Proving The Resurrection By the "Minimal Facts" Approach

[PRmerger]

How nice of the church to keep up with the times.

You keep making references to the Church changing its teaching.

Is this a deliberate misunderstanding?

Because you’ve already been told, numerous times, that the Church has not changed its teachings.

At all.

So if you wish to pursue this, you’ll need to give an example from the Church from the past, and then an example of the Church presently, and where the change is.

Please cite your sources, of course.

 

[pocaracas]

Huh? What “intervention?”

Ok, not my first… my second:forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=13336615&postcount=115.

We could, I suppose, with equal alacrity, ask: “Are the individuals we today (and as far back as the 1920s) call The Three Stooges, the real original Three Stooges?” (Fake Shemps notwithstanding, since Judas Iscariot was replaced in the lineup by Matthias.)

You will have to provide something pretending to be a smidgeon of a reason to think they weren’t, given that the very idea of “the Apostles” derives from and is inseparable from the identified twelve individuals known as “the Apostles.”

I do so hate analogies… but that one is nice, actually.

The reason to think that they weren’t is simple: with each little “miracle” done by their master, within the time period of 3 years, they were always equally amazed. One would think that they’d come to look at it as “Jesus doing his thing… again :groan:”
Maybe the being amazed was a detail added later to the story, huh? Or maybe no such amazing things really happened and they were never amazed… so why would they expect Jesus to resurrect?
That’s what was expected of the Teacher, some decades earlier…

Actually, the Damascus Document upon which your claims about the Teacher of Righteousness are based has been radio carbon dated to between 44 BCE and 129 CE. Which means, essentially, that you have very little certainty supporting your claim that the Teacher of Righteousness actually preceded Jesus.

Wha?.. Damascus? hmmm… indeed, some things about the Teacher do come from that document. But, it seems that, analyzing the text, one is lead to think that it was written before Jerualem was destroyed, in 70AD. This narrows the dating to 44BCE-70CE (how curious, you’re using CE…)

But the best stuff comes from the Pesher Habakkuk, dated to 111 BCE-2 CE:
“”
There is the “Wicked Priest”, “… who was called by the name of truth at the beginning of his coming; but when he commanded over Israel, his heart rose up and he abandoned God and betrayed the precepts because of riches, … and he followed the ways of a(bo)mination in every kind of unclean defilement”. (PH-VIII)

The phrase “swallow up” in the next passage usually means, in Hebrew, to do away with, or to kill. The implication in this passage is that the Wicked Priest captures the Teacher on the Day of Atonement and eventually sees him killed. It speaks of “… the Wicked Priest who persecuted the Teacher of Righteousness, swallowing him up in the anger of his fury in his place of exile. But at the time of the feast of rest of the Day of Atonement he appeared before them to swallow them up and to cause them to stumble on the Day of Fasting, their Sabbath of rest”. (PH-XI)

Another phrase tells of “… the Wicked (Prie)st who la(id hands on the Priest, the Teacher of Righteousness,) to put him to death… And God will not let (the Wicked Priest go) un(punished for the blood which) he has shed, but (God will) pay him his (re)ward by delivering him into the hands of the violent of the nations to execute (vengeance) upon him”. (PP 37-IV)

If one assumes that the Teacher is Maitreya/Jesus, then a logical choice for the “Wicked Priest” would be the Jewish high priest Caiaphas, or possibly Annas, his father-in-law who held the real power. One could conjecture that the “Man of Lies” was Judas.
“”

[cont…]

 

[pocaracas]

[cont…]

Then there is the little matter of my posts 158-160 in this thread which show that most of what was contained in the Damascus Document about the Teacher of Righteousness was pre-prototyped in Wisdom 2, Isaiah and Plato, at least several hundred years before the earliest dating of the Teacher of Righteousness.

I am surprised that you even braved the opportunity to go back to this point when you offered squat in reply to posts 158-160.

Indeed, I needed to read up a little more. From the same link as above, a little history:
“”

Between 164 and 63 BC they achieved political and religious independence. Jewish freedom fighters led by the five Maccabee brothers wrested control of Judaea (roughly the land between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea, bordered by present day Gaza on the south and Tel Aviv on the north), and established the Hasmonean dynasty. This freedom, however, came with a price, because the Hasmonean rulers interrupted the ancient hereditary line of the Jewish Zadokite priesthood by declaring themselves the high priests of the temple. They changed temple practices and liberalized the moral code. This was a scandalous action to orthodox Jews.

It is thought that groups such as the Essenes separated from mainstream Judaism at this time because they could no longer participate in services and a way of life they considered blasphemous. Calling themselves the Sons of Zadok, the Essenes held faithful to the priestly (Zadokite) line of succession. They objected to slavery and Temple sacrifice and followed a solar calendar at odds with the normal lunar calendar of Judaism; this almost ensured separation, for festivals and times of worship fell on completely different days. Living in small communities on the outskirts of villages and cities, in Judaea they numbered about 4,000.

Hasmonean rule ended in 63 AD when the Roman general Pompey sacked Jerusalem. From this time the Romans were the dominant political force in the area. Radical Jewish groups, the zealots and sicarii (assassins), urged armed rebellion against the Romans. In 66 AD the first Jewish revolt against Rome began. In 70 AD, after four years of fighting, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Jews. Smaller revolts ensued, but by 135 Judaea belonged to Rome.

In this milieu, with its competing factions and rivalries, Jesus fulfilled his ministry. Claims to Messiahship abounded in his day. His own life was little noted – historians gave him scant attention for 300 years. His death was not seen at the time as the sacrificial atonement that some regard it as today. It was, instead, the most degrading of punishments, a savage and bloody form of torture introduced by the Roman ‘barbarians.’
“”

So… the zadokians seem to have been around for a while… and other had written about them…

If?

More like if.

And that if depends completely upon you giving something of a plausible reason why it should even achieve that level of if.

riiight… Jesus… the historical Jesus (if not the Teacher), is presenting a message way too similar to the Essene way. How can you explain that, if not as him being from that community?

 

[PRmerger]

[cont.d]

Ah… no… first century - no bible.
Second century - distribution problems.

Actually, according to some scrolls found in the 20th century and according to some early heresy hunters from way back then (Tertullian, I think, and even Paul), there were many parallel gospels in circulation, giving many alternative views of the nature of Jesus.

So here’s a thing you can use when you’re on a Bible-Alone forum, poca: you can tell these Bible Alone Christians the above…and they will be stumped.

You’re welcome.

Unfortunately, you came to a Catholic forum, with knowledgeable Catholics, so the above objection is no objection at all, because, as you know, (or ought to know) we don’t go by the Bible Alone.

The Church is what declares something to be part of the Bible.

So if there was no Church, then the above would be problematic–how do we know which scrolls are theopneustos and which ones aren’t?

There is Sacred Tradition, poca, which Catholics appeal to–and no Bible is necessary for us.

In fact the Catholic faith was whole and entire before a single word of the New Testament was ever put to writ.

 

[pocaracas]

Oh, dear.

Again with the literalism.

We did not interpret your “it’s not like you guys get a lot of pocaracas’s [sic] around here” to mean: many with the name pocaracas.

We understood you to mean: people like me who argue like me and present things like me.

Sheesh!

Oh, lighten up!

 

[PRmerger]

“In the most general sense, Psalm 22 is about a person who is crying out to God to save him from the taunts and torments of his enemies, and (in the last ten verses) thanking God for rescuing him”

Maybe they were unaware of that pslam… yes, it is possible.

No, poca.

Psalm 22.

Read it again.

Whom does it seem to be referencing?

Who was mocked and jeered?

Whose hands and feet were pierced?

Whose garments were divided and sold by casting lots?

Can you think of anyone that this Psalm, written hundreds of years before Christ’s time, could have been foretelling?

 

[PRmerger]

Oh, lighten up!

 

[pocaracas]

This is, amusingly, a faith-filled assertion.

You believe it because someone told you it’s true.

But you never read a single study with empirical data that demonstrates that “Empiricism is all we have to be as sure as we can about anything.”

#faith
#irony

Someone told me? Who? You must know something about me that I don’t…

Did you know that Einstein’s general relativity was developed in a theoretical setting - pen and paper.
People did buy it.
Until they saw the effect of gravitational lensing, during a solar eclipse - a known star was being viewed on both sides of the sun! How could that be?

Until that empirical test, it was not an accepted theory.

There are various string theories… up until now, none has provided the required experimental setup that would let us verify it… as such, none is accepted as representing reality.

That’s how things are.
Mental masturbation is alright, but it requires an empirical test to turn it into a valid description of reality.

 

[Peter_Plato]

But the best stuff comes from the Pesher Habakkuk, dated to 111 BCE-2 CE:

Here is a translation of the entire scroll of Pesher Habakkuk:

jacksonsnyder.com/yah/2014/Habakkuk/HABAKKUK%20PESHER%20COMPLETED%20WITH%20NOTES.pdf

I am not sure where the “good stuff” is to be found since it reads like a vague messianic allusion taken from a number of the OT prophets (mostly Habakkuk), Wisdom literature and the Psalms.

It isn’t clear why you would suppose that a real individual pre-existed Christ based upon that “stuff” any more than you would insist Isaiah, Wisdom or Psalm 22 were, likewise, referencing real individuals in their days. OR why only the Pesher Habakkuk scroll ought to be treated differently from those other writings. Yet no OT scholar that I am aware of has made what would amount to stronger claims about the existence of more “real persons” than yours based purely on the books of the OT.

The scroll of Pesher Habakkuk more likely seems to have been written in the same vein as the prophetic or wisdom “books” concerning an expected individual, a messiah, of sorts.

 

[Gorgias]

Lol… not that “that”… the other “that”.
“that” the rule works outside the Universe.

Yeah, so we’re back where we started, a few rounds ago: now you’re claiming that gravity works ‘outside’ of Creation? And you’re the one claiming to be waving the banner for reason and for empirical evidence?

Exactly just that! Empiricism is all we have to be as sure as we can about anything.
Other means to reason can lead to erroneous reasoning and, by the unavailability of empirical means, untestable claims… I’m not saying that they have led us to such errors, but we cannot tell if they are errors or not.

If that’s your claim, then you’re in big trouble. If all we have is empirical evidence and nothing else, then ‘rationality’ itself is unreliable. In other words, none of our arguments matter, since the arguments themselves cannot be measured. If you want to claim to be a fundamentalist (don’t worry – I mean ‘empirical fundamentalism’, not ‘Biblical fundamentalist’! ), then you have to throw the ‘rationality’ baby out with the ‘non-empirical bathwater’…

Why Ronald Reagan?.. bah, never mind!

It’s a presidential debate reference. You’re under 30, then, I take it?

Well, yes, of course…
But the texts were not a unit, like they are now in the bible.
They were separate gospels… some suspected of being heretical, just as many others in circulation…

Not the ones that were (later) declared ‘canonical’ – in part, because they had been accepted by all Christians. You can’t claim ‘heretical gospel’ and point to one of the Four Gospels. Nope. Just doesn’t hold water.

Also, each particular church would take its time to acquire a copy of a particular gospel… hence the distribution problems I mentioned.

Read Justin Martyr’s description of what Christian worship was all about. It might surprise you that he explicitly mentions that they read from the Gospels. No distribution problems: that’s what Christian worship included from the very beginning – retelling the story, breaking bread, common prayer.

Were they really?

Ever heard of the Essenes?

Not sure what you think you’re demonstrating with this…

Well… I did start the sentence with a “possibly” and ended it with “who knows?”, so I had hoped that much would be clear.
Can anyone tell if this is what indeed happened?

OK – you keep going to this idea; it doesn’t work from the perspective of an argument. You can’t just say “hey, maybe the moon is made of green cheese! who knows? hey, maybe Obama is a Martian! who knows?” An argument that’s a simple unfounded claim is no argument at all, and can reasonably be discarded out of hand. Sorry.

“In the most general sense, Psalm 22 is about a person who is crying out to God to save him from the taunts and torments of his enemies, and (in the last ten verses) thanking God for rescuing him”

Maybe they were unaware of that pslam… yes, it is possible.

OK – so, besides the “who knows; it’s possible” fallacy… your assertion is just plain wrong on its face. No, it’s not possible – the Jews of the 1st century AD did know their Scripture (even better than people know it today)! You can’t just claim “yeah, no one got the reference, maybe” – that argument just doesn’t hold up. In fact, the response that’s recorded in that passage (“hey! he’s calling on God!”) explicitly indicates that they did understand the reference!

Moreover, they didn’t have the “chapter and verse” system of delineating Scripture back then, so you would have to quote a line in order for folks to understand what you were talking about (just like, earlier in the thread, folks quoted Star Trek in order to make a point – Trekkies got it immediately!). Jesus does this time and again in His teaching, so when He does it from the cross, it’s no surprise to anyone who knows Him.

 

[PRmerger]

Someone told me? Who? You must know something about me that I don’t…

Fair enough.

So you made it up?

Or you saw some studies which demonstrate that “Empiricism is all we have to be as sure as we can about anything.”

Which is it?

Please cite your sources.

 

[pocaracas]

You would need to give an example, then, of a religious rule that doesn’t sound man-made.

What would that look like?

Beats me… that requirement sounds a bit like an oxymoron, to me… like Military Intelligence, or Microsoft Works.

I suggest, as you continue to dialogue here, you make it clear that your lack of education on all things religious is what is fueling your question.

Right now, you seem to be asserting that you have studied things quite well, and find the concepts untenable.

But, as it turns out, you actually have “distorted the teachings” or aren’t even sure you were educated about them.

How can I tell that something I think about the religion is outdated or refers only to some variant? I say things as I think they are. Now you all know I may have some shortcomings related to your religion… Please don’t think ill of me, if I misrepresent something in the future.

###########

You keep making references to the Church changing its teaching.

Is this a deliberate misunderstanding?

I don’t think so… In there, I was going by what Gorgias said…

Because you’ve already been told, numerous times, that the Church has not changed its teachings.

At all.

I have? ok, if you say so…

So if you wish to pursue this, you’ll need to give an example from the Church from the past, and then an example of the Church presently, and where the change is.

Please cite your sources, of course.

Are you sure you want this?
The Spanish Holy Inquisition, perhaps?

“”
In 1233 a special papal court called the Inquisition was established to cope with the rising tide of heresy and to bring about religious conformity. Those accused were tried in secret without the aid of legal counsel. Those who confessed and renounced heresy were “reconciled” with the church on performance of penance. Those who did not voluntarily confess could be tortured. If this failed, the prisoners could be declared heretics and turned over to the secular authorities, usually to be burned at the stake.

A rationalization for torture was that the soul was considered incomparably more important than the body, so therefore it was believed that torturing a suspected heretic was justifiable if confession could save the soul from the greater torments of hell. The use of torture, secret testimony, and the denial of legal counsel prevailed in all courts that followed Roman legal procedure. But some of the church’s courts of inquisition, and in particular the Spanish courts, abused their authority and became almost fanatical in their prosecution of suspected heretics.
“”
Does this view of the soul over the body’s importance still stand?

 

[PRmerger]

Did you know that Einstein’s general relativity was developed in a theoretical setting - pen and paper.
People did buy it.
Until they saw the effect of gravitational lensing, during a solar eclipse - a known star was being viewed on both sides of the sun! How could that be?

Until that empirical test, it was not an accepted theory.

Excellent.

Were you under the misapprehension that empirical testing is a bad thing?

Empiricism is great.

My job relies on it.

My worldview relies on it.

We just don’t limit ourselves to Empiricism Only.

That’s a foolish limitation, and one that is self-refuting.

For, of course, as you know (or ought to know), Empiricism can’t prove that Empiricism Only is the way to gain knowledge and truth.

 

[pocaracas]

No, poca.

Psalm 22.

Read it again.

Whom does it seem to be referencing?

Who was mocked and jeered?

Whose hands and feet were pierced?

Whose garments were divided and sold by casting lots?

Can you think of anyone that this Psalm, written hundreds of years before Christ’s time, could have been foretelling?

You’re thinking Jesus, huh?
I can say the Teacher…
Or any believer who find himself surrounded by a bunch of people who don’t share his beliefs.
I’m certainly not fond of going through any ghetto… something like that may happen to me.

 

[PRmerger]

Beats me… that requirement sounds a bit like an oxymoron, to me… like Military Intelligence, or Microsoft Works.

“That sounds like a man-made religious rule!” said poca.

But now, it turns out, you can’t even fathom what a non-man-made religious rule would look like.

It turns out that this was a rather inutile objection then, eh?

How can I tell that something I think about the religion is outdated or refers only to some variant?

I think, given your track record here, you should just have that be your default position.

I don’t think so… In there, I was going by what Gorgias said…

Gorgias has repeatedly said that the Church hasn’t changed her teachings.

One has to wonder why you keep asserting this.

Are you sure you want this?
The Spanish Holy Inquisition, perhaps?

Uh, no…poca.

You need to cite a magisterial document with the Church’s teaching from the past, and then a magisterial document with the Church’s teaching from the present.

Otherwise what I’m doing is…

Wait.

Must.

Not.

Make.

Analogy.

deep cleansing breath.

Suffice it to say, poca, that you cannot cite second party references if you want to talk about Church teaching.

You can search Fr. Google for official Church documents.

Prove your case, please.

Evidence is being demanded.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Are you sure you want this?
The Spanish Holy Inquisition, perhaps?

“”
In 1233 a special papal court called the Inquisition was established to cope with the rising tide of heresy and to bring about religious conformity. Those accused were tried in secret without the aid of legal counsel. Those who confessed and renounced heresy were “reconciled” with the church on performance of penance. Those who did not voluntarily confess could be tortured. If this failed, the prisoners could be declared heretics and turned over to the secular authorities, usually to be burned at the stake.

A rationalization for torture was that the soul was considered incomparably more important than the body, so therefore it was believed that torturing a suspected heretic was justifiable if confession could save the soul from the greater torments of hell. The use of torture, secret testimony, and the denial of legal counsel prevailed in all courts that followed Roman legal procedure. But some of the church’s courts of inquisition, and in particular the Spanish courts, abused their authority and became almost fanatical in their prosecution of suspected heretics.
“”
Does this view of the soul over the body’s importance still stand?

history-world.org, eh?

What about an actual modern historian who has made a life’s work of studying the Inquisition?

After the reforms, the Spanish Inquisition had very few critics. Staffed by well-educated legal professionals, it was one of the most efficient and compassionate judicial bodies in Europe. No major court in Europe executed fewer people than the Spanish Inquisition. This was a time, after all, when damaging shrubs in a public garden in London carried the death penalty. Across Europe, executions were everyday events. But not so with the Spanish Inquisition. In its 350-year lifespan only about 4,000 people were put to the stake. Compare that with the witch-hunts that raged across the rest of Catholic and Protestant Europe, in which 60,000 people, mostly women, were roasted. Spain was spared this hysteria precisely because the Spanish Inquisition stopped it at the border. When the first accusations of witchcraft surfaced in northern Spain, the Inquisition sent its people to investigate. These trained legal scholars found no believable evidence for witches’ Sabbaths, black magic, or baby roasting. It was also noted that those confessing to witchcraft had a curious inability to fly through keyholes. While Europeans were throwing women onto bonfires with abandon, the Spanish Inquisition slammed the door shut on this insanity. (For the record, the Roman Inquisition also kept the witch craze from infecting Italy.)

catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=5236

 

[PRmerger]

You’re thinking Jesus, huh?

Do you know any other Jew who fits the bill?

Someone whose clothes were torn and divided by casting lots? Who was mocked and jeered, scorned and despised? Who had his hands and feet pierced?

 

[pocaracas]

Here is a translation of the entire scroll of Pesher Habakkuk:

jacksonsnyder.com/yah/2014/Habakkuk/HABAKKUK%20PESHER%20COMPLETED%20WITH%20NOTES.pdf

I am not sure where the “good stuff” is to be found since it reads like a vague messianic allusion taken from a number of the OT prophets (mostly Habakkuk), Wisdom literature and the Psalms.

It isn’t clear why you would suppose that a real individual pre-existed Christ based upon that “stuff” any more than you would insist Isaiah, Wisdom or Psalm 22 were, likewise, referencing real individuals in their days. OR why only the Pesher Habakkuk scroll ought to be treated differently from those other writings. Yet no OT scholar that I am aware of has made what would amount to stronger claims about the existence of more “real persons” than yours based purely on the books of the OT.

The scroll of Pesher Habakkuk more likely seems to have been written in the same vein as the prophetic or wisdom “books” concerning an expected individual, a messiah, of sorts.

Thanks! I tried, but never got the full text!

What says you to this part?
"IX
8 Its interpretation concerns the Wicked Priest, whom, as a consequence of the Evil he did to the Righteous
9 Teacher and the Men of his Council, El delivered to the hand of his enemies to afflict him
10 with torturing (and) to consume with bitternesses of soul, because he condemned16
11 His Elect. Woe to the profiteer’s profiteering, Evil unto his house, who places his nest
12 high up to escape the power of Evil. You have devised shame
13 for your house by cutting off many Peoples and sinned against your soul. For
14 the stones will shout from the walls and the beams of wood will answer it "

 

[Bradski]

So if you wish to pursue this, you’ll need to give an example from the Church from the past, and then an example of the Church presently, and where the change is.

The church, quite reasonably, is prepared to change whenever it is shown to be wrong.

Please cite your sources, of course.

Pope Leo XIII:

“Whatever they can really demonstrate to be true of physical nature, we must show to be capable of reconciliation with our Scriptures; and whatever they assert in their treatises which is contrary to these Scriptures of ours, that is to Catholic faith, we must either prove it as well as we can to be entirely false, or at all events we must, without the smallest hesitation, believe it to be so.”

This would refer, I assume, to any discrepancy between our ‘two overlapping magisteria’. Leo appears to agree that science will trump the church whenever it can be shown that science has proved its case.

I’m assuming that this would refer to matters such as geocentrism, evolution etc.

 

[pocaracas]

If that’s your claim, then you’re in big trouble. If all we have is empirical evidence and nothing else, then ‘rationality’ itself is unreliable. In other words, none of our arguments matter, since the arguments themselves cannot be measured. If you want to claim to be a fundamentalist (don’t worry – I mean ‘empirical fundamentalism’, not ‘Biblical fundamentalist’! ), then you have to throw the ‘rationality’ baby out with the ‘non-empirical bathwater’…

Read what I wrote about Einstein’s General Relativity, a few minutes ago…

It’s a presidential debate reference. You’re under 30, then, I take it?

Or I’m not american…
I know who the man is… but I didn’t get the reference to his voice, or why it’s relevant… but I guess it’s not important…

Not the ones that were (later) declared ‘canonical’ – in part, because they had been accepted by all Christians. You can’t claim ‘heretical gospel’ and point to one of the Four Gospels. Nope. Just doesn’t hold water.

Are you telling me that none of the NT texts were ever suspected of being heretical?

virtualclaritymagazine.org/how-were-the-new-testament-books-chosen/
“”
Some were concerned about James because it appeared to contradict Paul on the relationship between faith and works. Questions were also raised about 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and the book of Revelation.
“”

Read Justin Martyr’s description of what Christian worship was all about. It might surprise you that he explicitly mentions that they read from the Gospels. No distribution problems: that’s what Christian worship included from the very beginning – retelling the story, breaking bread, common prayer.

Not all… or else, heretical teachings wouldn’t have sprouted like they did, huh?

Not sure what you think you’re demonstrating with this…

It may be argued that Jesus was an Essene…

OK – so, besides the “who knows; it’s possible” fallacy… your assertion is just plain wrong on its face. No, it’s not possible – the Jews of the 1st century AD did know their Scripture (even better than people know it today)! You can’t just claim “yeah, no one got the reference, maybe” – that argument just doesn’t hold up. In fact, the response that’s recorded in that passage (“hey! he’s calling on God!”) explicitly indicates that they did understand the reference!

Are you saying that everyone in the region was jew?

Moreover, they didn’t have the “chapter and verse” system of delineating Scripture back then, so you would have to quote a line in order for folks to understand what you were talking about (just like, earlier in the thread, folks quoted Star Trek in order to make a point – Trekkies got it immediately!). Jesus does this time and again in His teaching, so when He does it from the cross, it’s no surprise to anyone who knows Him.

That makes sense…