Jane H

Sorry for not getting round to this sooner.

It’s an often made suggestion, but not one I feel inclined to regard as plausible.

1) The lack of OT quotations. If the stories were made up, the first place to start with is the OT, and make your stories fit prophecy, which gets quoted. The resurrection appearances completely lack the OT quotations- from being a constant theme throughout the gospels, they suddenly and surprisingly stop, in all 3 gospels*. This is simply because there was nothing in the OT to suggest the Messiah was going to be eating a post-mortem Filet-o-fish by the Sea of Tiberias. This was a shock no-one expected.

2) The lack of connection between Jesus resurrection, and the future hope of personal resurrection. That connection had already been understood by the time the gospels were written (e.g. in Paul), but it wasn’t there at the time the disciples met Jesus. That connection has been carefully left out- whereas it would have been included if the stories were made up later.

3) The strange portrait of Jesus. Not the shining like a star of Daniel 12, or the dazzling radiance of the Jewish apocalyptic tradition. The resurrected Jesus had a strange physical-but-different body, that defied the contemporary expectations, that fitted in with none of the C1 religious forms or typology. You wouldn’t start from that sort of mixed up body story if you didn’t have to.

4) The women. In the chauvinist C1 world, if you expect anyone to take you seriously, you don’t start your climax with women finding the empty tomb. They were not legal witnesses, and the idea that they were inserted into the tradition at a later stage is implausible in the extreme. They were only there in the gospel stories because they were there in reality.



*Ignoring Mark 9-20 as a much later tradition.

Johnny Skeptic

You should find noted skeptic historian Richard Carrier's critique of James Holding's "The Impossible Faith" at http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...er/improbable/ to be interesting. Holding basically says "If A did not happen, how do you explain B?" Among other things, Carrier discusses the role of women in the early Christian church. At http://www.infidels.org/library/mode.../resurrection/, you wil find an article by Carrier that is titled "Why I don't buy the Resurrection Story."

If Jesus actually appeared to some people after he rose from the dead, why do you believe that he did it?

Jane H

Thank you for these references. Were I to work my way in detail through all of both articles, there would be an unacceptable delay in answering your post. They have been saved for a later date. I’m sure you can fill in any relevant arguments in the short term. I’ve tried to get a gist, and focused on the “women’s evidence” part.

As regards the gist, Carrier is heading off towards Hume on miracles. Perhaps that can be revisited later? For now my agenda is to establish the clear historical probability of the orthodox view of the resurrection, leaving that philosophical debate out. Further, my line of argument is less about the success of Christianity, and more about what caused such a dramatic change in beliefs about such things as the resurrection body and what constitutes messianic success.

Jane H

Carrier does a good job of outlining reasons to believe that women were trusted, but his success, even on his account, is very partial. For one example:

“Unlike slaves, Josephus is saying that women should not appear in court simply because it was unseemly--essentially saying that women were liable to giggle or scold or otherwise violate the proper demeanour of the court. Therefore, even this passage from Josephus offers no support to the view that the testimony of women was not trusted.”

Hardly a ringing endorsement of women’s suitability as witnesses! The point still stands; you wouldn’t want to invent a story about women being the first witnesses to the empty tomb if you were trying to persuade the likes of Josephus.

Were all four gospels written by focus groups who wanted to give a bigger role to women? The first list was written by Paul in Corinthians 15, and that would have been the base point from which the gospel appearances were written. Even given a not debatable element of dependence between the gospels elsewhere, it is very remarkable how different the resurrection accounts are between the gospels. If all four borrowed uncritically from Mark (a whole new direction for the study of dependence!), they copied the names wrong.

Ingenious though it is, I really can’t begin to buy Carrier’s reason for inventing women first at the tomb. Especially when the women flee- surely should they should be doing the announcing if his theory of bigging up the sisterhood is correct?


If I have misunderstood your final question, please put me straight! Why did Jesus reappear? I am confident that any answer I could give would be very partial. Perhaps these mixed thoughts might help:

If He didn’t, as I put in my previous post, Christianity was dead, with everyone heading home. Jesus turned them around. It was an essential part of the announcement of the Kingdom. Death was seen as defeated. Detail of post-mortem situation and especially the nature of the resurrection body were revealed. To make Christian faith worthwhile (“If Christ isn’t resurrected, your faith is in vain”). Because the next phase of humanity wouldn’t have begun otherwise…

Doug Shaver

I have always found that argument totally unpersuasive, and I still do. However, suppose for the sake of discussion that the gospel authors would have felt that way. Might that be evidence for their not having intended to persuade anyone that it really happened?

achristianbeliever

For me its not how many people saw the resurrected Jesus its the character of the people who saw him.

Seems strange when considering Biblical passages such as
John 21:24, 2 Peter 1:16 and 1 Corinthians 15:17

Knupfer

Well, let's see: there were hundreds of people at pentecost, thousands of conversions because of Christ's affect on Paul who never met him until after he died, the continent of Europe was predominatly Christian, the billions of born again Christians whose lives have changed, for starters.

Jane H

I can’t see John agreeing with that (Ch20:29-31):

Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

Or Luke (24:46-48): He told them, "This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.”

I can’t see why anyone would write a gospel to convince no-one. These things take a long, long time to write!

The question still remains- why are the women left out of Paul, but included in all the gospels? On one theory, Mark decided that his gospel wasn’t sufficiently female friendly, and decided to invent the first discovery for them. (Not that female friendly seems to be a concern elsewhere). Matthew and Luke simply copied Mark without thinking, and John followed suit (adding a yet unrealised dimension to the dependency question). All of them, for some reason, changed the names, reactions and story from Mark’s version.

On the other hand, Paul was quoting from an agreed list which left out the women to avoid problems with the rampant misogyny of the age. However everyone in the churches learned the strong tradition the women were first, and Mark felt inclusion was sensible in his gospel. The others agreed. They included the women because everyone knew it was that way, even if it was an apologetic liability.

stuart shepherd

Good point Stuart

I don't think that Matthew has any credibility at all. When the Devil took Jesus on that mythical high mountain where Jesus could see """all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; """the Devil and Jesus were alone. How could Matthew have known what took place? If Jesus is supposed to be God he would have told Matthew a truthful version of the events if he reported a real event to Matthew. God cannot lie. But we can see that Matthew fabricated this encounter between Jesus and the Devil. How can we believe anything this liar Matthew says?

Examine the following Scripture......
Matthew 2:9 (King James Version)
9When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was.

Did you ever go out and look at the stars in the night sky? Stars are millions of miles away and each star is probably a million times greater than the size of the earth. It is impossible for a star to guide people to a certain location. It is a matter of physics. But this is what Matthew would have you believe even though it is a physical impossibility.

Now examine the following Scripture......
Matthew 24:29 (King James Version)
29Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:

Can the stars fall from heaven? In Matthew's world of ignorance they could. Ancient man thought that stars were like Christmas lights that God had stuck on the canopy of the heavens which covered the earth. But we know that the stars are millions of miles away and the stars are millions of times larger than the earth.

Could God tell these lies? Or was Matthew just making up a fairy tale for his friends?
If these tales are false can we believe that a man died and rose from the dead? Without credibility there is no way we could believe Matthew.

Jane H

Some interesting thought here.

I would imagine Jesus passed on what had happened with the temptations to the disciples at some point. It made its way through the community teaching to Mark, Matthew and Luke. Interestingly for source criticism, and as a reply to the sorts of questions you raise about Matthew, Mark’s version is rather briefer than the other two.

Navigation was done by stars some time before sat-nav. I would think some form of comet or other non-regular astronomical event could be used to identify Bethlehem, but other possibilities exist.

“Stars falling from heaven” is terminology quoted from the OT in Jewish apocalyptic language to describe the destruction of a nation. It’s a bit like “I’m going to punch your lights out!”- a phrase that needs to be understood in a context. One example of such usage of that phrase-

Isaiah 34:3-4 “Their slain will be thrown out, their dead bodies will send up a stench; the mountains will be soaked with their blood. All the stars of the heavens will be dissolved and the sky rolled up like a scroll; all the starry host will fall like withered leaves from the vine, like shrivelled figs from the fig tree.”

I have argued in rather more detail on this forum that Matthew 24,25 is a reference to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70, using a mixture of Jewish apocalyptic language and OT reference (for example the reference you suggested). Given that, it would appear that Jesus accurately prophesied the destruction of the Temple, and the events of AD70, within a “generation“.