MerryAtheist

This made me laugh out loud.

graehame

From gregor :

Graehame. You're familiar with the circularity of your argument, I suppose.
My argument can be summarized as follows : If Christianity has any merit, then it rests not strictly on what 20th Century scholarship has to say about Scripture, or about the life of Jesus; but upon what those who heard Jesus speak understood Him to have said, & what they did about it. In other words, the facts (1) that all of the Apostles were in a position to know whether or not the beliefs they taught to others were true, yet (2) a majority of the Apostles were executed for those beliefs rather than recant, is strong evidence that they believed what they were saying. There is nothing circular about those statements.

From Julian :

Graehame, there are so many things wrong with your post that I don't have the patience to point out all your mistakes, however, I will pick just one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by graehame...for example, why didn't the nonbelievers in 29 AD simply say the body was still in the tomb? Why did they insist that the guards must have fallen asleep? And isn't that a ridiculous thing to say, given the noise it must have made to reopen the tomb, & given the likely penalties for sleeping on guard duty?

What non-believes in 29 AD?
I assumed you were aware that a copyists error apparently resulted in mis-dating the birth of Jesus, which probably occurred c. 4 BC. A reasonable date for the Crucifixion would therefore be 29 AD, although it might have occurred as late as 33 AD.
It might have been clearer had I said, “why didn’t the nonbelievers at the time of the Crucifixion say…� I apologize for my lack of clarity.

From sigmadog :

Originally Posted by graehame...One of God's greatest acts of mercy towards us all is to deny us proof of His Will.

This made me laugh out loud.
It often has the effect on people who haven’t thought the matter thru-- but if this weren’t the case, then our discussion would be academic. It’s obvious that God hasn’t provided cast-iron proof, therefore either He doesn’t exist at all, or else He never intended to provide proof.
The most cursory reading of the New Testament shows that what God seems to care most about is our faith. You & I may find that attitude strange-- even unreasonable-- but given that's the attitude God displays, it follows that providing us proof would be contrary to His purpose.

David B

Or even stark staring mad!! And given that is the attitude god is alleged to display, it would seem to provide at least some grounds for not believing the allegations of his attitude, and existence.

David B

Diogenes the Cynic

The problem with this question is that it assumes that there ever was an empty tomb in the first place or that any direct follower of Jesus ever claimed to have seen him alive after the crucifixion. The Empty Tomb story was probably invented by Mark (Please read Peter Kirby's piece on the the historicity of the empty tomb for a summary of why the story is almost certainly fiction) and there is no real evidence anyone who knew Jesus ever claimed to have witnessed a resurrected Jesus. The earliest claim for an empty tomb is in Mark's Gospel, at least 40 years after the alleged crucifixion. The earliest, unambiguous claim for a physical resurrection (Mark doesn't have one) is Matthew, more than 50 years later.

Until you can prove that anyone was running around in Palestine, c. 30 CE claiming that a corpse had escaped from a tomb, then there is no reason to ask questions about the response of "non-believers."

Amaleq13

They might not be circular but they are far from "facts".


With regard to 1):

According to Paul, the Apostles were wrong at least with regard to gentile converts. He even goes so far as to accuse some of being "false apostles".

According to the Gospels, the Disciples repeatedly failed to understand Jesus.

Neither of these support your first "fact" which is actually an assumption based on faith.

With regard to 2):

At best you have a circumstantial case for the martyrdom of James and Peter which is obviously quite a bit short of a "majority".

exapologist

Hi all,

I'm very much enjoying the discussion on this thread! I'd first like to respond to Graehame.

While I certainly sympathize with your endorsement with the responses of Blomberg and Marshall -- indeed, I once endorsed them, not knowing what the arguments were from the other camps -- I'm afraid I can't agree that their responses are plausible. For, first, Marshall virtually dismisses the problem, as though it doesn't exist. Given that it *is* a longstanding problem among scholars and commentators from the early church fathers on --indeed the entire NT authors saw it as a problem from the beginning, which is why they later played the theme down in their writings -- I think Marshall's response is both unreasonable and irresponsible as a scholar. His response is basically the ostrich response: put your head in the sand, and maybe it will go away. Second, Blomberg's response is clearly implausible. For takes a "divide and conquer" approach to the passages, dealing with each one as isolated from the others. But they are clearly part of an organic whole, and are saying the same thing -- that, like the rest of his Jewish contemporaries, he believed that the end of all things was near, and that God was about to liberate the Jews from their oppressors and restore Israel. That Jesus really taught this, and that it was central to his message, is, I think, the best explanation of a large number of facts. Here are a few:

(i) the expectation of the Jews at the time: from Jewish writings from the intertestamental period to the second century CE, we see that it was commonly believed that God would liberate his people from their oppressors and restore them to their land, often also believing that God would annihilate the Gentiles.

(ii) the sense of *urgency* that permeated the lives and words of John the Baptist, Jesus, and the disciples indicates that they felt sure that the end would occur immediately.

(iii) Jesus was close to John the Baptist (indeed, I agree with Sanders, Vermes, et. al. that he was one of his disciples, but the latter point isn't necessary for my purposes), and he preached roughly the same message as John. But John's was a message of repentance in light of the immanent end of all things, and the restoration of Israel. So, it makes sense that Jesus shared a similar, if not the same, vision.

(iv) The successive watering down of this message from Mark to Peter's epistles indicates that Jesus taught it, but that it was becoming increasingly difficult to The synpotics all have the passages about Jesus clearly predicting the end in his and/or his disciples' lifetimes. It's very clear in the first gospel -- Mark. Luke and Matthew included Mark's passages on this score, but they start to play them down, given that some of the disciples have died, and the end hasn't yet occurred. Finally, by the time that John's gospel is written at the end of the first or beginning of the second century, words about the immanent end are no longer found on the lips of Jesus. Further, the end of his gospel has an apologetic discussion to get Jesus off the hook. It says, in effect, "look, Jesus didn't say that *none* of the disciples would die before the end of all things. Nor did he say that John the disciple would die before the end. Rather, Jesus said that *if* he comes back before John dies, it's no concern of yours." Finally, by Peter's epistles - which are some of the last things written in the NT, we have Peter in full back-peddling mode, postponing the eschaton indefinitely. He's saying, in essence, "yep, Jesus said that the end is near, and that we are in the last days. But days are really long in his calendar -- even millenia!"

In light of these facts, and many others like them (e.g., Paul, in 1 (or 2nd?) Thess. is so sure that Jesus is returning any minute that he talks about the order of who will rise first, and even says "we who are alive.. will meet the Lord in the air" (no mistaking that Paul falsely predicted the immanent end!), I agree with many of the leading scholars that their best explanation is the hypothesis that Jesus actually predicted the end of all things and the restoration of Israel in his lifetime, or at least that of his disciples.

hatsoff

You presuppose implication equals statement. It does not.

Julian

Okay, you missed my point. Diogenes talked to it above but I will reiterate. I wasn't questioning your date in relation to the crucifiction. I was asking about the non-believers. What non-believers? We have no documents from that time that has to do with christianity so I can only conclude that you made this up. Perhaps you can produce some documentation on this topic?

Julian

exapologist

Hi Zeichman and Revisionist,

Perhaps I should have been clearer about my reference to "Schweitzer's project". I'm no Jesus scholar, but I believe that it's common in the relevant literature to associate the thesis that Jesus' message involved the immanent coming of the kingdom of God and the restoration of Israel, and the apocalypse with Schweitzer. However, I don't think the association with Scheitzer goes any deeper than that in such references. So, for example, N.T. Wright sees himself as standing within the tradition of Schweitzer in this respect, but obviously he has deep disagreements with Schweitzer with respect to just about everything else (e.g., methodology, pessimisim about much of the gospel materials, etc.). The same goes with Sanders and Vermes -- they radically disagree with Schweitzer in many respects, their methods are *much* more rigorous than his, etc.

Similarly, my intention was to associate the views of Third Questers such as Sanders and Vermez in this very narrow sense re: the thesis that Jesus' message crucially involved an immanent eschaton, which includes an apocalypse.

exapologist

Hi Robto,

I agree that Crossan's work is respectable and very rigorous. He may even be *right*. However, the account of the historical Jesus argued for by Sanders and Vermes strikes me as much more plausible. In any case, even if Crossan is correct, I think it falls prey to the second horn of the dilemma I stated in my first post: it entails that the NT is substantially revised and inaccurate, in which case bible-based religions seem undermined, in my view.

But perhaps God superintended the compilation of scripture and tradition so that it has it's current form? Perhaps, but now we're just talking about logical possibilities, and not probabilities. And if so, then the data of Christian special revelation is on a par with that of all religions, in which case it doesn't give us any reason to accept it over any other religious tradition.

Still, perhaps that's okay? Perhaps some pluralistic version of religion is true? Maybe. Maybe certain sorts of widely realized religious transformation and religious experience, are best explained in this way? Maybe, but considerations from philosophy, psychology, and sociology of religion make me unsure about that. Perhaps I'm mistaken? What do you think?