Christians, what are you talking about?!

Great Debates
101

Ehh, strictly speaking this wasn’t an argument for the truth of Christianity so I’m unsure the charge of “appeal to authority” is quite right. The question was “Do people believe this?”; the response “Yes, a billion do” is an affirmative answer. In that respect your comment really was a bit … non-sequiturial (and perhaps a bit hostile), even if correct.

Well, you could argue this stuff all day long. I’m not at all of a mind to accept Jesus’s divinity, but he was supposed to be all human; he was tortured and killed and he felt every moment of it (along with the attendant doubts). Many Christians believe that he resided in hell for a period of time which could have, to them, felt like an eternity. Was it a huge sacrifice? I dunno. But it would’ve been something.

102

Even so, millions of people before and after him have suffered even worse tortures. I don’t see how his small amount of suffering has changed anything. It all seems rather pointless and the fact that so many people still believe this nonsense is a rather sad commentary.

103

Wasn’t he releasing the virtuous pagans while he was at it? Just because he was in hell doesn’t mean he was suffering the torments of hell. After all, Dante got through without a scratch.

104

Well, possibly, although there are lots of ways to [del]engage in special pleading[/del] work this out—who knows exactly what Jesus suffered? Or perhaps the scale is simply different because he’s God. But it’s probably a mistake to view this as some unit-for-unit exchange of suffering in any event. As discussed earlier in the thread, this bit of Christian theology should be examined in the context of Judaic sacrifice.

105

The idea of sacrificial love is understandable. The idea that a divine all loving , creator of all would need a physical sacrifice to forgive us, makes no sense at all. IMO, it contradicts every positive quality attributed to said being.

106

Why don’t you start a Christianity Pit so you can cast this inexhaustible supply of similar threads in?

107

I was about to post something similar, but it wasn’t even 48 hours. From Friday, what, evening? To before dawn on Sunday.

As Mr. Deity persuasively explained to [del]Jesse[/del] Jesus, “It’ll be thirty-six hours, tops. Thirty-five if we do it on a weekend when the time changes.”

108

The more we learn, scientifically, about the history of Bible, the more likely it becomes that the story told in the gospels is fiction. You can choose top believe it’s historically true, but that becomes more and more obviously, clinging to tradition rather than evidence and reason.

109

I tried to bring this up as a Biblical contradiction in an argument, but someone once explained this to me this way.

“The Gospel accounts tell us that Jesus had to be buried quickly, because the next day was a Sabbath, and that He rose again after the Sabbath. If you assume that the Sabbath referred to was a Saturday, then Jesus was in the tomb two nights and one day. But Jesus was crucified on the feast of Passover and the day after Passover is always a Sabbath no matter what day of the week it is. If He was buried before this Sabbath and resurrected after the Saturday Sabbath then a Wednesday Passover would give 3 days and 3 nights in the tomb.”

Being the skeptical atheist I am, I looked this up.

http://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/astronomical-applications/data-services/spring-phenom

In the year 31 AD, the Vernal Equinox was on Friday March 23, 5am (accounting for +2 hours Jerusalem time from Greenwich meantime). The new moon was Tuesday April 10, 2pm. First evening of visible crescent was Wednesday April 11. Date of the first of Nisan (beginning at sundown the evening before…) was Thursday April 12. The 14th day of Nisan (Passover) was Wednesday April 25. Doing the math, if Jesus was in his 33rd year and had not yet reached his 34th birthday, this would put him as being born in 4 BC (there being no year 0), which is the accepted date of the death of Herod the Great.

Now, I’ve rarely heard this argument used before, and I’m not convinced of the historical personage regardless, but the math seems to work out.

110

Here was the other source I used.
http://www.judaismvschristianity.com/Passover_dates.htm

111

I’ve never understood why it’s so easy to give God the property of being able to violate the laws of physics He authored, but somehow He can’t disregard His arbitrary rules and forgive us for being human and being descended from other non-perfect humans.

112

The Gospels all explicitly say that Jesus was crucified on friday and raised on sunday. They differ in that the synoptics say that friday was the first day of Passover that year (with the Last Supper being a Seder the night before), while John depicts friday as the Day of Preparation in order to make Jesus’ death coincide with the slaughter of the Pascal lambs.

It’s also not true that the day after the first day of Passover is always a sabbbath. The seventh day of Passover is always treated as a sabbath, but not the 2nd.

The firts day of Passover is Nissan 15, not 14, by the way.

113

Yeah, I’m trying to make sense of this guy’s argument. Looking at the source, I’m not sure how they translate the Gregorian Wednesday to the Jewish Wednesday, so I can’t really vouch for the year, now that I think about it. I’ll look further into it. Problem is you can’t trust apologetic sources because they will massage anything to agree with their stance. But here’s how his argument works: (He said day after Passover, but I think he meant the first actual day of Passover, which is a High Sabbath)

If Jesus was crucified on a Wednesday (preparation day for High Sabbath) and in the ground by Wednesday night (Night 1), Thursday (which started Weds night) is the High Sabbath (first day of Passover) (Day 1, Night 2), Friday is the second preparation day that week (Day 2, Night 3), Saturday is the regular weekly Sabbath (Day 3) and Jesus rose before dawn (which means he didn’t spend a 4th night) on Sunday (the first day of the week).

Does it say Friday, explicitly? Not that I’m an expert, but it appears to me they use the phrase “preparation” day, which is assumed to be Friday but not explicitly Friday. The first and seventh days of Passover (depending on the branch of Judaism) are High Holidays and are essentially (yearly) Sabbaths. The days before would be preparation days.

114

Don’t forget the fact that we barbequed Lamb Chop afterward.

115

I disagree. IMO as a teacher Jesus message is much more significant than any of the myths, as well as one we still haven’t internalized enough to live. I think philosophers and certain spiritual leaders have a certain grasp of the world and reality that they try to teach and pass on, but the world in general can only receive it and live it as they are ready. That’s why it’s still relevant today. The same message or a similar message may well be taught by others as the essential truth of it asserts itself to different people at different ages.

116

And don’t forget that not only some sins required animal sacrifice…or that Passover is not some festival for the ‘annual forgiving of sins’. :confused:

117

It begins the night before on a Gregorian calendar, so today is 14 Nissan and tonight is 15 Nissan at sundown.

118

The Day of preparation can refer to either the friday preparations for the Sabbath or to the day before Passover (remember that Jewish days are measured from sundown to sundown, though, so the Day of Preparation and the Passover Seder occur on the same calander day). The Gospels all say that Jesus was crucified on the day before the Sabbath and raised on the day after (“on the first day of the week”). The question you’re raising, as I understand it, is whether the “Sabbath” referred to is the High Holy day or the regular Sabbath.

This depends on which Gospel you want to believe. The synoptics all explicitly say that Jesus was crucified on the Feast day, the first day of Passover. That the last supper was a Seder, that he was crucified the next day (which was still the same day by Jewish measurement), and that the day after that was a Sabbath.

John says that Jesus was killed on the Day of Preparation and times his death with the slaughter of the sacrificial lambs at the Temple.
They all then say that the empty tomb was discovered after the sabbath “on the first day of the week,” which was sunday.

It’s hard to make an arguiment that the synoptics could have been saying Jesus was killed on any day but a friday, since the next day was a sabbath and since they clearly say that the Passover feast had already happened the night before. They have Jesus being crucified on the first day of Passover, so that’s not what they could have been referring to when the said the next day was a sabbath.

John has Jesus killed on the day of Preparation and the next day as Passover, but he also phrases it in such a way (“that sabbath was a high day”) as to imply that it was a regular sabbath which happened to fall on a high day, not that it was a sabbath only because it was a high holy day.

I think the apologetic you’re describing has to explain why the synpotics clearly state that the Last Supper was the Passover feast. This would seem to directly contradict a hypothesis that Jesus was killed on the Day of Preparation.

There is, of course, a contradiction between John and the synoptics, regradless.

119

Nobody said it was. I said the sacrifice of the lamb was for the forgivesness of sins.

120

In addition, the Haggadah and any set of prayers for holidays have additional or alternate language if that day falls on a Sabbath - thus it is not true that a holiday is a Sabbath no matter what day of the week it is.