Proving The Resurrection By the "Minimal Facts" Approach

[Trevor_Dewey]

The Minimal Facts (4+1)

The minimal facts include four that are so strongly evidenced that nearly every scholar (including the skeptic) regards them as reliable facts. The fifth fact, the “+1”, is accepted by a significant number of scholars though not nearly as many as the first four.

The Minimal Facts are:

1. Jesus died by crucifixion
2. Jesus’ disciples believed that He rose and appeared to them
3. Saul, the persecutor of the Church, was suddenly changed
4. James, the skeptical brother of Jesus, was suddenly changed
5. Jesus’ tomb was found to be empty

In subsequent posts, I will present the evidence in support of each of these facts.

This isn’t something I think is worth bothering with, either you accept Christ or you reject Him and no amount of “minimal facts” is going to change that. But your “minimal facts” are missing at least one other minimal fact: that after the Resurrection the Apostles were willing to die in pretty horrible ways (and most did die in horrible ways) for Christ and Christianity. Also the use of “brother” is just confusing to non-Catholics, you start getting people thinking that the Blessed Virgin Mary and Joseph actually had children together. Maybe put that in quotes.

 

[Randy_Carson]

According to the story, as told by some, yes.

But I’m questioning if these disciples weren’t conflating two tales of two people, mingling hopes and wishes… and producing a collective story where those wishes did come true.
Perhaps… Jesus is the “resurrected” Teacher…?

Poca-

The disciples lived with Jesus for three years…leaving their homes, families and livelihoods in order to follow him.

What is the likelihood that they were simply confused by the appearance of a man who CLAIMED to be Jesus but was really someone else?

Either way, your account does not address the conversion of Paul or James. They did not have any “hopes and wishes”…they did not believe Jesus was the messiah or the Son of God. Yet, they were converted by meeting Jesus after the resurrection.

And if Jesus was NOT raised, why would the Jews not simply open of Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb, place the body on a cart, and parade it through the streets of Jerusalem to silence the early believers?

 

[Randy_Carson]

This isn’t something I think is worth bothering with, either you accept Christ or you reject Him and no amount of “minimal facts” is going to change that. But your “minimal facts” are missing at least one other minimal fact: that after the Resurrection the Apostles were willing to die in pretty horrible ways (and most did die in horrible ways) for Christ and Christianity. Also the use of “brother” is just confusing to non-Catholics, you start getting people thinking that the Blessed Virgin Mary and Joseph actually had children together. Maybe put that in quotes.

I would put their willingness to suffer under point #2.

As for the word “brother”, I understand you completely, but sometimes its best to save that minor point until after the big ones are made.

 

[pocaracas]

Hi Randy.
You’re right, it is easier to be heard and replied to away from AF!

The disciples lived with Jesus for three years…leaving their homes, families and livelihoods in order to follow him.

What is the likelihood that they were simply confused by the appearance of a man who CLAIMED to be Jesus but was really someone else?

I have recently been instructed on the difference between “disciples” and “apostles”.
I’m assuming then that you mean “apostles”, the 12… the main disciples.

Funny how the existence of disciples assumes a Master, or… wait for it… Teacher
The Teacher is also said to have had some disciples.

There are cults (some completely unrelated to christianity) where people do leave all their worldly belongings and join the cult, live in the cult and remain there till they die of old age… Does that render the cult’s basic premise true?
What is the likelihood that these people are confused by the appearance of some person who claims to represent the divine, but is really just a guy?

I told you before: the fact that people believe in some things is no guarantee that those things are actually real.

Also… the story of the apostles may have been exaggerated in some parts. I mean, if the story of Jesus himself got exaggerated, then why stop there?

Either way, your account does not address the conversion of Paul or James. They did not have any “hopes and wishes”…they did not believe Jesus was the messiah or the Son of God. Yet, they were converted by meeting Jesus after the resurrection.

Perhaps they were converted by something else and then attributed it to the resurrected Jesus myth already in circulation.
A growing dissatisfaction with the jewish authorities, perhaps… what caused Jerusalem to fall?

And if Jesus was NOT raised, why would the Jews not simply open of Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb, place the body on a cart, and parade it through the streets of Jerusalem to silence the early believers?

You do realize that the tale of the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea can be part of the tale which was added, do you not?

If the Teacher was Jesus, then his crucifixion would have happened some decades before the one claimed by the early church… and the tomb, if there ever was one, was unknown. No jews around the time of the claims of resurrection could open the tomb, for no one could point in its direction.

If, on the other hand, Jesus was a simple successor of the Teacher, it is possible that the tale of the Teacher’s hopeful resurrection got mingled in people’s imaginations and, when Jesus got himself arrested (for the same troublesome activity as the Teacher), the crucifixion and resurrection tale quickly caught on… but then Jesus got released!
I can make up other stories that fit the bill and have no supernatural requirements and also stem from the Teacher’s existence prior to Jesus… of course, no heretical gospel tell any such tales… what purpose would that serve, at the time?

You once brought up Tim O’Neill as a counter to the mythicist view of Jesus… he just said that Jesus seems to have been just one more apocalyptic preacher, following the footsteps of… the Teacher. I honestly couldn’t find much information about other apocalyptic preachers, besides these two… some say the John the Baptist was one too… but that one is contemporary with Jesus… I’d expect someone in between.

However, I’d find it laughably implausible for God to be sitting in his heavenly throne, looking down and spotting the Teacher in his preachings and thinking “Hey, this guy is on to something… mankind is ready - time to let them know about Christ and the Holy Spirit.” (not even accounting for the implausibility of the existence of that God in the first place)

 

[Here_For_Donuts]

Philo was a contemporary of Jesus. He wrote extensively about Judiasm, he lived in Israel for a great deal of his life, but there’s no mention of a miracle worker or “crowds of people” following any miracle worker. There’s no mention in his writings of saints rising up after Jesus was crucified, like it says happened in Matthew.

Certainly he would have maybe…noticed this if it had happened…?

 

[pocaracas]

Philo was a contemporary of Jesus. He wrote extensively about Judiasm, he lived in Israel for a great deal of his life, but there’s no mention of a miracle worker or “crowds of people” following any miracle worker. There’s no mention in his writings of saints rising up after Jesus was crucified, like it says happened in Matthew.

Certainly he would have maybe…noticed this if it had happened…?

I don’t know… was Philo in Jerusalem?

 

[PRmerger]

According to the story, as told by some, yes.

But I’m questioning if these disciples weren’t conflating two tales of two people, mingling hopes and wishes… and producing a collective story where those wishes did come true.
Perhaps… Jesus is the “resurrected” Teacher…?

So they actually lied when they said they saw the Resurrected Christ?

And what did they do with his body?

 

[Bradski]

So they actually lied when they said they saw the Resurrected Christ?

Someone, many years after the event, wrote about what someone said they saw.

You are asking the wrong question. The questions should be: Did the person who wrote that account have accurate information? Did he relay it accurately? Were his sources reliable? Did he have any reason to embellish what he had been told? How much interpretation did he have to make? Did he lie? Did the story change over the decades? How sure are we about who actually wrote it? What access do we have to the original?

Paul wrote that Jesus was seen by 500 people after the resurecction (nice round number, isn’t it). I’ve read people arguing that it must therefore be true because: Do you think that every one of those 500 people lied?

It’s the wrong question, isn’t it.

 

[pocaracas]

So they actually lied when they said they saw the Resurrected Christ?

And what did they do with his body?

Who lied?
The story tellers? Those were probably just relating their own rendition of the tale in circulation.
How does a mythological story come to be in circulation? That doesn’t seem to be a difficult task, judging by the number of different beliefs that exist…
At some point, someone lied, or someone exaggerated some point and it became canon… Humans do the rest.

Which body? The teacher’s? By some accounts, he was just one of many crucifixions performed in a short time… He’d have gone to some common grave, like many other common criminals. It rotted.
By the time of the gospel writers, there was no body…
But we had Jesus, not the teacher… Jesus, according to a plaque in Japan went travelling and died there. (I know this is a silly story, but it’s still more believable than "rose from the dead)

 

[PRmerger]

Who lied?
The story tellers? Those were probably just relating their own rendition of the tale in circulation.
How does a mythological story come to be in circulation? That doesn’t seem to be a difficult task, judging by the number of different beliefs that exist…
At some point,** someone lied, **or someone exaggerated some point and it became canon… Humans do the rest.

So, again, who lied?

And why did he lie?

And why did the ones who started this lie go to horrible deaths singing the praises of this Christ with the Made Up Resurrection without ever recanting their lie?

Do humans do that?

 

[PRmerger]

Who lied?
The story tellers? Those were probably just relating their own rendition of the tale in circulation.
How does a mythological story come to be in circulation? That doesn’t seem to be a difficult task, judging by the number of different beliefs that exist…
At some point, someone lied, or someone exaggerated some point and it became canon… Humans do the rest.

Which body? The teacher’s? By some accounts, he was just one of many crucifixions performed in a short time… He’d have gone to some common grave, like many other common criminals. It rotted.
By the time of the gospel writers, there was no body…
But we had Jesus, not the teacher…

So are you saying that in the first, say, 40 decades after the crucifixion there were no Christians around?

It wasn’t until after the first gospel narratives were made up that that Christianity was born?

Jesus, according to a plaque in Japan went travelling and died there. (I know this is a silly story, but it’s still more believable than "rose from the dead)

Do you have a source for this? Perhaps an image of this plaque? I googled, and couldn’t find anything.

 

[pocaracas]

So, again, who lied?

And why did he lie?

And why did the ones who started this lie go to horrible deaths singing the praises of this Christ with the Made Up Resurrection without ever recanting their lie?

Do humans do that?

Do humans lie?.. Are you asking that?.. LOL!

Why do people lie?
How did most (all?) human religions come about, if no one ever lied without ever recanting their lie?

Who lied specifically?.. beats me… it’s not recorded… How should I know?
I know that there is a story of a man, a Teacher, which pre-dates the story of Jesus by, at least, 50 years. I know that this Teacher, according to the tale, did many things which, are repeated in the tale of Jesus… all the way up to the giving a hard time to the priests of the temple, getting arrested and being crucified.
Here, you can read all you want about him:
shareintl.org/archives/M_emergence/mem_bsteacher.htm
But the main event (which I’ve put elsewhere in this thread, too):
“”
The Teacher of Righteousness is called in Hebrew Moreh ha-Zedek – one entrusted with the Law and sent by God to lead his people in the way of truth. The root word zedek is also found in “Melchizedek” – the King of Righteousness, and in “Sons of Zadok” – Righteous Priests. In the spring of 1950 Andre Dupont-Sommer, Professor of Semitic Languages and Civilizations at the Sorbonne, presented to the academic community a paper about the Moreh ha-Zedek which caused a sensation.

“Jesus,” he claimed, “appears in many respects as an astonishing reincarnation of the Teacher of Righteousness. Like the latter, he preached penitence, poverty, humility, love of one’s neighbor, chastity… Like him, he was the Elect and the Messiah of God… Like him, he was the object of the hostility of the priests… Like him, he was condemned and put to death. Like him he pronounced judgment on Jerusalem, which was taken and destroyed by the Romans for having put him to death… Like him, he founded a Church whose adherents fervently awaited his glorious return… All these similarities – and here I only touch upon the subject – taken together constitute a very impressive whole.”

It must be emphasized that Dupont-Sommer never suggested the Teacher of Righteousness was Jesus, but called him a prototype.
“”

So… question: why did the christians of the first and second century AD, the writers of the gospels, omitted all knowledge of this Teacher from the early first century BC (or late second century BC)?
Were they not aware of that tale?
Or did they conflate the two persons and were not aware of it?..

 

[pocaracas]

So are you saying that in the first, say, 40 decades after the crucifixion there were no Christians around?

It wasn’t until after the first gospel narratives were made up that that Christianity was born?

40 decades?!!

Hold it, home boy. If the Teacher detail has any merit… perhaps all those christian ideas were moving around well before the time attributed to Jesus?

Do you have a source for this? Perhaps an image of this plaque? I googled, and couldn’t find anything.

Knock yourself out:
travel.cnn.com/tokyo/visit/did-jesus-christ-live-and-die-northern-japan-065383

 

[Peter_Plato]

Someone, many years after the event, wrote about what someone said they saw.

Bradski, you’d do well to read Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. He makes some pretty impressive arguments as to how the Gospel’s could not have been written “many years” after the event.

For one, the frequency of names in the Gospels matches almost perfectly the frequency of names of first century Palestine as found in ossuaries, records and authenticated writings from the period.

Now, try writing getting four different authors to write five narratives about life in a town or country – even your town or country – “many years” after the events and see if they get the names of people, the place names, local landmarks, the designation of public officials and their roles essentially correct without access to original documents (or the Internet.) Now your narrative may sound credible to those who don’t look past superficialities, but anyone with expertise will soon see the problems with your enterprise.

As to the alleged fact that no datable Gospels in their original form exist to convince you (which would seem at least part of your argument,) you do realize there were several empire-wide persecutions involving the collection and destruction of the sacred writings of Christianity (the last and most notable under Diocletian.) That, in addition to the fact that parchment manuscripts don’t have much of a shelf life, anyway.

Your claim that the Gospels were written “many years” after the events by “someone” who wrote what “someone said they saw” is a dubious one for many reasons.

I’d also like to point you to Tim McGrew and his work on how the frequency of undesigned coincidences in the Gospels and Acts demonstrate their authenticity.

premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable/Episodes/Unbelievable-Ehrman-vs-McGrew-Round-2-Do-undesigned-coincidences-confirm-the-Gospels

Either the writers of the Gospels unwittingly conspired or colluded “many years after the fact” on matters they couldn’t consciously have known or predicted and got those matters correct every time OR the Gospels are authentic eyewitness accounts.

Barring some actual research into such matters on your behalf and bringing up solid arguments against those of people like Bauckham and McGrew, or I think you ought to drop the supercilious claim that the Gospels were written by “…someone, many years after the event, wrote about what someone said they saw.”

This point is not only getting old and tiresome, but is largely unsubstantiated. You are interested in the truth of the matter, yes?

 

[Peter_Plato]

Hold it, home boy.

http://forums.catholic-questions.org/picture.php?albumid=2053&pictureid=17305

 

[Randy_Carson]

Someone, many years after the event, wrote about what someone said they saw.

You are asking the wrong question. The questions should be: Did the person who wrote that account have accurate information? Did he relay it accurately? Were his sources reliable? Did he have any reason to embellish what he had been told? How much interpretation did he have to make? Did he lie? Did the story change over the decades? How sure are we about who actually wrote it? What access do we have to the original?

Paul wrote that Jesus was seen by 500 people after the resurecction (nice round number, isn’t it). I’ve read people arguing that it must therefore be true because: Do you think that every one of those 500 people lied?

It’s the wrong question, isn’t it.

In response to some of your questions:

1. The gospels were written early…the first being completed in the mid-40’s to early 50’s.
2. The gospels were written by eyewitnesses or people who had access to eyewitnesses.
3. The gospels are corroborated by archaeology, fulfilled prophecy, the ancient statements of early non-Christian authors, and the internal evidence of language, proper nouns and cultural details.
4. The gospels did not and have not changed over time.
5. Paul wrote that Jesus appeared to “more than five hundred people” (cf. 1 Cor 15:6), so that’s not only a round number but a conservative estimate.

 

[Randy_Carson]

Do humans lie?.. Are you asking that?.. LOL!

Why do people lie?

Three reasons:

1. Money
2. Sex
3. Power

Now, which of these three motivations seem to apply to the apostles?

Oh, that’s right…none of them.

They did not get wealthy.
They did not get chicks.
They did not gain power.

They were pursued, punished, imprisoned, mocked and martyred.

Or did they conflate the two persons and were not aware of it?..

Or are you simply seeing a parallel that has not real connection.

Did the men who knew Jesus best believe that he appeared to them after dying on the cross, poca?

It’s a yes or no question. :sad_yes:

 

[pocaracas]

Three reasons:

1. Money
2. Sex
3. Power

Now, which of these three motivations seem to apply to the apostles?

Oh, that’s right…none of them.

They did not get wealthy.
They did not get chicks.
They did not gain power.

They were pursued, punished, imprisoned, mocked and martyred.

hmmm… Power… how do you measure power?
Control over people? control people’s behaviors?
Control people’s thoughts?

I’d say they were rather efficient with that… although, not everyone was under that spell, so they got persecuted…
Did they really get persecuted, at first?
Or was it only after…?

Or are you simply seeing a parallel that has not real connection.

Did the men who knew Jesus best believe that he appeared to them after dying on the cross, poca?

It’s a yes or no question. :sad_yes:

Like I said earlier, the story says yes.
Reality… may not be consistent with the story we have today… with the story that was written in the late first century AD.

If the parallel I see has no connection, then it’s one hell of a coincidence!
A coincidence too close, in time and place, for comfort.
Even the first people who examined the dead sea scrolls find it astonishing to the degree that they suggest that the Teacher was a prototype of Jesus, a proto-Jesus!

 

[PRmerger]

Do humans lie?.. Are you asking that?.. LOL!

Oh. Wow.

Let me repost, so you can re-read what the antecedent was for “that”, when I asked “Do humans do that?”

And why did the ones who started this lie go to horrible deaths singing the praises of this Christ with the Made Up Resurrection without ever recanting their lie?

Do humans do that?

Read the sentence right before I asked “Do humans do that?”

That’s what is the referent.

Actually, since I’m feeling full of bonhomie today I’ll just spell it out for you:

Do humans who are lying withstand terrible pain and torture without recanting, sticking to their story, when simply saying, “Ok! I lied!” will relieve them of this horrific torture they’re being tormented with?

Do humans do that?

 

[PRmerger]

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” – Carl Sagan

"This sounds so commonsensical, doesn’t it? But in fact it is demonstrably false. Probability theorists studying what sort of evidence it would take to establish a highly improbable event came to realize that if you just weigh the improbability of the event against the reliability of the testimony, we’d have to be skeptical of many commonly accepted claims. Rather, what’s crucial is the probability that we should have the evidence we do if the extraordinary event had not occurred. This can easily offset any improbability of the event itself.

“In the case of the resurrection of Jesus, for example, this means that we must also ask, “What is the probability of the facts of the empty tomb, the post-mortem appearances, and the origin of the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection, if the resurrection had not occurred?” It is highly, highly, highly improbable that we should have that evidence if the resurrection had not occurred.” (William Lane Craig, “Stephen Law on the Non-existence of Jesus of Nazareth”, reasonablefaith.org/stephen-law-on-the-non-existence-of-jesus-of-nazareth.).

So, no, extraordinary claims require sufficient evidence…just like any other kind of claim.