(August 12, 2013 at 6:31 am)Esquilax Wrote: Why is this? Would they not have access to the earlier texts? And which is it: is the fact that it's similar proof that it's real, or is that the fact that it's different? You can't claim that two contradictory propositions are proof for the same claim.
Bizarre, huh? Is that so? This claim of singular resurrection isn't as original as you'd like to think: religions and myths both before and after christianity have employed it so often it's its own category.
Or are you claiming that all of these distinct individual resurrections occurred, just because the idea of it is weird?
They had excellent access to OT texts...not sure I see the point here...
Material that is coherent yet dissimilar is a standard analytical tool in biblical historical criticism. (Note that I am not trying to use those criteria to establish the veracity of the resurrection here, just sayin' this gets done a lot.)
The resurrection of Jesus is coherent with the spectrum of C1 Judaism, but differs crucially as described earlier.
The comparative religion approach to explanation has a number of fatal flaws. One of these is that it is one thing to follow a religion suggesting that a divinity you never knew came back in some unknowable sense; it's quite another to claim that your mate, who you saw dead, was eating someone else's fish and chips in a new sort of body, right under your nose. The idea of a human coming back from the dead was pretty much unknown before Jesus. In the form of the account, of a new, physical, permanent resurrected body, completely unknown.
Crucially, none of this would account for the whole “Kingdom of God has arrived” thing. The complete change of belief about how Judaism should function. Those bold characters on my first post were intentional...
