On the Missing Corpse of Jesus

[JoeyKnothead]

Some'll say Jesus hopped up and left that cave there, after he was dead.

Others'll say the missing corpse of Jesus can be better explained by the actions of the living.

For debate:
Which explanation is best? Why?

[Starboard Tack]

[quote="Starboard Tack"

By the way, Christ didn't die to "save all of mankind forever", just those who want to be saved. Remarkably, there will be some who opt out, and from my understanding of free will, all of them will be 'adults.'

It's apparent that all you are doing here is evangelizing. You believe and that is fine, I am not attempting to convince you of anything, but matters of debate are not about beliefs and what happens to those that don't believe as you do, so maybe you should take your evangelizing elsewhere.

I'm not sure if you noticed or not, but this site is labeled "Debating Christianity." That would imply that there is a debate to be had regarding theology. Your approach to this debate is to state that Jesus never said anything worth noting, and that only children would believe in God. You also seem to confuse my observation of the implications of the Christian debate to evangelizing. If God exists, and if Jesus Christ is, as he said, the way to eternal life, then it follows that an angry rejection of that may have consequences to one's eternal status. If you don't want to hear that argument, then why on earth are you posting on a "Debating Christianity" web site? Surely there must be a web site for people who don't want to debate these subjects but just listen to each other's reasons for why Christians are fools? Want me to find one for you?

[Goat]

Dubious reasoning, and false assertions. When you say "there is nothing at all to connect the Gospel to the apostle" you are at odds with a great many scholars. A decent summary of the evidence for is found at http://bible.org/seriespage/authorship-1-john, which has a long citation list that puts the lie to your assertion that this issue is somehow settled to support your desired outcome.
[

Let's quote from your link.

It should be noted that the problem of determining the author of 1 John is a somewhat different one from the determination of the authorship of 2 and 3 John, because in the case of 1 John the letter is anonymous – no author is specified within the work itself. The only other New Testament letter which makes no reference to the author’s name is the Epistle to the Hebrews

Yep..I would say that your link essentially supports his claim.

[Tired of the Nonsense]

Tired of the Nonsense Wrote:
You believe that a corpse became reanimated and flew away, and that hoards of dead people returned to life, came up out of their graves and wandered the streets of Jerusalem. You seem to have a very uncertain definition of "absurd?"

Starboard Tack wrote:
Your belief or disbelief has no bearing on whether the account is true or not.

This is true for both of our positions of course. And yet how do we evaluate the truth of any claim, to separate those which are valid from those which are absurd? We routinely compare all claims to common experience, do we not? I have suggested that the best explanation for a missing corpse is that some living human agent moved it. You consider such a possibility to be one of the "absurd lengths critics seem to have to go to come up with alternatives to what is described in the New Testament." Your version of events not only has the missing corpse returning to life and leaving under it's own power, but eventually flying away. Your particular usage of the term absurd seems to be totally at odds with the accepted usage of the word.

ab·surd [ab-surd, -zurd] adjective
1. utterly or obviously senseless, illogical, or untrue; contrary to all reason or common sense; laughably foolish or false: an absurd explanation.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/absurd

I submit to you that the story of a flying reanimated corpse is contrary to all reason or common sense, laughably and foolishly so. It really is, you know! But is it true? Well, some sort of supporting evidence considerably stronger than your most sincere personal desire for it to be true is going to be needed to overcome the absurd nature of such a claim. At this point it is clear that you have no such supporting evidence.

If your a priori faith assumption says that God does not exist, then miracles cannot exist, then dead people can't be resurrected. However, and again, your belief or disbelief of God has no impact on the reality of his existence, although it will likely have a significant impact on your life.

Whether I believe in the existence of God or not has no bearing on whether you possess overwhelming supporting evidence that your absurd claim occurred in this particular instance.

However, and again, your belief or disbelief of God has no impact on the reality of his existence, although it will likely have a significant impact on your life.

If it will "have a significant impact on (my) life" in the same way that Jesus is supposed to come back at almost any second now, then I guess I will refrain from holding my breath.

Tired of the Nonsense wrote:
Joseph of Arimathea, who was a secret disciple of Jesus, along with Nicodemus, another disciple, took possession of the body of Jesus on Friday afternoon. They took the body to the new rock tomb of Joseph to prepare it as a matter of convenience, because the tomb happened to be close at hand to the place where Jesus was executed (John 20:42). Sometime the next day the priests went out and took possession of Joseph's tomb, which was covered by a large stone which the priests sealed with their official seals. Early Sunday morning the tomb was discovered to be empty. It requires no great leap of deduction to see that the tomb was already empty when the priests took possession of it. It is in fact the obvious answer. No supernatural explanation is required.

Starboard Tack wrote:
This falls under the "Biblical Grassy Knoll" school of interpretation of Scripture, based on an idiosyncratic view of the facts.

This falls under information gleaned directly from the Gospels themselves.

And the witnesses to the resurrected Jesus were seeing what, exactly. Oh right, no witnesses and those that claim to be witnesses were lying, confused, delusional. Unlike you.

Stories of witnesses are not the same thing as witnesses. There was no generally outcry from all of the "hundreds perhaps thousands" of witnesses that you claim existed at the time the event was supposed to have occurred, and no mention at all of any such an event for a quarter of a century or so. No eyewitness claims at the time to support the story of an absurd event; what does that normally add up to? And don't I have every RIGHT to be skeptical of such a story? But I do acknowledge that there probably were individuals spreading the rumor of the resurrection within six weeks or so of the execution of Jesus. Just as the chief priests predicted they would.

[Starboard Tack]

Dubious reasoning, and false assertions. When you say "there is nothing at all to connect the Gospel to the apostle" you are at odds with a great many scholars. A decent summary of the evidence for is found at http://bible.org/seriespage/authorship-1-john, which has a long citation list that puts the lie to your assertion that this issue is somehow settled to support your desired outcome.
[

Let's quote from your link.

It should be noted that the problem of determining the author of 1 John is a somewhat different one from the determination of the authorship of 2 and 3 John, because in the case of 1 John the letter is anonymous – no author is specified within the work itself. The only other New Testament letter which makes no reference to the author’s name is the Epistle to the Hebrews

Yep..I would say that your link essentially supports his claim.

Well, I guess that would be true, if you are unable to actually read what is written, or understand it. But since I assume Tired is able to do that, he doesn't need clarification, but apparently you do. So to help you avoid actually reading what your are referencing, here is the conclusion:

In response to all of the above suggestions we may refer to the historical and internal evidence cited above which points to John the Apostle as the author of 1, 2, and 3 John (as well as the Fourth Gospel, although this is something of a separate issue). We refer to the statement regarding the three epistles and the Gospel of John by B. H. Streeter, with which we agree:

We are forced to conclude that all four documents are by the same hand. And few people, I would add, with any feeling for literary style or for the finer nuance of character and feeling, would hesitate to affirm this, but for the implications which seem to be involved.

Let me know if you need any more help with the text.

[Goat]

Dubious reasoning, and false assertions. When you say "there is nothing at all to connect the Gospel to the apostle" you are at odds with a great many scholars. A decent summary of the evidence for is found at http://bible.org/seriespage/authorship-1-john, which has a long citation list that puts the lie to your assertion that this issue is somehow settled to support your desired outcome.
[

Let's quote from your link.

It should be noted that the problem of determining the author of 1 John is a somewhat different one from the determination of the authorship of 2 and 3 John, because in the case of 1 John the letter is anonymous – no author is specified within the work itself. The only other New Testament letter which makes no reference to the author’s name is the Epistle to the Hebrews

Yep..I would say that your link essentially supports his claim.

Well, I guess that would be true, if you are unable to actually read what is written, or understand it. But since I assume Tired is able to do that, he doesn't need clarification, but apparently you do. So to help you avoid actually reading what your are referencing, here is the conclusion:

In response to all of the above suggestions we may refer to the historical and internal evidence cited above which points to John the Apostle as the author of 1, 2, and 3 John (as well as the Fourth Gospel, although this is something of a separate issue). We refer to the statement regarding the three epistles and the Gospel of John by B. H. Streeter, with which we agree:

We are forced to conclude that all four documents are by the same hand. And few people, I would add, with any feeling for literary style or for the finer nuance of character and feeling, would hesitate to affirm this, but for the implications which seem to be involved.

Let me know if you need any more help with the text.

Yet, they admit, they can't honetly do that.

How nice.

L:et's look at what 'www.earlychristianwritings.com has as a resource for 1st John

The relationship of 1 John to the fourth gospel has been the subject of much scholarly debate. Kummel argues that the gospel and the letter are from the same author (Introduction to the New Testament, pp. 442-5). Norman Perrin presents a solution that connects the redactor of John with the author of the letter (The New Testament: An Introduction, pp. 222-3):

Are the gospel and letters from the same author? They have a unity of general style, tone, and thought that seems to indicate they are, especially in the case of the letters and the discourses in the gospel. But a closer examination reveals a poverty of style in the first letter compared to the gospel - "the author works to death a few favorite constructions, and his vocabulary is more limited than that of the gospel" - and some real differences in thought. The latter aspect of the matter is particularly important since these differences concern eschatology and the sacraments. The author of the letter has a strong hope for the future, a version of the traditional Christian hope for the parousia (2:17, 18, 28; 3:2, 3; 4:17), and he has a great interest in the sacraments of the church (2:12, 20, 27; 3:9; 5:1, 6). In the gospel of John the main thrust is toward the denail of the hope of the parousia, on the grounds that the first coming of Jesus was the decisive event and no further coming, no further judgment, is to be expected (3:16-21, 36, and elsewhere). But throughout the gospel are individual sayings that express the more traditional Christian hope (5:27-29; 6:39-40; 44b, 54; 12:48). Similarly with the sacraments: the gospel as a whole puts its major emphasis on the idea that men are brought to faith by their response to the church's proclamation (3:31-36 and elsewhere), and has no particular concern for the sacraments. Yet the words "water and" in 3:5 make that verse an unmistakable reference to baptism, where no such reference exists apart from those two words; 6:51b-58 makes the discourse on the bread of life sacramental, whereas without those verses it is not; and 19:34b-35 introduces an allusion to baptism as it interrupts the continuity of the narrative.

These indications suggest that the gospel has been redacted from an original text with no future parousia hope or concern for the sacraments, and that such a hope and concern were introduced into the gospel by the author of the first letter. If this is the case (and it is all very tentative), the main text of the gospel is by one author and the first letter by another. Are either of these authors the "presbyter" who wrote the second and third letters? There are similarities of language and thought, yet there are small subtle differences. We simply do not know; the most we can say is that probably at least two authors are involved in the gospels and letters of John, and perhaps three. What is important is that the similarities of style, tone, and thought point to the existence of a Johannine "school." Whether the final form of these texts is the work of one author, or two, or three, their ideas, theology, contents, tone, and style have taken shape not in the mind of one man, but in a group, probably formed of one strong leader and a few intimate followers.

And, Raymond Brown said

Raymond Brown states (An Introduction to the New Testament, pp. 389-390):

Most scholars think the Johannine Epistles were written after the Gospel. More precisely, I would place I and II John in the decade after the body of the Gospel was written by the evangelist (ca. 90) but before the redaction of the Gospel (which may have been contemporaneous with III John, just after 100). What particularly differentiates I and II John from the Gospel is the change of focus. "The Jews" who are the chief adversaries in the Gospel are absent; and all attention is on deceivers who have seceded from the community, and by so doing have shown a lack of love for their former brothers and sisters.
[/quote]

[Starboard Tack]

Tired of the Nonsense Wrote:
You believe that a corpse became reanimated and flew away, and that hoards of dead people returned to life, came up out of their graves and wandered the streets of Jerusalem. You seem to have a very uncertain definition of "absurd?"

Starboard Tack wrote:
Your belief or disbelief has no bearing on whether the account is true or not.

This is true for both of our positions of course. And yet how do we evaluate the truth of any claim, to separate those which are valid from those which are absurd? We routinely compare all claims to common experience, do we not? I have suggested that the best explanation for a missing corpse is that some living human agent moved it. You consider such a possibility to be one of the "absurd lengths critics seem to have to go to come up with alternatives to what is described in the New Testament." Your version of events not only has the missing corpse returning to life and leaving under it's own power, but eventually flying away. Your particular usage of the term absurd seems to be totally at odds with the accepted usage of the word.

ab·surd [ab-surd, -zurd] adjective
1. utterly or obviously senseless, illogical, or untrue; contrary to all reason or common sense; laughably foolish or false: an absurd explanation.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/absurd

I submit to you that the story of a flying reanimated corpse is contrary to all reason or common sense, laughably and foolishly so. It really is, you know! But is it true? Well, some sort of supporting evidence considerably stronger than your most sincere personal desire for it to be true is going to be needed to overcome the absurd nature of such a claim. At this point it is clear that you have no such supporting evidence.

If your a priori faith assumption says that God does not exist, then miracles cannot exist, then dead people can't be resurrected. However, and again, your belief or disbelief of God has no impact on the reality of his existence, although it will likely have a significant impact on your life.

Whether I believe in the existence of God or not has no bearing on whether you possess overwhelming supporting evidence that your absurd claim occurred in this particular instance.

However, and again, your belief or disbelief of God has no impact on the reality of his existence, although it will likely have a significant impact on your life.

If it will "have a significant impact on (my) life" in the same way that Jesus is supposed to come back at almost any second now, then I guess I will refrain from holding my breath.

Tired of the Nonsense wrote:
Joseph of Arimathea, who was a secret disciple of Jesus, along with Nicodemus, another disciple, took possession of the body of Jesus on Friday afternoon. They took the body to the new rock tomb of Joseph to prepare it as a matter of convenience, because the tomb happened to be close at hand to the place where Jesus was executed (John 20:42). Sometime the next day the priests went out and took possession of Joseph's tomb, which was covered by a large stone which the priests sealed with their official seals. Early Sunday morning the tomb was discovered to be empty. It requires no great leap of deduction to see that the tomb was already empty when the priests took possession of it. It is in fact the obvious answer. No supernatural explanation is required.

Starboard Tack wrote:
This falls under the "Biblical Grassy Knoll" school of interpretation of Scripture, based on an idiosyncratic view of the facts.

This falls under information gleaned directly from the Gospels themselves.

And the witnesses to the resurrected Jesus were seeing what, exactly. Oh right, no witnesses and those that claim to be witnesses were lying, confused, delusional. Unlike you.

Stories of witnesses are not the same thing as witnesses. There was no generally outcry from all of the "hundreds perhaps thousands" of witnesses that you claim existed at the time the event was supposed to have occurred, and no mention at all of any such an event for a quarter of a century or so. No eyewitness claims at the time to support the story of an absurd event; what does that normally add up to? And don't I have every RIGHT to be skeptical of such a story? But I do acknowledge that there probably were individuals spreading the rumor of the resurrection within six weeks or so of the execution of Jesus. Just as the chief priests predicted they would.

Your entire case is based on a disbelief in God. If no God, no miracles. If God, then miracles. If miracles, then the resurrection. To paraphrase someone or other (can't remember who), the God that can speak the universe into existence will have no problem with the odd resurrection. It is the disbelief in God that powers your entire view on these matters, and as such, is a statement of faith which you characterize as a position of reason. This is simply false, since reason has nothing to do with it, otherwise you wouldn't be inventing conspiracy theories to buttress a weak argument.

The issue is much as you state it. This is a historical question. Either the resurrection occurred, or it did not. It could have occurred, but not be verifiable through the usual historical analytic process. Or it may not have occurred, and the evidence for it not occurring could be indicated by the usual historic analytic process. However, this is not our situation. What we have is historic evidence that supports the resurrection as the best explanation of what was observed. We have individual and separate attestation, we have accounts as nearly contemporaneous with the events as one could expect, we have behaviors from people indicating their belief in the truth of what they attested to, we have the behavior of people who were opposed to the idea of Jesus' divinity suddenly converting after his resurrection (James and Paul) and we have plausible and consistent accounts of events from people with no motivation to lie.

Notwithstanding false assertions of "scholarhsip" to the contrary, there is a predominance of opinion that the conspiricy theory you have espoused is unsupported by any evidence, and frankly dismissed as the purview of cranks.

Incidentally, your continued reference to "flying corpses" is offensive, is a statement of theology that is dark, indeed, and an indication that you are not a serious person. Is that really how you want to make your case?

[Tired of the Nonsense]

In response to all of the above suggestions we may refer to the historical and internal evidence cited above which points to John the Apostle as the author of 1, 2, and 3 John (as well as the Fourth Gospel, although this is something of a separate issue). We refer to the statement regarding the three epistles and the Gospel of John by B. H. Streeter, with which we agree:

We are forced to conclude that all four documents are by the same hand. And few people, I would add, with any feeling for literary style or for the finer nuance of character and feeling, would hesitate to affirm this, but for the implications which seem to be involved.

Let me know if you need any more help with the text.

You might do well to actually read some of the material you are trying to desperately to defend. 2 John for example:

2John
[1] "The elder unto the elect lady and her children, whom I love in the truth; and not I only, but also all they that have known the truth;"

And then there is 3 John:

3John
[1] "The elder unto the wellbeloved Gaius, whom I love in the truth."


As you can see, in these instances the author NAMES HIMSELF. The elder or presbyter, just as Papias referred to the author of Gospel John. NOT the apostle or evangelist. Have you noticed how your Sunday School understanding of the Bible and what it is you think you believe has taken a beating over the last few months?

[Starboard Tack]

In response to all of the above suggestions we may refer to the historical and internal evidence cited above which points to John the Apostle as the author of 1, 2, and 3 John (as well as the Fourth Gospel, although this is something of a separate issue). We refer to the statement regarding the three epistles and the Gospel of John by B. H. Streeter, with which we agree:

We are forced to conclude that all four documents are by the same hand. And few people, I would add, with any feeling for literary style or for the finer nuance of character and feeling, would hesitate to affirm this, but for the implications which seem to be involved.

Let me know if you need any more help with the text.

You might do well to actually read some of the material you are trying to desperately to defend. 2 John for example:

2John
[1] "The elder unto the elect lady and her children, whom I love in the truth; and not I only, but also all they that have known the truth;"

And then there is 3 John:

3John
[1] "The elder unto the wellbeloved Gaius, whom I love in the truth."


As you can see, in these instances the author NAMES HIMSELF. The elder or presbyter, just as Papias referred to the author of Gospel John. NOT the apostle or evangelist. Have you noticed how your Sunday School understanding of the Bible and what it is you think you believe has taken a beating over the last few months?

Read the entire piece and the conclusion. Perhaps then comment. Or not, since it contradicts your cherry picking.

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

Peter and the other apostles, Paul, and James are named. Sorry, but the others appear to not have left affadvits, notarised or otherwise.

Can you quote these eyewitness accounts so that we can see them here?

I am referring to 1 Cor 15. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_Corinthians_15

I see, thank you.

How would it have been obvious? You live in Greece. You get a letter from Paul mentioning 500 eyewitnesses. How exactly are you going to go about confirming this? You aren't going to undertake a huge journey just to question unnamed witnesses to an event that occurred at some unknown time and place. It wouldn't have been obvious that there weren't 500 witnesses, quite the opposite, his audience would have no way of confirming or denying that there were 500 eyewitnesses. Like us, they just had to take his word for it.

One would think that a claim that a man rose from the dead might have stimulated such enquiry, but as I said, some of the best proof for the resurrection are the silly arguments offered up in rebuttal.

Is this intended to be a counterargument?

Well that's an easy one to answer if we don't commit to traditional authorship. They didn't make themselves bad, they are used as a literary device by the author.

Yes, the liberal, and minority position is that the Gospels were written by someone other than the authors they have been attributed to for 2 millenia and who were given credit for having been the authors by virtually all ancient scholars writing close enough to the period to have known the difference.

This is not true, and also a fallacious appeal to tradition. It is not a minority position.

Some modern scholars consider the traditional authorship account to be essentially credible,[5] while others doubt it.[6]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Mark

Papias does not identify his Matthew, but by the end of the 2nd century the tradition of Matthew the tax-collector had become widely accepted, and the line "The Gospel According to Matthew" began to be added to manuscripts.[6] For many reasons most scholars today doubt this—for example, the gospel is based on Mark, and "it seems unlikely that an eyewitness of Jesus's ministry, such as Matthew, would need to rely on others for information about it"[7]—and believe instead that it was written between about 80–90 AD by a highly educated Jew (an "Israelite", in the language of the gospel itself), intimately familiar with the technical aspects of Jewish law, standing on the boundary between traditional and non-traditional Jewish values.[1] The disciple Matthew was probably honoured within the author's circle, as the name Matthew is more prominent in this gospel than any other,[8] and it is possible that some of the "M" material may have originated with Matthew himself.[9]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_ ... nd_sources

According to the majority view, the evidence against Luke being the author is strong enough that the author is unknown.[50][51][52] The Book of Acts contradicts the letters of Paul on many points, such as Paul's second trip to Jerusalem for an apostolic council.[53][54] Paul placed an emphasis on Jesus' death while the author of Luke instead emphasizes Jesus' suffering, and there are other differences regarding eschatology and the Law.[7] Paul described Luke as “the beloved physician�, leading Hobart to claim in 1882 that the vocabulary used in Luke-Acts suggests its author may have had medical training. However, this assertion was contradicted by an influential study by Cadbury in 1926, and has since been abandoned; instead it is now believed this language reflects merely a common Greek education.[55][56][57][58][59]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Luke#Authorship

Given that these references to apostolic authorship were written during a time when the very early church was trying to sort out core doctrines, if the authorship was later, wouldn't one expect to find versions of the Gospels dating to the period that would support one perspective or another, when these perspectives were in dispute? We don't see that, nor do we see any signs of legendization - just sober history by people who didn't understand what it all meant, but wanted to be as accurate as they could in recording the facts.

We don't see sober history, we see evangelical religious documents. The author of Luke makes this clear enough when he states that he is writing in order to reaffirm the faith of his reader.

I'm not sure what you mean by "different versions of the Gospels", what do you have in mind exactly?

I think you need to recognize that a lot can happen between a resurrection rumor getting started and the stories that get written down about it several decades later.

As noted, the resurrection account was credal as early as 3 to 5 years after the event.

This is not quite true. The "resurrection account" in 1st Corinthians doesn't contain nearly as many elaborate and fantastic elements as would later appear in the gospels. It seems quite a bit of "legendization" may have occurred.

The first accounts of the resurrection were written within 25 years of the event, which is far too short a time for legendization to occur.

Do you have evidence to support this claim?

I have a hard time taking you seriously, Fuzzy. You stated in your response that 1st Corinthians is usually dated as being in the range of 53 to 57 AD.[3][4] . It clearly discusses the resurrection. Pop quiz: What is 55 - 33?

Sorry, you have misunderstood what I was asking evidence for. Can you provide evidence for this: "25 years...is far too short a time for legendization to occur."

Non-believers can make up whatever stories they want to try to discredit the resurrection, but until those stories are more believable than the testimony of eye witnesses in the NT, they will remain unconvincing.

There is no eyewitness testimony to the resurrection in the NT. There is hearsay. This is different.

From http://www.religioustolerance.org/resur_lt.htm:

"There is a near consensus among liberal, and some mainline theologians, that:

The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were not written by Jesus' disciples but by person or persons whose names are unknown.
Neither Paul nor any of the Gospel writers had been an eyewitness to Jesus' ministry, execution, or after-death appearances."

I will grant the above, that liberal "Christians" have near unanimity on the position that the resurrection is a myth and that the Gospels do not contain eye witness accounts. It is the height of arrogance, however, to continue to state as fact something that is held by a minority of those studying the Bible. It is also arrogant to present the opinions of people who cannot be characterized as intellectually honest as of equivalent value to those of more honest character. The basis for this statement is quite simple. Again, from Religious Tolerance, (no conservative think tank, I might add):

"What many liberal theologians believe about Jesus' death:

Many liberal and some mainline Christian leaders believe that Jesus died during the crucifixion, did not resurrect himself, and was not bodily resurrected by God."

Note the word "mainline" Fuzzy? Note that liberal scholars are not included in that group? Hopefully, you will drop the pretense that your views must be taken as fact on the basis that they represent some kind of meaningful consensus. They represent a consensus, but it is a consensus of people who think like you and present confused interpretation as fact. To avoid the obvious label of being called intellectually dishonest, Liberal Christians must explain what the heck they are doing in church, taking communion, bowing and praying? To what are they bowing and praying to? God, or a myth as John Crossan would assert? You either believe that Jesus Christ was resurrected or you don't. If you don't, that's just fine, but pretending that you are engaged in anything other than idolatry when you call yourself a Christian without believing that you are worshipping a divine Christ whose divinity can only be proven by the fact of his resurrection is a very odd state of mind, or a dishonest one. For that reason, when liberal scholars state that 100% of all of the writers of the NT and all of the commentary from early scholars looking into the truths of these claims were in cahoots to trick the gullible, well to me, that is just further evidence of a very jumbled thinking process, not to be taken seriously however seriously they take themselves.

You seriously misunderstand modern biblical scholarship and modern Christianity. Can you really not comprehend that it is possible to deny traditional authorship while accepting that the resurrection occurred? Can you really not see that historical evidence is unimportant to those who have faith in Jesus? Are these concepts really so new and foreign as to be incomprehensible to you? You seem to view anything that does not conform to a rabidly traditional and fundamentalist version of Christianity as "atheism." There is absolutely nothing about the liberal forms of Christianity that requires a disbelief in Jesus or the resurrection. Yes, you might find some who hold more "Christian atheist" beliefs but that is hardly representative.

Also you throw up strawman arguments, once again. Who is claiming that the church fathers were "in cahoots to trick the gullible"? There are plenty of reasons for people to believe things that don't involve malice.

And furthermore, I do not know what point you are trying to make by citing Religious Tolerance. I do not recall ever even bringing up the "near consensus among liberal, and some mainline theologians." I am not talking about theologians and Christian leaders, I am talking about biblical scholars. I do not think that the opinion of theologians is especially relevant when discussing issues of textual and historical analysis.

Finally, appealing to the religious conviction or lack thereof of scholars as a reason for doubting their conclusions is an ad hominem argument.

[Starboard Tack]

Peter and the other apostles, Paul, and James are named. Sorry, but the others appear to not have left affadvits, notarised or otherwise.

Can you quote these eyewitness accounts so that we can see them here?

Consult 1 Peter, Acts, and John.

How would it have been obvious? You live in Greece. You get a letter from Paul mentioning 500 eyewitnesses. How exactly are you going to go about confirming this? You aren't going to undertake a huge journey just to question unnamed witnesses to an event that occurred at some unknown time and place. It wouldn't have been obvious that there weren't 500 witnesses, quite the opposite, his audience would have no way of confirming or denying that there were 500 eyewitnesses. Like us, they just had to take his word for it.

One would think that a claim that a man rose from the dead might have stimulated such enquiry, but as I said, some of the best proof for the resurrection are the silly arguments offered up in rebuttal.

Is this intended to be a counterargument?

Yes, your contention is that no one in Greece could be bothered to ask whether it was true that someone had been raised from the dead after declaring to be God. That presumes that Paul's audience was brain dead, which is not likely, so yes, this is a rebuttal to your contention.

Well that's an easy one to answer if we don't commit to traditional authorship. They didn't make themselves bad, they are used as a literary device by the author.

Yes, the liberal, and minority position is that the Gospels were written by someone other than the authors they have been attributed to for 2 millenia and who were given credit for having been the authors by virtually all ancient scholars writing close enough to the period to have known the difference.

This is not true, and also a fallacious appeal to tradition. It is not a minority position.

Yes, it is. See www.religioustolerance.org. You really must stop saying this, as it is so clearly false.

Given that these references to apostolic authorship were written during a time when the very early church was trying to sort out core doctrines, if the authorship was later, wouldn't one expect to find versions of the Gospels dating to the period that would support one perspective or another, when these perspectives were in dispute? We don't see that, nor do we see any signs of legendization - just sober history by people who didn't understand what it all meant, but wanted to be as accurate as they could in recording the facts.

We don't see sober history, we see evangelical religious documents. The author of Luke makes this clear enough when he states that he is writing in order to reaffirm the faith of his reader.

There is virtually universal acceptance that the Gospels are written in the tradition of biography, a.k.a. history. You are wrong.

I'm not sure what you mean by "different versions of the Gospels", what do you have in mind exactly?

What I mean is that if the Gospels were written very long after the events described, there would be versions that would support one position or another that would help resolve doctrinal questions rampant in the church 100 to 300 years after Christ's resurrection. We don't, just eye witness accounts that support each other, written in the form of historical accounts.

I think you need to recognize that a lot can happen between a resurrection rumor getting started and the stories that get written down about it several decades later.

As noted, the resurrection account was credal as early as 3 to 5 years after the event.

This is not quite true. The "resurrection account" in 1st Corinthians doesn't contain nearly as many elaborate and fantastic elements as would later appear in the gospels. It seems quite a bit of "legendization" may have occurred.

It doesn't matter. What matters is whether the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ was doctrinal from within a few years of Christ's death, and it was.

The first accounts of the resurrection were written within 25 years of the event, which is far too short a time for legendization to occur.

Do you have evidence to support this claim?

I have a hard time taking you seriously, Fuzzy. You stated in your response that 1st Corinthians is usually dated as being in the range of 53 to 57 AD.[3][4] . It clearly discusses the resurrection. Pop quiz: What is 55 - 33?

Sorry, you have misunderstood what I was asking evidence for. Can you provide evidence for this: "25 years...is far too short a time for legendization to occur."

This has been studied, I believe by A.N. Sherwin-White. But the concept is common sensical. Legends can't occur when survivors who can contradict the legend are still alive. A single lifespan is the minimum for this to happen, but it requires a couple of generations for really big legends to gain traction.

Non-believers can make up whatever stories they want to try to discredit the resurrection, but until those stories are more believable than the testimony of eye witnesses in the NT, they will remain unconvincing.

There is no eyewitness testimony to the resurrection in the NT. There is hearsay. This is different.

From http://www.religioustolerance.org/resur_lt.htm:

"There is a near consensus among liberal, and some mainline theologians, that:

The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were not written by Jesus' disciples but by person or persons whose names are unknown.
Neither Paul nor any of the Gospel writers had been an eyewitness to Jesus' ministry, execution, or after-death appearances."

I will grant the above, that liberal "Christians" have near unanimity on the position that the resurrection is a myth and that the Gospels do not contain eye witness accounts. It is the height of arrogance, however, to continue to state as fact something that is held by a minority of those studying the Bible. It is also arrogant to present the opinions of people who cannot be characterized as intellectually honest as of equivalent value to those of more honest character. The basis for this statement is quite simple. Again, from Religious Tolerance, (no conservative think tank, I might add):

"What many liberal theologians believe about Jesus' death:

Many liberal and some mainline Christian leaders believe that Jesus died during the crucifixion, did not resurrect himself, and was not bodily resurrected by God."

Note the word "mainline" Fuzzy? Note that liberal scholars are not included in that group? Hopefully, you will drop the pretense that your views must be taken as fact on the basis that they represent some kind of meaningful consensus. They represent a consensus, but it is a consensus of people who think like you and present confused interpretation as fact. To avoid the obvious label of being called intellectually dishonest, Liberal Christians must explain what the heck they are doing in church, taking communion, bowing and praying? To what are they bowing and praying to? God, or a myth as John Crossan would assert? You either believe that Jesus Christ was resurrected or you don't. If you don't, that's just fine, but pretending that you are engaged in anything other than idolatry when you call yourself a Christian without believing that you are worshipping a divine Christ whose divinity can only be proven by the fact of his resurrection is a very odd state of mind, or a dishonest one. For that reason, when liberal scholars state that 100% of all of the writers of the NT and all of the commentary from early scholars looking into the truths of these claims were in cahoots to trick the gullible, well to me, that is just further evidence of a very jumbled thinking process, not to be taken seriously however seriously they take themselves.

You seriously misunderstand modern biblical scholarship and modern Christianity. Can you really not comprehend that it is possible to deny traditional authorship while accepting that the resurrection occurred? Can you really not see that historical evidence is unimportant to those who have faith in Jesus? Are these concepts really so new and foreign as to be incomprehensible to you? You seem to view anything that does not conform to a rabidly traditional and fundamentalist version of Christianity as "atheism." There is absolutely nothing about the liberal forms of Christianity that requires a disbelief in Jesus or the resurrection. Yes, you might find some who hold more "Christian atheist" beliefs but that is hardly representative.

Proving the historicity of the Gospels is irrelevant to the question of whether Jesus Christ was the son of God, so I agree with you. However, you will note that most liberal Christians who call themselves Christians do not believe in the resurrection, the virgin birth, or the necessary atonement of Christ for 'getting right with God.' I have listened to debates between scholars like D'Souza, Hugh Ross or Bill Craig and Jesus Seminar types like Bart Ehrman, John Crossan or John Spong. While the latter are probably very nice people who obviously think Jesus said some nice things, they most certainly are not Christians since they do not think him divine. Maybe he isn't. The evidence indicates he is, so rationally, I'm going with that. But you are quite right, believing that the Gospels were written by the names on the book jacket is irrelevant to salvation.

Also you throw up strawman arguments, once again. Who is claiming that the church fathers were "in cahoots to trick the gullible"? There are plenty of reasons for people to believe things that don't involve malice.

And furthermore, I do not know what point you are trying to make by citing Religious Tolerance. I do not recall ever even bringing up the "near consensus among liberal, and some mainline theologians."

I think there must be two Fuzzy Dunlops. The one who wrote: "Yes, that's what happens when you agree with the majority of scholars. That's what mainstream means", referring to the basis for his opinions, and the one who wrote "I do not recall ever even bringing up the "near consensus among liberal, and some mainline theologians". You repeatedly assert things on the basis that your assertion agrees with "mainstream" scholarship, just like SlopeShoulder, and just like SlopeShoulder, the facts don't support the premise.

Finally, appealing to the religious conviction or lack thereof of scholars as a reason for doubting their conclusions is an ad hominem argument.

Agreed. That is why I have criticized Slope for doing exactly that.