing against positions I do not hold.

No, that is your straw man again. As I've already pointed out several times. :banghead:

Since you haven't been paying attention, let me state it as clearly as possible: The tomb would get mentioned by Paul as something any believer would embrace as confirmation of their faith in the resurrection.

You are free to believe that an alleged eyewitness description of an event can be described as a symbol of that event but you are simply wrong. That is a misuse of the word "symbol".

I'm not interested in your imagination. Paul offers no indication that they doubted Christ's resurrection. In fact, his argument requires that they still believed it.

You have misinterpreted Paul. He is assuming his readers still believe in a resurrected Christ and arguing that, based on that existing belief, they should also believe in a general resurrection.

The point of this particular reason is that Paul does not offer any support for an empty tomb tradition prior to the Gospels. Now, as an argument from silence, it is inherently inconclusive on its own but offering possible explanations for the silence doesn't actually eliminate it. The fact remains that the textual evidence for the empty tomb does not extend to Paul. The trail starts with the Gospels.

That is a non sequitur. Belief in a physical resurrection does not require or even imply a tomb. The most you can claim for Paul, based on his words, is that Jesus was buried. The most common fate of a crucifixion victim was a common grave. So, no, not "impossible".

Who is also a secret disciple (or sympathizer) and also just happened to have a new tomb? Your lack of rational standards is showing.

Of course!! Joseph took responsibility for the body. He would be the prime suspect for the disappearance and the first to be questioned and the first to be punished.

Not just because of the singular nature of his appearance. It is the sudden appearance and singular nature of his purpose in the story, the prophecy-related descriptions of him, his convenient ownership of a new family tomb with a round door, Pilate's willingness to hand over the body to a non-family member, and the absence of any indication his participation resulted in the expected martyrdom.

I'm arguing for doubt and you are responding as though I am arguing for certain fiction. You exaggerated my claim and then argue against the exaggeration. That is a straw man whether you know it or not.

I do not want you to guess. I want you to read and go no further than the words you see. You've been guessing too much and too poorly when you should have been reading.

How am I the one playing word games when I'm trying to get you to stick to what I've actually written rather than what you imagine I'm thinking?

That makes no sense. I maintain that it is reasonable to expect Paul to mention an empty tomb if he had known about it.

I maintain there are several aspects of the character that call his historicity into question and his conveniently sudden appearance is one of them.

I wouldn't expect better from a toddler.

And I'm going to stop expecting it from you. :wave:

aa5874

I have isolated another motive for the disciples to desecrate the burial site of Jesus and remove his body.

Once it is admitted that Jesus existed as human, and did have thousands of followers who heard that Jesus claimed he would be killed but that he would be raised on the third day, then the disciples were almost duty bound to do whatever it took to make it appear that Jesus did resurrect to salvage or maintain the thousands of followers who had believe in the words of Jesus.

Before Jesus died, his followers thoroughly believed in him. He was doing miracles or magic tricks, feeding the hungry with "magic" fish and bread, bringing the dead or "unconscious" back to life, and making the sick healthy by simply talking to them.

The day that Jesus died, the disciples knew that they must get his body BEFORE the three days were expired as predicted by Jesus.

The disciples were going to lose a lot of donations, they would go bankrupt, their finances would dry up. They must simulate a resurrection.

There is no way Jesus would still be in the tomb when three days and nights had past. That would have been a disaster for the converts.

They would steal the body and claim Jesus appeared to them only and then ascended to heaven. It worked, the donations kept on flowing. The new religion was salvaged.

Petergdi

Nonsense. Paul not meeting your reasonable expectations is not good evidence for what Paul knew or did not know. This is especially true where your reasonable expectations are conditioned by modern discourse on the subject.

In order to draw the conclusion you wish to draw, you would have to show that it would be abnormal for someone who knew of the empty tomb not to make use of the empty tomb in a discourse about the resurrection. I submit to you that this would only be abnormal from the mid 19th century onwards.

Peter.

Toto

What happened in the mid-19th century to change this?

Kapyong

Gday,

Mate - YOU claimed the transfiguration in Jesus' physical body was a fact!

Which is plainly ridiculous - it's NOT a fact at all.

It's a religious belief,
not supported by any evidence,
and violating the laws of nature.

We aren't in church now, renassault - claiming your faithful beliefs are facts doesn't work here.

Really?
Then why DID so many Christians mention it - AFTER the Gospels became known?

Before early 2nd century - NO mention of the E.T.

Later 2nd century - MANY Christians mention the E.T. :
Justin,
Tertullian,
Origen,
Hippolytus etc.

Many many Christians DO mention the Empty Tomb - over and over and over. How does that fit with your explanation that no-one needed to mention it?

Born of woman?
Who was ever not born of woman?
Or - why would you say someone WAS born of woman?
Unless there was some reason to think otherwise.
Unless Paul means something else.

I think Paul's Iesous Christos is something like our concept of "soul" - it is born in every person 'of woman'.

Nothing to do with a historical Jesus.



Rubbsih.
It says the exact OPPOSITE.
It says we will rise in another imperishable body, a spiritual body.

Paul says clearly that we are raised in a spiritual body, NOT a physical one :
1 Cor. 44
"it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body."

Paul makes it clear the resurrection is in a spiritual body, he clearly says Christ was made "a life-giving SPIRIT", unlike the first Adam who was physical :
1 Cor 15.45 :
"So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"[e]; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit."

Heavenly, NOT earthly :
"49. And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we[f] bear the likeness of the man from heaven. "

Flesh CANNOT inherit :
"50. I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,"

It is absolutely clear, from his own words, that Paul sees resurrection as SPIRITUAL.

Did you skip over those passages ?

Paul does NOT mention the tomb once.


K.

Petergdi

I'm pretty sure it was a growth in science-mindedness.

- The risen Christ appeared to those to whom God was pleased to reveal him.

- The empty tomb was a fact available to anyone in Jerusalem at that time.

That anyone would have been able to observe the empty tomb made it seem more like a proper sort of fact to educated people in the mid-19th century onwards. Before that time, there were rather few people who would have made that distinction.

You can get a pretty good feel for the change with date-limited searches of Google Books.

Peter.

arthurnoll

Skimming through all the responses spawned by this question, I do not see anyone considering another possibility. Lets consider some things here, like the viewpoint of the people who killed Jesus. It is said that they "feared the people". Why? And why, exactly, did they kill him? For blasphemy? Claiming to be the son of God? Do you kill someone for that, or do you just consider him crazy? Pilate saw no harm in him to begin with. Is there something else going on here? Why would rich Jews desperately want him dead, while a Roman was indifferent? And then the Roman agrees with them? What did they tell him?

Seems to me it would logically be something to do with Jewish law, a law or custom the Romans didn't have and didn't take seriously. What could it be?

You really don't have to look far. Jesus said at the beginning of his preaching, that he was there "to preach the acceptable year of the Lord". The "acceptable year of the Lord", is considered by many Bible scholars, to be the Jubilee year. And what is the Jubilee year? It was the third Sabbath, the year following 7 cycles of 7 years, or every 50th year, and what was supposed to happen was a "rest", from the money game. Like starting over with the board game of Monopoly. In the Jubilee, debts were forgiven, servants got out of debt bondage, land was redistributed. Old Jewish law, that a Roman wouldn't have known or cared about, but the Jews who could read, could have known and cared about these laws, supposedly from Moses, a famous figure. Whether a law from Moses was followed or not, would be of great interest to Jews, and the law itself, can easily be seen as political dynamite. Do you think most of the rich Jews wanted a Jubiliee year? About as much as they wanted a hole in the head, I'd say. I think they viewed someone preaching for a Jubilee year and drawing crowds as a very dangerous person. And Pilate would not have known about this feature of Jewish culture. But once told, he might well have seen Jesus as a potentially dangerous man. Romans had had their own serious troubles in the past with people trying to restore greater equality to society. Understanding that, he could have agreed to follow their wishes, and to even go along with their schemes.

And what scheme might that have been? What could they do? They had a difficult problem. They couldn't shut him up with debate. He "put all to silence". They could kill him- but how? And how to deal with the crowds he had been attracting? It is clearly written, that "they feared the people". How about applying the illusionist's basic principle of distracting attention? Make the man into a mighty miracle worker. First tell people they were putting guards on the tomb to prevent the body being stolen and look like he had resurrected himself. "Remember", that he had said words about being resurrected. That they could have been taking such words out of context didn't matter. The context being that Jesus was talking about very long amounts of time before he would be resurrected, and there are also words by others about "a thousand years is as a day to the Lord". So, three thousand years? But most would say that this is just meant to mean a long time, because Jesus was emphatic that "of that day and hour, no one, not even the son of man", knows." So, take those words out of context, tell everyone he had said he would come back to life in three days, plant this story of being afraid that people would steal the body to make it appear he had resurrected himself, put the body in an expensive tomb with a big rock in front of it to make the illusion even more dramatic, and then do exactly what you said you didn't want to happen, steal the body and make it disappear. They had motive and opportunity. The result would be a great distraction of attention. Which obviously worked beautifully. Nobody was talking about Jubilee years anymore, everyone was talking about the empty tomb and about this enormous miracle. Nobody was talking so much about how the evil authorities had killed an innocent man, because after all, he had risen, they had failed to really kill him.

And all sorts of other symbolic stories the man told could be taken literally and make him into even more of a miracle worker, after the fact. The fact that nobody in their right mind would have laid violent hands on a man who really did miracles, is seldom considered, as are some other incidents reported. Like the incident of the people asking Jesus to give them some sign that he was the messiah, and he said there would be no sign but that like Jonah, he would disappear and then come back. If he really could do miracles, why didn't he show them something as they asked?

But letting people bury the man in even more miracles, happened very easily, and conveniently, given the initial push of the illusion of the empty tomb.

And it has continued to work very well for a couple thousand years, here we are, people still passionately arguing about this, and completely ignoring the implications of what a Jubilee year is, or what the logic for that might be. The possibility of miracles is fascinating to many human beings. Illusionists have been playing on that for eons.

Some Christians know what the Jubilee year is, (you can find the details in Leviticus 25) but not many in my experience. And most of those who know what it is, in my experience are still very distracted by the concept of miracles happening. They would much, much rather believe in the possibility of miracles, than to accept the idea that Jesus was just a man talking about rules for society and the consequences for society of ignoring objective arguments. And lots of rich people I'm quite sure, would still much rather let the whole concept of a Jubilee year, and any logic for it, rest quietly buried with Jesus under a thick covering of miracles.

And I think Jesus knew it likely would happen. Because it had happened before. He is recorded as saying, "you polish the tombs of the prophets, but you would have killed them".

I think most who reverence Jesus today, are in awe of an illusion, and many of those who despise him are in disgust about people taking what they feel must have been an illusion, seriously. But dig under the illusions and stories of miracles, resurrect some real possibilities here and you get the concept of a real man, someone preaching the Jubilee year, someone pointing out the inter-dependence of human beings, pointing out the need for cooperative teamwork and rational sharing of wealth and need for rational looking ahead at what resources will be available in the future. Subjects about which a lot of people are apt to get quite passionate about, right to the present.

Arthur Noll

Kapyong

Gday,

WOULD have ?
Then why DIDN'T they?

No early Christian visited the tomb, or makes ANY mention of it -
Paul, James, Jude, Peter, John - NO mention of the tomb at all.
Not the slightest hint that anything special happened in Jerusalem.

Finally, CENTURIES later, claims about Jesus' tomb arose - and now we have FOUR tombs of Jesus : 2 in Jerusalem, 1 in Japan, 1 in Kashmir.

K.

Petergdi

The empty tomb was almost universally accepted as a pedestrian sort of fact in HJ scholarship until fairly recently. The idea that Jesus did not have a proper burial has recently become a bit fashionable, but in the context I was discussing was accepted as something that everyone could observe at the time.

Primitive Christianity was not relic-minded. Even in the time of Justin Martyr the supposed existence of a yoke made by Jesus is treated as a interesting thing of no religious significance. (For that reason, I think it may possibly have been real).

If the "stone of stumbling" to the Jews is always "Christ crucified" then Romans 9:33 would make a good reference.

These are the result of a relic-mindedness which was absent from primitive Christianity.

It would be interesting if you could find people who made the fact (supposed fact if you like) of the empty tomb into a key part of a discussion of Christ's resurrection. This has been very common for the last century and a half. I think it was much less common before.

Peter.

Amaleq13

It is, as I noted, an argument from silence and, as such, its strength is dependent upon the nature of the expectation. A reasonable expectation provides a reasonable doubt about the claim, if it goes unfulfilled.