Toto

The question is whether Paul was a witness to the resurrection, or to the resurrected Christ. But that topic concerns whether Paul believed in a physical resurrection. SecWebLurker appears to claim that the appearance to Paul was not of the same quality as the appearance to the disciples:

faded_Glory

I will let Nomad answer this one, but I do notice an inconsistency. In regards to the Roswell issue he says that the existence of people claiming to have seen remnants of an alien spacecraft, and claiming to know other people who have seen the aliens themselves, is evidence for the existence of aliens.

Yet, a few posts later, he says that Pauls' claim to have seen the resurrected Jesus, and knowing others who have seen him, is evidence that Paul believes in a resurrected Jesus.

To me these things are not the same. I would argue that evidence for someone's belief is categorically not the same as evidence for the thing the person claims to have seen. For the first to become the second we need to subject the person making the claim to scrutiny - and the more important the claim is, the more thorough should be the scrutiny. The more biased a person is likely to be, the more we need independent evidence, preferably from inanimate sources to rule out human imperfections. If that is not available, we would require independent testimony form someone with an opposite bias, or at least no vested interest in the veracity of the fact being claimed. In the absence of any of such independent backup, we are left with just a subjective claim - and it is up to every person individually to believe it or not. Evidence it ain't.

fG

Vorkosigan

2) Jesus walking on the water. Here again we have multiple attestation of this event, from Mark and John (Matthew and Luke used Mark for their source, so they are not independent textual evidence). Given that it is extremely unlikely, that any experiment could reproduce this event, however, we cannot verify through scientific enquiry that it actually happened.

Nomad, if you don't want to have a serious discussion on the nature of scientific enquiry, why do you keep bringing it up?

Since you have your hands full here and with the burgeoning discussion on XTALK, you can let me know when you have time to mutually reflect on these matters.

Michael

Nomad

People can only testify to that which they have personally experienced, or that which they believe they have experienced. Paul believed that the Resurrected Jesus appeared to him, and the people at Roswell believe that they saw aliens. Both offer testimonial evidence for what they believe to be true.

In an ideal world we will always try to subject evidentiary claims to further examination, preferably with the ability to examine the witnesses personally. Once all of the original witnesses are dead this becomes impossible, and we are left with a decision to believe or not believe those claims. Other evidence may or may not have since come to light, but the claims remain, as does their status as evidence for what they believed.

If I may, have you ever studied ancient history fG? I am not making an accusation. This is an honest question, as I am unsure of the standards you would personally use to evalutate evidence for ancient peoples and events. I have listed my own briefly, and I apply them equally to other ancient claims. If you do likewise, then I am content. As a specific example, on what basis do you decide whether or not Julius Caesar was assassinated on March 15, 44BC?

Agreed. I have already said the same thing in my responses to Dennis. At the same time, we must not automaticallyreject evidence offered by a biased source.

Your final statement is simply false, though your means of investigating a claim listed above are valid. I would add one additional means by which we can evaluate a claim: If we also personally experience the same thing as is being claimed, and we can safely assume that we are sane individuals capable of evaluating our own experiences (an assumption we live with 99%+ of the time), then this can constitute confirmation of the truth of the claim being made.

Please refer one more time to my definition of the word "evidence". Evaluation of the quality of evidence is always independent of the simple definition of evidence itself.

Nomad

Nomad

First, I was responding to a direct question put to me by Logan in which he wanted to know how far I am prepared to go in claiming historical evidence supports a specific claim (in this case Jesus walking on the water). I amswered that question, using his specific examples. I did not bring it up, but I did think the question was worth responding to.

That said, it remains outside the scope of this specific thread to go into too many specific evidentiary claims, as the question before us is whether or not I am consistent in what I claim to be historical evidence. By now I would hope that this question is now settled, and that most of those reading this thread accept that I am not inconsistent.

Now, when I say that science cannot verify, nor disprove many historical claims (especially those that are supernatural in nature, and, more specifically, singular events), this is merely a truism accepted by virtually all serious historians. See again my quotation from Michael Grant, and others in a similar vein from Raymond Brown, Donald Akenson and J.P. Meier are available if you need additional supports. I am certainly not outside of the mainstream in my reasoning on this point.

This thread appears to have pretty much played itself out, and it is my intention to focus my near term energies (here at the Secular Web) on some questions on morality.

The discussions at XTalk will continue, but will probably do so at a more leisurely pace than is common on these boards. The "pressures" to respond quickly to Xtalk posts is far less there than it is here. At the same time, some of the most intense discussions end up off boards in email (almost always at the request of the other party, my own preference is to talk on public boards where others may read, comment, and ask questions).

I do not know what you hope to accomplish in a "reflection" on the matters you and I have discussed here, but if you wish, start a thread, and I will see read it.

Peace,

Nomad

Apikorus

Nomad, while I am inclined to believe that Julius Caesar was indeed assassinated on March 15, 44 BCE based on extant sources, my entire worldview does not hinge on this datum. Were historians to uncover evidence that he was assassinted instead on March 14, or that rather than being murdered he committed suicide, I would be surprised and eager to assess such claims. But if the such claims were abundantly well-supported, I could easily assimilate them.

Claims of the sort that Jesus was the "son of God" and "the messiah" are rather different, though, in that they form the basis for your entire worldview (largely so, at least), and that of many millions of others. Chances are that you would not find it so easy to assimilate the work of a scholar who might claim to have found Jesus' skeleton, or that Jesus had fathered children.

[ January 08, 2002: Message edited by: Apikorus ]</p>

Nomad

Just to clarify on this point:

SecWebLurker is a personal friend of mine, and I know as a fact that he accepts that Paul believed in a physical resurrection of Jesus. He argues for this in great depth in the thread I have cited. He also believes that Paul's exerience was different from that of the disciples (though SWL accepts that Jesus did appear to Paul physically), and here I would not necessarily disagree with him. The experience as described in Acts is clearly different from that of the Gospels (only Paul could see and hear Jesus, the others with him could not). But to go from that experience to claiming that Paul rejected the physical resurection is to draw an incorrect inference, and SWL does not do this.

Based on 1 Cor. 15:3-8 there is no indication that Paul thinks that his exerience of the risen Jesus was non-physical, nor does he present that Resurrection (Paul's Gospel) as being substantially different from that of the others in his list. In fact, quite the opposite is the case. The structure of this section, together with verses 1 and 2 shows that Paul sees the Gospel as a unity, with all of the people listed as witnesses to the Resurrection sharing equally in the same experience of the risen Jesus. At most, Paul sees himself as the least of these "witnesses", but he is very insistent that what he preaches is the same as what is preached by Peter, John, James, and the other apostles (Galatians 2:7-9).

Nomad

Nomad

Actually, I would pretty much agree with you here Apikorus, and I raised this particular example only because I did a specific thread on it on these boards in the past. My point had been that the evidence for ancient events is often not nearly so good as many might believe, and from an objective standpoint, the evidence found in the Bible is basically on par with what we can find in most other sources from a similar period of time. Often times it is actually better than what we have on other people and events.

To me, I think it is appropriate to treat evidence in the same fashion, whether it comes from Christian or non-Christian sources, and to use the methodology of historical inquiry to determine as best as we can what happened. Since that is the only real point that needed to be established in this thread, and after 8 pages of discussion, I think it is safe to say that I have been consistent in what I classify as historical evidence.

Agreed. See again my responses to Dennis and Logan and others where I admit this.

I rarely shy from considering hypotheticals, as they are always fun to at least examine. At the same time, I am perfectly willing to subject my beliefs to evidentiary claims, and should some of them be shown to be false, then I would have to reject them. That said, it is important to remember that in the examination of history we are rarely dealing with "certainty" and "facts", but, rather, probability and plausibility. I have examined the arguments that run counter to my beliefs in many areas, including from some historians I consider to be among the truly great minds of the last century. I have not agreed with all of their conclusions, nor would they expect me to do so, I suspect, but in each case they do force me to evaluate the quality of the evidence that I have for my beliefs, and that is certainly a good thing.

So, can I prove that all of the things I believe to be true, are, in fact, true? No, I cannot. In fact, if everyone on these boards came to accept 100% of the things I am prepared to defend on the basis of historical evidence alone, they would still be able to remain sceptics, and even atheists or agnostic. History is merely a tool to arrive at beliefs. It is not, and should not be, the only tool we have or use.

BTW, I would be no more likely to accept that the bones of Jesus were suddenly discovered with certainty, than I am prepared to accept that the bones of St. Luke have been confirmed (with certainty) to be those of Luke. Even the scientists that have made the latter claim do so only within a range of probability, not certainty. And as for the question of whether or not Jesus had children, I have considered this question as well, and the evidence does appear to be against it rather strongly.

Peace,

Nomad

Toto

You friend SWL argued on that thread that Paul's experience of Jesus was qualitatively different from the others. He has to argue that if he believes in a physical resurrection, since, according to Acts, Paul was blinded by a light and only heard a voice, and all this was after Jesus ascended to heaven to sit at the right had of God. (Where do you find that Paul saw Jesus?) If Paul's experience of the resurrection was the same as the others', it makes much more sense to assume that they all experienced a spiritual resurrection in their own heads.

You can argue that Paul believed in a physical resurrection, but that is different from saying that he himself experienced that physical resurrection the same way the apostles allegedly did, where Thomas could put his hands in the wounds.

Since I read the Jesus Mysteries, I understand what this debate is about. The best interpretation of Paul's letters is that Paul believed in a spiritual or non-physical resurrection, or a resurrection on some Platonic level that we no longer believe is there. The idea that there was a physical resurrection here on earth was developed in the mid-second century as a prop to the organizational power of the church, and the church burned a lot of heretics who refused to believe in it.

Kosh

Can you post some references to this?

Thanks.