Why can't Christians Verify Exactly Where Jesus Was Buried?

[Crossless2.0]

Has anyone here seen Dan Barker's Challenge? This test shows how unreliable the NT is and how all over the show their core stories are.
" The conditions of the challenge are simple and reasonable. In each of the four Gospels, begin at Easter morning and read to the end of the book: Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20-21. Also read Acts 1:3-12 and Paul’s tiny version of the story in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8. These 165 verses can be read in a few moments. Then, without omitting a single detail from these separate accounts, write a simple, chronological narrative of the events between the resurrection and the ascension: what happened first, second, and so on; who said what, when; and where these things happened.

Since the gospels do not always give precise times of day, it is permissible to make educated guesses. The narrative does not have to pretend to present a perfect picture–it only needs to give at least one plausible account of all of the facts. Additional explanation of the narrative may be set apart in parentheses. The important condition to the challenge, however, is that not one single biblical detail be omitted."

Go knock yourselves out with this one!

I'm sure the response to Barker's challenge among our Christians will be <crickets>.

[Minimalist]

No. It will be "he's reading it out of context."

They love that fucking word.  Even though they don't know what it means.

[Crossless2.0]

No. It will be "he's reading it out of context."

They love that fucking word.  Even though they don't know what it means.

They're pretty sure it's Latin for "cherry-picked".

[Firefighter01]

That's a start anyway, now let's add James and the gospels. Let's be really really liberal with James
Let's be even more liberal.  According to Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistle_of_James .."Many scholars consider the epistle to be written in the late 1st or early 2nd centuries:[13]"

and from http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/james.html 
- Information on the Epistle of James
Kummel presents the reasons that most scholars suspect James to be a pseudepigraph (Introduction to the New Testament, pp. 412-3):

1. The cultured language of James is not that of a simple Palestinian. Sevenster's evidence that the Greek language was much used in Palestine at that time and could be learned does not prove that a Jew whose mother tongue was Aramaic could normally write in literary Greek. Most of those who defend the thesis that James was written by the Lord's brother must assume that it achieved its linguistic form through the help of a Hellenistic Jew, but there is no evidence in the text that the assistance of a secretary gave shape to the present linguistic state of the document, and even if this were the case the question would still remain completely unanswered which part of the whole comes from the real author and which part from the "secretary."

2. It is scarcely conceivable that the Lord's brother, who remained faithful to the Law, could have spoken of "the perfect law of freedom" (1:25) or that he could have given concrete expression to the Law in ethical commands (2:11 f) without mentioning even implicitly any cultic-ritual requirements.
3. Would the brother of the Lord really omit any reference to Jesus and his relationship to him, even though the author of JAmes emphatically presents himself in an authoritative role?
4. The debate in 2:14 ff with a misunderstood secondary stage of Pauline theology not only presupposes a considerable chronological distance from Paul - whereas James died in the year 62 - but also betrays complete ignorance of the polemical intent of Pauline theology, which lapse can scarcely be attributed to James, who as late as 55/56 met with Paul in Jerusalem (Acts 21:18 ff).
5. As the history of the canon shows (see 27.2), it was only very slowly and against opposition that James became recognized as the owrk of the Lord's brother, therefore as apostolic and canonical. Thus there does not seem to have been any old tradition that it originated with the brother of the Lord.

Paul has detailed knowledge about Jesus: he was born a Jew (Galatians 4:4 of David's line (Romans 1:3), who has been raised to the celestial realm (Romans 1:4, etc), and has a brother he knows named James (Galatians 1:19). He also quotes an early Christian creed in 1 Corinthians 15.

I wouldn't say that is correct. He knows nothing about his virgin birth or anything else about the nativity, nothing about the miracles, ministry, cleansing of the Temple, triumphant ride into Jerusalem or trial

Right so let's break down Carrier's argument now. His argument is that Paul didn't think of Jesus as a real person - despite the fact he quotes him directly, has him interacting with real people, knows his flesh-and-blood brother James, and talks about his crucifixion in every letter!

What do you mean, ..."despite the fact he quotes him directly, has him interacting with real people"
Would the flesh and blood brother of the Lord leave out his bloodline to Jesus? Would a biological brother say, "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ"? I don't think so.

These are just some reasons why Carrier's argument is not carried, and why scholars are not persuaded by it (even other mythicsts).

Which other mythicists are you talking about here?

---

I note that you either can't or won't answer the simple questions I put to you. Is Israel Finkelstein's scholarship also worthless to you? Instead you are deliberately appealing to a false dichotomy. I answered all your questions, so now answer mine.

Which are the questions that you are talking about and I'll do my best? Among the problems about Israel Finkelstein's Bible Unearthed: http://www.atheistcoalition.org/docs/bib...rthed.html:

According to the Biblical chronology, Abraham and the patriarchs of Genesis were active roughly 2000 BCE. The stories make repeated mention of camel caravans. However, archaeology has shown that camels were not domesticated until much later; camel caravans were no earlier than 1000 BCE.

There is no evidence for the Exodus as the Bible describes it. The Bible does not give an exact date for the Exodus, nor refer to the pharaoh of the time by name. There is a stele of Pharaoh Merneptah mentions a people named Israel living in Canaan by 1200 BCE, so the Exodus should have occurred some time before that. However, there is no Egyptian documentation of any large group of slaves of any ethnicity leaving Egypt during a likely time frame. The population of Egypt was not over 5 million at the time, and it is out of the question that nearly 1 million people could leave without some kind of record or evidence.

There is no evidence for a swift, decisive military conquest of Canaan by Israelites by 1200 BC. And it does seem implausible that a ragtag group of slaves, however numerous, could have managed a well coordinated attack on an entire region after 40 years of wandering in the desert.

According to the bible, King David and his son Solomon reigned over a large territory, from Mesopotamia to Egypt, and had the wealth to build impressive temples and palaces. This monarchy would have had to have ruled in the range of 1000 to 900 BCE or so. Yet archaeologists have not found any monumental architecture at all dating to this time in Judah. Apparently Jerusalem was a rather small village at the time.

[Minimalist]

Danny does not need rational rebuttals.  Anyone who tells him his fairy tales are true is good enough.

You can add that question to the others about the godboy that they can't pin down.

1. When was he born?

2.  When did he die?

3.  How many years was his "ministry?"

4.  Did he fuck over the temple at the beginning or the end of his ministry?

5.  Why do they come up with different genealogies for their boy...neither of which indicates any holy dick being inserted into Mary?

Jesusism is ten pounds of bullshit in a five pound bag.  The fucking tomb is the about the least of their problems.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Well, yeah. Even if Jesus was a real person, that says nothing at all about the claims attached to him after the "fact".

[Aractus]

Are you being deliberately obtuse? You're assuming the evidentiary value of the writing you're citing, which is wholly insufficient for the claim under discussion. To answer this question -- have you not heard of archaeology? Societies leave behind a lot of physical evidence for their cultural beliefs and mores.

Without ancient writing, archaeological finds are much more difficult to evaluate meaning from. This is why we debate the function of the Pyramids for example, and wouldn't you know it arrive at a scholarly consensus on that. Again you are deliberately creating a false dichotomy as any decent archaeologist is a scholar of ancient literature as well - like Israel Finkelstein.

Say, next week can we debate the existence of Beren and Luthien? I'm sure they existed, because Tolkien wrote about them. And writing is evidence!

AGAIN you are using a false dichotomy. A straw man argument. The writings of Shakespeare are, according to Scholars, hard evidence for the historicity of William Shakespeare. They don't tell us anything directly about his character however, but they do provide clues. They are not evidence for the historical existence of Romeo and Juliet. Without writing we have no evidence whatsoever that Shakespeare ever existed. Therefore it is at least possible that the plays were written by a woman using a pseudonym; so I could put forward that hypothesis and you wouldn't be able to directly refute it. I could indeed go further and use the evidence of women using pseudonyms to have novels published in later centuries. But I would be doing the same thing that Carrier does, which is assuming that a paradigm that exists elsewhere (female authorship of novels) would apply to the case I'm looking at (authorship of plays), and therefore the onus of proof would be on me to show why it applies. Again, from what I've seen of Carrier he does not do this, he simply assumes that what he sees in ancient polytheist religions would apply to a first century monotheist religion.

But WHAT IS THAT EVIDENCE, Danny?  Hint:  It's the fucking gospels which are about as useful as tits on a bull in this discussion because they are:

1: Anonymous
2: Date from considerably later than the events they describe
3: Are full of errors
4: Have been deliberately altered to fit later theological designs.

Now, all of this comes from Professor Ehrman.... who has shit all over them for 25 years but then decided they could be useful to him when he chose to write another book.  I lost a lot of respect for him when he did that.

Right, so I'll say this a third time: you are knowingly putting forward a false dichotomy. The writings of Josephus contain author errors as well. The writings of Herodotus contains errors - in fact they contain a WHOPPER that had Egyptologists the world-over convinced that the ancient Egyptian Pyramids were built using slave labour for more than 2 millennia! Every ancient writer made errors, so you can't expect the gospel writers to have higher standards: that is creating impossible conditions, as you well know.

NB: The gospels are four books, five including Acts of the Apostles. They are not the only evidence, nor did I say they are the best evidence for the historicity of Jesus. We also have non-gospel/Gnostic writings such as the gospel according to Thomas, we have seven letters penned by Paul in the 0050's, and we have the Epistle of James as well.


I'll go through your points:
1. It is true that the gospels are anonymous, however we do know that Luke-Acts was either written by a close associate of Paul's named Luke the Physician, or someone that was close to Luke. There is scholarly consensus that one of those two options is the most likely, and there is scholarly consensus at least among critical scholars not accept second century ascribed authorship to the other three. Although we can't know for certain about the other three, the fact that Luke is associated with Paul means scholars can make reasonable inferences about the other synoptic gospels, and that is that Mark was already written and Matthew was written around the same time as Luke. Please note that there was another gospel written in Hebrew quite similar to Matthew, that scholars think was written before Matthew as well.
2. Their dating is early by ancient standards. They are however written at least 30 years after the death of Jesus, and probably 40-50 years later.
3. Errors can help authenticate works, as well as help to discredit them. Mark's ignorance of geological locations within Judea indicates the author was likely a Gentile Christian rather than a Jewish Christian for example. This would in-turn lead to the plausibility of Acts 15's account of an early Christian Council in Jerusalem at which proselytising to non-Jews was discussed.
4. They haven't been deliberately altered, at least not substantially. I'm not sure where you're getting that from, but there are numerous quotations of the New Testament made in the writings of Church Leaders in the early centuries (2nd, 3rd, and 4th), and nothing within them suggests that the text was systemically altered (i.e. what is quoted is exactly what is in the New Testament as found in ancient manuscripts). Ehrman himself confirms this is the case. That is, he has no evidence to show that what existed in the first century was in anyway dissimilar to what existed in the 2nd-4th centuries, beyond the textual variation that presently exists, and has said so.

[Aractus]

Which are the questions that you are talking about and I'll do my best?

Well, despite the fact you just attempted to attack a very distinguished Israeli archaeologist and scholar with a description of one of his works rather than a critique of it, my question was this: Where do you draw the line. You essentially tried to claim that Scholar's are hacks - does this apply to all academic fields? Does this apply to all scholars? Does it apply to Old Testament scholars and archaeologists or is this a specific prejudice you have against New Testament scholars, and if it is why is it?

According to Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistle_of_James .."Many scholars consider the epistle to be written in the late 1st or early 2nd centuries:[13]"

and from http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/james.html 
- Information on the Epistle of James
Kummel presents the reasons that most scholars suspect James to be a pseudepigraph (Introduction to the New Testament, pp. 412-3): ...

As I indicated, most scholars today place the authorship 50-65 AD. Many of the arguments made in your quoted material are based purely on assumptions. If the Bible is correct that Jesus's father was a builder, then he probably would have been quite well off by ancient standards which moots the point made about James the Just being a peasant, and it is also interesting to note this might indicate that Jesus was rebellious - i.e. he was motivated to start his ministry because he saw how unjust the disparity in equality was.

I wouldn't say that is correct. He knows nothing about his virgin birth or anything else about the nativity, nothing about the miracles, ministry, cleansing of the Temple, triumphant ride into Jerusalem or trial

The virgin birth, in fact the whole nativity, is a myth. That's easy. He might well have known that such a rumour was going around in his lifetime, but he doesn't bother writing about it. He clearly knows about what you call "miracles" (healings), he clearly knows about the message Jesus preached (even though he mixes it with his own theology). He knows about the crucifixion, and he knows about the Last Supper, thus by extension we would expect he knows about the details of the trial and the events leading up to it. That's not to say the gospels are entirely accurate at all, just that Paul knew about all those things.

What do you mean, ..."despite the fact he quotes him directly, has him interacting with real people"
Would the flesh and blood brother of the Lord leave out his bloodline to Jesus? Would a biological brother say, "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ"? I don't think so.

Although Paul does not make a habit of quoting Jesus, he does quote him directly on occasion and he makes numerous citations to stuff that Jesus preached. Furthermore he talks about Jesus interacting with people in a way that a celestial being does not. In other words, Carrier's argument ignores everything Paul has to say about Jesus, because it is clear to anyone that Paul is talking about a person and not a celestial body.

State your reasons why you don't think James the Just would write that introduction. Again, this is a moot point anyway, I don't care which James wrote James, it doesn't change the fact that it was written before the gospels of Matthew and Luke and has detailed knowledge of two sermons in particular that only appear in those writings, which proves that Matthew and Luke couldn't have "made up" the sermons on the Mount & Plain.

Among the problems about Israel Finkelstein's Bible Unearthed: http://www.atheistcoalition.org/docs/bib...rthed.html:

According to the Biblical chronology, Abraham and the patriarchs of Genesis were active roughly 2000 BCE. The stories make repeated mention of camel caravans. However, archaeology has shown that camels were not domesticated until much later; camel caravans were no earlier than 1000 BCE.

There is no evidence for the Exodus as the Bible describes it. The Bible does not give an exact date for the Exodus, nor refer to the pharaoh of the time by name. There is a stele of Pharaoh Merneptah mentions a people named Israel living in Canaan by 1200 BCE, so the Exodus should have occurred some time before that. However, there is no Egyptian documentation of any large group of slaves of any ethnicity leaving Egypt during a likely time frame. The population of Egypt was not over 5 million at the time, and it is out of the question that nearly 1 million people could leave without some kind of record or evidence.

There is no evidence for a swift, decisive military conquest of Canaan by Israelites by 1200 BC. And it does seem implausible that a ragtag group of slaves, however numerous, could have managed a well coordinated attack on an entire region after 40 years of wandering in the desert.

According to the bible, King David and his son Solomon reigned over a large territory, from Mesopotamia to Egypt, and had the wealth to build impressive temples and palaces. This monarchy would have had to have ruled in the range of 1000 to 900 BCE or so. Yet archaeologists have not found any monumental architecture at all dating to this time in Judah. Apparently Jerusalem was a rather small village at the time.

What you have just (I assume mistakenly) quoted is a description is a description of 'Bible Unearthed', not a critique of it.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Are you being deliberately obtuse? You're assuming the evidentiary value of the writing you're citing, which is wholly insufficient for the claim under discussion. To answer this question -- have you not heard of archaeology? Societies leave behind a lot of physical evidence for their cultural beliefs and mores.

Without ancient writing, archaeological finds are much more difficult to evaluate meaning from. This is why we debate the function of the Pyramids for example, and wouldn't you know it arrive at a scholarly consensus on that. Again you are deliberately creating a false dichotomy as any decent archaeologist is a scholar of ancient literature as well - like Israel Finkelstein.

So, what archaeology do you have for Jesus, to support these writings you're plumping so hard?

That's right -- none. You're trying to suborn my point even as you cannot meet its standards.

And furthermore, archaeological evidence, even in the absence of writing, can give much insight into the cultural practices of a society. More difficult? No doubt. More reliable than a puzzle-book put together a few hundred years after the fact? Even more certain.

Say, next week can we debate the existence of Beren and Luthien? I'm sure they existed, because Tolkien wrote about them. And writing is evidence!

AGAIN you are using a false dichotomy. A straw man argument. The writings of Shakespeare are, according to Scholars, hard evidence for the historicity of William Shakespeare.

In the context of this thread, your comparison is weak, because we know where the guy's buried. If we wanted, we could go dig up his bones.

Probably has something to do with the absence of a story about resurrection and ascension. I'm told those details make it harder to nail a man down in place and time.

You've got a pretty big circular argument going on here. Let me not interrupt your cycle any more.

[Aractus]

So, what archaeology do you have for Jesus, to support these writings you're plumping so hard?

That's right -- none. You're trying to suborn my point even as you cannot meet its standards.

And where is the body of Hitler? That's right, no one knows. See how easy it is to create these stupid false arguments that you seem to love putting forward?

And furthermore, archaeological evidence, even in the absence of writing, can give much insight into the cultural practices of a society. More difficult? No doubt. More reliable than a puzzle-book put together a few hundred years after the fact? Even more certain.

I was saying they both have value and both provide evidence, according to you though ancient writing is not of the same value or standard as an ancient stone hammer. Go figure.

In the context of this thread, your comparison is weak, because we know where the guy's buried. If we wanted, we could go dig up his bones.

So what? As I just pointed out you can't point me to Hitler's remains can you? Christianity as we know it wouldn't exist if the body was known to be rotting somewhere.