# Vesuvius and the Evidence for the Resurrection

**URL:** <https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/vesuvius-and-the-evidence-for-the-resurrection/9948>\
**Category:** Side Conversation\
**Created:** [March 14, 2020, 2:51pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/vesuvius-and-the-evidence-for-the-resurrection/9948 "2020-03-14T14:51:46Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 4

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**Author:** ![Faizal\_Ali](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/faizal_ali/32/12416_2.png) [@Faizal\_Ali](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Faizal_Ali)\
**Post date:** [March 16, 2020, 1:30am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/vesuvius-and-the-evidence-for-the-resurrection/9948/61 "2020-03-16T01:30:08Z")

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> [@colewd](#):
>
> This is your claim.

My claim, actually was that there is not “a single example of an eyewitness of account of a single moment of Jesus’s life that is accepted as such by consensus of historians.”

Could you point out where you have presented any evidence to counter that? For all I can see, you are just crying for help from some of the Christian members here. The one who responded essentially confirmed what I am saying.

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**Author:** ![colewd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecd19e/32.png) [@colewd](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/colewd)\
**Post date:** [March 16, 2020, 1:36am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/vesuvius-and-the-evidence-for-the-resurrection/9948/62 "2020-03-16T01:36:05Z")

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> [@Faizal\_Ali](#):
>
> Could you point out where you have presented any evidence to counter that? For all I can see, you are just crying for help from some of the Christian members here. The one who responded essentially confirmed what I am saying.

I am asking you support your assertion. You should note why there is little interest in this discussion. If you cannot support it directly we have no reason to continue.

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**Author:** ![Faizal\_Ali](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/faizal_ali/32/12416_2.png) [@Faizal\_Ali](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Faizal_Ali)\
**Post date:** [March 16, 2020, 1:42am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/vesuvius-and-the-evidence-for-the-resurrection/9948/63 "2020-03-16T01:42:24Z")

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How do you suggest I support my claim, except with the fact that you are unable to provide a single example of eyewitness testimony that is accepted by scholarly consensus?

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**Author:** ![colewd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecd19e/32.png) [@colewd](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/colewd)\
**Post date:** [March 16, 2020, 1:58am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/vesuvius-and-the-evidence-for-the-resurrection/9948/64 "2020-03-16T01:58:53Z")

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I expect you to support your claim and not commit a burden shift fallacy. Very simply list all the top Christian scholars and non Christian scholars and see who is claiming that Mathew is not the author of the gospel attributed to him as we know Luke and Mark were not apostles.

I know Bart Ehrman is an advocate that Mathew is probably not the author and Lydia and Tim McGrew take the opposite argument. Where is NT Wight or Gary Habermas or William Lane Craig. I don’t know the answer but it may be this is simply not a big issue.

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**Author:** ![Timothy\_Horton](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/timothy_horton/32/9410_2.png) [@Timothy\_Horton](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Timothy_Horton)\
**Post date:** [March 16, 2020, 2:31am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/vesuvius-and-the-evidence-for-the-resurrection/9948/65 "2020-03-16T02:31:49Z")

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> [@colewd](#):
>
> I expect you to support your claim and not commit a burden shift fallacy.

What gave you such a tremendous hatred of Irony Meters that you have to melt every one you come across?

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**Author:** ![John\_Harshman](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/john_harshman/32/1121_2.png) [@John\_Harshman](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/John_Harshman)\
**Post date:** [March 16, 2020, 2:58am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/vesuvius-and-the-evidence-for-the-resurrection/9948/66 "2020-03-16T02:58:58Z")

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> [@colewd](#):
>
> You can do a Gish gallop

Let’s put down “Gish gallop” as another term whose meaning you don’t know. You have a penchant for sprinkling words you don’t understand into your posts.

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**Author:** ![faded\_Glory](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/faded_glory/32/7167_2.png) [@faded\_Glory](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/faded_Glory)\
**Post date:** [March 16, 2020, 7:40am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/vesuvius-and-the-evidence-for-the-resurrection/9948/67 "2020-03-16T07:40:13Z")

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Who was the eye witness when Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane? The disciples were asleep.

Who was the eyewitness when Pilate interrogated Jesus? All the disciples had fled.

Is it not obvious that these passages are using the common literary technique of an omni-scient third person narrator?

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**Author:** ![T\_aquaticus](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/t_aquaticus/32/1249_2.png) [@T\_aquaticus](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/T_aquaticus)\
**Post date:** [March 16, 2020, 3:08pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/vesuvius-and-the-evidence-for-the-resurrection/9948/68 "2020-03-16T15:08:37Z")

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> [@Faizal\_Ali](#):
>
> There are also **some** who believe Jesus never existed, and that he is all a myth.
> 
> The overwhelming scholarly consensus, however, is against both those beliefs.

Joseph Smith is a modern example of this type of situation. There is zero doubt that Joseph Smith existed and had a group of followers, but there are still many who doubt that he received the Book of Mormon from the prophet Moroni. There are even people who directly claim to have seen the Golden Tablets that Smith used to translate the Book of Mormon to English.

> [@](#):
>
> The first edition of the Book of Mormon featured two testimonials: one written by a group of three witnesses and another by a group of eight. Three witnesses (Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris) declared an angel of God appeared to them and showed them the Book of Mormon plates and they heard the voice of the Lord pronounce that Joseph Smith’s translation had been accomplished “by the gift and power of God.” This experience took place in June 1829 near the home of Peter Whitmer Sr. in Fayette, New York. An additional eight witnesses (members of the Smith and Whitmer families)[1](https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/#note1) declared that Joseph Smith himself showed them the plates and allowed each to “heft” the ancient artifact and examine its engravings. Several others had direct experiences with the plates or otherwise witnessed Joseph Smith’s translation of the Book of Mormon.  
> [Vesuvius and the Evidence for the Resurrection - #50 by AlanFox](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/vesuvius-and-the-evidence-for-the-resurrection/9948/50)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Faizal\_Ali](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/faizal_ali/32/12416_2.png) [@Faizal\_Ali](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Faizal_Ali)\
**Post date:** [March 16, 2020, 4:46pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/vesuvius-and-the-evidence-for-the-resurrection/9948/69 "2020-03-16T16:46:20Z")

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> [@colewd](#):
>
> I expect you to support your claim and not commit a burden shift fallacy. Very simply list all the top Christian scholars and non Christian scholars and see who is claiming that Mathew is not the author of the gospel attributed to him as we know Luke and Mark were not apostles.

That is unnecessary.

> The gospel itself does not specify an author, but he was probably a male [Jew](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jew), standing on the margin between traditional and non-traditional Jewish values, and familiar with technical legal aspects of scripture being debated in his time.[[12]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Matthew#cite_note-FOOTNOTEDuling2010302-13) Early Christian tradition attributes the gospel to the apostle [Matthew](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_the_Apostle), but this is rejected by modern scholars.[[10]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Matthew#cite_note-FOOTNOTEBurkett2002174-11)[[11]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Matthew#cite_note-FOOTNOTEDuling2010301%E2%80%9302-12)

Feel free to avail yourself of the sources cited in the footnotes if you wish to rectify your ignorance on this matter.

> **[Gospel of Matthew](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Matthew#Authorship_and_sources)**
>
> The Gospel of Matthew\[note 1\] is the first book of the New Testament of the Bible and one of the three synoptic Gospels. It tells how Israel's Messiah, Jesus, comes to his people (the Jews) but is rejected by them and how, after his resurrection, he sends the disciples to the gentiles instead. Matthew wishes to emphasize that the Jewish tradition should not be lost in a church that was increasingly becoming gentile. The gospel reflects the struggles and conflicts between the evangelist's The g...

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**Author:** ![swamidass](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/swamidass/32/3_2.png) [@swamidass](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/swamidass)\
**Post date:** [March 17, 2020, 10:07pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/vesuvius-and-the-evidence-for-the-resurrection/9948/70 "2020-03-17T22:07:18Z")

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> [@Faizal\_Ali](#):
>
> My claim, actually was that there is not “a single example of an eyewitness of account of a single moment of Jesus’s life that is accepted as such by consensus of historians.

1 Corinthians 15:3-7 seems pretty close.

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**Author:** ![John\_Harshman](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/john_harshman/32/1121_2.png) [@John\_Harshman](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/John_Harshman)\
**Post date:** [March 17, 2020, 10:41pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/vesuvius-and-the-evidence-for-the-resurrection/9948/71 "2020-03-17T22:41:38Z")

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> [@swamidass](#):
>
> 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 seems pretty close.

Not close at all. It’s a statement of what Paul read in “scriptures”, and no scriptures we know of are first-hand accounts. So third-hand at best.

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**Author:** ![swamidass](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/swamidass/32/3_2.png) [@swamidass](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/swamidass)\
**Post date:** [March 17, 2020, 11:45pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/vesuvius-and-the-evidence-for-the-resurrection/9948/72 "2020-03-17T23:45:56Z")

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I’m not sure you understand how textual analysis works.

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**Author:** ![John\_Harshman](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/john_harshman/32/1121_2.png) [@John\_Harshman](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/John_Harshman)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2020, 1:15am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/vesuvius-and-the-evidence-for-the-resurrection/9948/73 "2020-03-18T01:15:41Z")

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Could be. I’m not sure you understand how communication works. You tend toward cryptic one-liners.

In the present case, how does textual analysis illuminate the matter at hand? Be as specific as possible, perhaps in more than one sentence.

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**Author:** ![swamidass](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/swamidass/32/3_2.png) [@swamidass](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/swamidass)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2020, 1:42am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/vesuvius-and-the-evidence-for-the-resurrection/9948/74 "2020-03-18T01:42:54Z")

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So, this is an example of the sort of reasoning that I am talking about, though there are actual academic papers better and more directly engaged with the evidence too:

[https://carm.org/analysis-pre-pauline-creed-1-corinthians-151-11](https://carm.org/analysis-pre-pauline-creed-1-corinthians-151-11)

I think also you may be using an anachronistic meaning of “eyewitness” account. In these cases, we are talking about statements and facts that can be traced back to people who would have been eyewitnesses. So, for example, even if Matthew and Luke draw on Mark, that does not some how negate them. There is good evidence that they were composed by people who were eyewitnesses themselves or in direct contact with eyewitnesses, independent of Mark, due to what some people have called  
“undesigned coincidences.”

[https://crossexamined.org/undesigned-scriptural-coincidences-the-ring-of-truth/](https://crossexamined.org/undesigned-scriptural-coincidences-the-ring-of-truth/)

> What is an undesigned coincidence? An undesigned coincidence (so-named by J.J. Blunt and first discovered by William Paley) occurs when one account of an event leaves out a bit of information which is filled in, often quite incidentally, by a different account, which helps to answer some natural questions raised by the first.

> There are two categories of undesigned coincidences pertinent to the New Testament: Internal and External. As the labels suggest, the former concerns details which are filled in by other Biblical (i.e. internal) sources, while the latter concerns details filled in by other **extra-Biblical (i.e. external) sources**.

I would add that this does not even touch on the equally important and relevant questions of dating of specific manuscripts by various means.

We all should agree that “stuff happened” in First Century Palestine that ended up being important somehow for some reason. There is evidence of many sorts. While a bound bible off a printing press isn’t direct evidence, it is referent to thousands of actual manuscripts, many of which date back to that time, both Scripture and non-Scripture.

One of the more interesting exchanges I had at a LCMS seminary was over evolution and textual criticism. He was a textual critic. We were discussing evolution, and how it progressed. He had a lightbulb go off, fairly quickly, and said (paraphrased, “they way you are talking about nested clades and phylogenies, that is exactly how we think about biblical manuscripts, and that makes a lot of sense to me.” Turns out that textual criticism ends up very similar to phylogenetics. From looking at changes to the text and the script over time, the divergence over time, they can make surprisingly good estimates to date individual copies and source texts, much as we do in phylogenetics.

Of course, I am no expert there and I can’t speak the original language, and I certainly don’t have the nuanced expertise to recognize and place script styles. This figure, however, really was surprising for me,

[https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/radiocarbon/article/viewFile/1537/1541](https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/radiocarbon/article/viewFile/1537/1541)

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/uploads/peacefulscience/original/2X/4/424fd8bada5424fddbd73b6c2cbe38128730a2fc.png)

The black is C14 dating and the grey are dates from “paleographical” analysis. The concordance is and was surprisingly high. Basically, they already knew the dates of the scroll, including picking out the recent forgeries, before C14 dating, and they might even have higher precision. When you think about it, this makes sense, because looking at the text, they can put manuscripts into order with one another, knowing based on the text which one came first, and because there are so many manuscripts from this time, they may be able to get far higher precision that C14.

I could go on here, but the key point is that this is a legitimate and massive field. It also has “terms” of art, where terms are used in ways that makes sense in the domain. One such example is “eyewitness,” which might be best understood as a gloss on a more refined scholarly concept than what our current meaning of eyewitness is (photo on your cell phone?).

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**Author:** ![Faizal\_Ali](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/faizal_ali/32/12416_2.png) [@Faizal\_Ali](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Faizal_Ali)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2020, 2:08am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/vesuvius-and-the-evidence-for-the-resurrection/9948/75 "2020-03-18T02:08:32Z")

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> [@swamidass](#):
>
> So, for example, even if Matthew and Luke draw on Mark, that does not some how negate them. There is good evidence that they were composed by people who were eyewitnesses themselves or in direct contact with eyewitnesses, independent of Mark, due to what some people have called  
> “undesigned coincidences.”

Frank Turek? Are you being serious?

Anyway, my claim is very specific: There is not so much as a single fragment of text regarding the life of Jesus that scholarly consensus agrees was either written by someone who directly witnessed the event described, or by someone recording such an account directly from a witness.

I remain unaware of anything that meets these criteria. Do you know of any?

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**Author:** ![swamidass](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/swamidass/32/3_2.png) [@swamidass](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/swamidass)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2020, 2:20am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/vesuvius-and-the-evidence-for-the-resurrection/9948/76 "2020-03-18T02:20:18Z")

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> [@Faizal\_Ali](#):
>
> Frank Turek? Are you being serious?

It is an interview of a scholar. It is hard to find publicly available academic literature, so I took what I could quickly find. I’m sure there are better places.

> [@Faizal\_Ali](#):
>
> Anyway, my claim is very specific: There is not so much as a single fragment of text regarding the life of Jesus that scholarly consensus agrees was either written by someone who directly witnessed the event described, or by someone recording such an account directly from a witness.

Do you mean a physical fragment of a manuscript? I’m not an expert, but you might be right. I don’t think anyone purports to have found literally original manuscripts. Everything we have would have been copied, it seems (though I’m not an expert to say for sure) from prior manuscripts or oral traditions.

Or do you mean a small stretch of words? As I understand it, there might even be a strong consensus that the text of 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 was a creed formed within 10 (if not 5 years) of Jesus’s death, which would mean the text was formed by several direct witnesses.

That doesn’t mean you must accept that their report is correct that Jesus rose from the dead. But the weight of evidence does seem to indicate that the claim of Jesus rising from the dead was very early, articulated by many people while people who would have been eyewitnesses (at least of his death) were still alive. That just provides a datapoint to explain. Whatever happened a little over 2000 years ago had them claiming that Jesus bodily rose from the dead soon after a public execution. Perhaps they were lying or confused or brainwashed, but that the puzzle this fact raises.

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**Author:** ![colewd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecd19e/32.png) [@colewd](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/colewd)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2020, 5:51am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/vesuvius-and-the-evidence-for-the-resurrection/9948/77 "2020-03-18T05:51:56Z")

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> [@Faizal\_Ali](#):
>
> , or by someone recording such an account directly from a witness.

I think what Josh cited was from Paul based on his knowledge of the Old Testament prophecies and partially from his encounter with eye witnesses.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Faizal\_Ali](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/faizal_ali/32/12416_2.png) [@Faizal\_Ali](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Faizal_Ali)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2020, 10:34am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/vesuvius-and-the-evidence-for-the-resurrection/9948/78 "2020-03-18T10:34:30Z")

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> [@swamidass](#):
>
> That doesn’t mean you must accept that their report is correct that Jesus rose from the dead. But the weight of evidence does seem to indicate that the claim of Jesus rising from the dead was very early, articulated by many people while people who would have been eyewitnesses (at least of his death) were still alive. That just provides a datapoint to explain. Whatever happened a little over 2000 years ago had them claiming that Jesus bodily rose from the dead soon after a public execution. Perhaps they were lying or confused or brainwashed, but that the puzzle this fact raises.

That is my understanding of the current scholarly consensus. It does NOT entail the existence of sources understood to be first hand accounts, which is the specific claim I am disputing.

> [@colewd](#):
>
> I think what Josh cited was from Paul based on his knowledge of the Old Testament prophecies and partially from his encounter with eye witnesses.

That’s nice, but I’m asking about the scholarly consensus, not what Bill Cole personally believes.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Faizal\_Ali](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/faizal_ali/32/12416_2.png) [@Faizal\_Ali](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Faizal_Ali)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2020, 10:39am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/vesuvius-and-the-evidence-for-the-resurrection/9948/79 "2020-03-18T10:39:05Z")

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The video below provides an example I often use in this discussion: There is no doubt that members of the Heaven’s Gate cult believed a space craft was flying behind the Halle Bopp comet to take their souls to another world, and they believed this so fervently that they committed ritual suicide after castrating themselves in accordance with this belief. As you can see, at least one survivor of this cult still believed this to be true after the suicides.

So we know this was a belief among the followers of this cult, and not something devised by later people.

It does NOT mean they had good evidence that the space ship actually existed.

> [@swamidass](#):
>
> Perhaps they were lying or confused or brainwashed, but that the puzzle this fact raises.

And, with regard to the early Christians, you reject those explanations in favour of the one in which Jesus really rose from the dead, and that is why his early followers believed it.

Which of those four explanations do you favour for the Heaven’s Gate cult? Are there other explanations that have not yet been listed?

[![](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/uploads/peacefulscience/original/3X/e/e/eef64507840604b243b5084e28e11f7938bf0c2e.jpeg "Heaven's Gate suicides remembered") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzWpfq103q4)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![faded\_Glory](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/faded_glory/32/7167_2.png) [@faded\_Glory](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/faded_Glory)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2020, 12:30pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/vesuvius-and-the-evidence-for-the-resurrection/9948/80 "2020-03-18T12:30:21Z")

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> [@swamidass](#):
>
> But the weight of evidence does seem to indicate that the claim of Jesus rising from the dead was very early, articulated by many people while people who would have been eyewitnesses (at least of his death) were still alive. That just provides a datapoint to explain.

There are many such datapoints:

-The LDS Church has already been mentioned (11 witnesses swore they saw the Golden Plates, and there are now 16 million members of this church).

- [Hopkins estimated that nearly four million Americans might have been abducted by extraterrestrials.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_abduction_claimants)

Then there are Bigfoot believers, Moon landing hoaxers, Flat Earthers… the list goes on and on.

Conclusion: lots of people believe in really weird things.

How’s that for an explanation?

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