I. Encountering Faith and Doubts
I grew up being told by relatives that Christ's story in the Bible was true, and so I supposed that it was, just as I supposed that the earth's core was filled with hot rock or magma - something I had never seen but only read about in science books. I went to church and prayed, and the gospel story interested me enough to read a Bible commentary on it. I picked the Methodist minister Vincent Taylor's commentary on Mark from my school library. It impressed me that Taylor theorized that when Christ healed people or drove out demons, what was actually happening was that Jesus inspired cripples to walk or mentally ill people to behave normally. It wasn't as if the people lacked legs or eyes, but rather that they had trouble walking or seeing and Jesus empowered people to do these things. Taylor's thesis sounded easier to accept from a naturalistic viewpoint, and it opened me up to the idea that Jesus' miracles could have a rationalist or naturalist explanation.
II. Should one address each question or argument with the assumption that Christ's resurrection is factual?
Broadly speaking, there are two starting points or assumptions to make when considering each argument for or against Christ's Resurrection being factual:
A. One way to address the arguments is to begin with the assumption that it is factual, after which arguments made against it must be false or otherwise fail. An example of this could be the question of why you personally believe that it is factual. You can answer that you know it is true because it is something you know inside. A doubter could reply that sometimes people's feelings can be wrong. Working on the unspoken assumption however that the Resurrection is definitely factual or that your arguments for it must be correct, you might automatically dismiss the doubter by saying: "It's true that sometimes people can be wrong, but in this case I am not, because it's true and I definitely know from my own experience and deep feelings that this belief in particular is a fact."
The downside of this strong assumption and way of thinking however is that it prevents you from evaluating your own feelings in a detached way and confirming independently whether they are right or not.
B. Another approach is to aim to evaluate each question or argument in a detached way. That is, you try to evaluate questions objectively and put aside your own biases, preferences, and emotions, rather than just answering a question in a way that must explain why your own position is right.
If your approach is A., that you always consider each question or argument going on a strong position that your position or expectations must be correct then I think that the evaluation process is over. You have already found your answers to your questions and so there is no further need or potential for evaluation or introspective reevaluation. The rest is simply a foregone conclusion.
So only if you can follow Approach B are the next steps for you.
III. Whether everything in the Bible must be factually true that is intended by its direct author writer as fact
Christians agree that the Holy Spirit spoke with the prophets and that God inspired the Bible. However, mainstream, traditional Christians debate whether everything in the Bible must be factually true whenever its author intended it so.
One example is the description of the waters over the heavens in Genesis 1. At the time of the writing of Genesis (2500-1500 BC), the most advanced societies in western Asia, where Palestine was located, were Sumeria and Babylonia. They believed that the heavens in the night sky were made of hard tin and that the stars were set in the tine roof. The Babylonians also believed that the waters were forcibly divided by their main god Marduk at the beginning of the Creation.
In Genesis 1, we read:
In the passage above, we see that God uses a "firmament", a firm layer that in Hebrew literally means something hammered out like metal, in order to divide the waters. And we see that the sun and stars are placed "in" this firmament and that half of the mass of the waters are "above" this firmament that holds the stars.
Three ways of explaining this scheme:
A. The author intended to say that there is a mass of liquid water "above" the firm layer of heavens "in" which the sun is placed, and this is 1. factually true or 2. not factually true.
B. We don't believe that there is a firm layer over the heavens, so therefore this is not what the passage meant. Therefore, the passage must be 1. an allegory/metaphor or else it is referring to something else like 2. clouds, even though clouds are below the sun and below the heavens, or like an "ice canopy" that ceased to exist after the great flood, even though the Psalms written after the flood portray the waters above the firmament as if they are still in place.
For a deeper discussion on this topic, I welcome you to come to this thread:
Waters over Firmament, Flat Earth, and whether the Bible can be factually incorrect.
http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...ally-incorrect
Only if you don't accept that everything in the Bible intended by its direct writer as fact must be factually true is it worth going on to the next step. If you already believe absolutely that all facts alleged in it must be factually true no matter what, there is no point in going farther in reconsidering whether Christ's Resurrection occurred. The reason is because you hold as your premise that any alleged facts must be true, including of course His resurrection.
Some stories in the Old Testament violate our common ideas of science and the natural order than the idea of a man rising from the dead and ascending into heaven. Another good example is that of Noah's flood - namely that a family was able to build a boat big enough to hold two of every species of the world's animals, that the animals somehow collected on board, that they survived on the boat with limited food for 40 days, that in only a few thousand years the animals repopulated the world, including flightless birds populating New Zealand.
So as a result, only if you don't hold the premise that everything in the Bible must be factually true is it worth moving on to then reevaluating evidence for and against the Resurrection's occurrence.
IV. Major arguments and evidence for Christ's Resurrection
A. One of the most common arguments and explanations that many people use for their belief in Christ's Resurrection's factuality is that they know it inside to be true. The believers might feel Christ's presence, they can tell that He is working in their lives, or they "just know" that it is true.
The difficulty with this argument is its subjectivity. Some people "just know" that they will win the lottery. Or they can tell or "just know" that their boyfriend loves them when their friends tell them that their boyfriend is just using them. Or they feel the "presence" of an imaginary friend or benevolent deity from another religion and can see the deity or friend helping them. Or thinking strongly about a certain philosophy (like Confucianism), set of ethics, or deceased role model can help them make the right choices in life. Arguably sometimes this feelings can be right. Maybe ESP exists and the person did succeed in predicting that they won the lottery. Perhaps the person they love does love them back like they think.
B. Another common argument is that a person might pray to Jesus or asking God about Jesus and witness a sign or miracle.
I wrote about this elsewhere:
C. One of the best arguments for me is that various Old Testament prophecies predicted the Messiah's death and resurrection (Isaiah, Psalms, Zechariah, Daniel), and I see numerous similarities between what was predicted for the Resurrection and what the Gospels narrate about it.
A major question that must be asked however, is whether if something (like Christ's Resurrection) is predicted in the Bible that it must definitely occur?
First, if descriptions of history or past events (like Noah's flood) can be factually incorrect or are considered to be myths, how can we be sure that descriptions of future events cannot be wrong too?
Second, are there cases in the Old Testament of failed prophecies? Farrell Till gives as two examples Ezekiel's prophecy that Nebuchadnezzar would destroy Egypt and prophecies by Ezekiel and Isaiah that this king would destroy the city of Tyre:
Jeremiah predicted that King Jehoiakim lack any heirs, yet it turned out that Jehoiakim had a son who ruled after him:
From an apologetic standpoint, one way to address these two verses is to propose that God gave one prediction, but then changed His mind. This would be like the story of Jonah where God predicted Nineveh's destruction, but then spared it when Nineveh repented.
Till gives an example of a prophecy whose failure I think might be explained in Apologetics by a change in the subjects' behavior, namely the king's idolatry:
http://infidels.org/library/modern/f.../prophecy.html
Third, if we see some things in a prophecy line up with real events, does that mean that the other things in the prophecy must too? When I read Messianic prophecies, I am impressed with their similarity to descriptions in the New Testament of Christ's experiences. However, there are several alternate explanations: The similarities could be coincidences, they could be fabricated by New Testament writers, or the prophecies could be mistakenly interpreted to match the real life occurrences.
Daniel 9 is a messianic prophecy that perplexes me in some parts. The passage says that the prophecy was made to seal up prophecies and was about atoning for sin. It predicted that a / the "messiah" or "anointed one" would "be no more" (the term used for God taking away Enoch in Genesis) and then Jerusalem's temple would be destroyed. It said that this would occur after set number of "weeks" of years after an order to rebuild and restore Jerusalem (the city had been destroyed in Daniel's time by the Babylonians). Depending on how one makes the calculation, the weeks of years pointed to a period between about 110 BC and 35 AD (and most likely to a time in 20-33 AD). So far, one can see that this is a Messianic prophecy and that it bears strong similarity to Jesus' death and the Temple's destruction.
Daniel 9 then describes an additional week that is quite confusing for me. The chapter's ending says:
Does this mean that the Roman leaders Vespasian, Titus, or Hadrian will make or confirm a covenant with many nations for a seven year period after the destruction of the Temple (70 AD) or of Jerusalem (130-135 AD)? And then 4 years after confirming this covenant he will end the Jews' sacrifices? This is a bit confusing because I think the Jews' main annual sacrifices ended as soon as their Temple was destroyed (70 AD).
One theory by some scholars is that Daniel was not in fact written by the prophet Daniel of the 6th century BC living in Babylon, but was instead written in the Maccabbean period (eg. the 2nd century BC) while pretending to be written in the 6th century BC. In this theory, the real writer was making up his own predictions about what were for him contemporary events, like the Greek pagans' abuse of the temple in the 2nd century. The advantage of this theory is that it might explain discrepancies with events in the 1st to 2nd centuries AD, in that the passage would have really been written to describe events centuries earlier. In this alternate theory, the "messiah" is not Jesus, but some other leader who is called "anointed".
Personally, I do not have a strong opinion about this alternate theory, but I think that the computation most likely makes the passage's predictions point to 20-33 AD.
Another major Messianic prophecy is David's Psalm 22, about the narrator's death and salvation. In the course of the passage it says:
"I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me." (v. 17)
I suppose the narrator could be predicting in this verse how Jesus felt in the crucifixion, but the part about seeing His own bones sounds a bit strange. Jesus' body didn't decay into a skeleton with all his bones showing. I guess he could have been abused so badly that numerous bones were showing through broken skin, but this seems unexpected too, even with the floggings.
Throughout the Messianic prophecies in the Old Testament, there are details of the Messiah's experiences that apologists may find as fulfillments of details in the prophecies. However, sometimes they are uncorroborated outside of the gospels themselves, which leaves open the possibility that the creators of the gospel stories simply made them up in order to make the gospels appear to be fullfillments.
In the next verse in Psalm 22 we have an example of this kind of uncorroborated detail. It says:
(v.18) "They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture."
In the gospels (Matthew and John), Jesus' garments were divided among the soldiers who crucified him, but whether or not this actually occurred is not confirmed or refuted by sources that we have available.
I grew up being told by relatives that Christ's story in the Bible was true, and so I supposed that it was, just as I supposed that the earth's core was filled with hot rock or magma - something I had never seen but only read about in science books. I went to church and prayed, and the gospel story interested me enough to read a Bible commentary on it. I picked the Methodist minister Vincent Taylor's commentary on Mark from my school library. It impressed me that Taylor theorized that when Christ healed people or drove out demons, what was actually happening was that Jesus inspired cripples to walk or mentally ill people to behave normally. It wasn't as if the people lacked legs or eyes, but rather that they had trouble walking or seeing and Jesus empowered people to do these things. Taylor's thesis sounded easier to accept from a naturalistic viewpoint, and it opened me up to the idea that Jesus' miracles could have a rationalist or naturalist explanation.
II. Should one address each question or argument with the assumption that Christ's resurrection is factual?
Broadly speaking, there are two starting points or assumptions to make when considering each argument for or against Christ's Resurrection being factual:
A. One way to address the arguments is to begin with the assumption that it is factual, after which arguments made against it must be false or otherwise fail. An example of this could be the question of why you personally believe that it is factual. You can answer that you know it is true because it is something you know inside. A doubter could reply that sometimes people's feelings can be wrong. Working on the unspoken assumption however that the Resurrection is definitely factual or that your arguments for it must be correct, you might automatically dismiss the doubter by saying: "It's true that sometimes people can be wrong, but in this case I am not, because it's true and I definitely know from my own experience and deep feelings that this belief in particular is a fact."
The downside of this strong assumption and way of thinking however is that it prevents you from evaluating your own feelings in a detached way and confirming independently whether they are right or not.
B. Another approach is to aim to evaluate each question or argument in a detached way. That is, you try to evaluate questions objectively and put aside your own biases, preferences, and emotions, rather than just answering a question in a way that must explain why your own position is right.
If your approach is A., that you always consider each question or argument going on a strong position that your position or expectations must be correct then I think that the evaluation process is over. You have already found your answers to your questions and so there is no further need or potential for evaluation or introspective reevaluation. The rest is simply a foregone conclusion.
So only if you can follow Approach B are the next steps for you.
III. Whether everything in the Bible must be factually true that is intended by its direct author writer as fact
Christians agree that the Holy Spirit spoke with the prophets and that God inspired the Bible. However, mainstream, traditional Christians debate whether everything in the Bible must be factually true whenever its author intended it so.
One example is the description of the waters over the heavens in Genesis 1. At the time of the writing of Genesis (2500-1500 BC), the most advanced societies in western Asia, where Palestine was located, were Sumeria and Babylonia. They believed that the heavens in the night sky were made of hard tin and that the stars were set in the tine roof. The Babylonians also believed that the waters were forcibly divided by their main god Marduk at the beginning of the Creation.
In Genesis 1, we read:
6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
8 And God called the firmament Heaven.
...
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
8 And God called the firmament Heaven.
...
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
Three ways of explaining this scheme:
A. The author intended to say that there is a mass of liquid water "above" the firm layer of heavens "in" which the sun is placed, and this is 1. factually true or 2. not factually true.
B. We don't believe that there is a firm layer over the heavens, so therefore this is not what the passage meant. Therefore, the passage must be 1. an allegory/metaphor or else it is referring to something else like 2. clouds, even though clouds are below the sun and below the heavens, or like an "ice canopy" that ceased to exist after the great flood, even though the Psalms written after the flood portray the waters above the firmament as if they are still in place.
For a deeper discussion on this topic, I welcome you to come to this thread:
Waters over Firmament, Flat Earth, and whether the Bible can be factually incorrect.
http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...ally-incorrect
Only if you don't accept that everything in the Bible intended by its direct writer as fact must be factually true is it worth going on to the next step. If you already believe absolutely that all facts alleged in it must be factually true no matter what, there is no point in going farther in reconsidering whether Christ's Resurrection occurred. The reason is because you hold as your premise that any alleged facts must be true, including of course His resurrection.
Some stories in the Old Testament violate our common ideas of science and the natural order than the idea of a man rising from the dead and ascending into heaven. Another good example is that of Noah's flood - namely that a family was able to build a boat big enough to hold two of every species of the world's animals, that the animals somehow collected on board, that they survived on the boat with limited food for 40 days, that in only a few thousand years the animals repopulated the world, including flightless birds populating New Zealand.
So as a result, only if you don't hold the premise that everything in the Bible must be factually true is it worth moving on to then reevaluating evidence for and against the Resurrection's occurrence.
IV. Major arguments and evidence for Christ's Resurrection
A. One of the most common arguments and explanations that many people use for their belief in Christ's Resurrection's factuality is that they know it inside to be true. The believers might feel Christ's presence, they can tell that He is working in their lives, or they "just know" that it is true.
The difficulty with this argument is its subjectivity. Some people "just know" that they will win the lottery. Or they can tell or "just know" that their boyfriend loves them when their friends tell them that their boyfriend is just using them. Or they feel the "presence" of an imaginary friend or benevolent deity from another religion and can see the deity or friend helping them. Or thinking strongly about a certain philosophy (like Confucianism), set of ethics, or deceased role model can help them make the right choices in life. Arguably sometimes this feelings can be right. Maybe ESP exists and the person did succeed in predicting that they won the lottery. Perhaps the person they love does love them back like they think.
B. Another common argument is that a person might pray to Jesus or asking God about Jesus and witness a sign or miracle.
I wrote about this elsewhere:
For example, some people see Jesus in the clouds. Or they are healed of an illness that was certain not to heal. Or there is an extreme coincidence like having a premonition of a car crash and then buckling up right before it happened.
Counterargument: They could be real coincidences, or they could be a placebo effect whereby the body heals itself because of faith in the healing, not because of a direct outside force. Or there could be another paranormal explanation, such as one where the person's own expectations somehow "will" the event to occur. People in other religions like Buddhism and Hinduism claim miracles, signs, and visions too that they consider confirmation of their beliefs like reincarnation.
http://earlywritings.com/forum/viewt...p=46067#p46067
Counterargument: They could be real coincidences, or they could be a placebo effect whereby the body heals itself because of faith in the healing, not because of a direct outside force. Or there could be another paranormal explanation, such as one where the person's own expectations somehow "will" the event to occur. People in other religions like Buddhism and Hinduism claim miracles, signs, and visions too that they consider confirmation of their beliefs like reincarnation.
http://earlywritings.com/forum/viewt...p=46067#p46067
A major question that must be asked however, is whether if something (like Christ's Resurrection) is predicted in the Bible that it must definitely occur?
First, if descriptions of history or past events (like Noah's flood) can be factually incorrect or are considered to be myths, how can we be sure that descriptions of future events cannot be wrong too?
Second, are there cases in the Old Testament of failed prophecies? Farrell Till gives as two examples Ezekiel's prophecy that Nebuchadnezzar would destroy Egypt and prophecies by Ezekiel and Isaiah that this king would destroy the city of Tyre:
The prophetic tirades of Isaiah (13-23) and Ezekiel (24-32) against the nations surrounding Israel provide a treasure house of unfulfilled prophecies. Ezekiel, for example, prophesied that Nebuchadnezzar would destroy Egypt and leave it utterly desolate for a period of 40 years, during which no foot of man or beast would pass through it (chapter 20), but history recorded no such desolation of Egypt during or after the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. Ezekiel also prophesied that Nebuchadnezzar would destroy Tyre, which would never again be rebuilt (26:7-14, but Nebuchadnezzar's siege of Tyre failed to take the city, and Tyre still exists today. A curious thing about this prophecy against Tyre is that Isaiah also predicted that Tyre would be destroyed, but, whereas Ezekiel predicted that Tyre would be permanently destroyed and "nevermore have any being," Isaiah prophesied that it would be made desolate only for a period of 70 years.
...
The fact is that neither prophecy was ever fulfilled. Nebuchadnezzar did not destroy Tyre forever, and it was never made desolate for a period of 70 years.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/Deb...ians/Page7.htm
...
The fact is that neither prophecy was ever fulfilled. Nebuchadnezzar did not destroy Tyre forever, and it was never made desolate for a period of 70 years.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/Deb...ians/Page7.htm
Jeremiah predicted that King Jehoiakim lack any heirs, yet it turned out that Jehoiakim had a son who ruled after him:
Therefore thus says the LORD concerning Jehoiakim king of Judah, He shall have none to sit upon the throne of David, and his dead body shall be cast out to the heat by day and the frost by night. (Jer. 36:30)
So Jehoiakim slept with his fathers, and Jehoiachin his son reigned in his stead. (2 Kings 24:6)
So Jehoiakim slept with his fathers, and Jehoiachin his son reigned in his stead. (2 Kings 24:6)
Till gives an example of a prophecy whose failure I think might be explained in Apologetics by a change in the subjects' behavior, namely the king's idolatry:
Isaiah made the prophecy to assure King Ahaz that the Syrian-Israelite alliance would not prevail against him, yet the Bible record shows that the alliance not only succeeded but did so overwhelmingly. Second Chronicles 28 reports that Ahaz's idolatrous practices caused "Yahweh his God" to deliver him "into the hand of the king of Syria" (v:5). (This king was the Rezin of Isaiah 7:1.) The Syrians "carried away of his a great multitude of captives" and took them to Damascus (v:5). Simultaneously, the Israelites attacked Judah under the leadership of Pekah (the same Pekah of Isaiah 7:1), and in one day 120,000 "valiant men" in Judah were killed and 200,000 "women, sons, and daughters" were "carried away captive" (vv:6-8).
With the Syrian-Israelite alliance posing a threat to Judah, Isaiah was sent to Ahaz to prophesy that the alliance would fail. After doing so, he said in his very next breath that Yahweh would bring the king of Assyria against Judah and that he would desolate the land (7:17-25). Imagine, if you can, the absolute absurdity of this. The prophet came, in effect, to say, "Don't worry; Syria and Samaria will not defeat you. Assyria will." What kind of consolation was that supposed to be?
With the Syrian-Israelite alliance posing a threat to Judah, Isaiah was sent to Ahaz to prophesy that the alliance would fail. After doing so, he said in his very next breath that Yahweh would bring the king of Assyria against Judah and that he would desolate the land (7:17-25). Imagine, if you can, the absolute absurdity of this. The prophet came, in effect, to say, "Don't worry; Syria and Samaria will not defeat you. Assyria will." What kind of consolation was that supposed to be?
Third, if we see some things in a prophecy line up with real events, does that mean that the other things in the prophecy must too? When I read Messianic prophecies, I am impressed with their similarity to descriptions in the New Testament of Christ's experiences. However, there are several alternate explanations: The similarities could be coincidences, they could be fabricated by New Testament writers, or the prophecies could be mistakenly interpreted to match the real life occurrences.
Daniel 9 is a messianic prophecy that perplexes me in some parts. The passage says that the prophecy was made to seal up prophecies and was about atoning for sin. It predicted that a / the "messiah" or "anointed one" would "be no more" (the term used for God taking away Enoch in Genesis) and then Jerusalem's temple would be destroyed. It said that this would occur after set number of "weeks" of years after an order to rebuild and restore Jerusalem (the city had been destroyed in Daniel's time by the Babylonians). Depending on how one makes the calculation, the weeks of years pointed to a period between about 110 BC and 35 AD (and most likely to a time in 20-33 AD). So far, one can see that this is a Messianic prophecy and that it bears strong similarity to Jesus' death and the Temple's destruction.
Daniel 9 then describes an additional week that is quite confusing for me. The chapter's ending says:
Does this mean that the Roman leaders Vespasian, Titus, or Hadrian will make or confirm a covenant with many nations for a seven year period after the destruction of the Temple (70 AD) or of Jerusalem (130-135 AD)? And then 4 years after confirming this covenant he will end the Jews' sacrifices? This is a bit confusing because I think the Jews' main annual sacrifices ended as soon as their Temple was destroyed (70 AD).
One theory by some scholars is that Daniel was not in fact written by the prophet Daniel of the 6th century BC living in Babylon, but was instead written in the Maccabbean period (eg. the 2nd century BC) while pretending to be written in the 6th century BC. In this theory, the real writer was making up his own predictions about what were for him contemporary events, like the Greek pagans' abuse of the temple in the 2nd century. The advantage of this theory is that it might explain discrepancies with events in the 1st to 2nd centuries AD, in that the passage would have really been written to describe events centuries earlier. In this alternate theory, the "messiah" is not Jesus, but some other leader who is called "anointed".
Personally, I do not have a strong opinion about this alternate theory, but I think that the computation most likely makes the passage's predictions point to 20-33 AD.
Another major Messianic prophecy is David's Psalm 22, about the narrator's death and salvation. In the course of the passage it says:
"I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me." (v. 17)
I suppose the narrator could be predicting in this verse how Jesus felt in the crucifixion, but the part about seeing His own bones sounds a bit strange. Jesus' body didn't decay into a skeleton with all his bones showing. I guess he could have been abused so badly that numerous bones were showing through broken skin, but this seems unexpected too, even with the floggings.
Throughout the Messianic prophecies in the Old Testament, there are details of the Messiah's experiences that apologists may find as fulfillments of details in the prophecies. However, sometimes they are uncorroborated outside of the gospels themselves, which leaves open the possibility that the creators of the gospel stories simply made them up in order to make the gospels appear to be fullfillments.
In the next verse in Psalm 22 we have an example of this kind of uncorroborated detail. It says:
(v.18) "They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture."
In the gospels (Matthew and John), Jesus' garments were divided among the soldiers who crucified him, but whether or not this actually occurred is not confirmed or refuted by sources that we have available.
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