“Whether the accusation was true or not, it’s immaterial”… So, that the accusation may not be true would have no consequence on your bringing it up, Ben? Do you really care about truth? How do you expect us to believe you when you bring this accusation up and then you say that it’s not relevant whether it is true or not? Moreover, Paul did answer something about that specific accusation.
**Every time that expression is used in the Scriptures, is with the purpose of identification. That’s all. **
You are making use of scholastic dishonesty. Our discussion has nothing to do with the fact that the accusations to Paul were true or not. Did they accuse Paul of believing in the resurrection? Bring up the text. But that’s what he said in Court, which was not true. Therefore, Paul was lying and there is nothing you can do to fix his blunder.
That may be “all”, but if God is the God of the living, why does He then identify with people who were dead many years before, even for the sake of identification?
Dishonest, really? When YOU have been expressing yourself as though you were assuming that the accusations to Paul WERE TRUE? If you said those accusations were true, and I think you did, then my bringing up the question about the validity of those accusations can make sense, can’t it?!
That is, if God is the God of the living?
And I have lost track of how many times I have told you that this is a formula of identification because of the honorable place we have our forefathers in our lives.
Paul was accused of teaching the Jews to abandon Moses, to stop circumcising their children, and to renounce the Jewish customs. These accusations were true, otherwise the Jews would not have arrested him for preaching apostasy. Read Acts 21:21.
Yeah, like “If this man hadn’t committed a crime, we would not have brought him to you” !!!
Yes, but why, especially if God is the God of the living, why does He identify Himself using the names of 3 people who passed away many years before? Why not using the name of someone still alive?
**There was no response from Paul. He was as silent as a statue. Read Acts 21:21. That’s when the accusation was presented to him by James and the Elders in the headquarters in Jerusalem.Yeah, like “If this man hadn’t committed a crime, we would not have brought him to you” !!!
Have you ever heard of judicial errors? They happen, you know, and rather often, I am afraid!
Moreover, that they thought from some things he had said that Paul preached apostasy doesn’t necessarily prove that he was doing it!
Also, haven’t you read the response that Paul did to that specific accusation? (Not when he stirred a discussion between Saducees and Pharisees, but later, I think it was when he appealed to Caesar…)
We have been through this too long. I have been under the impression that you understand it very well. But for some foul reason, you keep turning back the same question over and over again.
Then you must have a truncated version of Acts, or you wish so hard that Paul really did the things the way his accusers have put it that you cannot even nuance your thoughts from them. Paul answered to the accusation, sir, though you apparently considered he didn’t. Are you sure you want the things in God’s and not just in yours?
Because you failed to answer this question over and over again. Do you only answer the questions you like? Then how will you answer God Himself when He will ask you questions at the Judgment Day, even just as a witness?
THIS question you haven’t answered as of yet!
**I am all ears. Believe me I am. Tell me how and where I can read that Paul answered to the accusations before the Sanhedrin, or for that matter before James and the Elders in Jerusalem that he did not teach the Jews to abandon Moses, that he did not teach them to stop circumcising their children, and that he did not tell them
A first attempt was in Acts 22, 1-21, where he took the whole thing from the beginning, explaining where he came from, and his background before that turning point when on his way to Damascus the resurrected Jesus appeared to him. At one point, he said that the Lord (the resurrected Jesus) told him: “Go, I will send you to the Gentiles” and right then, he was interrupted by shouts: “Do away with him! This man shouldn’t be allowed to stay alive!” The next day, the Roman officer wanted to know exactly what were the charges the Jewish Council (that’s the High Priest and the Sanhedrin)had against Paul. Chapter 23. That’s where Paul, in verse 6, shouted: Brothers, I am a Pharisee and a descendant of Pharisees. I am on trial because I expect that the dead will come back to life." As you pointed out, this was not the charge against him per se, but since it all had to do with his preaching the resurrected Jesus as the Messiah, and the implications of this on a number of details on how to serve the Lord God from then on, not only in Paul’s view, but in the new Church authorities’ view (see the decision the Church took at the first historical Church Council held in Jerusalem in Acts 15, 1-31), it WAS certainly quite correlated! It was not the last time Paul would speak up. (Continued in my next post)
Back to the OP topic now…Today I was visited by a Christian who calls himself a “Messianic Jew.” After an hour of study about the resurrection, he got impatient with my lack of faith, and before he left he challenged me to produce the body if I couldn’t believe in Jesus’ resurrection. That’s what inspired me to share with you this topic for discussion.
Now, if we put ourselves together, and then put together whatever we can from reading the NT about the resurrection of Jesus, we will see that he did not resurrect. I would like to bring to your attention some points about that tale. Tale! Yes, and the term is not mine. I am borrowing it from Jesus’ own disciples who went even further by adding the adjective “idle.” Idle tale, they said. (Luke 24:11)
The women had reported the words of the “angel” that Jesus had resurrected. The disciples probably had never heard of such a thing. They had no choice but to discard their report as an idle tale. Now, think: If those who lived daily with Jesus, listening daily to his words, could not believe the report, how can we be expected to, after almost two thousand years of listening to a tale that just won’t get less idle?
When did the disciples ever change their minds about that idle tale? I wonder because about 30 years later, when Paul showed up in Jerusalem preaching that Jesus had resurrected, he almost got killed. Why? Was not the Sect of the Nazarenes
headquartered in Jerusalem? Yes, but that Jesus had resurrected was not in their agenda. The whole thing had been made up by Paul. Yes, all according to his gospel as he himself revealed it to his disciple Timothy. (II Tim. 2:8) Obviously, Paul needed that tale to promote his Cause, which turned out to be Christianity.
The resurrection of Jesus, therefore, can be accepted only and exclusively by faith because there is no evidence to substantiate the event. An empty tomb is no proof of resurrection. And the refusal at the time to produce the body does not diminish from the fact that the body was indeed removed from there. And the guards can never be taken as evidence of anything whatsoever, because they were set at the tomb area only late Saturday morning. The disciple who removed Jesus’ body from that tomb, most probably Joseph of Arimathea, had the whole night of Friday, and all for himself to act without any disturbance. And he did it because he had enough reasons to believe that, by not doing it, even during the hours of that Sabbath, Mary Magdalene would have done it instead, as she herself declared she would. (John 20:15) So, I wish the preachers of the resurrection would at least give Paul the credit that’s due him. (II Tim. 2:8)
Ben: