Steven Carr

' In the words of E. E. Ellis, "It is very unlikely that the earliest Palestinian Christians could conceive of any distinction between resurrection and physical, 'grave emptying' resurrection. To them an anastasis without an empty grave would have been about as meaningful as a square circle."


You have to admire the chutzpah of those scholars who claim to know the mindsets of every single person living 2,000 years ago, and be able to declare what every single person could or could not believe.

Even if that claim were true of the vast majority of people, that would still leave a small minority who might well believe. And Christians were a small minority at first.

Could Western minds conceive that we could escape to a space-ship located on a comet heading towards Jupiter? Or could Western minds conceive that the human race was created by aliens living millions of years ago?

Could 19th century Americans conceive that the Jews sailed across the Atlantic and that an angel would bring new revelations to one American citizen? Clearly a lot of people did believe just that and followed this new religion.

As it happens, 1 Clement proves a resurrection by mentioning how a Phoenix resurrects, leaving its old bones behind.

So the idea that a resurrection without an empty tomb was perfectly plausible to people who could also believe that a Pheonix existed.

Vorkosigan

Greetings back at ya! How ya doing? Great to see you around these parts.

Vorkosigan

HRG

No testimony which contradicts an established regularity of nature can be called reliable. The very terms "testimony" and "observation" imply that nature behaves regularly (e.g. that photons are not emitted in mid-air and travel along straight lines). Without that regularity, there would be no connection between the visual experiences of an alleged witness and the actual event.

Regards, HRG.

HRG

First prove your affirmative claim that the apostles did actually die for their beliefs.

BTW, the empty tomb has zero worth as evidence unless it has been shown that Jesus was buried there and not reburied. Taken alone, it is as compelling as the argument that Egyptians must already have had cellular phones. After all, we never found any telephone wires in Egyptian tombs ....

Regards, HRG.

Asha'man

You haven't studied the Talmud much, have you? :banghead:

It most certainly does not agree with the empty tomb. But, if you are going to use the Talmud as support, why do you ignore the fact that it says Jesus was stoned and hung from a tree for blasphemy? That certainly puts the crucifixion in a bit of a different light, doesn't it?

If you want to know about an empty tomb from Jewish stories, then you are looking for the Toldoth Jesu. In that story, a gardener removed the body from a tomb, to deflect the actions of the apostles. This is actually a far more likely explanation than all of your proposed alternatives.

However, this piece of the story was almost certainly written centuries after the original fiction of the empty tomb was invented, so it would be foolish to use it as supporting evidence.

Sauron

You didn't answer the question; you merely procrastinated it out by referring to Luke and Acts.

1. How does merely reading Acts demonstrate that no negative testimony existed?
2. What makes Acts authoritative anyhow?
3. What is the evidence that Luke was careful?
4. And even if he was careful - not proven yet - how does that help your case? Why do you think that "careful" equates to "all knowing about Jewish writings and testimony"?

1. You don't know the Talmud.
2. Citing the Talmud does not prove "no negative evidence" anyhow. The Talmud is not the sum total of all Jewish writing from that time.

Two of my original questions remain unanswered:

2. What is your evidence that they cared enough to worry about this? "They" being anyone alive back then who might have heard about the alleged events in Jerusalem?

3. What is your evidence that they knew anything about the tomb at all? Knowledge of an execution does not automatically mean that they knew about the manner in which a body was disposed. You cannot expect negative testimony in such a situation, so any alleged lack of such testimony has zero evidentiary value.

pharoah

Let's look at a few problems in the gospels:

• The birth dates for Jesus given in Matthew and Luke are incompatible.
• The geneologies in Matthew and Luke are incompatible. Both of them are clear fictions.
• The virgin birth story is based on a mistranslation of Isaiah. The prophecy that Isaiah made to the king turned out to be wrong.
• The slaughter of the innocents is unhistorical, a piece of fiction concocted by Matthew based on a particularly egragorious abuse of the OT. Even if it did occur, it places God in a very bad light.
• Jesus said that he would return before all of the audience that he was addressing died. That was 2000 years ago.
• The Judas betrayal tale makes no sense.
• Matthew's tale of the dead saints rising is utterly ludicrous.
• It's impossible to show from the gospels that Jesus was buried "three days and three nights".
• The gospels contradict themselves on numerous details concerning the trial, crucifiction and resurrection.

This is just a few of the many significant problems that the gospels present. To believe in a resurrection in the face of this mountain of lies and contradictions is akin to believing that there is a historical Zeus behind the Greek myths.

Amaleq13

You've already been given a link to an article written by a member of this forum specifically against Craig's apologetics.

I'm not sure this is true of "every single thread" but I'm sure it is true of the majority. Do you really not understand why? It is not a special rule of this forum but a rule of logic. The vast majority of threads here deal with Christian claims. They are either assertions and arguments put forth by Christians as a challenge to atheists or they are Christian assertions and argument brought here by atheists to be challenged by atheists with more background knowledge. Either way, the initial claim is Christian and the burden of proof lies with the claimant.

Do you really not understand why this makes no sense? The burden is determined by logic, not "fairness". If you make a claim, you are required to support it with evidence.

Craig made a claim and should be expected to support it with evidence.

Lowder has offered an argument against the claim and, if you bother to read the article, you will find that he readily accepts his burden of proof in response.

Iasion

Heya buddy...

Good here - spring time - woohoo :-)
Hope you are well too.

By the way,
I mentioned your thesis and site over on Wiki here :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_...rk_and_Midrash

There was some interest expressed in some more detail, I hope to add more - perhaps you could contribute some ? :-)

Not sure what you think of Wiki - but when I saw a page of apologetics, I couldn't help myself...


Iasion

Orthodox_Freethinker

Have you considered the possiblity that the Church has been right on their authorship all along?