Gary & Rhinestone's Thread on Burial and Resurrection of Christ

[Gary]

Stein: Would you give us a brief (one short paragraph) synopsis of the best evidence for the historicity of the Empty Tomb as believed by the majority of NT scholars? I know that you are a busy man, so no need to go into detail.

[psstein]

Stein: Would you give us a brief (one short paragraph) synopsis of the best evidence for the historicity of the Empty Tomb as believed by the majority of NT scholars? I know that you are a busy man, so no need to go into detail.

I'll just quote from Dale Allison's Resurrecting Jesus: The Earliest Christian Tradition and Its Interpreters (London: T&T Clark, 2006), 332:

The best two arguments against the tradition (of the empty tomb)- the ability of the early Christians to create fictions and the existence of numerous legends about missing bodies- while certainly weighty, remain nonetheless hypothetical and speculative, whereas the best two arguments for the tradition are concrete and evidential: a) Visions of Jesus, without belief in his empty tomb, would probably only have led to belief in Jesus' vindication and assumption to heaven, not to belief in his resurrection from the dead. B) The discovery of the empty tomb by Mary Magdalene and other women commends itself as a likely nonfiction.

I'd encourage you to buy the book, but it's neither cheap nor particularly accessible.

[Gary]

I'll just quote from Dale Allison's Resurrecting Jesus: The Earliest Christian Tradition and Its Interpreters (London: T&T Clark, 2006), 332:



I'd encourage you to buy the book, but it's neither cheap nor particularly accessible.

I agree that using women as the first persons to find the empty tomb sounds authentic as the witness of women was not considered very reliable evidence in that time and culture. But to me, if the Empty Tomb is an invention, the women are essential to pulling off this embellishment.

The author of Mark has already told us that the (male) disciples had all fled and abandoned Jesus. How could he then have these "scaredy cats" showing up to the tomb on Sunday morning to "anoint the body"? No. He couldn't do that. So he had women show up with the excuse that they needed to anoint the body (but hadn't Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus already done that? Oh well...). Once someone noticed that the tomb was Empty, THEN the attitude of the timid disciples changed. They were now willing to come out of hiding and look at the Empty Tomb for themselves.

No. Having the disciples show up without the women having discovered the empty tomb first would have looked very odd. The author needed the women.

And this is why the women are not mentioned in the Early Creed of First Corinthians !5: Because no one had ever heard of women finding an Empty Tomb until the author of Mark invented it in circa 70 AD. And how did he pass off the fact that no one had ever heard this story before?

Answer: "and the women fled in fear, telling no one."

[Sparko]

I agree that using women as the first persons to find the empty tomb sounds authentic as the witness of women was not considered very reliable evidence in that time and culture. But to me, if the Empty Tomb is an invention, the women are essential to pulling off this embellishment.

The author of Mark has already told us that the (male) disciples had all fled and abandoned Jesus. How could he then have these "scaredy cats" showing up to the tomb on Sunday morning to "anoint the body"? No. He couldn't do that. So he had women show up with the excuse that they needed to anoint the body (but hadn't Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus already done that? Oh well...). Once someone noticed that the tomb was Empty, THEN the attitude of the timid disciples changed. They were now willing to come out of hiding and look at the Empty Tomb for themselves.

No. Having the disciples show up without the women having discovered the empty tomb first would have looked very odd. The author needed the women.

And this is why the women are not mentioned in the Early Creed of First Corinthians !5: Because no one had ever heard of women finding an Empty Tomb until the author of Mark invented it in circa 70 AD. And how did he pass off the fact that no one had ever heard this story before?

Answer: "and the women fled in fear, telling no one."

So to make people believe, they invented a story that nobody would likely believe? Brilliant!

[Adrift]

The majority of these scholars have questionable reasons for rejecting the empty tomb:

Goulder attributes the ahistoricity of the empty tomb to a conflict between Petrine and Pauline Christianity. On his view, Petrine Christianity believed in a spiritual resurrection, which Pauline Christianity then added a body to. See his A Tale of Two Missions. His thesis is a recapitulation of the Baur Hypothesis, which was disproven about 100 years ago.

Ludemann simply contends that dead bodies don't rise, thinking instead that the appearances can be attributed to psychological phenomena.

Crossan argues that the Cross Gospel (and Gospel of John) preserve an earlier burial tradition, where Jesus was buried by the Romans after his crucifixion. See his The Cross That Spoke.

Casey argues that Jesus' tomb was in an unknown location. Once the disciples had experiences of the Risen Jesus, they concluded that he had been raised from the dead regardless of whether or not the tomb was empty. His argument seems to be primarily parallelomania, but read his Jesus of Nazareth for the full case.

Crossley largely agrees with Casey (Casey was his PhD supervisor). He adds on the caveat that early Christians made sense of their experiences in light of the OT, such as the resurrection of the righteous martyrs in 2 Maccabees. He had a debate with Michael Bird a few years ago about it.

Ehrman thinks that Jesus' body was simply thrown into a shallow grave, largely because that's what usually happened.

By the way, if you need help finding these books, PM me.

psstein, if I may, sometimes I think it's better if those questions posed to Gary are answered by Gary to expose his ignorance. Gary isn't coming from this from a rational and contemplative perspective. He hasn't read the scholars involved, and honestly doesn't seem that interested in doing so other than the occasional Google quote-mine or blog membership. When I see questions like the one you replied to by Sparko, it's a test to see whether or not the emperor will acknowledge he has no clothes. He won't, of course, but it's entertaining watching him squirm none-the-less.

[RhinestoneCowboy]

Since the sources regarding the practice of Roman crucifixion are unanimous in that they involve:

(a) keeping the person hung up for an extended amount of time in order to be eaten by scavenging animals

and

(b) forbidden a proper burial

Why is preference given to one account, Mark's, (who was copied by Matthew/Luke and most likely inherited by John, therefore, not independent) with obvious theological bias, numerous historical inaccuracies and rewriting midrash interpretation of the Old Testament (Isaiah 53, Psalms and such)?

[psstein]

psstein, if I may, sometimes I think it's better if those questions posed to Gary are answered by Gary to expose his ignorance. Gary isn't coming from this from a rational and contemplative perspective. He hasn't read the scholars involved, and honestly doesn't seem that interested in doing so other than the occasional Google quote-mine or blog membership. When I see questions like the one you replied to by Sparko, it's a test to see whether or not the emperor will acknowledge he has no clothes. He won't, of course, but it's entertaining watching him squirm none-the-less.

Thank you. I'll take it into consideration. Years in an academic setting have conditioned me to answer questions when nobody else will.

[Raphael]

Experts tells us that the overwhelming majority of the population of first century Palestine was illiterate.

New archaeological evidence is suggesting that they were a lot more literate than we have been assuming them to be:
http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...iously-thought

http://www.pnas.org/content/113/17/4664.abstract

[Raphael]

James G. Crossley? And which book are you referring to?

The title is: The Date of Mark's Gospel: Insight from the Law in Earliest Christianity

https://www.amazon.com/Date-Marks-Go.../dp/0567081958

[DesertBerean]

The title is: The Date of Mark's Gospel: Insight from the Law in Earliest Christianity

https://www.amazon.com/Date-Marks-Go.../dp/0567081958

thanks. Yeah, a little steep but maybe I'll find it at the library

[One Bad Pig]

thanks. Yeah, a little steep but maybe I'll find it at the library

If it's not at your library, you can request them to obtain a copy through ILL.

[Raphael]

thanks. Yeah, a little steep but maybe I'll find it at the library

Heh, that's the reason I don't have a copy. They had a Kindle version available for a while, but it was similarly priced (not as expensive, but was from memory in the $50 range)

[DesertBerean]

50 bucks for a Kindle...whoa. Still...and I do prefer things like this in electronic form. Easier to find words or phrases

[rogue06]

you would think so, since their entire society revolved around the Law, and they were instructed to write the law and wear it and keep it close to their hearts and they took that literally (no pun intended) as phylacteries. Also the Romans were a pretty literate society too and they would write and post letters and signs with their edicts on them and expect the people to read and obey.

As mentioned modern research confirms the belief that the ancient Jews were considerably more literate than nearly everyone else in the Mediterranean region. From something I posted a little over three months ago:

To be kept in mind the next time someone drones on about the Bible being composed by "illiterate Bronze Age goat herders"

Source: New Evidence on When Bible Was Written: Ancient Shopping Lists

Source

© Copyright Original Source

I had long heard that the Jews were regarded as being among the most, if not the most, literate people in the Mediterranean region.

The abstract from the paper itself:

This discovery confirms that literacy was not exclusively found among the most educated as it was in other societies. It appears to be much more widespread in ancient Israel (or Judah) as even low ranked soldiers (historically speaking a group where high levels of reading and writing are not found) in an isolated location (not a commerce or cultural center where higher levels of literacy would normally be found) were able to read and write and do so very competently.

ETA: I see Raph has already made note of this.

[rogue06]

It would be vaguely interesting if there weren't such a transparent agenda behind it all. Gary's on a one man crusade to get someone, anyone, to doubt that the Resurrection happened. He believes that if people stop believing in the Resurrection then they will stop being Christians, and if they stop being Christians then religious and political views he finds distasteful will come to an end.

For some reason, Gary thinks the Resurrection narrative's weakest point is the empty tomb tradition, so he's attempted to attack it from a number of angles in different threads. Each time he does, he's rebuffed, runs away for awhile with his tail between his legs, licks his wounds, and then comes back and tries it again from another angle.

Notice his main argument in this thread is "most people of the lower classes in the first century were buried in dirt trenches", and therefore, presumably, Jesus should have been as well. Notice though that he hasn't argued that most people in the lower classes were not crucified to begin with, or that they quit their day jobs to become itinerant sages with a large entourage. He's not going to attack these points because he knows there's no finger purchase. Worse still is that he thinks that he has some people fooled into thinking he's been objective this whole time because he uses words like "possible" and "plausible" and the like. No one's buying it of course (no one who's read more than a handful of his posts that is), so I have no idea who he thinks he's fooling, or why he keeps up the charade. Thankfully he shoots his own foot enough that it doesn't take much to expose his chicanery.