Evidence for Jesus' rising from the dead

Great Debates
41

I’ve been to dinner at His place practically every week. He serves a spiritually nourishing if unvaried menu!

As for poker, I’m certain He’s been there. I recall one game when two close friends were betting heavy against each other, one called with three of a kind, and the other beat him with a full house. The first guy shouted out His name, so I presume that He had something to do with the results! :wink:

With me, however, He tends to kibitz my bridge hands. :slight_smile:

My aunt, who was normally a show-me-proof skeptic about matters supernatural, maintained to her dying day that He did show up in her bedroom once when she was sick, and worried about the family as well, and reassured her. I offer that as third-party anecdotal evidence, not as anything you need accept as proof of anything.

Zev, have you ever looked at Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, in the New Testament, specifically the 15th chapter? As a Jew, you obviously won’t count it as Scripture – but I’m wondering what you make of what Paul, trained in rabbinic exposition, has to say on the subject of resurrection there. If nothing else, the exegesis of a scholarly Jew on that hotly-argued Christian-Scripture passage might furnish new light on this discussion.

42

To spare Zev from having to chase down a copy of 1 Corinthians 15, I’ll post it here:

1 Corinthians 15

Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them–yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. Whether, then, it was I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.

But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For he “has put everything under his feet.” Now when it says that “everything” has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.

Now if there is no resurrection, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized for them? And as for us, why do we endanger ourselves every hour? I die every day–I mean that, brothers–just as surely as I glory over you in Christ Jesus our Lord. If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus for merely human reasons, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.” Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God–I say this to your shame.

But someone may ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. All flesh is not the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.

So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.

If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a lifegiving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.

I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed– in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

43

Like the Gospel accounts, this reads to me like nothing more than a convoluted attempt to make Pilate behave in a manner unlike even a more equinanimous procurator, who would have summarily executed any individual making any claim to a politically-loaded title like “messiah”. Perhaps Pilate was multidimensional, but Roman Law, as it applied to sedition, was not. Rabble-rousing of the sort described in Jesus’ actions in the Temple circa Passover would almost certainly be seen as an incitement to revolt by itself. Pilate is already know to have killed others for less. It’s natural to conclude, if the barest details of the Gospel accounts are accurate, that even the most benevolent Roman procurator would have expeditiously hung Jesus on tree, and suffered no repurcussions from his superiors for overzealousness. Evoking “multidimensionality” to explain away a sadist’s paradoxical munificense and reluctance in the case of one particular Jewish agitator is, IMO, an extremely weak argument, which is not aided by elaboration of the kind you cite. The ultimate consequence, in any such rationalization, is to put an excessive burden of influence on the Jewish authorities, and/or “proletariat”, which they simply did not have.

44

Roman Law was the Roman Emperor, and subject to his whims. I’ve given you one of the most respected sources in the world. If you choose to dismiss the detailed writings of such an authority as a “rationalization”, then I choose to dismiss your posts as the same. I’m not wasting my time digging up cites for you merely to dismiss them preemptively.

45

Criminals executed for SEDITION, as Jesus was, were NEVER given over for proper burials, Lib. You also have to remember what Jesus was (allegedly) accused of by Pilate and what was written on the titulus. For Pilate to give the body over for burial was to admit that the titulus was true. Pilate would not just have been saying a criminal was innocent, he would have been repudiating his own authority and - more importantly- the authority of Tiberius. For Pilate to admit that Jesus was the “king of the Jews” would have been an act of sedition against the Empire.

Furthermore, as I said before, there is no Empty Tomb tradition in Christianity for at least 40 years after the crucifixion. There is no evidence whatsoever that any direct apostles ever claimed to have seen such a thing, nor was there any veneration of the site until the 4th century when it was “discovered” by Constantine.

Do you have any better evidence for an Empty Tomb than the Gospel of Mark? Can you show any proof that anyone claimed such a thing before 70 CE? Why didn’t Paul know about it?

46

Gah. I’m sorry, but that simply is not true. I’ve just given an authoritative cite in which the case of Jesus is considered to be a counter-example. As to your other questions, I have no quarrel with them. My only quarrel is with this notion that Pilate’s exceptional treatment of Jesus is a metaphysical impossibility. It isn’t. I gave my cite, and quoted the pertinent portion. It stands.

47

I need to address this specifically. I didn’t say it was a matter of Roman law, I just said it wasn’t done, and it wasn’t done because of the perception that was created by Jewish law. Under Jewish law, executed criminals could not be given a proper burial so giveing the body over was popularly perceived in Palestine as an admission of innocence.

Tha element of Jewish law also supports the fictional quality of Joseph of Arimathea since no member of the Sanhedrin would have been permitted under Jewish law to claim the body.

48

Lib, outside of Palestine, crucifixion was used for offenses other than sedition or treason. Inside Palestine, it was used exclusively for crimes against the Empire.

49

Why wasn’t it done for the other reasons in Palestine at that time?

50

Alexander Jannaeus alone crucified 800 pharisees in Jerusalem for no purpose other than to spite Judean rebels. They were not seditious by any objective sense of the word, and in fact were militarily supported by the Syrian king, Demetrius III.

51

All of that is dealt with by Jona Lendering in the cite I gave above from Livius. He is a secular source. I trust your intellectual integrity. Please read his articles, and then we can discuss this in light of them.

52

Typical. There’s nothing preemptive about it. I could fill pages with cites from other lauded historians (participants in the Jesus Seminar past and present would be voluminous enough, one of whom, Marcus Borg, I’ve been lucky enough to meet) would would characterize your source as overly-generous at best, and complete rubbish at worst, a fact you know well. Pilate’s egregious behavior is known to have sparked deadly riots. Pilate killed indescriminately and had scores of offenders executed without trial. He angered the Jewish populace and clergy gratuitously by filling Jerusalam, even Herod’s palace, with Roman idolatry, nearly inciting a full-scale revolt himself. He further raided the Temple funds to build an aqueduct; and the final straw in a haystack of offenses was to slaughter about 4000 disciples of a Samaritan prophet on their sacred ground. These are just the things I can recite from memory. The mad was a sadist and a poor excuse for a procurator. What we know of his behavior from independent sources make anything resembling the Biblican account of Jesus’ trial and crucifixion appear patently absurd. There’s nothing frivolous or unfair about that assessment, the authority of your source notwithstanding.

53

After catching up on this thread some more I think I need to emphasixe once again that the gospels are not historical records written by witnesses but were created long after the fact from prior written sayings traditions, from the Hebrew Bible and from each other.

Friar, there are good reasons to doubt that any of the gospels came even indirectly from witnesses and no good reasons to think they did. They don’t even make such a claim for themselves. When you base your argument on an assumption that the gospels are “reliable” (and I assure you, they are not, they contain demonstrable errors that witnesses could not have made) you are presuming your own conclusion. Essentially you’re making a circular argument that the gospels are reliable because you believe they’re reliable. I know good and well you are capable of better than that.

54

Not to quibble, but criminals who were executed by Jewish courts were buried in “temporary” graveyards administered by the courts. After a period of time (I’m not certain of the length, but surely not less than a year) the bones would be exhumed and reburied in their ancestral graves.

Zev Steinhardt

55

It’s been quite a while since I’ve studied Daniel in depth. And Daniel is most certainly not a book where you want to just read two verses without the surrounding context. :slight_smile:

But why would a grace period be necessary? If Jesus’s death obviated the need for sacrifices, why the forty year wait? Why the “grace period?”

Very true, but even this exile is also prophesised to be temporary as well (although, granted, far longer than a mere seventy years).

Zev Steinhardt

56

This was almost 300 years before the crucifixion of Jesus and your own source says it was an exception and that crucifixions were rare in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus. You can’t compare eras that far apart. You might as well try to draw conclusions about American jurisprudence from the salem witch trials.

Captain Aamazing, it was only done for sedition against Rome because most other capital crimes could be dealt with under Jewish law and the Romans didn’t care about Jewish law. You only got crucified if you pissed off the Romans.

57

Oh, man! :eek:

Item the first: the source also explicitly says, and explains why, the Jesus encounter was an exception to the sedition rule — and even declares it to be historical fact.

Item the second: you cannot possibly be serious about comparing the zeitgeist of ancient Rome with the zeitgeist of today’s America. I mean, nevermind the witch trials. You can’t draw conclusions about American jurisprudence in 2005 from American jurisprudence five years ago. Things moved ever more slowly in Palestine back then, and rulers were even more capricious than they are today.

Anyway, I leave it at that. The source is there for anyone who cares to read it. And it is impeccable. I’m out.

58

What about non-Jews and non-Jewish communities in Palestine? Crucifixion for non-sedition crimes happened there? Or crucifixions of slaves by their masters? I don’t know a whole lot about Roman jurisprudence.

59

I think what he’s trying to say is that the crucifixion of a bunch of Pharasees by Alexander Jannaeus (who was a Hasmonean king, and not Roman) isn’t able to tell you much about Roman crucifixion practices, because it was a different regime with different rules. I could be wrong, though.

60

Exactly. The Hasmonean-Pharisee dispute was an intermural Jewish conflict. The Romans were not involved.