Roland

We're always being told by those who accept the historical truth of the gospel stories that the thing that separates Christianity from all other religions is that Jeus Himself rose from the dead and that this is a well documented historical fact attested to by reliable eyewitnesses.

But I wonder just how convincing all these post-resurrection appearances really were for those who "saw" them. Let me explain.

Matthew 28:16-17 tells us "Then the eleven disciples went away into Galillee, to the mountain which Jesus had appointed for them. When they saw Him, they worshipped Him; BUT SOME DOUBTED."

Matthew does not specifically tell us when this event happened, but John 21:14 gives us a bit of a clue. In that verse, John has just gotten through relating a THIRD appearance of Jesus to His disciples. The first one, according to John, was His appearance on Resurrection Day (the one where Thomas was not present); the second occurred 8 days later, when Thomas WAS present; and the third sometime later while the apostles are fishing at the Sea of Tiberias. Since John 21:14 states explicitly that this last event was "the third time Jesus showed Himself to the disciples after the resurrection," we can safely conclude that the appearance found in Matthew must have occured AFTER the previous three.

If so, we must now ask ourselves WHY, after all these infallible appearances, some of the disciples STILL DOUBTED. They've seen Jesus FOUR TIMES since His death and they STILL don't believe it's Him? This leads me to two possible conclusions: 1) some of the disciples must have been total idiots or 2) these appearances may not have been quite as convincing as the Bible portrays them as being.

And that leads me to my final conclusion, which is that, if people who actually SAW Jesus' resurrected body FOUR TIMES remained skeptical of His return, why should we, 2000 years later, be impressed with its reality? All we have are timeworn documents attesting to that fact. Do the Christians of today really have more of a basis for their beliefs than all these doubting apostles who actually "saw" Jesus?

I think, given all this, that we who are unbelievers today can be forgiven our skepticism.

After all, if some still doubted what their eyes were telling them after FOUR pretty elaborate appearances, perhaps these "eyewitnesses" on which this religion is based were the ones suffering from delusions (it's happened before and since).