I was thinking of the thread about heliocentrism. The Church had certain positions about it (which Galileo got embroiled in, for various reasons) but it had no problem with scientific proof that the Earth revolved around the Sun.
But you are surely right that history or science has nothing to do with scripture itself or what various churches say happened.
Resurrection is evidently a pretty old-school religious concept: e.g. there is a 4000-year-old written version of a story that was already who knows how ancient even then describing Inanna’s descent into the underworld, where she is stripped of all her royal trappings and killed, the corpse hung on a hook. Then, after three days and three nights, her body is redeemed and she is revived.
In ancient Judaism, the phenomenon of people appearing to be dead, but then waking up was common enough, that, unless someone died by something like decapitation, they weren’t considered dead until they were 3 days dead. In other words, if someone couldn’t be awakened in the morning, or passed out and didn’t regain consciousness, they had to remain inert for 3 days before they could be entombed.
How this practice eroded, what the Diaspora had to do with that, and what modern medicine did, are interesting, but long, and probably out of the scope of this thread.
But it’s a tidbit that makes sense of the fact that everyone claims Jesus was dead for 3 days, when he was really dead for about 36 hours, if you follow the gospel timeline very strictly.
Why he was removed from the cross, assuming this to be a true story, probably means he had someone influential among his followers, who insisted on removing him from the cross before Shabbat started. Since the Romans agreed he was dead, anyway.
The 3 days vs. 36 hours is another thing that makes me think there is some real story back there. Not anything close to the gospel stories, but something. If there weren’t, then the embarrassing discrepancy between 3 days/36 hours probably wouldn’t exist.
The myth of Osiris is even older, and he was resurrected after being murdered by his brother, Set (interestingly, “Set” is also the name of the son Adam and Eve have after Cayin kills his brother Havel).
Thanks, PhilyGuy. I read your link and now know there is a broad schism between the two types of Baptists. I did some googling, but I can’t find out what the overall breakdown between fundamentalists and modernists is for all Christians if that even makes sense. But yes, I believe the evangelists I’ve seen on TV and the Christians I have spoken to, most, if not all of them, were probably fundamentalists concerning the resurrection. It would be interesting to talk with a modernist to see how far they really are from an atheist’s POV regarding the resurrection.
It seems we can come up with speculation about what happened to Jesus that may have looked like a resurrection, but that’s just one small part of the Christian story that doesn’t add up. Virgin births don’t happen, miracles don’t happen, and people don’t magically ascend to the sky without the aid of wires.
So even if someone says, yeah, you got me, the resurrection probably didn’t happen, that doesn’t change that much for me. It’s just one brick in a wall of tall tales that I believe are untrue, and don’t get me started on the Old Testament…
In the Christian legendarium, Jesus’ tomb was provided by a wealthy follower named Joseph of Arimathea. The story goes on to say that Joseph later received the Holy Grail from an apparition of Jesus, and sent it to Britain, or possibly traveled there himself, so there’s obviously some mythologizing at work; but it’s possible that an influential follower might have arranged for the cadaver to be brought down off the cross (assuming that there’s a nugget or
behind the Gospels, of course).
True. If we are debating whether there was a person named Jesus who lived and did some of the mundane things mentioned in the Bible, then the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
If we are to believe the supernatural claims in the Bible and this is literally one of the most important things that has ever occured in the history of humankind then the absence of evidence would, it would seem to me, to be evidence of absence - the absence here being the contemporaneous consideration of Jesus being in any way important.
Precisely my earlier point, with the argument coming back that things happened in the ancient world that were never recorded, which is inarguably true. However, it’s fair to say that it was uncommon for people to have a virgin birth, to perform public miracles, to be resurrected after being crucified, and then to ascend up into the sky. If any of that had happened, people would have noted it, and something would have survived besides simply hearsay and rumor. The lack of ANY contemporaneous writings to back up these stories tells me they didn’t happen. I’m still waiting for someone to provide a preponderance of evidence that it happened, or at least proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
One could argue that literacy was very much not widespread before the 20th century CE. The people who could write about the events were a vanishing fraction of the people who could have possibly been witnesses – in fact, it appears that the christ himself was illiterate, as he is never known to have written anything down (just like Moses). Hence, hearsay is really all there could be.
The evidence suggests that the 13 guys were a sort of traveling medicine show, extracting a living from the locals by peddling the ancient equivalent of snake oil. Hence, they were really not inclined to try to attract educated types to their presentations. The likelihood of first person witnesses who could write about those things (without being embarrassed about being duped) is all but nil.
There’s only one mention of Jesus writing in the Bible, and in context, a better translation might be “doodling”. But there are multiple mentions of him reading.
How could we possibly know that? I’m told little to nothing survived from that period. He could have been a prolific writer, many people who preach are. The point is we can’t say what he was or wasn’t, because nobody bothered to write it down at the time.
There is evidence, and quite a bit for that period and a person of his standing.
Jesus wrote in the dirt once, and could sorta read. Likely he had a little of what we would call “Hebrew school” , but by today’s standards he would be considered “functionally illiterate” is my guess. From all the graffiti it is obvious that a lot of people could read and write- a little- as least to the extent of “Brutus sucks it” . But yeah, being able to write down a history of an event was not at all common.
One of them was a Tax collector. And at least one person collected some of Jesus’s saying etc, what is now called “Q” . John, much much later either learned to read and write or more likely he had followers who could do so. (it is not hard to believe a young man could learn a lot in another 6 or 7 decades)
Please, show us all of the contemporaneous evidence, and the gospels are not evidence since most are not contemporaneous and could have easily been made up.
i have questioned his existence. I have read an article, a couple years ago, that said they unearthed some box or something with the name inscribed of one of Jesus’s brothers. this to me was some hard evidence, IF it is true. how can I prove archaeological discoveries that I haven’t seen in person, nor studied in-depth myself? question everything, is my motto.
I have heard the shroud is a fake, but again, how can I know?
the bible, if it is to be considered a trustworthy source, says that when the empty tomb was seen, his grave dressings were sitting there. I don’t remember if it said someone took them out or what.
if he rose after 3 days then that is a miracle. miraculous things happen today but nothing like that, that I’ve seen.
I believe in the old testament but I question the new one. it seems legit when I read the whole bible cover to cover. but questions arise, for sure. I just figure, if the Jews won’t give up their faith, maybe they are right, since I agree with the old testament, which is their holy scripture. but what if they really were just that stubborn and didn’t want to let go of their rituals that they felt brought them god’s favor? accepting Jesus would mean taking actual responsibility for their sins, and not depending on animal sacrifices etc for atonement. so maybe they were willfully ignorant, if Jesus was real?
lots of questions.
I too wonder why there is so little ancient writing about Jesus, outside the bible. but if you find really old bibles- like mine from around 1870- they do list times that people originally wrote the stories of Jesus. its just strange to me that none of these writings seem to be within even 50 years of his life.
With that said, this seems to be a uniquely American debate.I rarely, if ever, see it in Euro media.
American non-believer:
Jesus wasn’t the son of God. God doesn’t exist so Jesus didn’t either.
Euro non-believer:
Jesus wasn’t the son of God. God doesn’t exist. But everything points to a wandering preacher, one of many, walking around in 1st century Palestine, warning that THE END IS NEAR. Paul did a lot of ret-conning, for whatever reason, and started a new religion. But for him, the disciples of Jerusalem would’ve been forgotten by now. Paul’s method and rules for conversion was a lot more successful than James the Just’s.
Anything could be made up, and hardly any histories are contemporaneous, Q is likely contemporaneous. They likely didn’t need to write a Gospel since Q was around and people still had their memories.
But we have covered this before, and I linked to several, even here in this thread. Josephus is the best- Antiquities of the Jews= Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the sanhedrin]of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned:
and - Tacitus, in his Annals (written c. AD 115), book 15, chapter 44,[57] describes Nero’s scapegoating of the Christians following the Fire of Rome. He writes that the founder of the sect was named Christus (the Christian title for Jesus); that he was executed under Pontius Pilate; and that the movement, initially checked, broke out again in Judea and even in Rome itself.[58] The scholarly consensus is that Tacitus’ reference to the execution of Jesus by Pontius Pilate is both authentic and of historical value as an independent Roman source.[59][60][61]
The Ossuary did have the name of James on it, and it was the proper age. Sadly, “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” might not be the Jesus the Messiah, and the inscription is disputed. It is only a maybe.
Alas, unless there’s proof from the time that something happened, and not 100 years later, it’s simply hearsay and rumor and not proof. We know Brutus assassinated Julius Caesar because witnesses who were there told other people who documented it at the time. That’s called creating a historical record.
According to this, there were 40 miracles attributed to Jesus in the Bible. You can read about each one, but I’ve listed them below. It’s quite an impressive list of miracles.
Do you believe nobody would have bothered to note if someone performed even a handful of these miracles? Not everyone was illiterate; indeed, the Romans would have been interested in someone performing these miracles since it’s never happened before or since.
Some of them, such as “changing water into wine” or “walking on water,” could have been clever tricks, but healing a leper and resurrecting someone who is truly dead is no parlor trick. If Jesus did these things, they would have been recorded for history by someone; if he didn’t, there would be no trace of them ever happening unless someone made up a story years later.
Born to a virgin
Changing water into wine
Healing of the royal official’s son
Healing of the Capernaum demoniac
Healing of Peter’s mother-in-law
Healing the sick during the evening
Catching a large number of fish
Healing a leper
Healing a centurion’s servant
Healing a paralyzed man
Healing a withered hand
Raising a widow’s son
Calming the storm
Healing the Gerasene man possessed by demons
Healing a woman with internal bleeding
Raising Jairus’ daughter
Healing two blind men
Healing a mute demon-possessed man
Healing a 38-year invalid
Feeding 5,000 men and their families
Walking on water
Healing of many people in Gennesaret
Healing a girl possessed by a demon
Healing a deaf man with a speech impediment
Feeding 4,000 men and their families
Healing a blind man
Healing a man born blind
Healing a demon-possessed boy
Catching a fish with a coin in its mouth
Healing a blind and mute man who was demon-possessed
Aside from Cicero, what contemporary accounts of Caesar’s assassination survive? The account of Nicholas of Damascus, e.g., was written decades later (and survives only because it was quoted in one of the surviving volumes of the Constantinian Excerpts). Suetonius and Plutarch wrote even later.
