I believe the whole NT account, including the bodily Resurrection, but I will take a revisionist stab at that one… I think the Tomb Guard was at least on the last night comprised of the Temple Guard. Caiaphas & Co. asked Pilate for a Roman guard. Pilate’s “You have a guard” probably was a “You already have one. Use your own” rather than “Here- have some Roman troops”. Thus, the priestly enemies of Jesus were the ones to whom the guard was accountable, not Pilate.
There were several people who supposedly rose from the dead,in Pagan religions as well. Although the claim for Jesus ressurection were spread by some writers I wonder why non of the dead that was seen walking around on Easter morning,didn’t get more press than they did. I wonder if they had to die again and why.
I find it also strange that Mary who knew Jesus well didn’t recognize Him, nor His other followers, until he was said to break bread with them!
Ahhhh! Insufficient evidence! The cornerstone of all religion. Where would we be without it! 
My guess: Utopia.
Nope. The gospels were all written within a few decades of his death, and the belief in resurrection can be traced to well before then. The creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, for example, is almost unanimously affirmed (even by skeptical scholars) to pre-date the writings of Paul, and is generally dated to within 5-7 years after his death. (A few scholars do argue against it being an early creed, but they’re decidedly in the minority.)
In point of fact, a survey of published papers in English, German, and France (as well as writings from a few other countries) shows that even critical scholars almost unanimously affirm that the early believers genuinely believed to have encountered the risen Jesus. Again, this is a survey of critical scholars, not necessarily believers; German scholarship, for example, is tremendously skeptical of the resurrection itself. Nevertheless, the disciples’ belief that they had encountered the risen Jesus is one of the tenets that are almost unanimously accepted by relevant scholars, even those who are hostile to traditional Christianity.
So no, this belief did not emerge centuries later. That’s one of those rumors that tend to get propagated in Internet chat rooms and around the office water cooler. It’s not what scholars actually claim, though.
You might enjoy reading The Passover Plot. Hugh Schonfield concluded Jesus meant his promised return to be a literal one, that he faked his death on the cross and was spirited away from the tomb to recuperate.
See Post #8.
It’s believed (based primarily on the letters of Paul) that the earliest followers claimed to have seen Jesus “appear” to them in some form, but not that they necessarily claimed he had been physically resurrected.
You are right that the physical resurrection belief accrued fairly early (within the first century), and not hundreds of years later, but it can’t be traced before the synoptic Gospels, or shown that either Paul or the originalk disciples ever claimed it.
All scholarship is critical, by the way, or it wouldn’t be scholarship. “Critical” scholarship doesn’t mean attacking or “hostile,” it means that it uses unbiased, scentific methodology. Most critical Biblical scholars are believers.
The Passover Plot was a popular book, but modern scholars almost unanimously reject the scenario that it paints. His scenario might arguably explain how someone could survive crucifixion, but it fails to plausibly explain the widespread belief among the disciples that they had met the risen Christ. His approach also requires arbitrarily dismissing problematic details of the resurrection accounts without any explanation for why they should be dismissed.
That’s why modern scholars – even skeptical ones – don’t embrace his viewpoint. Instead, they typically suggest that the disciples had been subject to mass visions or hallucinations. I don’t consider those explanations to be plausible either, but that’s ultimately another story. The bottom line is that among knowledgeable scholars, even those who do not accept the Resurrection are not inclined to accept the Passover Plot scenario.
I can confirm that The Passover Plot is not taken seriously by scholars. My college Religion profs laughed out loud at it when I mentioned it to them. One of them (a skeptical, former priest who assigned John Crossan as required reading) said flat out it was “fiction” and told me to throw it in the garbage (not that I had ever taken it seriously in the first place, I referenced it as a joke).
It’s not true that scholars “typically” posit mass hallucinations, though. They posit possible visionary experiences by one or a few, but there is no reason to believe they ever claimed to have seen him physically walking around, so no reason to explain it. Paul never makes that claim.
To say that there is “no reason to believe they ever claimed to have seen him physically walking around” is ultimately a circular argument. Modern scholars, including skeptical ones, overwhelmingly agree that the disciples genuinely believed that they had encountered the risen Jesus. How to explain this belief is another matter altogether. Those who are unprepared or unwilling to believe that he rose from the dead must postulate the aforementioned visions or hallucinations.
Just one or two? Hardly. The early creedal evidence attests that the appearances were believed to have happened on multiple occasions, to multiple individuals. It would otherwise be difficult to explain how the disciples were willing to preach and plant churches, even though this meant likely torture and death. (Indeed, we have independent attestation that some of them were indeed martyred, such as Peter and Paul.) In addition, you have the conversions of at least two prominent skeptics, Peter and James, the brother of Jesus. While such accounts do not directly state “They converted because they saw the Jesus walking around!”, they remain dramatic events that must somehow be explained, especially since Christian leaders were being put to death during those times.
Whether Paul claimed to have personally encountered the physically risen Jesus depends on how one chooses to interpret 1 Corinthians 15:7 (from a book that is almost universally accepted to be one of his works). Ultimately though, this is a side issue. He certainly claimed to have had some sort of encounter, despite being a skeptic, at the same time that others were claiming to have met the resurrected Messiah. A historian’s task is to explain these matters somehow, which is why they typically posit multiple congruent visions, multiple congruent hallucinations, or a genuinely risen Jesus.
No, it’s stament of fact. No such claim exists, creedal or otherwise, until the Gospel of Matthew. Before then, it’s just claims of “appearances,” which are not specified as physical, and which Paul does not differentiate from his own visionary experiences.
There is zero evidence that the early disciples preached a physical resurrection and zero evidence that they were martyred (those claims come from later Christian church lore. They’re not even in the Bible. We don’t know what they believed or claimed because we have no surviving testimony (if any existed at all).
Your asserted “conversions” of Peter and James are dismissable out of hand because those claims are made in the Gopels, and you can’t use the Gospels to prove themselves (speaking of circular arguments).
Paul says only that Jesus “appeared” to people, not that he walked out of a tomb. It’s not necessary for more than one or two people to have claimed to have “seen” Jesus in order for the meme to spread and for others to start making similar claims.
A “genuinely risen Jesus” is not an historical possibility, by the way, and needs not (and IS not) considered at all by critical historians.
That is incorrect. The creedal material in 1 Corinthians 15 clearly states that he was risen, after which he made multiple appearances. The clear implication is that these appearances were physical; otherwise, there would be no point in stating that he has risen.
Again, untrue. To cite just a few examples, Josephus records the martyrdom of James, who most certainly was an early leader in the church. As for Peter and Paul, their martyrdom is generally accepted by historians. It’s true that no contemporaneous accounts survive, that is hardly unusual for those ancient times, prior to the advent of mass media.
Moreover, if you had read my post carefully, you would have noted that I did not claim that the disciples had definitely be martyred. Rather, I pointed out that they were preaching and planting churches even though this meant likely torture and execution. In other words, whether they were actually killed nor not is ultimately irrelevant, for they were willing to risk torture and death for the sake of their cause.
Your claim that there is “zero evidence” is a gross exaggeration, to say the least.
Also untrue. First of all, I was referring to Paul, not Peter. Second, neither account occurs in the gospels. And third, I was not attempting to prove the inerrancy of any of the gospels; rather, I was merely pointing out that the conversions of Peter and James are well accepted, even by skeptical historians, and that these conversions merit some manner of explanation. In point of fact, Paul is never even mentioned in the gospels, and James is only mentioned as being a skeptical brother of Jesus.
And so forth, and so on go your claims. As usual, Diogenes, you are pulling “facts” out of thin air in order to support your own presuppositions. I’ve learned to expect this by now, whenever topics like this come up.
It does not say he had risen physically, and Paul denies that physical resurrections are possible in that same book.
No such implication exists, especially since Paul says that physical resurrections are impossible, and that people only rise in “spiritual” bodies.
Even accepting the passage as authentic, Josephus does not say why James was killed or what he believed. It cabnnot be cited as evidence that James was “martyred” for anything he preached about Jesus because Josephus doesn’t say anything other than that he was killed.
They generally take an agnostic attitude about it (it’s possible, but not proven), but there isn’t any actual historical evidence for it.
We do not have any reason to believe they were risking torture and execution. There is no historical evidence of this.
It’s not an exaggeration,. it’s true. There is ZERO evidence that the original disciples ever claimed to have witnessed or believed in a physically resurrected Jesus, or ever preached such a belief to others. Paul never makes such a claim either, does not mention an empty tomb, says that physical resurrections are impossible and makes no distinctiuon between Jesus’ “appearances” to the disciples and to his own visions.
Paul makes no such claims. Paul says only that Jesus 'appeared" to Peter, then James. He does not say the appearances were physical.
I assumed you were talking about the appearance narratives in the Gospels since Paul does not claim the disciples saw a physically risen Jesus.
Their “conversions” (which I don’t think is the correct word for a cult they founded themselves) are not alleged by Paul to have been based on a belief in a physical resurrection (which paul says is impossible), but only upon seeing “appearances,” which Paul does not distinguish from his own visions, and gives us no reason to infer anything physical.
I don’t have any presuppositions. I’m stating demonstable, provable fact in every regard.
If I remember correctly, there is a place in the New Testament where Jesus eats with the Apostles, and states that he is not a spirit! Also he had Thomas put his fingers in His wounds to show it was him.
This of course was written after the fact, like so much of the Bible, to try to prove a point, and doesn’t need to be factual to someone who is trying to make converts.
I heard somewhere that they were eating broad flat mushroom caps that (a) look rather like pita bread, and (b) can induce euphoria and suggestibility and even hallucinations; grind 'em up and you get a fine powder that can turn water into something that (a) starts off kinda like wine, and (b) as the dosage increases, gets similar results. Under the guidance of a psychotherapist-slash-authority-figure-slash-hypnotist, either can bring on a relaxed trance state conducive to having psychosomatic symptoms get forgiven away; in his absence, dosing yourself with both in some kind of sacramental wine-and-bread ritual while like-minded believers around you all do the same can bring on whatever experience you deeply crave.
I just wanted to add that even supposing it was true, we have no reason to believe that recanting the beliefs would have prevented the torture/death. Nor do we have reason to believe that even if they recanted that their fellow believers would have cared. I remember reading about Sabbatai Zevi, who recanted and converted and his followers simply rolled with the punches (from here):
“Sabbatai’s conversion was devastating for his followers. Muslims and Christians criticized his followers after the event. In spite of Sabbatai’s apostasy, many of his adherents still tenaciously clung to him, claiming that his conversion was a part of the Messianic scheme. False prophets such as Ghazzati and Primo, who were interested in maintaining the movement, encouraged such belief. In many communities, the Seventeenth of Tammuz and the Ninth of Av were still observed as feast-days in spite of bans and excommunications by the rabbis.”
Your office definitely has more interesting water coolers than mine does.
Okay, so if we know this, then didn’t the authors of the Gospels know this, too? Wouldn’t potential converts know it? Fifty years later, they would still be living under Roman rule, so when they were composing the narrative it seems like they wouldn’t a plot hole like that in.
Say that there was a woman who weeped in front of Jesus’ body as he hung on the crucifix and left flowers at the base. Years later, this woman talks about how she had wept and given offerings as an impromptu ceremony for him. The person who hears her say this isn’t paying attention and simply hears that she mourned and gave offerings, like one would do at a proper burial. That person later goes to write the story of Jesus’ life, and remembers being told that Jesus’ had a burial ceremony. Of course, the instant he remembers that, he also realizes that this doesn’t make sense since Jesus was crucified and would have hung there until his corpse rotted off.
If this was a historian writing the document, he’d go back out to do some research to find out what the real answer is or he’d simply write, “actual outcome of Jesus’ body unknown.” But we aren’t dealing with historians. We’re dealing with people who likely had no way of attaining an answer to the question, knew that, who wanted to include more events that were possible than fewer, and who were happy to make up filler material to patch those events together.
That Jesus was buried adds an element to the history. There seemed to have been one person who said it happened (possibly), so add it.
How did he get down off the cross and into a proper grave? No idea, so let’s say that someone famous asked Pilate for special dispensation to take him down. We make up a fictional person from a fictional town, explain that he’s rich and famous and that Pilate would naturally do whatever he says, and bam, problem solved.
Ultimately, the exact progression of events that leads up to the creation of Joseph of Arimathea is unknowable, but he is the answer to your question. At some point, someone added in a kludge which explains how Jesus ended up in a grave. Given the unbelievability of the story and the non-existence of Arimathea, it seems likely that it is just a fiction though. Jesus most likely rotted on the cross.
Sure they knew it, which was why Mark had to contrive the “Joseph of Arimathea” gag (possibly taken from a story told by Josephus) as a means to get his hero into an honourable tomb. Sage Rat is right that no such place as Aramathea even existed. The name means “Best Disciple Town” in Greek. It’s made up, but making up someone who was both rich and a member of the Sanhedrin serves to fill a hole in the story for an audience that didn’t care about journalsitic integrity anyway.
It should be mentioned again that Paul does not mention this tomb, nor does he mention Joseph of Arimatheia.