(October 28, 2019 at 7:13 pm)Grandizer Wrote: Non-Christians Jews would disagree, and many interpret the suffering servant passage to be referring to a nation, not a particular person.It's both the nation and an individual. What's going on here is termed 'sociological representation', in which a person or group represents a group. The England rugby team will represent the nation in the final; David represented Israel in the stand-off with Goliath; and Jesus represented the nation of Israel on the cross. The identification made by the Early Church, although strikingly new, was a more than possible reading within conventional Judaism.
Quote:And the Resurrection didn't have to actually happen for the disciples to reinterpret the OT passages, only the belief that it did. So no what you're saying is not evidence for the Resurrection more than it is evidence that the belief in the Resurrection arose from C1 Jews, which no one actually doubts.If I understand you correctly, we're getting somewhere now. There are those who try to explain the rise of Xianity, with the belief set it has, in a way that requires that the Early Church actually didn't believe in the Resurrection. For reasons I've outlined they would be better looking elsewhere for an explanation, as the evidence here is overwhelming. So given the belief, what caused it?
Quote:The question I'm asking is not 'have these occurred?', but 'What caused the Early Church to believe they had occurred?'. They are very different questions.Quote:Things like the Blessing to Humanity, father of many nations, fulfilling the Covenant, sorting out that nasty business in Adam...Except these are pretty much vague terms that don't make for good prophecies, and <snip> These are Christian beliefs that we do not hold.
Whether the sources are evangelistically biased or not, they do tell us very reliably what the Early Church believed.
Quote:The OP provides an alternative account which covers the initial bases that would otherwise lead to the Resurrection as the conclusion.The vanishing of the body (explanation mentioned in the OP) is necessary but not sufficient to explain the rise of Xianity with the actual belief set it had. They, like you, would have been aware of numerous possible alternative explanations.
A vanished corpse is not a Resurrection.
A missing body is not the fulfilment of God's promises to Abraham and the world.
An empty tomb does not make Jesus the embodiment of God on earth.
Quote:Bart Ehrman in fact has written a book explaining how it all happened, and I still advise you to read that article I linked to earlier.Feel free to summarise the book, and we'll see how it all goes.
I did read the article, and agreed with it earlier in the thread. It supports everything I've been saying. The question I keep asking which is not looked at in the article, is why the Early Xians concluded Jesus was the Messiah, death had been defeated, and the Kingdom of God inaugurated?
The alternatives just don't make sense. The best explanation for the beliefs of the Early Church is that the Resurrection actually happened pretty much as the Early Church said.
