Resurrection/Jesus proofs

[M1Garand]

My goodness, I’ve used the phrase six times a year, there’s obviously no stopping me.

This year, the Kaninchens went on holiday, as usual, to Italy and it included a couple of weeks in Rome where we haven’t been for several years and it was rather nice to be there again - even if one can feel Baroque-d into submission from time to time.

Of course, one felt obliged to visit the old Ghetto area again (bit like Christian visitors feel the need to revisit certain Churches or whatever, I expect) and it makes you think (I’m half Italian-Jew, after all) of all those Jews walled-up in a tiny area and, if that wasn’t bad enough, forced to attend weekly Christian sermons and not complain/fall asleep.

I expect that, while the Priest was lecturing them about the wonders of Christianity, they’d rather wished for a ‘Get Out Of Jail Free’ card or other ways of saying ‘don’t believe a word of it’ as politely as possible.

Because your evidence didn’t prove anything of the sort.

You’re the one in sales, not me.

I find it interesting that you again go back to this. But it really all makes sense because you made it clear in a previous discussion, though skillfully and subtly, that you “loath” Christians. So the next logical question is why are you here and I think the answer is to poke your finger in the eye of the people you “loath”. You have been steeped in perpetual victimhood and you apparently seethe over things of which you have never experienced. You live in a safe, secure and sanitary Christian nation, where you are free to practice your faith, think and speak as you want and you are steeped in Christian values though you don’t even realize it. Despite this you are angry for slights you saw on tv or read about in a book but have never and will never experience. Why is this relevant? Because while you are extolling the virtue of the universality of “tolerant” Judaism, as it is now modernly reinterpreted by some but not all Jews, you are at the same time exuding a smug superiority in your beliefs. I find this amusingly hypocritical since, as you see it and have said, you dislike the Christian alleged superiority. I have extensively studied the content of Jewish sites and they also exude a sense of righteous superiority of Jewish belief while at the same time criticizing Christian’s for what they perceive as Christian superiority. This is not unlike obsession with past slights and atrocities that happened hundreds of years ago while at the same time turning a blind eye to the oppression, violence and apartheid practiced by Jews in their claimed homeland against non-Jews today(oh I know its all for security and I guess bulldozing a Catholic bishops house is for security).

To quote a bit of “pious fiction”:

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye".

You of course are on constant guard for the bigot and so you will again assume that I am “anti-semitic” which is fine but maybe you aught to consider that your mindset is poisonous to your personal growth.

 

[Goya]

Something I’ve said from time to time here (perhaps Randy will count how many times) is that there are often not Jewish answers to Christian questions (and vice-versa). In saying that, I don’t mean that the questions are not answerable but that they’re not answerable without moving somewhat outside the frame of reference within which they’re asked because Christianity and Judaism are not similar religions – Judaism isn’t Christianity minus Jesus and Christianity isn’t Judaism plus Jesus – they don’t ‘work’ in the same way, they don’t focus on the same things.

Christianity puts a lot of emphasis on the ‘afterlife’, Judaism actually puts very little emphasis on the ‘afterlife’, it’s a very ‘here and now’ religion. We also don’t share Christian beliefs in things like ‘Original Sin’, ‘Salvation’, ‘Heaven and Hell’ (we often don’t mean the same things even when we use the same words).

Anyway, after the flood, God made a covenant with humankind (don’t murder, steal, worship false gods, be sexually immoral, eat the limb of a live animal, curse God and do have a legal system) and the Jewish presumption is that if human beings try to live good/ethical lives within the context of that covenant, we all have hope for the World to Come.

That’s it, Goya, that’s what we all can hope for whether one is Jewish or a Gentile. No, we don’t see ourselves all headed for Heaven while wanting to stop everybody else escaping an eternity of Hell as a consequence of Original Sin – that whole business is a Christian concept not a Jewish concept.

Where the ‘chosen’ bit comes in is that, after the Flood, things started going downhill and God decided that he needed to do something and came up with the idea of getting some people/tribe/group to abide by tougher rules in order to be a strong hint to everybody else as to how things should be done – according to Jewish legend he ended up with us because everybody else (wisely?) turned him down.

Anyway, as a performance bonus we get Israel in the World To Come but that’s about it.

These things really belong in the Non-Christian Religions forum, we’re a long way from the topic of this thread.

You pretend to speak a lot for Judaism–that is, for what most Jews think.

…as you recount OT passages, as though they/it were a historical account.

Most of the Jews I know personally, take many of the OT passages allegorically–but you seem to read it as historical…

…all the while dismissing the New Testament en toto, as ‘pious fiction’, notwithstanding tangible, identifiable, traceable, threads of evidence going back almost 2000 years, clear up through the present.

It’s what you believe, and that’s fine, but It’s just not very convincing or persuasive (or even consistent).

(Unless you’re just seeking to convince yourself—that’s your business, and I can’t do anything about that, but if that is the case, I would suggest that you ask yourself the hard question: why do I need to be convinced of that which I purport to believe?)

 

[Kaninchen]

So you are saying orthodoxy (the things believed) ARE important and do make a difference to (orthopraxy) our actions. In fact orthopraxy is predicated on orthodoxy. No?

Orthopraxy is predicated on ‘The Law’, ‘orthodoxy’ is that our God gave us ‘The Law’. Not only that but it’s only through ‘The Law’ that we can make any deductions about our God (and the proscription about idolatry even means that going far in that direction - beyond things like ‘God is logical’ - is somewhat dangerous).

I’m somewhat oversimplifying, obviously, but the Torah is pretty light on ‘what to believe’ but very heavy on what to do/not do.

Obviously, our actions do come from our beliefs about the world. It would be difficult to deny that. So beliefs must “make a difference” and, if they do, why should they not “be shared.”

It rather depends on what one means by ‘shared’, doesn’t it? Does one ‘share’ one’s views by inflicting them on others or by trying to live a good/ethical life?

So, whether or not there is an afterlife is an unimportant consideration.

Not exactly a lot about it in the Torah or (even) the Tanakh as a whole is there? We may deduce a few things about it but a Dantesque ‘Paradiso/Inferno’, hardly.

It would seem, at least on the face of it, if life is a valuable commodity, then eternal life would be infinitely valuable. No?

Or does the economic law of diminishing marginal utility apply here?

More that speculation about the unknowable is less fruitful than cultivating our gardens.

Incidentally, we’re now way, way off-topic

 

[Kaninchen]

To illustrate the problems with your argument, I’m going to use a modern-day analogy. It’s a bit sensitive, but I think it is one that might have meaning for you.

Oh dear, Godwin’s Law applies.

 

[Randy_Carson]

Oh dear, Godwin’s Law applies.

As usual, Kaninchen, you duck the question with a quip.

My point is clear enough: people deny what they do not what to believe regardless of the evidence.

However, are you sure you understand Godwin’s Law correctly? I never suggested that you or your arguments have any connection to Hitler or to the Nazis whatsoever.

Indeed, I could not for you make no arguments…just empty assertions. :compcoff:

 

[CrossofChrist]

**
The Evidence for Jesus’ Resurrection**
By William Lane Craig
youtube.com/watch?v=4iyxR8uE9GQ

Fact 1: After his crucifixion, Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea in his personal tomb. This is significant because it would have been difficult for the disciples to make up the story of an empty tomb when everyone knew where the tomb was located.

1. Jesus’ burial is attested in the very old tradition quoted by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians.
   “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: 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.” (1 Co 15:3-5)
   Paul “received” this account from Peter within the first five years of Jesus’ crucifixion making the possibility of legend or myth very unlikely.
2. The account of the burial is part of very old source material used by Mark in writing his gospel. The passion narrative, in particular, is thought to be from an even earlier account that was used by all of the gospel writers.
3. As a member of the Jewish court that condemned Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea is unlikely to be a Christian invention.
4. No competing burial story exists.

Fact 2: On the Sunday following the crucifixion, the tomb of Jesus was found empty by a group of his female followers.

1. The empty tomb story is part of the very old source material used by Mark.
2. The old tradition cited by Paul in 1 Corinthians implies the fact of the empty tomb.
3. Mark’s story is simple and lacks signs of legendary embellishment.
4. The fact that women’s testimony was worthless in first century Palestine strengthens the case that women were the first to discover the empty tomb. Why would any account use the suspect testimony of women if it were not an accurate recounting of what really happened?
5. The earliest Jewish allegations that the disciples had stolen Jesus’ body presupposes that the tomb was empty.

Fact 3: On multiple occasions and under various circumstances, different individuals and groups experienced appearances of Jesus alive after his death.

1. The list of eyewitnesses to Jesus’ resurrection appearances (which is quoted by Paul and vouchsafed by his personal acquaintance with many of the people involved), guarantees that such appearances occurred. These included appearances to Peter, to the Apostles, to 500 people at one time, and to James.
2. The appearance traditions in the gospels provide multiple, independent attestation to these appearances.
3. Researchers have noticed signs of historical credibility in the specific appearances; for example, the unexpected activity of the disciples’ fishing prior to Jesus’ appearance by the Lake of Tiberius or the otherwise inexplicable conversion of James.

Fact 4: The disciples believed that Jesus was risen from the dead despite having every reason not to believe it.

1. Their leader was dead, and Jews had no belief in a dying (and rising) Messiah.
2. According to Jewish law, Jesus’ execution as a criminal showed him to be a heretic and a man literally under the curse of God.
3. Jewish beliefs about the afterlife precluded anyone’s rising from the dead before the general resurrection at the end of the world.

The historical resurrection of Jesus is the best explanation of these facts.

Good post.

 

[Randy_Carson]

Good post.

:tiphat:

 

[CrossofChrist]

I was thinking about this and one thing that could be convincing is just the fact that Jesus identified as God in his inner essence. He thought of himself in no other way. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have died a horrible Crucifixion. And because of his rational thought and preaching about love, he couldn’t have been mentally disturbed either. And when one considers how the world needed and was waiting for a Savior, it’s not unreasonable to think that one who identified as God himself, was irrefutable among those who confronted him, and preached a message of love, all the while acknowledging that he would be taken from his disciples in death, was really God himself. Especially considering the following:

We know God is here and he loves us. Reason demonstrates that God created everything and that his is here right now, because since God caused the universe and everything in it he has ordered it to some end. And that end is good because God, being existence itself, is the Supreme Good. But we have sinned against God, as one can see very easily in the world today. Therefore, we have made an infinite gap between us and God, because no sin is compatible with what is supremely Good. This is why we die. God, being infinitely good and full of love, did not want to see his creation stay forever stuck in sin. So to get us out of sin, someone whose life could atone for everyone’s sin needed to be given up; not because God is a tyrant who needs people to die, but because nothing according to the objective moral order is made right if sin is ignored, because sin is an infinitely grave offense against God. It is not just that those who have sinned inherit everlasting life, nor is it compatible with God’s holiness which cannot live with sin.

But that is the beauty of the Cross and Resurrection: God makes an infinitely unjust situation in the murder of his Son and brings infinite justice out of it. Christ, in solidarity with all of humanity and having power as God, takes away infinitely many sins in his death by taking our place in death so that we might have life. So when we read about the women finding the empty tomb or consider the radical change of heart the disciples had, along with their newfound courage even unto a brutal death, or even considering that the idea of an individual rising from the dead in a definitive way (unlike Lazarus) was as unheard of in the ancient world as it is now, it only adds to how much God loves us and was willing to use the lowly of the world to shame the proud, and how God really did save us in his Incarnation and Passion.

And that’s why we go to Mass and receive the Eucharist, to participate in this great mystery of Christ’s Incarnation, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension, and why we have a firm faith in the Holy Trinity as the Catholic Church proclaims and teaches. Because God loves us and will never leave us.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Orthopraxy is predicated on ‘The Law’, ‘orthodoxy’ is that our God gave us ‘The Law’. Not only that but it’s only through ‘The Law’ that we can make any deductions about our God (and the proscription about idolatry even means that going far in that direction - beyond things like ‘God is logical’ - is somewhat dangerous).

I’m somewhat oversimplifying, obviously, but the Torah is pretty light on ‘what to believe’ but very heavy on what to do/not do.

It rather depends on what one means by ‘shared’, doesn’t it? Does one ‘share’ one’s views by inflicting them on others or by trying to live a good/ethical life?

Not exactly a lot about it in the Torah or (even) the Tanakh as a whole is there? We may deduce a few things about it but a Dantesque ‘Paradiso/Inferno’, hardly.

More that speculation about the unknowable is less fruitful than cultivating our gardens.

Incidentally, we’re now way, way off-topic

Have you not heard…

Man does not live by bread (nor vegetables) alone.

It is the speculation about the unknowable that makes cultivating gardens meaningful. Otherwise all life is is merely an endless cycle of planting and harvesting. It is in light of the unknowable that cultivating gardens is delightful.

The death and resurrection is, in its own way, a divine planting and harvesting. Are you saying God cannot enjoy some of his own cultivation?

There, now we’re back on topic!

 

[daler]

Have you not heard…

Man does not live by bread (nor vegetables) alone.

It is the speculation about the unknowable that makes cultivating gardens meaningful. Otherwise all life is is merely an endless cycle of planting and harvesting. It is in light of the unknowable that cultivating gardens is delightful.

The death and resurrection is, in its own way, a divine planting and harvesting. Are you saying God cannot enjoy some of his own cultivation?

There, now we’re back on topic!

. O thou eminent Plato, who art invested with wisdom, how refreshing are the words of eloquence with which you express planting and harvesting of the endless cycle of within the garden of delight.

. I ran across a verse from the Bab which speaks in this manner concerning the Garden of Repose wherein appears the Blessed Lote-Tree, the “Tree beyond which there is no passing”, which refers to our approach to God as being futile unless we approach this Divine Tree which He has planted in the Garden of Repose, from which we may accept the ripened fruits of the knowledge of God. I pray it may be appropriate to the current theme and taste sweet upon the lips of the lovers of the Divine Gardener.

. "This is the divinely-inscribed Book. This is the outspread Tablet. Say, this indeed is the Frequented Fane, the sweet-scented Leaf, the Tree of divine Revelation, the surging Ocean, the Utterance which lay concealed, the Light above every light… Indeed every light is generated by God through the power of His behest. He of a truth is the Light in the kingdom of heaven and earth and whatever is between them. Through the radiance of His light God imparteth illumination to your hearts and maketh firm your steps, that perchance ye may yield praise unto Him.

. Say, this of a certainty is the Garden of Repose, the loftiest Point of adoration, the Tree beyond which there is no passing, the blessed Lote-Tree, the Most Mighty Sign, the most beauteous Countenance and the most comely Face." The Bab

 

[Kaninchen]

Have you not heard…

Man does not live by bread (nor vegetables) alone.

Or waffles for that matter.

 

[Randy_Carson]

Or waffles for that matter.

npatrol:

 

[Peter_Plato]

Or waffles for that matter.

Or waffling…

 

[Ion]

God wants us to believe in Him; Adam and Eve saw God but they failed. First Christians, who saw Jesus after his resurrection, suffered trials and proved they trusted Jesus.
To believe the resurrection is only the beginning.
Christianity is meaningful and non-contradictory and comes logically and prophetically after Judaism. I don’t know how Jewish people reconcile with being out of 2000 years of humanity (from a total of about 6000).

 

[daler]

. Whether for God to be silent for about 3,000 years for the Jews, after such a long history of His speaking to us through so many Prophets,

. or for Him to be silent for 2,000 years according to Christian belief,

. or for Him to be silent for 1400 years from the Islamic traditions,

. is a very long time for Him to be silent…

. No?

.

 

[Ion]

. Whether for God to be silent for about 3,000 years for the Jews, after such a long history of His speaking to us through so many Prophets,

. or for Him to be silent for 2,000 years according to Christian belief,

. or for Him to be silent for 1400 years from the Islamic traditions,

. is a very long time for Him to be silent…

. No?

.

You might not be well informed, but it is enough to look up this website, God was not silent at all with us, Christians …

 

[daler]

You might not be well informed, but it is enough to look up this website, God was not silent at all with us, Christians …

Ion,
. Of course I meant in the sense of people of the various Faiths believing that no Prophet has appeared since “their” Prophet last appeared. It is in that sense that I am suggesting that God has in actuality not been silent. That there “have been” Prophets since Moses, which the Jews deny, and that when Jesus spoke, it was God speaking to us, meaning that He indeed was not silent for 3,000 years or so.

. Likewise, as Muslims believe that God again spoke 1400 years or so ago, but has been silent ever since in that they believe no Prophet has appeared since Muhammad, even as Christians maintain that no Prophet has appeared since Jesus.

. So it is in that sense only, and hopefully not offending you or anyone else in their beliefs. It is just an observation.

God bless you, friend

Dale

.

 

[aragonjohn1]

What are your “proofs” or what convinces you the most about Jesus’ Divinity and Resurrection?

God comes renews covenant and that the Catholic Church proves that she truly is the fullness of Truth.

God bless