Don’t really know what to make of the Christian beliefs, but as trickie said, it makes for a great long weekend! Also, don’t forget the large amounts of chocolate!
Hey! My first post!
I heard Tony Snow on Fox TV discussing the implausibility of the Easter story, so barflyer has given us a trendy topic.
In response to the survey, I’m a Jewish atheist. Easter makes no more sense to my intellect than any religious practice. On the other hand, I acknowledge that Easter and other relgious holidays and ceremonies benefit many people in psychological ways. E.g., despite non-belief, even I was quite moved at the circumcision ceremony for my first grandchild six weeks ago.
I kind of like the theory from Foucault’s Pendulum: four friends, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, make the whole thing up as a joke. Everyone’s having a good time with it until that dimbulb Paul (he never got the one about the chicken crossing the road, either) took the whole thing seriously and got us into the mess we have today.
–sublight.
Hey, the first Dianetics! 
As for Easter, I like eating hard-boiled eggs. Can’t wait for Junior to get a little older so we can all have fun coloring them…
This is a variation on Option 1):
Here’s the evidence that it was “all made up”:
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The letters of Paul, the earliest documents in the New Testament (written c. 50-60 AD) don’t mention an empty tomb.
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The “Q” source, which Matthew and Luke used when they weren’t copying from Mark, doesn’t mention an empty tomb, or resurrection appearances of Jesus.
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Mark, the earliest gospel (c. 60-80 AD) mentions the empty tomb but not the resurrection appearances - only a “youth” dressed in white. (The last few verses of Mark were added later to make it fit with the other gospels.) Most of the story of Jesus’s crucifixion was created by cobbling together Old Testament passages to support the idea that Jesus had “fulfilled the scriptures”.
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The other gospels (c.80-110 AD) cribbed the crucifixion story from Mark and added in the resurrection appearances, probably from oral traditions, which is why they contradict each other.
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The gospel of Thomas, another early gospel (probably 1st-century) doesn’t mention the crucifixion or the resurrection appearances at all.
See John D. Crossan’s books for details on how OT passages became “historicized” to create the Easter story.
Well, I guess I’m not allowed to participate in the poll, but I presume that I may participate in debate about what I believe to be errors of fact or implication. (Correct me if I’m wrong here, and I’ll leave. No problem.)
Well, no, but they do mention the resurrection. A lot. A resurrection implies an empty tomb, doesn’t it?
Neither Luke nor Matthew copied from Mark any more than you’ve copied from your sources the points you enumerated in your post. What they did (and what you did) was present their story in the manner they thought most appropriate for their target audience.
Matthew was concerned more with the Rabbinical aspects of Jesus’ ministry, whereas Luke, a contemporary of Paul, explained his own rationale in his first four verses: “Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word [Paul, Peter, etc] have handed them down to us, it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus; so that you might know the exact truth about the things you have been taught.”
It is important also to remember that Luke and Acts were two-part scrolls, intended as two volumes of the same work. They were research for a patron (Theophilus) intended to present a comprehensive understanding of a nearly epic time period. Taken as a whole, they were basically a history much like other Greco-Roman texts of the time. It is quite reasonable that Luke might have used whatever was available at the time, including extant texts. Your argument makes it sound like sourcing of research material is something dirty, disingenuous, or fraudulent.
Finally, you present the “Q Source” as though it were some sort of known text, an artifact like a Dead Sea scroll, when in fact it is merely a contrivance, the collection of material (almost entirely of comprised of Jesus’ sayings) that Matthew and Luke share roughly in common. Some scholars believe that this could imply a common text.
Mercy.
I guess let’s start at the end. The alleged cobbling is a gratuitous conclusion. It does not follow from any argument that you made, but was simply tossed in like, well, like someone cobbling together an argument. 
Some of the earliest manuscripts do not contain verses 9 through 20 of Mark 16. Most do. But at least here, you drew your conclusion that they fudged the story in a way that it might follow from your prior assertion about the young man in white. But even without 9-20, you neglected to say what it was the youth told the women. “Do not be amazed and terrified; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, Who was cricified. He has risen; He is not here. See the place where they laid Him. But be going; tell the disciples and Peter, He goes before you into Galilee; you will see Him there, [just] as He told you.” (Amplified)
Thus a resurrection appearance is strictly implied.
Actually, whatever stories might have come to the (male) disciples (including Mark) about the crucifixion and resurrection had to come from some else. They weren’t there. But a lot of people were, including the women who loved Him. They were the likely source of facts regarding both events.
We have already shown that Mark strictly implies a resurrection appearance, rendering moot any rebuttal of your assertion (again gratuitous) that the other gospels “added in the resurrection appearances”.
As to oral traditions, you don’t seem to have a firm grasp on how information was passed around when papyrus and leather could be afforded only by the very rich, and when most people couldn’t read or write anyway. We know that Jesus was literate (He read scrolls in the temple). He wrote nothing down. Why should He? His message was a simple message for the heart. It was other people, like Luke, Paul, and others, who thought it was important to record something for posterity. It is amazing, in the context of Jesus’ message, that people will quibble over whether He gave His sermon on a hill or a mount, or whether Judas hanged himself or fell. This is straining gnats and swallowing camels.
The Acta Thomae is considered by Harnack (Chronologie, ii, 172) to be dated about 220 AD, and might have been written by Bardesanes or some other Gnostic. The so-called gospel of Thomas is a redaction of that work, and is mostly a fantastical account of Jesus’ childhood.
See The Jewish Roman World of Jesus for exhaustive resources, links, and bibliographies.
As I understand it, Easter celebrates Jesus’s glorious ascension from his tomb into Heaven.
But if he sees his shadow, there’s gonna be six more weeks of winter.
(Oh, spare me the flames, it just wastes electrons and I’m going to hell anyway.)
Libertarian:
Please read my post early on in this thread. I show why the resurrection does not imply an empty tomb. In fact, Paul’s choice to list himself as those to whom Jesus appeared specifically negates the possibility of an empty tomb.
You also deny that Matthew and Luke copied Mark any more than FriendRob copied from his sources. Spare me. Mark has 661 verse. 607 of those, or 92%, turn up in some way in Matthew. Many appear literally unchanged. Entire sentences are copied without changing a single letter. This is a far cry from mere reliance upon a source for research purposes.
On Q:
The religious tolerance web site (www.religioustolerance.org) estimates that approximately 90% of New Testament scholars accept Q as an actual document.
On Mark 16:9-20
Virtually all scholars have concluded these to be spurious. The oldest and best manuscripts lack them. They show reliance upon the other canonical gospels, whereas the rest of Mark predates Matthew, Luke, and John. Several alternate endings exist. 25 of the 27 most popular Bibles either exclude the verses, or set them off from the rest of the text with a note that they were probably not part of the original text. And of course they have the women telling the disciples one verse after it says that they don’t!
On Mark’s resurrection:
Nope, an appearance in Galilee does not imply a physical resurrection. It could be spiritual.
The gospel of Thomas:
220 CE? You’ve got to be shitting me! The latest I’ve seen this dated is middle of second century. Most scholars are split between 130 and 50 CE.
My mother thought she sensed my father’s spirit after he died. (She never claimed to see my father, just that she “felt” him.) Perhaps Jesus’ followers experienced the same phenomenon, to the point of thinking they had seen him? It’s obvious Jesus’ followers loved him very much and it seems to me that this may have been made them more susceptible to hallucinations induced by exreme grief. (Grief is stressful and people have been known to hallucinate while under stress.) OTOH, it’s not likely they ALL would have hallucinated, so maybe it was just a few of them, and the writers decided it would be better if ALL of them saw him?
I don’t think the Resurrection ever happened. But it’s difficult for me to believe that the Romans, who were WELL-practiced in the art(?) of crucifixion and other forms of execution would have mistakenly allowed Jesus’ friends and family to take him off the cross before he was dead. (That spear in his side was pretty good proof of death, IMHO, assuming it actually happened. In fact, that may have been the final cause of death!)
So I think someone stole the corpse and some of his followers hallucinated seeing him and the writers claimed it was all of them who saw him.
**Airblairxxx wrote:
As I understand it, Easter celebrates Jesus’s glorious ascension from his tomb into Heaven.
But if he sees his shadow, there’s gonna be six more weeks of winter.**
Goddess, can’t you get it right? You don’t get 6 more weeks of winter! You get 6 more weeks of Lent!
Thanks, Opus1, for saving me the trouble of looking up the hard facts.
I didn’t intend to present a reasoned argument, just a summary of what I’ve gleaned from my reading on this. A lot of it comes from Crossan’s books (which I mentioned in my post), especially The Beginning of Christianity, and I’m not going to try to summarize thousands of pages of careful argument in a few lines. Read it for youself and decide for yourself.
Libertarian is confusing the Acts of Thomas with the Gospel of Thomas. Acts is a late document that includes the story of Jesus as a boy killing with a glance another boy who made fun of him, turning clay birds into real birds, and other endearing magic tricks. Gospel of Thomas is a collection of sayings of Jesus, some very similar to those in the canonical gospels, others very different, check out http://www.nursehealer.com/Thomas.htm.
Saying #2:
Jesus said, “Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will reign over all.”
The date of GThomas is still debated, but some scholars believe it to be as early as any of the New Testament writings. For example:
Saying #20:
The disciples said to Jesus, “Tell us what Heaven’s kingdom is like.”
He said to them, “It’s like a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds, but when it falls on prepared soil, it produces a large plant and becomes a shelter for birds of the sky.”
In the Bible, the parallel saying says the mustard seed becomes a “tree” - which it doesn’t. It’s sort of a creeping plant. The “large plant” version is more likely original, because if Jesus was a rural type as he is depicted in the NT, he probably had a good idea what a mustard plant actually looked like. Later urban Christians didn’t, and garbled the quote.
Finally, on the “resurrection appearances”, I should have been more explicit. I meant that the Easter appearances of Jesus aren’t mentioned in Mark. If these were the source of the belief in Jesus’s resurrection, the foundation of the faith, why would Mark have omitted them? Or is it more likely that they were added in by later writers/tellers to make the ending more dramatic?
113 His disciples said to him, “When will the kingdom come?”
“It will not come by watching for it. It will not be said, ‘Look, here!’ or ‘Look, there!’ Rather, the Father’s kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people don’t see it.”
If I remember, Jesus’ appearence was different after the resurrection. Anyone else think this was an odd part of the story?
**barflyer wrote:
That the story was concocted at the time of the crucifixion by the followers to keep the sect going.**
I’d like to propose an idea about the Resurrection, drawing a paralell to a late 20th Century event that has some striking similarities.
ELVIS
Okay…now that you’ve stopped laughing, please look at it this way:
Elvis died of a drug overdose back in '79, yet he had such a strong following, there were rumors of sightings even up into the '90s. Some people felt so strongly about his music and what he represented, they didn’t want to accept his death; hence the rumors of the “fake” death, etc.
Add to this the wonderful world of tabloid journalism and you can see how a “cult of Elvis” formed and might well carry into the future. Imagine what things might be like in 2079, with a fully established Cult of Elvis, complete with mythology, etc, long after the real events are gone and forgotten.
Is it so hard to believe a similar thing happened in Palestine some 1970 years ago?
Yeah, he also walks through walls, eats some fish, and disappears again. Doesn’t it seem odd that the Lord of the Universe, having just Conquered Death and Satan, stops by to perform parlor tricks for his old buds before going up to heaven?
Actually, these stories are a result of a debate in the early church - was the resurrection a bodily resurrection or a spiritual one? The Greeks believed in an immortal soul, so a spiritual resurrection was more understandable to them. But Christian theory was based on the Pharisees’ belief in a bodily resurrection - considered ridiculous by the Greeks because everyone knew that bodies decayed very quickly. (Sorry, Opus1, I don’t buy the idea that the early belief was in a spiritual resurrection - Paul insists on a bodily res., though he later compromises on a new “spiritual body”, whatever that means. Anyway, if we get a new body at resurrection, why was there an empty tomb? Jesus shouldn’t have had any need for his old body.) So Luke inserts the story about Jesus eating fish - to “prove” he had a physical body. (Luke 24:41-42)
Most scholars seem to think that Jesus’s appearance on the road to Emmaus, where the disciples at first don’t recognize him, is another story written with a theological motive (Luke 24:13-32). But to me, this is the most believable of the resurrection appearances. The travelling disciples meet some wandering rabbi, who they tell about Jesus and who proceeds to demonstrate his scriptural expertise by explaining it all with Old Testament quotes. This was a favorite pastime of first-century rabbis - check out Philo. Later on, the disciples are talking about this guy and say “D’oh! It was Jesus, and we didn’t recognize him!”
Hey, it could have happened.
I have a penis, but I’m still flattered.
Don’t forget the honeycomb. Also, before eating, Jesus had them touch him to prove that he was flesh and bone. (Luke 24:39) Then, in John 20:27, there’s the spectacle of Thomas literally putting his fingers into Jesus’ spear wound.
BTW, in John 20:17, Jesus specifically warns Mary Magdalane NOT to touch Him before He ascends into Heaven. Was He afraid that Mary’s touch would prevent Him from ascending?
I’ve been looking at http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com and the list of contradictions just in the Resurrection story are so many, it’s difficult to take seriously anyone who claims the Bible has no contradictions.
They’re discussing “Death & Resurrection” over at The Pizza Parlor. NYCNative was known as Satan here.
FriendRob:
Actually, it is Paul’s letters which make me think that Jesus’ original resurrection appearances were considered spiritual. In 1st Corinthians, he lists all of Jesus’ appearances, and includes himself in the list. But when we read the description of Paul’s vision in Galatians and Acts, it’s clear that this is not a bodily resurrection of Jesus that Paul is seeing. It’s more like a divine light. But Paul lists himself right in there with Jesus’ other appearances, apparently making no distinction between his “vision” and those of the disciples. So I’m tempted to think that Jesus’ original appearances were “bodilyized” much later on, to counter gnostic heresies.
But you’re right that Paul is less than clear on the subject. Other parts of his letters may indeed support the notion of the bodily resurrection.
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Mark 15:44 notes that Pilate was surprised at Jesus dying so soon. That suggests that his soldiers removed Jesus from the cross earlier than was considered typical at the time. Perhaps the Roman Army was thinly spread during passover, a politically volatile time of year in the region. Or maybe the soldiers just wanted to knock off early.
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At any rate, it’s unclear to me why we should place trust in the medical skills of G.I. Joesephus. There’s a reason why we don’t let cops declare somebody dead and why we leave the job to specialists (i.e. coroners).
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Hi Opal!
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Dr. Jan Bondeson in his book Buried Alive notes that physicians didn’t gain definitive knowledge of the signs of death until the twentieth century. Even in the 1800s, many doctors were incompetent at diagnosing death and not afraid to admit it.
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Indeed, the ancients were aware that their methods of identifying death were fallible (same source as above).
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So under this scenario, Jesus cheats death and bests the Roman military state, though his heart did not stop on the cross. Sounds sufficiently miraculous to me.
Salon’s Review for Buried Alive which is where I acquired the above information on forensic knowledge over the ages. (No references to Jesus though).
Okay, I guess it’s possible he was still alive when he was buried. So who moved the stone? I don’t think he could have managed it.
I recommend an article from the online version of an episode of the PBS series Frontline, “From Jesus to Christ.” The article is entitled “Jesus and Jehohanan: An Archaeological Note on Cruxifixion.” It explains that the Romans knew how to prolong or cut short a person’s time on a cross, and that they had to make sure Jesus was dead before sundown in order to avoid violating the Sabbath.