Proving The Resurrection By the "Minimal Facts" Approach

[Contarini]

The Bible does say that the Resurrected Jesus cooked breakfast for the Apostles and spent time with them amongst the whole village.

Where do you find this reference to “the whole village”?

Are you thinking of the Emmaus appearance or John 21? Sure, he walks into the village with the Emmaus disciples, but there’s no indication that he did anything that particularly attracted attention in front of others.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

It’s that the Jewish people just carried on carrying on rather than acting as witnesses - first hand or second hand - to all sorts of wonders and a particular set of dramas would have acted.

Which particular set of dramas? What exactly are you questioning?

Whether they - all/some/a few/none - did or not is really just Christian ‘lit crit’ to me. Rejecting ‘myth Jesus’ doesn’t mean that one has to accept Sanders’ version of ‘historical Jesus’.

No. But what they claimed is, in fact, significant to the question you are raising. Just talking about the resurrection, all Christians claim non-believers would have had to report was that

1. The body had disappeared (and Matthew admits that the authorities were quick off the ground with a plausible explanation of that one), and
2. Jesus’ followers were claiming that he rose from the dead.

Which of these two things (or both) are you claiming probably did not happen because they were not recorded?

Edwin

 

[cornbread_r2]

I have no doubt that Paul received his “gospel” from the Lord. Jesus showed Paul much in the course of reworking his theology from Judaism into Christianity.

I also have no doubt that Paul received his knowledge of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection NOT from the Lord but from the apostles during his first visit.

I think you’ve created an artificial distinction between “gospel”, as it is commonly understood, and “knowledge of Jesus’s life, death and resurrection” in order to avoid the problem this poses for your argument.

In that Paul never directly quotes Jesus’s teachings, never mentions his miraculous deeds or many of the people in his life (including Mary and Pilate) – and in the absence of any passage claiming that they did and one explicitly stating that they didn’t – how can you possibly know with certainty that the apostles told Paul all about Jesus on his visit? In other words, how do you know that?

Mythicists cannot account for Jesus eating a meal with the apostles and allowing them to put their fingers into his wounds.

Most mythicists view the gospels as extended parables so that wouldn’t be a problem for them.

 

[Kaninchen]

Which particular set of dramas? What exactly are you questioning?

Well, deep down, of course, the nature of the NT as literature/performance but that’s a whole other story, isn’t it?

No. But what they claimed is, in fact, significant to the question you are raising. Just talking about the resurrection, all Christians claim non-believers would have had to report was that

1. The body had disappeared (and Matthew admits that the authorities were quick off the ground with a plausible explanation of that one), and
2. Jesus’ followers were claiming that he rose from the dead.

Which of these two things (or both) are you claiming probably did not happen because they were not recorded?

This is a Christian problem, not a Jewish/Atheist/Whatever problem, in that it exists only within the terms/context within which it is set up - a presumption of a particular form of ‘historical Jesus’ - Yes, I know that there are all these surveys/databases of scholarly consensus on ‘lowest common denominator/highest common factor’ Jesus but, to this outsider (I expect it’s the case with many others as well) the presumptions upon which such observations are based would need to be spelled out much more clearly.

So, to your ‘Christian responses to lack of external reportage’, my response might just be “the razor of William of Ockham.”

 

[SonOfMan]

Where do you find this reference to “the whole village”?

Are you thinking of the Emmaus appearance or John 21? Sure, he walks into the village with the Emmaus disciples, but there’s no indication that he did anything that particularly attracted attention in front of others.

Edwin

Oh, it seems you were right about John 21. However, that poses an even greater doubt for someone like me; I find it suspicious that only the apostles saw the risen Jesus. Of course they would claim that whether it happened or not.

 

[eddie_too]

i do not find it surprising that we do not have much in the way of jewish sources for the life, death and Resurrection of Jesus.

most of the people of that time were illiterate. those who were literate, the scribes, the pharisees and the priests had just conspired to have Jesus murdered. that would seem to me to make them very reluctant to document their actions.

those Jews who became believers would never have thought to pre-empt the apostles and their teaching by recording their own records, assuming they could write. those jews who did not become believers really had no reason to want to document the life and teachings of Jesus. to them, it was all a non-event, not to the priests and other leaders but to the average non-believing Jew. how were they to know the momentousness of the Incarnation without faith; and, not knowing the momentousness, what would be their reason for writing about it.

also, other than some pius women who followed Him and served Him, Jesus spent almost all of His time training and teaching the twelve. there simply would not have been many people capable of writing the Gospels and those who had best and most access to Jesus’ life and teachings were the twelve.

 

[epostle]

I wouldn’t say “independent authors.” All of the authors of the NT were from the same movement with the same bias and agenda. Not exactly independent or non-partisan.

Then you cannot accept first hand accounts of the Spanish Civil War because it was all initially written by Spaniards. Forget the American Civil War, all those initial writers were biased with an agenda because they were all Americans. You can always count on “independent or non-partisan” accounts (totally removed from language and culture) to come along later and straighten everybody out.

The mythicists will always raise the bar to the point where they can no longer reach:

The Gospels are not accepted by them as historically reliable because the Apostles were not equipped with an apostolic video camera.

• Caesar wrote a lot, Jesus didn’t write anything.
• Paul was too far away from the communities when he wrote his letters.
• Scholars say there are lots of additions rendering the bible useless as a historical source.
• 2 things even the mythicists will agree on: 1) Jesus was sentenced 2) He died

(I suppose the rest is just filler) but don’t know what happened to His body
…blah, blah, blah.

If we apply the same criteria to any event in history, raising the bar to the same height as the mythicists do with the Resurrection, we would have little history.

 

[Randy_Carson]

Oh, it seems you were right about John 21. However, that poses an even greater doubt for someone like me; I find it suspicious that only the apostles saw the risen Jesus. Of course they would claim that whether it happened or not.

1 Corinthians 15:3-8
3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance[a]: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

 

[Kaninchen]

Then you cannot accept first hand accounts of the Spanish Civil War because it was all initially written by Spaniards. Forget the American Civil War, all those initial writers were biased with an agenda because they were all Americans.

You’re really sure of that are you?

 

[epostle]

You’re really sure of that are you?

What I am sure of is that myth theorists bend, twist and distort the rules of historical evidence to support a godless agenda, and refuse to apply the same strict criteria to any historical event other than the Resurrection. That’s why it’s an agenda.

If they can “prove” the resurrection didn’t happen, then all of Christianity is a big farce and they have no need to amend their lives. The Myth Theory is quite trendy in some universities and if you don’t tow the line and deny the Resurrection you don’t get a passing grade.

From the sublime to the ridiculous:


http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/05/07/college-doubles-down-in-support-of-anti-christian-humanities-professor-who-failed-student-for-defying-his-atheistic-worldview/

 

[SonOfMan]

1 Corinthians 15:3-8
3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance[a]: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

I conflated the 2 stories, but yes I was sure that the Bible stated there were many witnesses. So there you have it, Contarini.

That leaves us back at the original question however; Why didn’t any of those 500 witnesses write (or paid someone to write) even the smallest excerpt describing the experience?

 

[Kaninchen]

What I am sure of is that myth theorists bend, twist and distort the rules of historical evidence to support a godless agenda, and refuse to apply the same strict criteria to any historical event other than the Resurrection. That’s why it’s an agenda.

If they can “prove” the resurrection didn’t happen, then all of Christianity is a big farce and they have no need to amend their lives. The Myth Theory is quite trendy in some universities and if you don’t tow the line and deny the Resurrection you don’t get a passing grade.

How far do you think that those of us who don’t accept things like the resurrection should be allowed to go in questioning it? Should students ever have to put in a position where Christianity is questioned at all?

It’s ‘toe the line’, by the way.

 

[cornbread_r2]

What I am sure of is that myth theorists bend, twist and distort the rules of historical evidence to support a godless agenda, and refuse to apply the same strict criteria to any historical event other than the Resurrection. That’s why it’s an agenda.

If they can “prove” the resurrection didn’t happen, then all of Christianity is a big farce and they have no need to amend their lives. The Myth Theory is quite trendy in some universities and if you don’t tow the line and deny the Resurrection you don’t get a passing grade.

From the sublime to the ridiculous:


http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/05/07/college-doubles-down-in-support-of-anti-christian-humanities-professor-who-failed-student-for-defying-his-atheistic-worldview/

See articles here, here and here for why the so-called “criterion of embarrassment” – a mainstay of mainstream apologetic biblical scholarship – has only very limited use in secular historical scholarship.

Also, Thomas L. Brodie is a Catholic priest, bible scholar, co-founder and former director of Dominican Biblical Institute Limerick and – – a mythicist.

 

[cornbread_r2]

Randy Carson:

One additional point against the notion that Paul learned of the resurrection from the apostles during his visit to Jerusalem:

Paul had already been preaching his gospel before his visit and says that the apostles he met approved of his message. If he wasn’t already preaching about the resurrection before his visit, then, 1) what was he preaching about and 2) how could a message that didn’t include the resurrection be approved of by the apostles?

 

[Contarini]

Oh, it seems you were right about John 21. However, that poses an even greater doubt for someone like me; I find it suspicious that only the apostles saw the risen Jesus. Of course they would claim that whether it happened or not.

I think it would be worth your time to read N. T. Wright.

He might not convince you. In fact, he’s so meticulous in raising all the possible objections and counter-examples that he might actually give you reason to doubt further. But I find his basic argument convincing.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

See articles here, here and here for why the so-called “criterion of embarrassment” – a mainstay of mainstream apologetic biblical scholarship – has only very limited use in secular historical scholarship.

Actually no, it’s commonly used in secular scholarship. The second link is the only one that is really worth taking seriously, and it’s very brief. The first link you give is just bad in multiple ways. The author seems to think that anything an author invents that modern people find embarrassing would have been embarrassing at the time. He also assumes far too much about how much we can say Mark invented. These are just a couple of the huge problems with his argument.

Also, Thomas L. Brodie is a Catholic priest, bible scholar, co-founder and former director of Dominican Biblical Institute Limerick and – – a mythicist.

Yes, and Covington argues that this proves the weakness of the criterion of embarrassment. But only if you apply it in a completely slapdash way—assuming, for instance, that a Dominican priest (censured by his order for his views) would have no reason to be a mythicist except that mythicism is obviously true.

I agree that the criterion of embarrassment has to be used with care. But I think it does apply to a lot of instances in the NT.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

I conflated the 2 stories, but yes I was sure that the Bible stated there were many witnesses. So there you have it, Contarini.

Right–but these were presumably Jesus’ former disciples. Matthew and Mark speak of an appearance on a mountain in Galilee, for instance. (This is, admittedly, hard to reconcile with Luke’s account, which seems to have them all staying in Jerusalem nonstop until Pentecost.)

That leaves us back at the original question however; Why didn’t any of those 500 witnesses write (or paid someone to write) even the smallest excerpt describing the experience?

Well, we don’t know that they didn’t. We have four Gospels which may well rest on eyewitness testimony.

But I think you are overestimating the literacy of the ancient world, not just in terms of how many people could read and write but in terms of how compelled they would have been to write about something just because it was important, and also how much written evidence we have. We do have quite a few tomb inscriptions, and so on, but nothing like what we have in more modern times. Much of what was written was lost. We have no account of Alexander the Great’s life until more than 300 years later, for instance.

We actually have far more evidence for Jesus’ life than we do for most ancient figures. True, the downside (from a historian’s point of view) is that all of it was produced by believers, although with different perspectives and theological agendas.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

those Jews who became believers would never have thought to pre-empt the apostles and their teaching by recording their own records, assuming they could write. .

We don’t know that. We don’t know, historically, that any of the Gospels are by “apostles.” Even if Mark wrote Mark, he certainly wasn’t an apostle, though tradition claims (plausibly) that he got his material from Peter. Luke wasn’t an apostle, but then he probably wasn’t a Jew either. The apostle Matthew almost certainly did not write Matthew in its present form. John, of course, is controversial as well.

Edwin

 

[cornbread_r2]

Actually no, it’s commonly used in secular scholarship. The second link is the only one that is really worth taking seriously, and it’s very brief. The first link you give is just bad in multiple ways. The author seems to think that anything an author invents that modern people find embarrassing would have been embarrassing at the time. He also assumes far too much about how much we can say Mark invented. These are just a couple of the huge problems with his argument.

Yes, and Covington argues that this proves the weakness of the criterion of embarrassment. But only if you apply it in a completely slapdash way—assuming, for instance, that a Dominican priest (censured by his order for his views) would have no reason to be a mythicist except that mythicism is obviously true.

I agree that the criterion of embarrassment has to be used with care. But I think it does apply to a lot of instances in the NT.

Edwin

I cited Brodie against the proposition that mythicists were just advancing their “godless agenda” in order to avoid having to amend their lives.

 

[Contarini]

I cited Brodie against the proposition that mythicists were just advancing their “godless agenda” in order to avoid having to amend their lives.

Sorry. That was, of course, a silly ad hominem in the first place.

Edwin