Abel Stable

In a discussion w/ some xians about easter- I had zeroed in on this little nugget:
Mt27
And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,
53 And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.

I mentioned how it is only referenced in the bible, and there are no historical records of this miraculous (& very visible) event. In reply I was told to read The Archko Letters, and Josephus. Along with this link: his resurrection
I know a bit on Josephus, but didn't have the knowledge on hand to discuss it any further at the time - anyone know more about these writings?

edited to add:
My impression was that Josephus is an apocryphal book of the bible- if so wouldn’t that be like trying to authenticate Star Trek by citing fan fiction? Anyway, help would be appreciated..

keyser_soze

Perhaps kirby could elaborate for you, it is enough tactically to bring up the church's own doubts as to the authenticity of the josephus passage. Not to mention the guy was hardly a rock of unbiased information. I would suggest one of the threads, "proof of jesus existance". The argument is without merit, it is simply assertions and their own personal belief. Despite the fact that there were historians living all around and in the area that jesus presumably did these miracles in, and wrote nothing about the obvious "neatness" factor of resurrected corpses and the like...You'll just have to rely on common sense, and destroy their arguments piece by piece. A search of the library here would also be of help to you. These arguments have been decimated many times over, so often in fact that people get bored of responding to them. Hence the articles on this site.

CX

No. Flavius Josephus was a Jewish historian with Roman patrons. He wrote numerous things, but the most oft cited are Antiquities and The Jewish War.

Peter Kirby

Josephus was a first century Jewish historian on the imperial payroll whose literary output exceeds the size of the Bible. Josephus does not mention the resurrection of the saints in Matthew.

The Archko Volume was shown to be fake by Goodspeed a long time ago; see this summary.

best,
Peter Kirby

Abel Stable

Thanks, I actually came upon that link earlier today- but not surprisingly they consider Goodspeed a hack & yokel bent on slandering Mahan's work. And also insist that Josephus reported the resurrection of dead bodies (even though I sure couldn't find it, so maybe I should ask them to cite it for me)- then ended with telling me to be more objective & not seek out just the sources that I may agree with.