Comment Thread for The Resurrection of Jesus - Apologiaphoenix vs Gary

[Apologiaphoenix]

Yep, that's the one. My buddy that's into this stuff has the book and said it's the best book on the subject - he's a pantheist.

If you could recommend that and two others, what would they be?

On what topic overall?

I'll see and then let me wait until Saturday to answer.

I have my fifth anniversary today. We have a full evening planned and sorry, but she's much cuter than you all are.

[fm93]

One thing that might've been worth discussing, but wasn't even touched on in the debate, is the prominence of those cultural factors. I'm aware of the status that crucifixion held in the ancient world, but as Rodney Stark writes in The Rise of Christianity (62):

...diasporan Jews would be less dubious about a messiah come to Palestine--a part of the empire that many Gentiles would regard as a backwater. Nor would the Jews have been so easily put off by the facts of the Crucifixion. Indeed, the cross was a symbol used to signify the Messiah in Hebrew manuscripts prior to the Crucifixion (Finegan 1992:348).

However, I can't find that book by this Finegan fellow. I was wondering if anyone knew of that claim, and what significance it might hold--were there subsets of Jews who didn't hold crucifixion in such a negative regard? is Finegan misinterpreting the evidence? is Stark misrepresenting Finegan?

[William]

Keep in mind that many of those who witnessed what Jesus said and did along with those who heard what the apostles said when they first went out spreading the news were still around during this time. If people just simply started "writing down stories about Jesus" that weren't true these witnesses would have noticed and called them out on them. The Gospels would have been rejected as fiction rather than being accepted.

I'm not sure this is accurate. There was no printing press and there was no google. fact checking would have been hard and who knows when which locations would have had which copies of what letters or books. The gospels weren't written till 70AD or later. Not all of those around Jesus were around him all the time, so one witness may have one take, and a witness of something else may have had another - and let's not forget that many were confused about what jesus taught most of the time. Not all of the early disciples had even seen Jesus. If we can believe Paul's 500 witnesses, think about being in a crowd of 500, and then think about how well you'd actually see the one guy everyone was there to see - most would not likely have a face to face encounter. And the power of influence is real -

"wow that was jesus did you see him?"
"Really? I saw someone but didnt get a great look. I thought he was dead."
"Yeah, but he's not anymore. That was him. that's why everyone was here"
"Whoa, I saw jesus... he must really be the son of God..."

But again, those were 500 nameless witnesses, out of which none of them wrote their own accounts. This really counts as One witness, Paul. Paul had knowledge of 5oo witnesses. Paul had a vision of Christ - we have to take his word for it if we're to believe it.

And by the time of the canonization of the bible, there were lots of other gospels and books in circulation that didnt make the final cut... who went off of which books, until the counsel of Nicea, and for how long?

But look at Acts and Paul's letters. There was already a lot of dissension and varying ideas and the apostles were constantly having to try and correct issues. Paul was routinely defending allegations that he was a liar and impostor. And then did everyone know who the real witnesses were as opposed to the ones who just claimed to be witnesses?

Think about war vets. Half didn't even really see any action, but when they get home the vast majority "have seen things you wouldn't believe" and the war was so widespread that someone could claim nearly anything and someone who was at another place in country coundnt refute it out right even if they were suspicious of it.

Of course, I'm not a christian, so a Christian may think i am biased and looking for fault. Then I'd think you were a biased christian treating the bible with far more care or forgiveness than you would any other book because you want it to be true. We have to resist this. We have to try to step outside of our biases and try to look at it all objectively. We still may reach different conclusions in the end, but the point to is look and search, not score imaginary points in a debate or have the best one liners, right? it's about truth and our best efforts to find it.

Could lies and embellishments have spread even if there were witnesses? Think about people you see. Think about human nature and the imperfection of memories. Think about how some people often fall into the trap that of "the end justifies the means."

but it's also important to try and avoid over simplifying things and then making a rule to apply across the board. Like "the lie would have been noticed, and since it persisted, it could not have been a lie." It's too simplified. It's too generic and too black and white and history and people just aren't that way. and I still think that a lie living on is far more likely than a dead man returning to life and flying away, which we all know to be impossible.

and one last point. Yes, a perfect and all powerful God could do the impossible if he wanted to. That's a presupposition that there is an all powerful God and it's also a presupposition that that all powerful God is the God of the Bible. So, the idea that an all powerful God could do something, is not evidence that he did in fact do that something.

thanks

[jpholding]

One thing that might've been worth discussing, but wasn't even touched on in the debate, is the prominence of those cultural factors. I'm aware of the status that crucifixion held in the ancient world, but as Rodney Stark writes in The Rise of Christianity (62):

...diasporan Jews would be less dubious about a messiah come to Palestine--a part of the empire that many Gentiles would regard as a backwater. Nor would the Jews have been so easily put off by the facts of the Crucifixion. Indeed, the cross was a symbol used to signify the Messiah in Hebrew manuscripts prior to the Crucifixion (Finegan 1992:348).

However, I can't find that book by this Finegan fellow. I was wondering if anyone knew of that claim, and what significance it might hold--were there subsets of Jews who didn't hold crucifixion in such a negative regard? is Finegan misinterpreting the evidence? is Stark misrepresenting Finegan?

Now why didn't you just ask me first?

http://tektonticker.blogspot.com/201...gans-wake.html

[Gary]

Please correct me kindly if I'm wrong, but your position is that Saul had all the same evidence presented to him that Nick has presented to you and because Saul didn't believe until an obviously (to his mind) supernatural event occurred to him that you should not believe until a similar experience has happened to you?
---
From my point of view, the Pharisaic tradition (from which modern Orhodox Judaism largely descends) had a false understanding of the OT Scriptures, which was a theme in the Gospels when they and the Sadduces challenged Jesus' teachings, and had them turned on their head, not by Jesus making null OT teachings which would have made him a heretic in their eyes, but instead Jesus interpreted the Hebrew Scriptures in a way they did not understand. Saul was a Pharisee and would have held to their "traditional" understandings, and so was prejudiced against the claims that Jesus was the Messiah, and did not allow himself a rational understanding of the events around him.

And that's from an academic level, there were also political issues (Jesus' was convicted of sedition), emotional issues (giving up the comfortable and widely held view for a minority view), and even up to a certain point Saul participated in killing Christians.

There are many very good reasons for Saul to ignore or persecute Christians and not look at the evidence objectively. It has been a while since I've used syllogism (and I'm on mobile) so if below I make a mistake please forgive it and point it out.

1. (Given) Saul was not convinced by the evidence you were given, and he is rational.
2. (Given) You are not convinced by the evidence you were given, and you are rational.
3. (Given) Saul changed his mind after a supposed supernatural event.
4. Because you are both rational, what applies to Saul's chain of reasoning applies to your chain of reasoning.
5. Therefore (from 3 and 4) it is reasonable for you to not change your mind without a supernatural event.

I have sought to demonstrate that (1.) is contested because Saul had reasons not to examine the evidence, and I find it more reasonable to think that he did not examine the evidence until the supposed supernatural event than that he did.

Of course this is not the reason you have for discounting the Resurrection as you've said that it's simply a lack of evidence and only meant to use Saul as an example of someone who would agree with you that the available evidence was not strong enough then, and still isn't strong enough now. If I'm recalling my informal fallacies correctly then you've committed the Historian's Fallacy by assuming the same standards of evidence between now and nearly 2000 years ago, as well as a Red Herring because this is practically off topic anyways.

As an aside, that William guy seems perfectly delightful, and someone I would like to see on TWeb more.

I also support Boxing Pythagoras debating someone, Nick being a possibility. BP is a smart guy and generally affable from what I've seen.

What evidence did Saul need to examine? He EXPERIENCED the evidence:

1. Earthquakes.
2. Three hours of darkness.
3. Dead saints roaming the streets.
4. Christians running up and down the streets of Jerusalem preaching that "The tomb is empty! The tomb is empty! The tomb guarded 24/7 by Roman guards is empty!"
5. Christians dying for a claim which they were asserting they had seen with their own eyes (appearances)= Would they die for a lie??
6. Thousands of Jews converting to a new, shameful, Faith that taught the Resurrection of an executed Messiah, something "no first century Jew would ever believe if it were not true".

What is there to examine??

[Jesse]

Now why didn't you just ask me first?

http://tektonticker.blogspot.com/201...gans-wake.html

Bah. You beat me too it J.P.

[William]

I'm not sure this is accurate. There was no printing press and there was no google. fact checking would have been hard and who knows when which locations would have had which copies of what letters or books. The gospels weren't written till 70AD or later. Not all of those around Jesus were around him all the time, so one witness may have one take, and a witness of something else may have had another - and let's not forget that many were confused about what jesus taught most of the time. Not all of the early disciples had even seen Jesus. If we can believe Paul's 500 witnesses, think about being in a crowd of 500, and then think about how well you'd actually see the one guy everyone was there to see - most would not likely have a face to face encounter. And the power of influence is real -

"wow that was jesus did you see him?"
"Really? I saw someone but didnt get a great look. I thought he was dead."
"Yeah, but he's not anymore. That was him. that's why everyone was here"
"Whoa, I saw jesus... he must really be the son of God..."

But again, those were 500 nameless witnesses, out of which none of them wrote their own accounts. This really counts as One witness, Paul. Paul had knowledge of 5oo witnesses. Paul had a vision of Christ - we have to take his word for it if we're to believe it.

And by the time of the canonization of the bible, there were lots of other gospels and books in circulation that didnt make the final cut... who went off of which books, until the counsel of Nicea, and for how long?

But look at Acts and Paul's letters. There was already a lot of dissension and varying ideas and the apostles were constantly having to try and correct issues. Paul was routinely defending allegations that he was a liar and impostor. And then did everyone know who the real witnesses were as opposed to the ones who just claimed to be witnesses?

Think about war vets. Half didn't even really see any action, but when they get home the vast majority "have seen things you wouldn't believe" and the war was so widespread that someone could claim nearly anything and someone who was at another place in country coundnt refute it out right even if they were suspicious of it.

Of course, I'm not a christian, so a Christian may think i am biased and looking for fault. Then I'd think you were a biased christian treating the bible with far more care or forgiveness than you would any other book because you want it to be true. We have to resist this. We have to try to step outside of our biases and try to look at it all objectively. We still may reach different conclusions in the end, but the point to is look and search, not score imaginary points in a debate or have the best one liners, right? it's about truth and our best efforts to find it.

Could lies and embellishments have spread even if there were witnesses? Think about people you see. Think about human nature and the imperfection of memories. Think about how some people often fall into the trap that of "the end justifies the means."

but it's also important to try and avoid over simplifying things and then making a rule to apply across the board. Like "the lie would have been noticed, and since it persisted, it could not have been a lie." It's too simplified. It's too generic and too black and white and history and people just aren't that way. and I still think that a lie living on is far more likely than a dead man returning to life and flying away, which we all know to be impossible.

and one last point. Yes, a perfect and all powerful God could do the impossible if he wanted to. That's a presupposition that there is an all powerful God and it's also a presupposition that that all powerful God is the God of the Bible. So, the idea that an all powerful God could do something, is not evidence that he did in fact do that something.

thanks

as far as all that goes, just look at the religious world today. There's one canon today, yet how many different denominations are there? There's still disagreement when there's a source to go back to review. Back then, the source was dead and gone. the apostles weren't omnipresent. It just seems like it would be very easy for misinformation to spread and thrive.

[Gary]

He was resistant, but if you read the accounts it seems he also became unsettled by the Christians and his own behaviour towards them. Acts 26:14 "...Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads. The most natural reading is that Saul probably would have become a Christian in the ordinary way because he was facing deliberations of sorts. His dramatic ripening through revelation was most likely because it validated that he had been set aside for special work ie apostle to the Gentiles.

In Acts chapter 26 Paul recounts his conversation on the Damascus Road. He states that Jesus appeared to him and spoke to him in the Hebrew language. The term, "It is hard for you to kick against the goads" first appears in ancient literature approximately 400 years before Jesus birth...in GREEK MYTHOLOGY! It is NOT a Jewish term.

Why would the Creator of the World, speaking in Hebrew, use a term from pagan, Greek mythology to announce his selection of a new apostle???

[William]

In Acts chapter 26 Paul recounts his conversation on the Damascus Road. He states that Jesus appeared to him and spoke to him in the Hebrew language. The term, "It is hard for you to kick against the goads" first appears in ancient literature approximately 400 years before Jesus birth...in GREEK MYTHOLOGY! It is NOT a Jewish term.

Why would the Creator of the World, speaking in Hebrew, use a term from pagan, Greek mythology to announce his selection of a new apostle???

along these lines it also seems odd to me that the term for hell is a greek word, not a Hebrew word. Why use a Greek word to describe a Hebrew spiritual rhelm, and why is the Hebrew term for Hell actually translated "grave?"

anyhow, it's curious to me.

[Gary]

Well Paul does quote Luke's gospel, and Luke's gospel use parts of some of the other gospels, so that would mean that Paul and Luke were traveling together when the synoptic gospels were already written. So we are back in the 50's and 60's.

This is false. The passage in question may sound similar to a statement in Luke, but we have no proof Paul is quoting a Gospel.

[Adrift]

One thing that might've been worth discussing, but wasn't even touched on in the debate, is the prominence of those cultural factors. I'm aware of the status that crucifixion held in the ancient world, but as Rodney Stark writes in The Rise of Christianity (62):

...diasporan Jews would be less dubious about a messiah come to Palestine--a part of the empire that many Gentiles would regard as a backwater. Nor would the Jews have been so easily put off by the facts of the Crucifixion. Indeed, the cross was a symbol used to signify the Messiah in Hebrew manuscripts prior to the Crucifixion (Finegan 1992:348).

However, I can't find that book by this Finegan fellow. I was wondering if anyone knew of that claim, and what significance it might hold--were there subsets of Jews who didn't hold crucifixion in such a negative regard? is Finegan misinterpreting the evidence? is Stark misrepresenting Finegan?

The book is The Archeology of the New Testament: The Life of Jesus and the Beginning of the Early Church by Jack Finegan. And the claim is that in the Dead Sea Scrolls, The Great Isaiah Scroll contains examples of the use of the Hebrew letter taw (which looks like an x or t) in its margins to signify eschatological and/or Messianic passages. I think Stark is reading too much into Finegan or Finegan is reading too much into the symbol. Finegan seems to be simply bridging the use of a cross-like symbol between 1st century Jews and the early church (he does this by comparing this symbol to a list of symbols and their meaning found in a work by Epiphanius of Salamis in AD 392). But there's a huge difference between Jewish acceptance of a cross-like symbol that may or may not expressly refer to the Messiah, and actual crucifixion, which, as we've already seen, was still considered shameful and accursed in the Babylonian Talmud.

[Adrift]

Now why didn't you just ask me first?

http://tektonticker.blogspot.com/201...gans-wake.html

Oh, well there you go.

[rogue06]

I'm not sure this is accurate. There was no printing press and there was no google. fact checking would have been hard and who knows when which locations would have had which copies of what letters or books. The gospels weren't written till 70AD or later. Not all of those around Jesus were around him all the time, so one witness may have one take, and a witness of something else may have had another - and let's not forget that many were confused about what jesus taught most of the time. Not all of the early disciples had even seen Jesus. If we can believe Paul's 500 witnesses, think about being in a crowd of 500, and then think about how well you'd actually see the one guy everyone was there to see - most would not likely have a face to face encounter. And the power of influence is real -

"wow that was jesus did you see him?"
"Really? I saw someone but didnt get a great look. I thought he was dead."
"Yeah, but he's not anymore. That was him. that's why everyone was here"
"Whoa, I saw jesus... he must really be the son of God..."

But again, those were 500 nameless witnesses, out of which none of them wrote their own accounts. This really counts as One witness, Paul. Paul had knowledge of 5oo witnesses. Paul had a vision of Christ - we have to take his word for it if we're to believe it.

And by the time of the canonization of the bible, there were lots of other gospels and books in circulation that didnt make the final cut... who went off of which books, until the counsel of Nicea, and for how long?

But look at Acts and Paul's letters. There was already a lot of dissension and varying ideas and the apostles were constantly having to try and correct issues. Paul was routinely defending allegations that he was a liar and impostor. And then did everyone know who the real witnesses were as opposed to the ones who just claimed to be witnesses?

Think about war vets. Half didn't even really see any action, but when they get home the vast majority "have seen things you wouldn't believe" and the war was so widespread that someone could claim nearly anything and someone who was at another place in country coundnt refute it out right even if they were suspicious of it.

Of course, I'm not a christian, so a Christian may think i am biased and looking for fault. Then I'd think you were a biased christian treating the bible with far more care or forgiveness than you would any other book because you want it to be true. We have to resist this. We have to try to step outside of our biases and try to look at it all objectively. We still may reach different conclusions in the end, but the point to is look and search, not score imaginary points in a debate or have the best one liners, right? it's about truth and our best efforts to find it.

Could lies and embellishments have spread even if there were witnesses? Think about people you see. Think about human nature and the imperfection of memories. Think about how some people often fall into the trap that of "the end justifies the means."

but it's also important to try and avoid over simplifying things and then making a rule to apply across the board. Like "the lie would have been noticed, and since it persisted, it could not have been a lie." It's too simplified. It's too generic and too black and white and history and people just aren't that way. and I still think that a lie living on is far more likely than a dead man returning to life and flying away, which we all know to be impossible.

and one last point. Yes, a perfect and all powerful God could do the impossible if he wanted to. That's a presupposition that there is an all powerful God and it's also a presupposition that that all powerful God is the God of the Bible. So, the idea that an all powerful God could do something, is not evidence that he did in fact do that something.

thanks

By every indication Christians were a pretty tight knit group despite being spread out and were fully aware of what was going on and being taught in different communities as evidenced by Paul's letters and Revelation. If people were merely making stories up and attributing them to Jesus it would have been noticed that they contradicted what they knew. The Gospels would not have been so readily accepted if they were just a bunch of stories with no basis in fact.

[William]

By every indication Christians were a pretty tight knit group despite being spread out and were fully aware of what was going on and being taught in different communities as evidenced by Paul's letters and Revelation. If people were merely making stories up and attributing them to Jesus it would have been noticed that they contradicted what they knew. The Gospels would not have been so readily accepted if they were just a bunch of stories with no basis in fact.

oh, well I'm not suggesting there were no basis in fact, just that along with some fact, lies, deviations and embellishments wouldn't have been impossible or unheard of.

and I wouldn't say, "every indication" as the NT itself shows otherwise, i believe. The divisions were some of the very reasons Paul wrote his Letters. And revelation? The majority of the existing churches mentioned in Chapter 2 and 3 had severe issues and were being threaten with not being recognized as churches by Christ if they didn't correct themselves.

[Abigail]

In Acts chapter 26 Paul recounts his conversation on the Damascus Road. He states that Jesus appeared to him and spoke to him in the Hebrew language. The term, "It is hard for you to kick against the goads" first appears in ancient literature approximately 400 years before Jesus birth...in GREEK MYTHOLOGY! It is NOT a Jewish term.

Why would the Creator of the World, speaking in Hebrew, use a term from pagan, Greek mythology to announce his selection of a new apostle???

He is reporting his conversion account to Agrippa a Hellenist. And big deal that he might use a term used in mythology, it is not as if he infringed copyright. You really are one hysterical fundy.