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

[Cyberman]

It's not about intelligence, it's about evidence. You've stated many times now that there is overwhelming evidence, but you haven't actually presented what that evidence is despite being asked several times. You're citing the gospels as evidence for the historicity of Jesus. Well fine - now what is your evidence for the validity of the gospels?

If we had a witness to an event giving testimony, and he spoke as much about talking animals and aliens as he did the alleged events, how would we establish his credibility sans outside sources?

[Minimalist]

Cue the special pleading mantra "Jesus is DIFFERENT" in 5....4....3....2....1.....

[Thumpalumpacus]

Since you keep attacking my intelligence [...]

Maybe next time, you won't bring condescension into play.

As for your question, did I mention anyone aside from you? No. I mentioned you and only you, and not to discredit your argument, but to return your insulting demeanor.

Perhaps if you read what was written for content rather than for argument's sake, your discussions would avoid the vitriol they seem to end up in most of the time.

I'm done with this discussion. You can have the last word; make it a good one.

[Aractus]

It's not about intelligence, it's about evidence. You've stated many times now that there is overwhelming evidence, but you haven't actually presented what that evidence is despite being asked several times. You're citing the gospels as evidence for the historicity of Jesus. Well fine - now what is your evidence for the validity of the gospels?

If we had a witness to an event giving testimony, and he spoke as much about talking animals and aliens as he did the alleged events, how would we establish his credibility sans outside sources?

Again that is a false dichotomy. No one is claiming everything the Gospels has to say is valid. That's a completely different claim. Just like the location and Hebrew names of ancient Canaanite cities, there is information to be found within ancient texts, including texts riddled with historical errors or tales of miracles, noting that the New Testament does not contain the same kind of miracles anyway as the Old Testament, and instead refers to incidences of healings. Faith healings have been performed for thousands of years before the time of Jesus, and continue to be performed - so I don't see that as at all as farcical a claim as you seem to imply. That is I accept that Jesus performed healing ceremonies, and people felt as if they had been healed. As a direct comparison consider Catholicism today - in Catholicism a priest will hear confession of individuals from the laity, and following the sacrament the person feels as if their God has forgiven their sins. This event itself still takes place whether or not you believe that the person's god forgave their sins or not, and what the gospels lay claim to in the way of miracles are (at least mostly) no more sophisticated than that. The exceptions that I can think of are 1. the transfiguration, 2. Lazarus raised from the dead (in John), and 3. Jesus raising from the dead in Matthew/Luke/John before ascending to heaven.

I have already put forward the case for the resurrection being an unfolding mythical account that happened after Jesus died. And I think most of us sceptics agree that the Gospel of John is perhaps the least grounded in reality.

But I guess to directly respond to your question I would say that the synoptic gospels, especially Mark, are based directly on the ministry of Jesus c. 30AD. So I think broadly speaking they discuss real events - Jesus delivered the sermon on the mount, he delivered the Parable of the Good Samaritan, and a number of other teachings, and he performed faith healings. And I should note here that I see no evidence that Jesus intended to deceive people with his faith healings, although that's certainly a possibility, it seems his motivations were more to do with waning to preach his own version of Judaism that was different to that being perched by Temple Jews (or what he calls the "Scribes and Pharisees"), and healing ceremonies were simply something to be performed by leaders such as him (there are passages in the Old Testament that detail exactly what practise one should follow when it comes to healing). If anything, Jesus not performing healing ceremonies would be inconsistent with a first century apocalyptic-style Jewsish preacher.

[Aractus]

As for your question, did I mention anyone aside from you? No. I mentioned you and only you, and not to discredit your argument, but to return your insulting demeanor.

Perhaps if you read what was written for content rather than for argument's sake, your discussions would avoid the vitriol they seem to end up in most of the time.

I'm done with this discussion. You can have the last word; make it a good one.

I am mentioning my argument with Min because he has made the same argument as you, however he is also much more informed about ancient history than you appear to be. I've been making exactly the same argument on the historicity of Jesus for two years, and that is that the expert historians in the relevant fields have a consensus view that Jesus of Nazareth was a historical person. I have asked you a specific question, the same question I asked of Firefighter - why is it that you have a prejudice against these particular academics (New Testament era historians)? I can actually show you, although it'd be a bit more difficult because I'd have to find my references, but believe me I can show you that not only do NT unanimously scholars say that Jesus of Nazareth was a historical person, but so do Roman Empire historians.

If you think we can't use the New Testament as evidence then why can't we use academic publications as evidence? See this is the problem with your argument, as soon as I show you that the evidence all points one way you decide the change the conditions by claiming that you want a different standard of evidence. But it's not up to you to set the standard of evidence, that's up for professional historians to decide. Then you say "if we can't trust the gospels for X then they must be wrong about Y" - again a clearly invalid argument. If that were the case we would ignore everything that Josephus has to say about the ancient world too because he makes a few clear errors too.

Then you lay claim to the gospels laying claim to too many miracles to be taken seriously: and that is not true either. Most of the miracles are healing ceremonies, and that requires a low level of sophistication in the real world that can be, let's say, mildly exaggerated by the time they're written down in the gospels. Besides healings and exorcisms there's only a handful of events: walking on water, raising Lazarus from the dead (which is just an extension of healing anyway), the transfiguration, water into wine, and of course cursing the fig tree (which was out of season anyway - so not much of a curse that one). Anyway at this point, we can be as sceptical as we like but it doesn't change the fact that we've established Jesus existed - the epistles of Paul in the absence of the gospels demonstrate that as it is, and they don't lay claim to all the miracles happening.


Christians believe that Jesus was resurrected from the dead, and then after 40 days ascended into heaven and took his body with him. Therefore if Christians knew exactly where he was buried it would disprove their belief. And I might add, it would be very difficult to prove a specific ossuary was his (that's if he was even laid to rest in one), as it would be vey unlikely to name all of his brothers mentioned in the Bible as well as his parents. IIRC most simply name just the father and perhaps one brother, "Jesus son of Joseph brother of [Simeon/Joseph/James/Judas]" could be anyone, as they are all common names. If it said "Jesus son of Joseph and Mary, brother of Simeon, Joseph, James, and Judas" then you might have proof. And if that's what you had it'd be more likely to be a forgery anyway, like the James ossuary. And back to the specific topic of this thread, the type of tomb that Jesus was said to be laid in immediately following his crucifixion, is an intermittent tomb used by the wealthy to let the body decay so it can be later placed within the family tomb in an ossuary, as opposed to putting the body straight into the family tomb and stinking it out while it decays. Furthermore it was located within Jerusalem or nearby, and not owned by one of Jesus's family members, which is all the more reason to think the family might want to move the body quickly to their family tomb. We just don't know - the tomb's owner may have been simply doing the family a favour by laying the body there until the Sabbath had passed so it could be moved to their tomb located in Nazareth (or wherever).

[Minimalist]

I am mentioning my argument with Min because he has made the same argument as you, however he is also much more informed about ancient history than you appear to be. I've been making exactly the same argument on the historicity of Jesus for two years, and that is that the expert historians in the relevant fields have a consensus view that Jesus of Nazareth was a historical person.

And Danny for those same two years I have been pointing out that you reflexively dismiss anyone who disagrees with your conclusion as being "not an expert historian."  In fact, most of the people you cite as historians are theologians but you cannot seem to grasp that for them to dismiss the godboy would be to crack their own rice bowl. 

Carrier is the only person I know of who has systematically reviewed all of the alleged evidence and come to the conclusion that is unreliable.  The key word there is ALL of the evidence, including the gospels and the epistles.

You should read his book.

[Aractus]

And Danny for those same two years I have been pointing out that you reflexively dismiss anyone who disagrees with your conclusion as being "not an expert historian."  In fact, most of the people you cite as historians are theologians but you cannot seem to grasp that for them to dismiss the godboy would be to crack their own rice bowl. 

Carrier is the only person I know of who has systematically reviewed all of the alleged evidence and come to the conclusion that is unreliable.  The key word there is ALL of the evidence, including the gospels and the epistles.

You should read his book.

Ehrman is a theologian? See here's the thing, most NT scholars are theologians to at least some degree, and Ehrman would not be excluded from that even though he's an atheist. The reason being that he still makes decisions about how to correctly categorise the belief-set of early Christians, which is by definition theology. Even Carrier does this when he claims to categorise the beliefs of Paul as being in a celestial being. So I think we have to be careful when thinking about dismissing scholars who are "theologians", when in fact  theology is  tied to the same interpretive functions as other historical decisions. Dan Wallace might be the scholar you are thinking of, who is an outspoken evangelical. But the reason I like to quote Wallace is that as an Evangelical he admits that the LXX and Matthew get the translation of Isaiah 7:14 wrong. Most Evangelical scholars are not willing to say that and defer the judgement of how to translate Is 7:14 to the unknown author/s of the LXX and the unknown author/s of the gospel of Matthew. Wallace has a lot of very interesting and valid stuff to say, but I don't cite him on this issue, precisely because one can attack his objectivity.

Hurtado's flagship publication "One God One Lord" was highly controversial among Evangelicals, and it cannot be found in most Christian bookstores either (despite the fact there's a new 2015 edition of it!) I don't think anyone can attack Hurtado on his objectivity, and he is a distinguished scholar. Distinguished because he has written books at a standard that get used as textbooks (of course not in hardcore Evangelical Bible Colleges, but in more moderate ones).

What you mean by "theologians", I assume anyway, are scholars (or lay writers) that publish works that end up in Christian bookstores, Christian-friendly and targeted towards proselytisation, and are typically not of an academic standard. On that note you can't attack either of the two scholars I've used here, although Ehrman does "just as bad" by publishing the exact opposite of an Evangelical publication: i.e. he writes non-academic level books targeted towards atheists. There's a big big difference between that, and say "Bible Unearthed" by Finkelstein & Silberman which is of an academic standard, despite its deliberately provocative title. In saying that, the title was probably chose by the publisher and not the authors.

Now with that said, I never said that Carrier has not looked at the evidence. He is the outlier. Almost all other scholars that have looked at exactly the same evidence he has have dismissed his hypothesis of Jesus being concocted as a 'celestial being' immortalised 20-30 years after the death of Paul. Choosing to believe the outlier above all other historians is no different to a Fundamentalist finding the one qualified biologist in the world who believes in creationism over evolution. Or to put it more specifically: it is not in-line with following the body of evidence. 200 years from now who knows, all historians might have come to the conclusion that Carrier was right. But as it stands at the moment, they have concluded that Jesus was a historical person.

The reason I am not a Christian is because I listen to what experts say, if I didn't I would quite happily say "all historians lack objectivity, blah blah blah". When I was younger I have made that exact argument.

[Minimalist]

Ehrman has a Master's of Divinity and a PH. D. from PRinceton Theological Seminary.  How much more of a fucking theologian do you want?  The fact that he has outgrown his early training should be a alarm bell for you but you seem to have missed the point.

You really need to watch this...and learn.

https://youtu.be/WIwfV3SdhNQ

[Silver]

Why must we continue a thread based on an individual that never existed?

[Aractus]

Ehrman has a Master's of Divinity and a PH. D. from PRinceton Theological Seminary.  How much more of a fucking theologian do you want?  The fact that he has outgrown his early training should be a alarm bell for you but you seem to have missed the point.

Right then, so we're in agreement with Ehrman. What on earth do you have against Hurtado? Unlike Ehrman he only publishes things at an academic standard... Like I said he is a distinguished scholar. Wallace even will admit where the body of evidence lies before proposing his theological perspective, such as authorship of the NT books. So even though there may not be complete objectivity from him in terms of "who do you think wrote 2 Peter" he will happily say that most scholars think it is a forgery, and doesn't try to hide it. When asked "why do you think Peter wrote it" he will answer simply that he accepts it on faith; i.e. admitting it is not a question he is answering academically. He doesn't pretend there's an academic answer. A dishonest scholar, or one that lacks academic integrity, would try to concoct an academic argument to suit their point of view.

As I said though we're talking about the body of evidence, not individual scholars, who will invariably have differing opinions about the New Testament. What I was saying is I don't think it's necessarily helpful to use the label of "theologian" when in fact theology persists to the same questions as historicity in many cases. To me at least (not academically) the word "theologian" conjurers images of Evangelical American Preachers like Rick Warren and Grand Wizard Johnny Lee Clary (RIP), or other preachers who we would hardly call "objective".

And I should say I'm not dismissing Carrier's qualifications, as I believe I correctly said, he is the outlier. That said, I'm sure if I tried I could find at least one qualified biologist who advocates for creationism.