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

[Sparko]

Arimathea, Palestine? I'm not familiar with such a city in first century Palestine. Would you kindly give us a link with a map which includes this fair city?

arimathea.jpg

[Gary]

JERUSALEM IS WHERE CHRISTIANITY BEGAN! It is the most improbable place for it to take root, right where he died and was buried under the Romans! Witnesses galore to contradict the apostles' claims! But even when the apostles were dragged before the Sanhedrin, the Jews did not deny the resurrection. They instead forbade them to preach in the name of Jesus.

And until you unearth one syllable from the the Jewish side of the story, dated up to the same criteria YOU demand for the Gospels, you have NOTHING to stand on!

Assumptions in your statement based solely on the ONE, uncorroborated, anonymous document whose historical veracity is in question:

---"Witnesses galore to contradict the apostles' claims!"

For all we know, Jesus and his band of followers were a very small group of insignificant nobodies whose leader was unceremoniously and unnoticed by the overwhelming majority of the city, snuffed out. The fact that no contemporary mentions a single word about: mass throngs greeting Jesus with palm fronds and shouts of "Hosanna, the son of David, the Messiah, has come to liberate us from the evil Romans", at least two earthquakes, three hour eclipses, angel sightings, the tearing of the temple veil, and dead corpses roaming the streets of the city is pretty significant proof that Jesus was NOT the big deal that the Gospels make him out to be.

---"even when the apostles were dragged before the Sanhedrin"

So says the book in question.

---"Jews did not deny the resurrection"

Where on EARTH do you get this assumption???

---"And until you unearth one syllable from the Jewish side of the story, dated up to the same criteria YOU demand for the Gospels, you have NOTHING to stand on!"

"Unless you can prove that people have NOT been abducted by Martians as Martian-abductee-proponents claim, you have NOTHING to stand on."

Bad logic.

[RhinestoneCowboy]

Especially since Joseph lived in... Arimathea, not Jerusalem.

Most scholars think that Mark's depiction of Joseph as a "respected member of the Council" meant he was a member of the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem.
His name is where he was from. This doesn't necessarily meant he still lived there. Moreover, it can translate to "best disciple town" which is sort of
conspicuous. Roger David Aus puts forth the hypothesis that Ramatha/Pisgah was the source of Joseph's name so the connection was made to the place of Moses' burial. https://books.google.com/books?id=_u...kAAWwQ6AEIHDAA

[Adrift]

Where is this distinction made in Mark?

Give me a reason the distinction absolutely needed to be made.

[RhinestoneCowboy]

Give me a reason the distinction absolutely needed to be made.

Mark says "they all". His knowledge (or lack thereof) of Jewish customs casts doubt on his depiction as actual history. http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...l=1#post346987

[Gary]

it is known who wrote it and when. Or them I should say. Nobody disputes the authors. We don't have any gospel manuscripts that don't have a name attached to them. And we don't have any with the wrong name on them. We don't have like 10 copies of Mark with Mark's name attached and 8 copies of Mark with John's name attached to them. And they ARE contemporary. They are written within the lifetime of the event. That is contemporary, and a heck of a lot more contemporary than your sources. Which are?

Unless you can prove that the accepted documents are false, you have to treat them as the truth. You have no way to prove them false or you would have done so. Instead you just handwave them away, throwing out 2000 years of history and acceptance for no other reason that you don't like them.

Try again.

"Nobody disputes the authors"

What an absurd statement! Imagine a believer in alien abductions using the same logic to shoot down criticisms of his or her belief:

"No one disputes that human beings have been abducted by space aliens, including Martians."

A majority, or if you dispute that, at least a significant minority of NT scholars do NOT believe that we know who wrote the four Gospels. To claim that "nobody" disputes this is either blissful, uninformed ignorance, or an outright lie.

Silly. Downright ludicrous. Dear "lurkers": Do you now see the lengths to which Christians will go to prop up this ancient superstition!

"Unless you can prove that the accepted documents are false, you have to treat them as the truth."

[DesertBerean]

I'm pretty sure it says "the chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death"

and

"they all condemned him to death"

Lemme check on that.........yup. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+14

LOL...it doesn't say "Sanhedrin" but does give the composition of who gathered against Jesus.

Here's a link I found about the Sanhedrin:

http://www.bible-history.com/JewishL..._Sanhedrin.htm

[DesertBerean]

"Nobody disputes the authors"

What an absurd statement! Imagine a believer in alien abductions using the same logic to shoot down criticisms of his or her belief:

"No one disputes that human beings have been abducted by space aliens, including Martians."

A majority, or if you dispute that, at least a significant minority of NT scholars do NOT believe that we know who wrote the four Gospels. To claim that "nobody" disputes this is either blissful, uninformed ignorance, or an outright lie.

Silly. Downright ludicrous. Dear "lurkers": Do you now see the lengths to which Christians will go to prop up this ancient superstition!

Dear lurkers....you will note his dishonesty in quoting sources?

[RhinestoneCowboy]

LOL...it doesn't say "Sanhedrin"

It depends on which translation you read. http://biblehub.com/mark/14-55.htm Are you saying the "council" was something other than the Sanhedrin?

but does give the composition of who gathered against Jesus.

Correct. It says:

Mark 14:53
They took Jesus to the high priest; and all the chief priests, the elders, and the scribes were assembled.

Mark 14:55
Now the chief priests and the whole council were looking for testimony against Jesus to put him to death; but they found none.

Mark 14:64
All of them condemned him as deserving death.

So was Joseph a member of the council or not?

[Gary]

Also, they are corroborated. The Bible didn't fall out of the sky as one canon, they were all originally separate sources (though they may have depended on one another for some details). So we have. Mark, Q, the L-source, the M-source, John, Paul's epistles, the Corinthian creed, and plenty of extra-biblical sources within the same century, both Christian and non.

Please provide a contemporary, truly independent source to the Gospel of Mark which corroborates the following events:

---the trial before Pilate.
---the burial in the rock tomb of a member of the Sanhedrin
---Mary Magdalene and other women finding an empty tomb on Sunday morning.

[Adrift]

Mark says "they all". His knowledge (or lack thereof) of Jewish customs casts doubt on his depiction as actual history. http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...l=1#post346987

Is there a reason we absolutely must assume that both Sanhedrins are in mind here rather than just the Great.

[Gary]

And you blatantly misquoted Manness to support your argument.

Please explain.

[Sparko]

"Nobody disputes the authors"

What an absurd statement! Imagine a believer in alien abductions using the same logic to shoot down criticisms of his or her belief:

"No one disputes that human beings have been abducted by space aliens, including Martians."

A majority, or if you dispute that, at least a significant minority of NT scholars do NOT believe that we know who wrote the four Gospels. To claim that "nobody" disputes this is either blissful, uninformed ignorance, or an outright lie.

Silly. Downright ludicrous. Dear "lurkers": Do you now see the lengths to which Christians will go to prop up this ancient superstition!

"Unless you can prove that the accepted documents are false, you have to treat them as the truth."

OK let me modify that. No serious professional NT scholars dispute that the Gospel authors are Mark, Luke, Matthew and John. Plenty of fringe "scholars" and nutjobs like Gary do however.

There. happy now?

[Gary]

Oh, so when Mark says "they all" in Mk. 14:53, 55, 64 he doesn't really mean "all"?

So it's safe to say Mark exaggerates things, huh?

No, you silly skeptic, "all" doesn't always mean "all, just as "is" doesn't always mean "is".

Didn't you learn anything from Slick Willy?

[Gary]

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Thanks. I have never seen this map. Would you kindly give a link to it's source? I'd like to see if this map is something produced by a scholarly source. If it is a map approved by the majority of Near East experts, I will retract my claim regarding the questionable existence of this city.