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

[Firefighter01]

Again the claim is misleading in a number of ways. Of those seven, only one is qualified and puts forward a scholarly argument - Carrier himself. The others such as Rober Price and Thomas Brodie refuse to publish things academically (in fact Brodie insisted upon publishing his 2012 book with a Christian publisher, not with a publisher with strong academic standards). And they all put forward vastly different hypotheses, and all completely discount each others competing mythicist hypotheses.

I'll explain briefly why Carrier is wrong, because as I quoted in the last post he's the only one worth taking seriously anyway, and for that I will borrow from Hurtado's arguments. Let's say we get the books of the New Testament and do our best to arrange them chronologically (in the order in which they're written) - we're not particularly interested in the pseudepigraphal works, Jude, Revelation, or Hebrews. This is fairly easy to do with the 7 letters of Paul:

c. 50 AD - Thessalonians
c. 53 AD - Galatians
c. 53-4 AD - Corinthians
c. 55 AD - Philippians
c. 55 AD - Philemon
c. 55-6 AD - 2 Corinthians
c. 57 AD - Romans

That's a start anyway, now let's add James and the gospels. Let's be really really liberal with James - I think it's quite early, but there are plenty of scholars who argue for a date as late as 65 AD. There used to be scholars that were convinced it was written later still, but that number has been dwindling recently, in part because of its reliance on two things in particular: the Hebrew Bible, and the pre-gospel sayings of Jesus; as well as appearing to be a rebuttal of Pauline Theology in part. Josephus says that James the Just was martyred in 62 AD, but like I said we do have to assume we can't trust the authorship claim (only because it can't be verified against other letters written by the same author); therefore we'll assume any date from 46-65 AD is possible. We'll put in late dates for all the gospels. This is what we get:

Paul
c. 50 AD - Thessalonians
c. 53 AD - Galatians
c. 53-4 AD - Corinthians
c. 55 AD - Philippians
c. 55 AD - Philemon
c. 55-6 AD - 2 Corinthians
c. 57 AD - Romans
"James"
c. 46-65 AD - James
"Mark"
c. 70-75 AD - Gospel of Mark
"Matthew"
c. 75-95 AD - Gospel of Matthew
Luke
c. 75-95 AD - Gospel of Luke
c. 75-95 AD - Acts of the Apostles
"John"
c. 75-95 AD - Gospel of John

Now we can see a clear pattern. We have Paul writing quite extensively about Jesus at least over a seven year period. Around the same time James writes his letter. Then later, and probably about 20 years later, we get the four gospels and Acts. Paul rarely quotes Jesus directly, however he makes numerous citations to things Jesus is later quoted as saying in the gospels. For example in 1 Corinthians 7:10-11 Paul delivers a teaching on divorce and attributes it directly to Jesus. It closely resembles what Jesus is quoted as saying in Mark 10:11-12/Matthew 19:8-9. And Paul's Lord's Supper in 1 Corinthians 11 closely resembles the gospel accounts of the Last Supper (and Luke's in particular).

Now this is despite the fact that Paul himself has his own theologies that contrast sharply with what Jesus taught in the gospels. A particularly good example of this is flesh theology that does not appear in the synoptic gospels, but does appear in the Gospel of John - perhaps indicating the gospel writer was more influened by Paul's theology than the writers of the synoptics.

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.

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! Carrier's argument is that 1. Paul is not talking about a historical person, but rather a celestial being; and 2. After Paul dies the other writers humanise Jesus and make the celestial being that Paul was talking about a patriarchal person. Basically what Carrier's argument requires is that none of the knowledge that Paul has about Jesus is valid. And by "valid" I mean that he came to learn about these things, rather than making them up.

However that argument simply doesn't stack up. It doesn't explain how James has detailed knowledge of the teachings of Jesus before the gospels, it doesn't explain how Paul has detailed knowledge of the teachings as well, it doesn't explain who taught Paul the creed in 1 Corinthians 15, it doesn't explain anything and it doesn't make any goddamned sense when compared with the evidence. Mark, Matthew, and Luke are not as theologically advanced as Paul - and yet are written later, which strongly suggests they're not based around Pauline theology. This can only happen if there are other leaders in the church and they aren't following Paul's theology. And that can't happen if Paul invented it all. How do we get three synoptic gospels all free from Pauline theology if they're all based on the celestial being that Paul invented? Not only is Paul's theology more advanced (and much more advanced than "Mark"'s), but there are two parallel sets of teachings throughout all of his epistles, whereby sometimes he re-purposes teachings delivered from Jesus that he knows about, and at other times he delivers his own teachings all the while going on about how he has the authority to do so.

Specifically, Paul has a different perspective on salvation than that delivered from Jesus himself. Jesus came for the Jews - he says specifically that he "was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel" (Matthew 15:24). He defends the Law of Moses and says it will not pass away (Matthew 5:18), refuting the prophecy made in Jeremiah 31:31-34. This is completely contradictory to what Paul teaches, in reaching out to the gentiles and telling them not to bother following the Law of Moses.

These are just some reasons why Carrier's argument is not carried, and why scholars are not persuaded by it (even other mythicsts). In short, for his hypothesis to hold water he has to ignore all the evidence that disagrees with his point of view, and then cherry pick a few bits of evidence that support it.

Now let's talk about all the extra-biblical evidence for Jesus...."crickets"

---

[quote pid='1382148' dateline='1472879179']
Joseph of Arimathea's tomb is largely irrelevant, because it's a small tomb about the size of a small fireplace that is designed to be use intermittently and not as a final resting place (it's a bit like what a morgue is today, where the body is placed in a shroud and later transferred to an ossuary).

If[/if] Jesus existed, and [i]if he were placed there, might this not possibly explain the Biblical story with appeal to resurrection?
[/i]
[/quote]

Joseph of Arimathea's tomb is largely irrelevant...

 So where is it?  Please, please don't say it's at the Church of The Holy Sepulchre or mention the Miracle of the Holy Fire