More Evidence: The Resurrection or Alexander the Great?

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No, no one does believe that Paul physically met Jesus. He was very clear to explain the encounter. What he heard and saw and how it affected him.

You are correct. All of those other things purportedly happened. The question is what does one believe. Do we look at all stories and consider them to be equal and correct? We look at other factors and we include them in our analysis and determination. Again, it’s not a formula, it’s a threshold of believability. Different evidence is going to affect people differently. There are reasons why I reject the other two stories you mentioned. Not because I believe the third, but in juxtaposition to the third. For instance, the story of Jesus is supported by a tradition of prophecy that went back a thousand years prior. Neither of the others can say anything similar.

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Or, alternative explanation, various details of the Jesus story were added to make it match prophecy. Consider all the hoops the story has to jump through to make a Nazarene born in Bethlehem, for example.

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Indeed, hoops. There’s a quite a bit of narrative that takes place in order for that baby to be born in Bethlehem. If it is true, then God, went to great lengths to coordinate the event. If it is false, then it’s a really silly story, because all of the details were completely unnecessary. Why provide all of the narrative when one could simply say “Jesus was born in Bethlehem” and leave it at that? It is like when you ask your child a question and they share too much information in response. You know there’s no reason for all of the details, so you suspect a lie. Is this a similar situation? Are the gospel writers going to wander, ad nauseam, through the story so as to force a correlation to Micah 5:2? I don’t think that is a good explanation and it certainly doesn’t fit well with how the rest of the Gospel narrative reads. Not in my opinion, anyhow.

That said, I was thinking of more general aspects of scripture that pointed generally to Jesus Christ, as prophecy. Parts of scripture that are known apart from the NT, but could only be understood in light of Jesus’ life and resurrection. Abraham with Isaac, and God saying that he would provide the ram for sacrifice. The blood of the Passover Lamb marking God’s own such that they were saved from death. And other more general examples, like how Moses (the Law) led God’s people through parted water, but only from Egypt to the desert. It was Joshua (Yeshua) who actually led God’s people, again through parted water, into the Promised Land. God’s word points in hundreds of ways toward Jesus, both very specifically and very generally at the same time.

There are many examples of specific prophecies that point to him. But the overall narrative also points to him. You can, of course, believe that it was a coordinated effort, after the fact. But that becomes a very large conspiracy. I reject conspiracies outright, because people are not dependable enough to be relied upon to keep to lies like that. This brings us back to the twelve. You can believe that they made up or imagined the resurrected Jesus, or you can believe that they met him. Is it a conspiracy or is it what transpired?

John 20:26-29 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” 28 Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Jesus himself admitted to the original Doubting Thomas that there was a blessing for those many who have not seen and yet have believed. It is challenging for those skeptics like us who struggle to believe. It is easy for many others who don’t require tangible evidence. I don’t think, though, that the reason it is difficult for you to believe is that God didn’t follow a route that can allow you to see. Maybe you cannot see it yet, or maybe I have done a poor job of being his instrument. You are an intelligent man, and so this is a daunting challenge.

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I’ve heard claims that he would almost certainly have met him when he was alive and preaching. It might have been Habermas but can’t remember exactly.

Did he? I can’t recall anything beyond the brief mention of Jesus’s appearance, and a quick look didn’t turn up anything. I’ll proceed here a bit on that basis–all Paul said was that Jesus “appeared” to him (and others). We know he also claims he was resurrected, but what was the nature of the appearance? Can we trust even what we hear from the account in Acts? We know that people can believe all kinds of things, and take those beliefs to great lengths. I wouldn’t read that much into Paul’s belief. It seems he believed it sincerely, and I don’t see how we go past that to draw other conclusions.

Something similar applies to “the twelve”. We don’t have first-hand accounts from them.

Writers like to make their story compelling. Apparently both Luke and Matthew saw the same need, and came up with rather different narratives.

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John, you are correct that Paul’s description in 1 Corinthians is limited.

Luke’s account in Acts is much more descriptive.

You have John’s account in Chapter 20.

There are some stories that are told different ways, and include different details, but both Matthew and Luke attest to the fact that Jesus rose from the dead.

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That’s not prophecy. That’s an incident, and subsequent interpretation of the Jesus story incorporated them as analogy. All that is cherry-picking stories from a host of other stories because they can be made to pre-figure Jesus.

I don’t think it was even that. It’s just people picking the parts that can be made to resemble the Jesus story and calling those the main story. It’s a Texas sharpshooter approach to scripture.

Or you can believe that somebody wrote that into the story because it went along with the story, and name-dropping adds verisimilitude.

You mean that there’s a story where he said that. Well, it certainly benefits a story that wants to be believed if it can convince you to downgrade the relevance of evidence. But I don’t see why I should accept any such thing because a story tells me to. I consider blind faith to be a fault, not a virtue. Perhaps that has something to do with being a scientist.

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You believe that the person who wrote that account was the apostle John?

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To what end? What is the point of all the fabrication? I understand and agree that if this is all a just-so story, one never has to deal with the problem of someone being raised from the dead. But there is nothing that you have said in any of your responses that adequately explains why. If you believe that every bit of it is fabrication, then there’s really no discussion here. But, if like most people (skeptical or otherwise) you believe at least that the characters are real and many of the details are also true, then the human nature aspect simply becomes more unbelievable than someone beating death.

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As John alludes to above, scholars generally don’t consider this to be a first-person account.

Sure. I was referring to the birth narratives though. Was just also thinking, I can imagine them being independent responses to a known challenge to the idea of Jesus as messiah.

The new religion was already in existence when this stuff was being written.

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34 posts were split to a new topic: When Was The New Testament Written?

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4 posts were split to a new topic: The Pre-Pauline Creed (30-35 AD)

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8 posts were split to a new topic: Are All Christians Who Affirm Evolution Deists?

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3 posts were merged into an existing topic: When Was The New Testament Written?

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2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Are All Christians Who Affirm Evolution Deists?

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This makes my point fairly succinctly. It is fine to propose other theories for how to make sense of this. However, at the very least attempt to test them with data. The "composite Jesus’ is not supported by evidence. Nor is the “late addition Resurrection myth.”

A the very least, somehow a large number of people came to believe the Jesus rose from the dead in 1st Century Palestine, shortly after Jesus’s death. They even begin partaking an symbolic blood drinking ritual (communion). Very devote Jews begin to welcome Gentiles into their communities as equals too. None of this is expected behavior for this cultural context. It is unprecedented and we have several controls in parallel Messiah movements in the same context.

There is certainly reason to doubt the impossible. So this does not box anyone into belief. However, the impossible Resurrection of Jesus seems to make most parsimonious sense of all this data.

If you really want to take forward the notion that Jesus was a composite person or that the Resurrection was a late add on, please produce stronger evidence than mere supposition. There is evidence against these claims.

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I would not make either claim. My notion, and that’s all anyone can ever have, is that this fellow Yeshua was proclaimed as a messiah, got a lot of followers, and then was killed, which nobody was expecting. Some (one?) of the followers had dreams in which the dead messiah explains that he isn’t really dead but carries on his work as a spirit. Thus the resurrection story begins. Thus Paul has a similar vision a bit later. Some of the things Jesus said or did may be true, but others are very likely accretions for various purposes. I return to the example of the birth in Bethlehem as a clear accretion for the purpose offitting his life to prophecy. The entire story of the empty tomb, the bodily appearance, etc. would be embroidery to improve the story, and could have easily arrived within only a few years.

Now, is it sensible that a new religion could have been founded quickly without true, bodily resurrection? I repeat the examples of Mohammed, Siddhartha, Joseph Smith, Mary Baker Eddy, etc. It’s happened many times. Just because Christianity is the only surviving Jewish messiah cult, that doesn’t make it special enough. The proper sample for comparison is larger.

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None of these include a claim of the bodily Resurrection. In all these cases, they agreed that their leader died.

It is not just because it survived. That is not what makes it special.

This, once again, is a testable claim. The evidence does not match the claim. They had language to talk about visions of dead people, but did not use this language to talk about Jesus. NT Wright explains this in the brief video I’ve quoted before. It is a short video. I know you hate videos. Would you give this one a shot?

It is fine to disagree with the Resurrection. Nothing here boxes you into belief. However, it is just uniformed and anti-evidence to leave these claims untested. Historians have tested these claims and found them to be in error. Even most non-Christian scholars agree that this is not a plausible position to hold. The irony here is that I’m in the position of arguing the consensus on both history and science. It is very strange to see people take an evidential approach to science switch and offer falsified theories as plausible in history. It is just strange.

I emphasize that none of this demonstrates that Jesus rose from the dead. I’m not boxing anyone into belief. At the very least, we should apply the same rigor here that we do in science, even though this is not our home discipline. It also requires some humility. None of us scientists speaks these original languages. We are always going to be dependent on scholars who have devoted their lives to understanding these things. We should definitely press for answers, but it is unwise to place our crazy speculations on the same grounding as their carefully studied answers.

Almost without modification, that paragraph goes too all the people I know in the Church who reject evolution. I am just being consistent on how we thinking about complex topics like 1rst Century Palestine and evolutionary science.

There is no evidence that these are late additions. The early date of the Pre-Pauline creed severely undermines this notion.

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Exactly. I was answering the question, “Now, is it sensible that a new religion could have been founded quickly without true, bodily resurrection?” You and others have asserted that some special event must be invoked to explain the rise of Christianity. I note that there is no such need.

What does make it special, particularly compared to Buddhism, Islam, Mormonism, and Christian Science?

Who are “they”? Are you claiming that the gospels are first-hand accounts of the actual witnesses? The bodily resurrection could easily be an early addition rather than a late one.

Which claims are you referring to? Are they claims I have made?

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That is not what I asked. What is in question was how did it form and spread during the lifetimes of those who would have been able to falsify this claim

We are looking at the historical claims around the Resurrection. There is no comparable claims connected to historical evidence in other religions. The epistemology of the Resurrection is different.

What exactly do you mean by early? I’m saying that it comes shortly after Jesus’s death, and is the core claim around which the early church is formed. Without the claim of Resurrection, there is no early church. There is a lot of evidence for this.

If you are saying that within a few years of Jesus dying, the Resurrection claim is added on, then I think you have a position consistent with the evidence. This, however, is not how the myth claim is usually made. Usually it is made to get around the fact that, in the scenario your are proposing, so many people would have had incentive to oppose this claim and means by which to disprove it. Moreover, why did they do this? No other messiah movement does the same? Why do they take this path?

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I’m not responsible to the claims of other people. Who would have incentive to oppose the claim? How would they disprove it?

As for explaining why they take this path, it’s unclear who you suppose they are or what precise path you’re talking about. If you refer to making up incidents to add to a story, that would seem to happen often, and often done by those who sincerely believe in the truth of their additions; a simple example would be Parson Weems and the cherry tree. If you refer to resurrection specifically, I think that Paul’s vision makes quite a good model. If no other messiah did this, perhaps they weren’t Hellenized enough, as resurrections are certainly common for Hellenistic saviors. And perhaps only Jesus was unexpectedly crucified, and only his disciples had the incentive to have those visions. One can only speculate, and fruitlessly.

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