I think the belief in a risen Jesus is better explained by potential naturalistic explanations than by a potential supernatural one, and you don't even need to argue the Gospels are complete myths to come up with a naturalistic explanation that's more compelling than a miracle case. One example: Joseph of Arimathea ended up moving Jesus' body to a private place during the night, in the hope that it would make things easier for the Messiah to come back to life and fulfill the expectations that he was supposed to meet. When that didn't happen, Jesus' body nevertheless stayed there and was never moved back to the original tomb. Joseph also decided not to let anyone know about this, so when rumors spread that Jesus had risen, he chose not to say anything about it.

Or it may be he decided to lie to the other disciples and have them believe Jesus rose from the dead (he or one of his men could have been the "angel" in the empty tomb when the women came to visit Jesus' body). Perhaps to spark some strong faith-based rebellion against the Romans.

Too many necessary information withheld from us so that one cannot really make any confident case for what triggered the Christ faith, but the point is the case for the Resurrection is just damn weak.

I think the best possible explanation of the Resurrection myth is to recognize that it is really just a cultural sop to older resurrection myths.

Ancient accounts tell of an important figure whose birth would be heralded by a star in the heavens, a god who would later judge the dead. He would be murdered in a betrayal by one close to him, his body hidden away — though not for long, as he would return in a miraculous resurrection to begin an eternal reign in heaven.

His name was Osiris.

Boru

I like to take a more pragmatic aproach. Resurection is impossible. After death and in a few hours, the nervous system, including the brain, begins to decay, it becomes liquified. In portugal we have an adage to say when someone runs into trouble, we say: "calm down bro, only death can't be. solved"

To play the devils advocate, perhaps the character in the myth fell to a deep coma and recovered after 3 days. Or that was just all made up.

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ETA: or like boru said an amalgamation of older myths.

(September 15, 2019 at 6:43 am)LastPoet Wrote: I like to take a more pragmatic aproach. Resurection is impossible. After death and in a few hours, the nervous system, including the brain, begins to decay, it becomes liquified. In portugal we have an adage to say when someone runs into trouble, we say: "calm down bro, only death can't be. solved"

To play the devils advocate, perhaps the character in the myth fell to a deep coma and recovered after 3 days. Or that was just all made up.

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ETA: or like boru said an amalgamation of older myths.

Yeah, I'm going with 'all made up'.  And a hefty dash of plagiarism.

Boru

(September 15, 2019 at 7:03 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:

(September 15, 2019 at 6:43 am)LastPoet Wrote: I like to take a more pragmatic aproach. Resurection is impossible. After death and in a few hours, the nervous system, including the brain, begins to decay, it becomes liquified. In portugal we have an adage to say when someone runs into trouble, we say: "calm down bro, only death can't be. solved"

To play the devils advocate, perhaps the character in the myth fell to a deep coma and recovered after 3 days. Or that was just all made up.

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ETA: or like boru said an amalgamation of older myths.

Yeah, I'm going with 'all made up'.  And a hefty dash of plagiarism.

Boru

The plagiarism bit doesn't seem very plausible to me, if only because I know of no myth prior to the Gospels that contains a resurrection account identical to the one found in the Gospels.

You brought up the example of Osiris, but I'm not sure the story is identical enough to the Jesus story for the plagiarism charge to be plausible. In the Osiris story, if I remember it correctly, the dude was chopped up into pieces (by his brother Seth, I think) and scattered all over the world, and his wife Isis had to then go locate his pieces and bring back Osiris by putting his body pieces back together. Something like that.

Now sure there were sons of gods and resurrections in prior myths, but I don't think plagiarism played a factor here (since the stories weren't remarkably identical). It could just be a common human imagery thing.

The resurrection would probably be best explained in a Marvel comic book. 

Or maybe Mad.

(September 15, 2019 at 6:24 am)Grandizer Wrote: I think the belief in a risen Jesus is better explained by potential naturalistic explanations than by a potential supernatural one, and you don't even need to argue the Gospels are complete myths to come up with a naturalistic explanation that's more compelling than a miracle case. One example: Joseph of Arimathea ended up moving Jesus' body to a private place during the night, in the hope that it would make things easier for the Messiah to come back to life and fulfill the expectations that he was supposed to meet. When that didn't happen, Jesus' body nevertheless stayed there and was never moved back to the original tomb. Joseph also decided not to let anyone know about this, so when rumors spread that Jesus had risen, he chose not to say anything about it.

Or it may be he decided to lie to the other disciples and have them believe Jesus rose from the dead (he or one of his men could have been the "angel" in the empty tomb when the women came to visit Jesus' body). Perhaps to spark some strong faith-based rebellion against the Romans.

Too many necessary information withheld from us so that one cannot really make any confident case for what triggered the Christ faith, but the point is the case for the Resurrection is just damn weak.

For one, if you start from a position where the supernatural is impossible, then an explanation of something being supernatural is never going to be the best explanation. Any naturalistic explanation given, will always be more likely than what's impossible. 

Now, if we start from a position where this is possible, such as with a belief in an existence of God that could make such things possible, then why the resurrection might be the best explanation makes more sense. 

But regardless, even if we both start with different presuppositions, all that would need to be indicated is why any such naturalistic explanations is less preferable than saying it's unexplainable as a natural phenomena. 

There's seem to be no real motivation for making this story up. Jesus would have been the worst messiah claimant to suggest a rebellion against Rome. He seemed to be entirely uninterested in the Roman Political order at all, let alone exhibiting any indication that he wanted to over throw it. There were plenty of other Messiah claimant that would have been more useful for this purpose. 

Secondly when Messiah claimant dies, their communities and followers tended to die along with them. There's no coming back from the Cross, hence why the cross was such an effective tool of Roman power. 

Another naturalistic explanation suggested is that his followers made it up to preserve the Christian community? Why? They wouldn't be preserving that community but putting them on path to the cross as well. Why be willing to die, suffer for the sake of something you didn't truly believe in, that you knew was false? 

His followers, his early community, passionately and fervently believed he conquered death in the resurrection. There's no signs of diminishment of their beliefs, but rather a sort of wildfire, and awakened sense of passion and commitment to it. 

It all defies attempts for naturalistic explanations. Perhaps that's why many opponents of christianity, would rather sell us on naturalistic explanations of a non-existing Jesus, more so than naturalistic explanations of what transpired after his death.

(September 16, 2019 at 8:44 am)Acrobat Wrote: There's seem to be no real motivation for making this story up. Jesus would have been the worst messiah claimant to suggest a rebellion against Rome. He seemed to be entirely uninterested in the Roman Political order at all, let alone exhibiting any indication that he wanted to over throw it. There were plenty of other Messiah claimant that would have been more useful for this purpose.

In the first scenario I describe, nothing was made up. Things just happened naturally whereby Joseph just let the others come up with their own interpretations of what happened without having to correct them. Perhaps he was too distraught to bother to correct them.

In the second scenario, Joseph of Arimathea "who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God" (Mark 15) may have been disappointed that Jesus was unable to bring near the kingdom of God. So Joseph decided to take things into his own hands in the hopes of achieving this goal (by using Jesus' purported resurrection as that spark) but things didn't go as exactly planned, even when the other disciples nevertheless ended up believing that Jesus did rise from the dead (because of the empty tomb and women witnesses and all).

Quote:Secondly when Messiah claimant dies, their communities and followers tended to die along with them. There's no coming back from the Cross, hence why the cross was such an effective tool of Roman power.

Tended is the key word. Plus, I'm not exactly sure what point you're trying to make here.

Ultimately, however, as I said in the OP, we don't have sufficient relevant information to go by to make any confident claims about what may have happened back then. Even if we were to be very charitable and grant that supernatural events are possible and that the Gospels were not entirely myths. We can speculate, but that's about all one can do. The case for the Resurrection just doesn't have a good basis, and it doesn't help that it's supposed to be a supernatural event (even if we grant that such events can be possible).

When you've got hardcore fans, they can have trouble accepting that you're gone. Think Elvis and Tupac.

(September 16, 2019 at 9:10 am)Grandizer Wrote:

(September 16, 2019 at 8:44 am)Acrobat Wrote: There's seem to be no real motivation for making this story up. Jesus would have been the worst messiah claimant to suggest a rebellion against Rome. He seemed to be entirely uninterested in the Roman Political order at all, let alone exhibiting any indication that he wanted to over throw it. There were plenty of other Messiah claimant that would have been more useful for this purpose.

In the first scenario I describe, nothing was made up. Things just happened naturally whereby Joseph just let the others come up with their own interpretations of what happened without having to correct them. Perhaps he was too distraught to bother to correct them.

In the second scenario, Joseph of Arimathea "who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God" (Mark 15) may have been disappointed that Jesus was unable to bring near the kingdom of God. So Joseph decided to take things into his own hands in the hopes of achieving this goal (by using Jesus' purported resurrection as that spark) but things didn't go as exactly planned, even when the other disciples nevertheless ended up believing that Jesus did rise from the dead (because of the empty tomb and women witnesses and all).

But they didn't just believe Jesus body was missing. But that he truly rose again. They believed in the reality of the resurrection as much as they did in the reality of an empty tomb. The depictions of the resurrection may be mysterious in nature, but people truly did believe in it, as a real as believing touching human flesh.

The community defies the sort of expectations and reality of other communities of disappointed expectations, like those communities that thought the world was going to end on an exact date. They go from a communities of high hope and expectations, to communities of disappointment, at at best a haggard hope, that's been shot and dismembered. They have a mortal wound that they've never able to recover fully from, that the drains the life out of them.

But this took a very different trajectory. Rather than diminished community, holding on to hope on a thread, they became more fervent more committed to this hope than when Christ was even alive, awakened to the reality of it. It didn't die, wasn't even wounded, or scathed, but became more animated and alive by it. That's pretty profound in itself. Christianity should have died along with him on the cross, like the following of other messiah claimants before him. If it managed to survive longer, should have done so with a mortal wound, hope dangling on a thin thread.

Quote:Ultimately, however, as I said in the OP, we don't have sufficient relevant information to go by to make any confident claims about what may have happened back then. Even if we were to be very charitable and grant that supernatural events are possible and that the Gospels were not entirely myths. We can speculate, but that's about all one can do. The case for the Resurrection just doesn't have a good basis, and it doesn't help that it's supposed to be a supernatural event (even if we grant that such events can be possible).

This is where our different presuppositional elements lay. I'm not into epoche (The Pyrrhonists developed the concept of "epoché" to describe the state where all judgments about non-evident matters are suspended in order to induce a state of ataraxia (freedom from worry and anxiety)), like many atheist. Rather than withholding a conclusion, I look for one that smooths it all out. One which the pieces fit more comfortably in, than ones that leave more nagging suspensions about certain pieces of the puzzle.

The resurrection exists as such a conclusion, because any naturalistic explanation that has ever been offered, or that I can imagine, never seems capable to doing that. It's make sense only when one contemplates the question less, but not for someone like me who wants to contemplate it more and more, till something is revealed. Epoche may relieve the anxiety for you, but not for me, who needs to contemplate and contemplate more, about what happened.