Have you read NT Wright’s work yet?
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That’s fine, from a secular perspective. Even if you take the mainstream NT scholarship view, the New Testament was starting to be written down within the possible lifetimes of witnesses of the events, starting around 50 AD with Paul and continuing until around 100 AD.
I’m certainly not trying to make the claim that we have decisive, objective demonstration of historicity of the Resurrection, only that New Testament is plausibly an authentic witness of the life of Jesus and the apostles.
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Any story in which people walk on water and come back from the dead is not “plausible.”
This is not complicated.
Not in depth. But from what I have read, he makes the error of going from the position that the earliest Christians believed Jesus rose from the dead, to the conclusion that he really did.
I do not deny that the resurrection was part of Christian belief from its earliest days.
The explanation is simple, and requires no miracles or supernatural events, just awareness and acknowledgement of an obvious fact that is all around us: Religious believers believe dumb things for no good reason. It’s part of what marks a religion. The polite word for this is “faith”. It’s the same thing that caused the earliest Muslims to believe Muhammad was talking directly with God, also for no good reason. I suspect you have no problem agreeing with me on that one, do you?
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So it’s not the witnesses themselves or the timeline of the record that’s the problem for you, it’s the content?
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The content should be enough for any reasonable person. But we don’t have witnesses. We have stories people believed to be true. Just like we have the story about Muhammad tallking with God thru the Angel Gabriel in a cave. Why did people believe that so fervently?
Beats me.
Is the only possible, or even most likely, explanation that it was true?
Hardly.
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Any God that can create the universe can do whatever he wants with water. Oh yeah, and life too. This is not complicated.
Relevant to real historians:
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So I think that fact that many millions of people throughout history have believed is intriguing.
Of course it’s not the only possible explanation, that would be weird. However, I think assessing the probability of historical events is pretty difficult, as even the most seemingly improbable events can happen once. Still, dead people don’t rise from the dead, and first century Jewish people knew that. So there’s another intriguing point.
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From your reference:
I don’t “disregard” the NT, but I also don’t accept that it accurately reports history. Rather, I see it as reporting traditions held by the early Christians.
I see that as a rather weak defense of the NT.
Considering the volume of manuscripts (why were there so many?) and the rapid growth of Christianity, that would tend to suggest that you are not accounting for something. That something might be because it is true.
I have done limited testing with the NT and find it fits well with the OT prophecies. Isaiah 52 12 through 53 claims “Gods servant” will suffer and take on the transgressions of the fallen people of Israel be put to death and rise again. This is just one of many prophecies that fits the profile of Jesus ministry, essence and life.
The bible is not complete without the arrival of the Jewish Messiah, Jesus.
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Testing? You think that reading a book and seeing that it says in the earlier parts that things in the later parts will come to pass, is testing?
And it’s “prophecy” when it says something as vague as “believers will suffer and be mocked and some will be killed” without any specific details about when, where, how much, by whom specifically?
This is what happens without critical thinking.
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I’ve seen people claim that Matthew was an eyewitness account more often than not. I’ve seen people claim that all four gospels were eyewitness accounts more times than I can remember.
You are seriously underestimating the claims of evangelists.
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I’m not even asking for that. I’d settle for proselytisers being accurate about what the bible contains. One of the biggest obstacles to believing anything is finding out that what the proponents have been telling you isn’t true.
It’s an even bigger obstacle once you already know the claims aren’t true and not only see them still being made by people who should know better, but see others who do know better not bother to correct the falsehoods, but instead pretend they are irrelevant, thus allowing them to spread unchecked.
It would lead to less adversity if every time some Christian claimed the gospels were eyewitness testimony other Christians corrected them first. But that never happens.
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Insults flagged as inappropriate.
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It is that. It’s also intriguing that so many people believe in Bigfoot or alien abductions.
There’s a difference between “improbable” and “physically impossible.”
The more fundamental problem here is that the entire argument is based on assessing probabilities. It’s too improbable that the disciples would die for a lie. It’s too improbable that they would all have hallucinations at the same time of a resurrected Jesus. Etc.
What is being committed here is the taxi cab fallacy. Probabilities are invoked throughout the argument, until the point comes to assess the probability of a guy coming back from the dead. Then, the argument suddenly flips to “Well, improbable things can still happen.”
Sorry, not buying.
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No more inappropriate than the original insults hurled at the demonstrable historicity of the gospels. A totalitarian assertion invites an acerbic response, but some folks can’t swallow their own medicine. My two inappropriate cents. :o)
The prophet Mohammed didn’t REALLY take dictation by the Archangel Gabriel. And yet here we are, with over 2 billions muslims in the world. So yes.
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