Which are notoriously unreliable. How do you know they weren’t simply lying or crazy ? That’s far more plausible than a resurrection.
Why not ? Admitting he made them up would hamper the spread of Christianity, and that could by why he faked the records ( assuming he did ).
I’m sorry, JThunder, but the only difference I can see between the Heaven’s Gate cult(and so many thousands of others throughout history) and those that followed Christianity is this: The former were willing to die for their beliefs, but the latter were willing to die for your beliefs.
Is there a copy of Dr. Greenleaf’s book An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the Rules of Evidence Administered in the Courts of Justice on-line, anywhere?
I would be interested to see the actual evidentiary analysis he performed rather than snippets of sentences highlighted with all caps and bolded and torn asunder by ellipses. I would not want to judge Greenleaf by his admirers (who might be nutcases).
Lissa, I would agree with JThunder, (in general–still withholding judgment on the unseen Greenleaf work), that the testimony of various people is evidence. It may not be sufficient or compelling evidence, but it is evidence in the legal sense.
Also I do think that Christianity benefited by the Romans fortuitously disposing of the ones that had other versions of what had occurred in Palestine (records being destroyed).
The actions of Nero and then the temple being destroyed by Vespasian IMHO accelerated the separation of Christianity from Judaism, while many Christians did also die, the loss for the Jews was worse: losing their Temple, their priesthood and also their ordered social and worship life. Under those conditions, the growth of Christianity backed by the “evidence” that the end of times was just there, was not surprising at all.
The Apostles claimed to be eyewitnesses. The Heaven’s Gate cultists did not.
You might not see the difference, but with all due respect, it’s there – and as any court of law would attest, it’s a major difference indeed.
Do we know for sure that they weren’t lying? Or crazy? Perhaps not… but as I said (ahem), there’s a difference between evidence and proof.
Moreover, if they were lying, why would they willingly sufferin prison and be martyred for a known lie? Not just one individual either, but several. I suppose it’s technically possible, but it’s unlikely in the extreme.
Nor did they exhibit signs of lunacy, except in the minds of those who choose to dismiss religious claims in that manner. If one is going to offer lunacy as an explanation, then one needs to offer evidence thereof – and by that, I don’t mean statements like “Of course they were crazy! They believed that Jesus rose from the dead, dammit!”
Why would one be so determined to perpetuate a deliberate falsehood, without any hope of personal gain? Eusebius had nothing to gain by spreading Christianity, if this meant being locked up and killed for a false belief. Rare is the man who would be willing to tortured and killed for what he knows to be false.
Besides, we’re not talking about a quick, painless death, here. Eusebius risked years of imprisonment (possibly lifelong), and he was personally persecuted for his belief. He also saw how his own mentor was martyred for this cause.
Could have done this for a known falsehood? Perhaps, but it’s unlikely.
I’m curious. What would “any court of law” call heresay testimony from anonymous sources written many years after a claimed event?
Hardly. Fanatical people are perfectly willing to lie and die for the One True Way, whichever of the One True Ways they happen to be enthusiastic about.
And after 2000 years, I’d be surprised if any such evidence existed.
Well, that is a crazy belief. It takes a lot more than 2000 year old twelfth-hand ancedotes to plausibly make a claim like that.
Unless, of course, telling that lie will spread the One True Way. For that matter, he could have convinced himself he was telling the truth even while he lied; “After all, I * know * Jesus rose from the dead, so it’s not lying if it convinces people of the truth !”
If it’s for the Cause, sure. Fanatics do it all the time.
That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that the Apostles were recorded as having been eyewitnesses. That distinguishes them from the Heaven’s Gate cultists. The veracity of these records is another matter altogether.
The rules with regard to hearsay are likewise another matter. Contrary to what may skeptics say, there are numerous instances in which hearsay testimony is admissible in a court of law. A thorough discussion would be beyond the scope of this thread, which has already digressed greatly from the OP; suffice to say, however, that Greenleaf himself had no problem with the New Testament accounts, and he’s the guy who wrote one of the foremost textbooks on legal evidence.
Matthew was not presenting evidence exactly - he was trying to show that the very clear prophecies understood at the time were fulfilled by Jesus. It is possible that some were, but the virgin birth - a misunderstood non-prophecy that he had Jesus fulfil anyhow shows what Matthew was really up to. The claim that non-believers think early Christians told people to believe on faith and nothing else is a strawman. They transmitted or made up stories purporting to show the truth of their beliefs. What is at question is whether believers use faith to replace the “evidence” that has been shown to be untrustworthy or downright false.
As for Eesebius, the Catholic Encyclopedia says he was born about 260 CE. He clearly did not see the Apostles die or talk to anyone who saw this, or even talk to anyone who talked to anyone who did. I’ll not dispute his meticulousness, but isn’t it at least possible that someone willing to die for his faith would also be willing to be not very skeptical about support for it? Especially when this sort of thing was accepted practice then, and would not be considered a sin against scholarship. Someone 160 years from now might be able to provide copious footnotes to National Enquirer articles about women having alien babies - let’s hope scholars of the day don’t give too much credence to footnotes.
Finally, if the spread of Christianity is evidence for the resurrection, I assume that you will admit that the spread of Islam is evidence for Mohammed being the true prophet of Allah. I believe we have far better documention for how he went from nothing to a position of power, and he managed to stay alive a bit longer than Jesus. When you accept a certain type of data as evidence for religion A, you must, for the sake of consistency, accept it as evidence of religion B.
Not surprised the documents Eusebius worked from vanished over the centuries. Can you tell us what documents he was purported to have?
I note that I view discussing the resurrection as useless. Either it happened or it didn’t. If it happened, it still didn’t make him the Jewish Messiah. If it didn’t, well, people can still believe it did. Not to mention the whole ‘in spirit’ segment, and so on. Really, there’s no way to settle it.
But if we can prove the Apostles existed, we can, at the least, have strong evidence towards supporting Jesus’ existance. So let’s look at that.
Now this is a sort of silly argument. You might as well say that YOU recorded the martyrdom of the Apostles on this messageboard, and you have an exceptional track record. But the evidence is only as good as the sources, and “exceptional track record” for a historian in those times was still pretty exceedingly lousy in terms of the lack of good information and separating rumor and myth from fact.
Given the rate at which the Romans produced marytrs for all sorts of beliefs and causes at the time, this seems a pretty darn flimsy argument, even if the details were anywhere close. For all we know, the Apostles were killed for inciting violent rebellion, and their followers put a different spin on things after the fact to explain their failure.
You keep saying that the Apostles claimed this or claimed that. But we don’t really even have that. The only person we have actually words from is Paul, and he DIDN’T see Jesus risen from the dead: he had a single vision of him after the fact. But then, Mohammed had a whole lifetime of conversation with God, as did Joseph Smith. Again, that’s almost the opposite of evidence for.
I’ll file this one under “arguments that JThunder makes but probably doesn’t himself believe” since all sorts of other movements, beliefs and fads have had explosive growth. If you believe that, say, voodoo is wrong, then how can you think that explosive growth is even at all evidence of anything? Let alone the shaky argument that just because some claim proves compelling and popular to a lot of people, then it must be true.
Unless you are suggesting that the growth was so fast that it could only be miraculous.
Why exactly is a legal scholar someone we should all consider an expert on history anyway? I mean, they aren’t really even remotely the same in terms of how they proceed and standards of evidence, and in many relevant ways they are very different. Greenleaf is as important to ancient history as Phil Johnson is to biology. This seems like an appeal to false authority.
Jesus existed. He is myth and reality.
Yes, and even if there was an image on the shroud, it still doesn’t mean anyone resurrected,just that by chance an image could be there.
Jesus is quoted as saying he would resurrect in 3 days, In the 60’s (I may be wrong on the date) there was a man from India that was buried for three days, he put himself in a trance and slowed his heart rate etc. down they placed him in a ground, put a lot of wood and then sand on top of that then he did awaken himself when they opened the place where he was. He said it takes many years to learn to do that. The scientists said if a lot of people learned to put themselves in such a state it could help them survive a lack of food and water, but it takes a great deal of discipline to do it and few can accomplish it.
Monavis
There is no evidence for the supernatural events described in the gospels. These volumes of Christian literature may quibble about the details, but on the whole, any honest Christian can only take the account of the gospels with, as I said, blind faith.
Reading the gospels is irrelevent to this discussion. The veracity of the text must be determined independently to the text itself. And what is wrong with demanding that no faith be put in the gospels? If there was evidence to support what the gospels described, faith would be unnecessary. Faith without evidence is only belief without reasonable cause.
I don’t know offhand; however, professional historians do regard Eusebius as a reliable authority. That is why even secular history books and encyclopedias state that the Apostles did exist and were martyred for their cause. Consider the Encyclopedia Brittanica’s entries on Saul of Tarsus and the Apostle Matthew, for example.
That’s a rather extreme position to take. In contrast, historians use a different set of criteria–criteria such as explanatory power, explanatory scope and superiority to rival hypotheses. If his own prophecied resurrection did not qualify him to be the Messiah, then one must postulate some other scenario–a spontaneous return to life, for example, in violation of the laws of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. Or the infamous “swoon theory.”
As I said, professional historians do acknowledge that the Apostles exist, and that Jesus existed. The also acknowledge the reality of the empty tomb, among other things, even though some may propose alternate explanations for these events (e.g. the swoon theory, or the aforementioned identical twin theory).
He was presenting reasons why people should believe Jesus’ claim to be the Messiah. That’s evidence. Which is evidence.
As I said, he is also considered to be an extremely reliable historical authority, even among secular historians. In matters of ancient history, scholars do not discard evidence simply because it wasn’t first-hand. Rather, they examine the general reliability of the source, the bulk of the evidence, and the strength of opposing arguments.
But their situations are NOT the same. In the case of early Christianity, we are talking about the spread of a religion that claims a singular historical event as its very foundation. As the Apostle Paul himself said, “And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.” Paul himself pointed to the Resurrection as the reason for people to believe.
The explosive growth of early Christianity despite intense Roman persecution, suggests that something happened to trigger that growth. This does not automatically prove that the Resurrection occurred, but it’s a piece of evidence that must be considered, evaluated and explained.
Now, this is the point at which people recklessly jump in and say, “But maybe it wasn’t the Resurrection! Maybe there was some other cause! You still haven’t proven that Jesus rose from the dead!” Must we again reiterate that we are talking about evidence, not proof? Any scholar – whether historian, legal expert or philosopher – first proceeds from the evidence and works toward a conclusion. One might propose an alternate explanation for the evidence, but that does not mean that the evidence is non-existent.
JThunder, you keep falling back to this its “evidence if not proof” stuff. But this is disingenuous. No one is saying that evidence must be absolute. What people are saying is that the things you are citing are not even necessarily evidence for your conclusion in the first place.
For instance:
Yes, but there are any number of more likely explanations other than “Jesus was the son of God who rose from the dead after three days.” Your argument is basically no different than someone claiming that them finding a plant unexpectedly fallen over in their house is evidence of poltergeists. Or the already cited example that because Troy exists, this is evidence that the Gods of Olympus existed. That’s not how “evidence” works. Christian beliefs were very compelling to many people. That isn’t anymore evidence that the core beliefs were true than that the appeal of astrology demonstrates that there is something to it.
But “reliable” is pretty relative when we are talking about ancient history. Just because we can consider him a reliable reporter of the documents and rumors of the time doesn’t mean that those documents or beliefs were themselves particularly reliable. There were most likely Apostles, and most likely some died (that’s generally what happened to all people making trouble at the time: and it happened to many many more sects and movements that just Christianity).
Wow, that’s an interesting argument.
A case for ignorance, huh? Let me ask you…
How would you scrutinize the veracity of a body of work you had not read? How would you evaluate the evidence if you did not know what ‘was described’? How would you distinguish between someone with ‘valid’ faith (presumably one with evidence) and someone who had only ‘belief wthout cause’ if you had no understanding of the bedrock of either flavor of faith?
I think you’re missing what JThunder’s point is. Christian beliefs may be compelling to many people today. It was compelling to a group of Christ’s contemporaries, though, in a circumstance that implies something unusually consequential. The people who were best in a position to know whether or not Christ rose suffered extreme persecution and were martyred in horrible (and, in most instances, solitary) ways.
The “next generation” of believers would have found this compelling indeed, IMO. The farther away from the actual event, the more there would be disbelieving discussion–like that in this thread–but the original spread of belief in the face of intense persecution, it seems to me, is evidence consistent with people who felt that they had strong reason to believe.
This is not at all analogous, IMO, with the existence of Troy being the foundation for a syllogism that leads us to conclude the gods of Olympus existed. Troy could easily have existed without the gods, no explanation required. OTOH, the spread of Christianity at the very least raises issues that require some explanation. You may find other explanations more reasonable. But the possibility that Christ actually rose is consistent with at least some of the evidence in a way that makes alternate explanations less reasonable, IMO. Somebody would have cracked in the face of such dreadful treatment (and death), it seems to me, if they were all knowingly spreading a lie for some unknown reason.