Zora

I am not a religious or biblical scholar...but do we really have 500 people seeing Jesus, or do we have one guy saying 500 people saw Jesus? You know, every kid has used this line at one time or another. "OK Mom, if you don't believe me, you can ask any of the guys. They'll tell you the same thing." Unless you can verify the story with the supposed witnesses, you do not have 500 actual witnesses. In order to verify 500 witnesses, I'd have to have a considerable sampling of people telling the same story independently of one another, and a way to determine that 500 people were in attendance at said event (ticket sales numbers????).

Johnny Skeptic

Christians who are aware that the credibility of the post-Resurrection appearances is questionable from a historical basis frequently try to put the burden of proof on skeptics by saying "If Jesus did not rise from the dead, how do you explain this or that?" The problem for Christians is that skeptics can play the "how do you explain this or that?" game too, and prepared skeptics are much better at playing that game than Christians are. If any Christians at this forum doubt what I am saying, I invite them to go to the General Religious Discussions Forum and get ready for some embarrassment.