svensky

Actually,

to just dismiss pauls comment as a lie is slightly problematic.

Why would he make the appeal if it wasn't so ?

The corinthian letters where written aroud 55 AD if memory serves, long before the destruction of jerusalem at the hands of the romans, so the "500" would still be around and available to ask questions of.

Also, many of the early converts to christianity where wealthy indiviuals, who where in a position to be able to afford to send people to check pauls story.

Yet we dont find any record of anybody disputing this claim.

Add to this the fact that jewish anti-christian writings of the time, writings that where out to dismiss who christ was, admit that he worked miracles, but attribute it sorcery, and admit the empty tomb but attribute the dissappearance to theft by the disciples.

If christ was a fraud, didn't exist or didn't rise, why dont the anti-christian jewish polemics just say that ? Why don't we find people disputing pauls claim ? There was chance and motive.

Let me guess, it was those nasty christians and a long and convulted plot to cover up the truth ?

Jason

[ August 04, 2002: Message edited by: svensky ]</p>

hologos

Greetings to all those gathered at the Box of Pandora,

We seem to be in a bit of a dilemma as to what constitutes a credible witness and how to determine if testimony corroborates or not.

Most of the conflict arises from the way we make our paradigms. Yes, how we "filter" information in the name of objectivity and so-called "free-thinking" is a major stumblingblock to real knowledge. We seem to have difficulty distinguishing veracity and authenticity, and continue to give credance to that which is in fact "pseudo" or "hoaxy." In other words, when we excavate something "old," we immediately apply a set of paradigms which were formed by unprovable hypotheses and call it "science." But when someone from a different "school" seeks a similar set of interpretive guidelines, they are called "unlearned mystics" and other terms which need not be repeated.

What are some of the things that establish the testimony of a "eye witness?" Were you there?
Did you know any of the participants?

The testimony of one person means little in a court of law. But if two or three say the same thing in their own words, the veracity of an event having happened becomes increasingly compelling. Then there is the preponderance of evidence principle. i.e. That Jesus is a real person in history is supported by a preponderance of evidence. One has to be given over to strong delusion to deny his existence. The problem comes up when we consider his claim to be "the way, the truth, the life." He also claimed to be "I AM" of the Old Testament--a claim which caused his arrest, trial, conviction, sentencing and execution. He is either exactly who He said He is or He is the greatest imposter ever. Some would deny any of this ever happened. Some people do not believe we went to the moon. Is there a preponderance of evidence that we did? Probably so. Have I seen the evidence? No, not in person. I do believe the testimony of the astronauts, even though I was not there with them. If this discussion is made two thousand years from now, many will believe we went to the moon, using the same evidence--some testimony from a credible witness--just as we have done and will continue to do. Some will not believe. Maybe it all came from Burbank, California. Are you sure?

selah,

Amen-Moses

Originally posted by svensky:
Why would he make the appeal if it wasn't so ?

Same reason for all other mythical claims.

The corinthian letters where written aroud 55 AD if memory serves,

So the letter is written to somone in Corinth? When did this letter first come to light?

long before the destruction of jerusalem at the hands of the romans, so the "500" would still be around and available to ask questions of.

The 500 would be where exactly? Paul doesn't name them or say where they came from.

Also, many of the early converts to christianity where wealthy indiviuals, who where in a position to be able to afford to send people to check pauls story.

Send people to where? From Corinth? And how do we know someone didn't try?

Yet we dont find any record of anybody disputing this claim.

So it is an argument from silence? If such a record ever existed what are the chances of it surviving?

Add to this the fact that jewish anti-christian writings of the time, writings that where out to dismiss who christ was, admit that he worked miracles, but attribute it sorcery, and admit the empty tomb but attribute the dissappearance to theft by the disciples.

If you can show me these anti-christian writings of 55CE I would be eternally grateful.

If christ was a fraud, didn't exist or didn't rise, why dont the anti-christian jewish polemics just say that ? Why don't we find people disputing pauls claim ? There was chance and motive.

Which polemics are those? Can you show them to me or only infer their existance from the surviving Gospel accounts?

Let me guess, it was those nasty christians and a long and convulted plot to cover up the truth ?

Or a long history of not copying anti-christian works.

I seriously doubt whether the letters attributed to Paul where published until either late 1st century or early in the 2nd, even then I doubt whether anyone was really bothered with them just as LDS adherants do not bother much with the early history of Joseph Smith and his cronies. The important thing for all cult members is the message.

Amen-Moses

[ August 04, 2002: Message edited by: Amen-Moses ]</p>

Peter Kirby

svensky: Why would he make the appeal if it wasn't so ?

I think it may have been so. Hundreds of people see the risen body of Christ at the same time all the time. Have you ever attended an adoration of the Eucharist at a Catholic church? Ask one of the parishioners whether she had been gazing upon the body of Christ. She will say yes if she is an orthodox Catholic. Now, this is not to say that I think that there was "adoration of the Eucharist" in the first century, but the same general idea may apply. It is often observed that such a remarkable occurrence as the appearance to 500, strangely, did not leave any trace in the gospels. This is strange regardless of whether we think it was an early story or the unvarnished truth. But perhaps there is an explanation. Scholars have noted that certain scenes in the gospels that are narrated as if they happened during the life of Jesus may rather have been retrojected resurrection stories. Compare John 21:1-14 with Luke 5:1-11, for example. (Note that the statement of Peter in Luke 5:8 is unmotivated where it stands but makes sense in the context of a post-resurrection story after the incident in which Peter denied Jesus three times.) There is some connection between the Eucharist and the appearance of Christ in the early church. See Luke 24:30 and John 21:13. Given this connection, I wonder if this so-called appearance to 500 has anything to do with the feeding of the 5000 men found in all four gospels (twice in Mark, as 4000 and 5000, once in John as 5000). The very fact that, whatever this event was, it must have been memorable, suggests that there may be a connection, because a memorable event would find its echo in a wide range of texts as this one does: in Paul, in the Synoptics, and in John. As to the nature of the event, I can only speculate that a few hundred people gathered together in Galilee and shared bread and fish together in a way that affirmed the reality of Jesus and the victory of life in their experience as a community. I freely admit that this is speculation, but speculation no more extravagant than the idea say that five hundred people were standing around together for no particular reason when the body of Jesus popped out of the sky and said hello and then vanished again into thin air. What I like about my speculation is that it doesn't make the author of 1 Cor 15 into a liar and it doesn't make natural science into a liar either. No conspiracies required: according to this speculation, these few hundred brothers actually did have an experience that showed to them that Jesus was risen indeed. It is modernistic scientism (and its bastard offspring fundamentalism) that demands that this experience be physical in order to be real. So I see no theoretical reason that an atheist and a Christian could not agree that this speculation concerning the historical situation here is plausible.

Here are the texts that show the connection between eucharist/feeding and resurrection/appearance. Note the parallel structure.

Mark 6:41. "Then, taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he said the blessing, broke the loaves, and gave them to [his] disciples to set before the people; he also divided the two fish among them all."

Luke 24:30. "And it happened that, while he was with them at table, he took the bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them."

John 6:11. "Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed them to those who were reclining, and also as much of the fish as they wanted."

John 21:13. "Jesus came over and took the bread and gave it to them, and in like manner the fish."

Just to be clear, when I say speculation, I mean that I offer the idea as interesting and plausible but not proven and not a "belief" of mine.

best,
Peter Kirby

Clutch

The evidential status of the “500 witnesses” claim is clear. An event’s occurrence is supported by n eyewitnesses when there are n eyewitness reports of reliable provenance. When there is one explicitly non-eyewitness report claiming without any supporting grounds that there were 500 eyewitness... then there are zero eyewitnesses.

KA’s response, besides running away, is to assert that the people who really were there would have piped up had Paul been getting this claim wrong. This is a baffling assertion. First, if the event never happened, then a fortiori nobody witnessed it. How, exactly, are people supposed to recognize themselves as the non-witnesses of a non-event? Are people to step forward and say, “I was there, I saw it, and it didn’t happen that way”, when there was no “there”, no “it”? More obviously, however, Paul’s claim is made in a letter to the Corinthians. Who in Corinth is supposed to step up as a genuine eyewitness, to police the claim of 500 witnesses to an alleged event decades earlier in a distant land?

Finally, the Buddhist example is only one of a huge number of such cases, in which large and conveniently round numbers of witnesses are claimed as attesting to this or that miracle in every religion, cult and superstition. Paul’s claim fits precisely into this familiar pattern; only transparent special pleading is offered to distinguish it from its myth-making equivalents in Islam, Branch Davidianism, Buddhism and UFO abductee-ism.

[ August 04, 2002: Message edited by: Clutch ]</p>

Clutch

I agree with Peter Kirby that there are plausible scenarios on which the ascension story gets started without anyone making it up out of whole cloth. A gradual process of embellishment, no single step in which amounts to barefaced lying, is one familiar and highly plausible such explanation. Kirby's conjecture is another. However, this quip has little to recommend it. First, any charge of "scientism" is empty, in the absence of demonstrating the inappropriateness of employing scientific standards or reasoning in this domain. I am unaware of Kirby's having supplied any such demonstration. And second, this seems an elementary misunderstanding of the relation between science, physicality, experiences, and truth.

Without delving into questions about the physical constitution of human felt experiences, the relevant question is whether there really was an event accurately represented by the experiences had by the crowd, on Kirby's hypothesis. Certainly an experience can be as real as a doorstop without accurately representing reality. Veridical or otherwise, it can also be as physical as a doorstop, if it is neurologically constituted. None of which relates to scientism in any obvious way.

The only objection to his proposal of the sort Kirby seems to be forestalling would come from someone who claimed that people only have veridical experiences. A fundmentalist, literalist, apologist might opportunistically attempt to adopt this view, notwithstanding its... well, obvious absurdity. But that's not scientism, and has nothing to do with physicalism. It's nothing more exotic than a stupid claim.

[ August 04, 2002: Message edited by: Clutch ]</p>

Grumpy

Clutch has just answered the substance of this thread (to my satisfaction, anyway). So nobody can complain that the question has not been addressed. End of story.

And hey, there must be somewhere around 500 people dipping into this thread, so you can ask them and they'll tell you I'm right!

Autonemesis

Oh please! If he was the greatest imposter ever, he wouldn't have been arrested, tried, convicted, sentenced and executed! The Jews would have believed him!

King Arthur

Peter... Excellent. I like your thinking. You're a step above many here. Your in-depth analysis is good and exactly what I was getting at whether others really understand or not.

You may not like my style, but we're a lot closer in ideology than you or others may realize.

Rock on!

BTW, to "hologos", I love the name! You're "The Word", man!

[ August 04, 2002: Message edited by: King Arthur ]</p>

Toto

This all sounds like much ado about nothing. A letter attributed to Paul claims that 500 saw the risen Jesus, but scholars argue over whether the word "saw" in Greek refers to seeing a physical object or having a vision. Paul could have meant that 500 (or some other large number) of people had a vision, or a mass hallucination, of the risen Jesus, similar to the one that he had on the road to Damascus (or wherever he had it.)

So as hard evidence, this is not very firm evidence of Jesus or his physical resurrection.

Craig and other apologists claim that it is unlikely that 500 people could hallucinate the same vision at the same time, but this ignores all the evidence we have of human gullibility and the contagiousness of beliefs.

Or the 500 could have taken some powerful mushrooms, for all we know. "Bread" or "fish" could have been a stand-in for some other substance. (I haven't read Allegro's book, I'm just talking off the top of my head. But the idea that a claim in an ancient document that 500 people saw a particular event is evidence of that event strikes me as flimsy at best.)

[ August 04, 2002: Message edited by: Toto ]</p>