CX

I observe that most mainstream biblical scholars (most of whom are not atheists, but rather are Xian, save Michael Goulder) conclude that the empty tomb story is a theological and rhetorical device and not a record of an historical event.

[ March 08, 2002: Message edited by: CowboyX ]</p>

Godless Dave

Wide-eyed:

Unlike Mr. Jordan, I won't claim to speak for all atheists. But I suspect none of them accept the empty tomb and resurrection story as historical fact. The only sources of this story are the Gospels, and the stories in the Gospels don't agree with each other. Plus they were written many decades after the alleged events took place. Only a contemporary historical account, written by someone who was not trying to spread Jesus's message, would lend any credence to the story.

I have another book, the Iliad, which states that the Trojan War started when Athena shot an arrow at Agamemnon. I don't believe that happened either.

cb

Hello-

This is my first post on this board. I confess that I am not an athiest, but I am not here to evangelize everyone. I just would like to know more about the Athiestic/Agnostic viewpoint.

My first question applies to this thread. For those of you that do not believe that "the tomb was empty", do you believe that Christ was buried at all?

Toto

I think that the whole trial-crucifixion-burial story is fictional. I think that the chance that someone like Jesus lived who is the basis of the Christian religion is maybe 50%. I think if he was crucified (which I would rate at less than 50%), his body was probably not buried. So there is no empty tomb to explain.

But this is all speculation. What about you, cb? Do you base your faith on whether certain events happened historically?

Vorkosigan

I believe that the account we have is largely fictional. The core story of crucifixion is probably true, in the sense of there being an execution of someone, at the hands of the authorities, problem the Romans, since the Gospels go to such great lengths to exonerate them.

I suspect further that the story is a composite of various legends and traditions that accumulated in the messiah movements of Palestine after the second century BC.

I have no real opinion on whether Jesus was buried. I don't see any way to know, since the original story, whatever it was, is almost completely lost. The Romans sometimes gave victims' bodies back to their families, so it is plausible that he was buried. They also left corpses on the cross to rot.

Read some books.
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060653752/internetinfidelsA/" target="_blank">The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins</a>

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/156563246X/internetinfidelsA/" target="_blank">Q and the History of Early Christianity</a>

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465006493/internetinfidelsA/" target="_blank">The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel</a>

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/002544395X/internetinfidelsA/" target="_blank">Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?: The Search for the Secret of Qumran</a>

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0300080123/internetinfidelsA/" target="_blank">The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark</a>

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060675578/internetinfidelsA/" target="_blank">Liberating the Gospels : Reading the Bible With Jewish Eyes : Freeing Jesus from 2,000 Years of Misunderstanding</a>

Other useful stuff
Meier's Three volume bio of Jesus
Bart Ehrman's Introduction to the New Testament
Raymond Brown's [i]Introduction to the New Testament
Luke Timothy Johnson's Introduction to the New Testament
Stevan Davies Jesus the Healer
Geza Vermes' The Changing Face of Jesus
Robert Eisenman's James the Brother of Jesus
NT Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God
Crossan's The Birth of Christianity

You can also visit websites, such as
Jan Sammer's <a href="http://www.nazarenus.com" target="_blank">www.nazarenus.com</a> on the Passion Narrative as a play. That bears on your question, so I tossed it out.

IMHO two of the best sites are
Mark Goodacre's <a href="http://www.bham.ac.uk/theology/goodacre/" target="_blank">fabulous collection of websites</a>
and
Peter Kirby's <a href="http://www.earlychristianwritings.com" target="_blank">www.earlychristianwritings.com</a>
with commentaries on almost every single piece of Christian and related writings.

Non-atheists are welcome to post; glad to have you aboard. Click on the "Library" link above this forum to see our fine collection of articles. Several high quality theists used to frequent these forums, but most are too busy nowadays.

Michael

[ March 09, 2002: Message edited by: turtonm ]

[ March 09, 2002: Message edited by: turtonm ]</p>

Kosh

From somewhere in the bowels of the SecWeb lib:

"There is no money in atheism"

cb

Hi Toto,



Thank you for your thoughts on this. I would like to know more. If Christ did not live, and the crucifixion/burial stories are false, then how and why does this school of thought believe that the Christian religion started? It seems to me that the apostles had nothing to gain at all besides persecution and rejection from their "roots" for this.

I believe that there is a good case for the historical veracity of the existence of Christ; his death, and burial. I think that the (excuse me for quoting a book title) Naturally tho, despite all the evidence and sound reasoning one may come up with, belief in the miracle of the resurrection must come by faith.

thanks,carrie

[ March 09, 2002: Message edited by: cb ]

[ March 09, 2002: Message edited by: cb ]</p>

cb

Hi turtonm,


Why do you think the gospel writers would want to exonerate the Romans? Palestianian Jews hated them.

That seems like a plausible hypothesis, except for the fact that the story of Christ did not represent the mainstream in Jewish thought of the time. Palestinian Jews hated the Romans, and were waiting for a Messiah to liberate them from their rule. They were looking for a military messiah that would estabish the kingdom of the Jews, not a peasent that died and rose again to save them from their sins and abolish the Mosaic law.
Perhaps you could make the argument that the "legend" developed from the Hellenistic culture. I will have to look into that idea further.

True. However, it does beg the question, if Christ was really left on the cross to rot, what would be the motivation for starting a movement that declared him "Messiah", "Son of Man", and "Son of God?" Especially if the Jews in the area could simply say "What the hell are you talking about? We saw the dood rot on the cross!"

Thank you for these resources. I will check out the websites, and as soon as I have some money, I will purchase some of the books. (Or maybe I will get them at the library)

</strong>

Thank you for the warm welcome. I am happy to be here to discuss with all of you. I hope some of these "high quality" thiests come back, I'd be interested in meeting them.

thanks again,carrie

Vorkosigan

Why do you think the gospel writers would want to exonerate the Romans? Palestianian Jews hated them.

What makes you think the Gospel writers were Palestinian Jews?

As for your question about seeing Jesus die, I wrote an essay for XTALK on this very issue for someone else there.....

The assumption that underpins arguments like the one Dr. Kilmon is making here is that human beings are rational actors when interacting within the framework of strongly-held identities. History shows repeatedly, however, that reality does not have a narrowly-rational effect on people who strongly hold to their identities, especially newly-adopted ones.

In other words, what apologetic strategies like this propose is a dichotomy that argues that, if Jesus had really been left to rot on the cross, then his followers would have looked at him, shrugged, and then gone home to get on with their lives. Obviously, we must conclude, something must have happened.

This is simplistic and grants too much empirical rationality to actors in such scenarios. In most cases, such actors are concerned not with rational adherence to the verdict of empirical reality, but with preservation of the
new movement/identity. Let's consider a few actual cases.

When Rebbe Schneerson, many whose followers believed him to have supernatural and prophetic powers, died in 1994, many expected the movement
that had formed around him to collapse. After all, many of his followers had openly proclaimed him the messiah who would shortly ascend to save the world, and considered him immortal. This would be the "rational" fork of an argument like Kilmon's. [and like yours, Carrie]

However, when Schneerson died, instead of disappearing, the movement simply rewrote the story, making Schneerson the Messiah-who-will-be-Raised. The identity was more important than the reality. The Lubavitchers have split over the issue, but many still believe that he was the messiah and will return.

I am sure many listmembers are familiar with Shabbetai Tzvi, the would-be Jewish Messiah who was captured by the Ottoman Empire. He converted to Islam to save his life. Certainly, in the mythical rational world posited by arguments like Kilmon's, his followers must have abandoned him! Sadly, in the real world inhabited by people for whom identity is more important than reality, many of his followers converted to Islam. It took decades to suppress his movement.

In India Sai Baba, the Indian guru, continues to attract followers who believe he has supernatural powers, is omniscient, and omnipotent. This is
despite the fact that Sai has been caught on film performing parlor magic.

Similarly, on numerous occasions in colonial situations very much like that of first-century Palestine, magic was deployed against the bullets of the white man. Despite repeated and bloody empirical checks, in many cases followers never gave up their beliefs in the efficacy of such magic. The Xhosa revolt spurred by Mlanjeni's claim that magic twigs would stop bullets dragged on for three years (1850-1853). The maji-maji rebellion (magic water stops bullets) in E. Africa against the Germans went on for two years (1905-07). Magic water broke out again among the followers of Rembe in the same region in 1917-1919. In North America, the roughly contemporaneous Wovoka, the Paiute messiah, created the ghost dance, which led to the development of ghost shirts which would stop the white man's bullets. Same result as the other magic, but the revolt petered out much more rapidly, since many at Wounded Knee (1890) were wearing ghost shirts. I could give many similar examples. My favorite is Alice Lakawena, who led
a revolt in Uganda in 1987. She told her followers their rocks and sticks would explode like hand grenades, and magic ointment on their chests would protect them. They were mowed down, of course. Her personal bodyguard, however, carried AK-47s!

Consider also the Taipings, the religious movement led by the mad Hong Xiu-chuan, which led to a civil war in China that blew up into the second- bloodiest war in human history. When the last Taiping Generals surrendered or switched sides, despite the defeat of Hong, many who had betrayed Hong did not give up their conviction that he had performed miracles. It was too iimportant to their identity.

The alternative to the impoverished view of human nature suggested in Kilmon's dilemma above is to take a much more robust view of human responses to threats to in-group identity. Humans are not machines automatically adjusting their thinking to reality, like bacteria trophing toward food, but social primates for whom the in-group is *the most important reality.* It is so important that people will kill and die for it. Otherwise, how do we account for the deaths of 24 people who killed themselves to ride a UFO to a comet? Otherwise, how do we account for the scores of children killed in the US in the last 25 years, killed by parents who withheld medicine on religious grounds. They had made their children
into a stage upon which they could play out their in-group identity, an identity more important to them than their own offspring. I would bet anything that not a single one of those parents has given up their belief (read "identity") either.

Crossan is exactly right. Jesus' body rotted on the cross like that of most people executed by the Romans. In fact, given human nature, that is the most likely scenario, the best explanation for the emergence of a Resurrection doctrine. Resurrection doctrine emerged precisely *because*
his death was witnessed by members of the movement, and precisely *because* he rotted and didn't get up again. It's not very far from "He will return" to "He has returned," especially if those who "witness" the return will be rewarded with enhanced status in the new in-group identity.

One can easily imagine at the base of the cross, looking up at one very dead would-be messiah, were Jesus' bosom friends, whoever they were. And
what did they do? Like the Lubavitchers, and the followers of Tzvi, and the maji-maji warriers, and the followers of Hong, and a thousand other
groups confronted by reality, they shrugged, went home, and rewrote the script in order to rescue their new identity from a terrible blow. Cognitive dissonance is a powerful force for change, especially in religious doctrine.

Michael

Undercurrent

I doubt that I can be as thorough as the other Michael is on this, but I believe your argument is based on the presumption that Judaism at the time was terribly dogmatic, and, more importantly, had the power to enforce dogma. I'm sure the "inner circles" of Jewish thought would frown upon a bunch of hippies and their messaiah, but they would play well in the stix.

Consider the birth of the Mormon religion. Like christianity, it's really just an ammendment to its parent religion, it arose in a rather insignifcant place, and was started as a small group of practitioners (a "cult" if you will.) Sure the more conservative elements of its parent religion frown on it, but it's hardly "persecuted" and mainstream christians adopt a much more live-and-let-live attitude towards it.

As for the romans, they probably didn't care much about the new cult from an out-of-the-way province, so long as it didn't try to obtain political power. In fact, the empire was populated by many such religions centred on god-men like Mithras, Dionysis, Hercules, &c.

Remeber that chistianity is mostly a roman religion, not a palestinian one. Christianity perhaps started in palestine, but much of its development, including the decisions as to which gospels were official cannon, occured in roman hands. Besides, would an evangelist with any sense take their faith to rome with a holy book that said "romans are assholes"?

m.