How did the myth of Jesus' resurrection originate?

[Aractus]

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AR: The point that most … would try to make is that "well there's no evidence for Luke's census” - … even if it turned out to be wrong it would not mean that any other detail is wrong. … 1. I don't know why you're talking about Is 7:14 in a thread about the resurrection … . 2. … Genealogies were common in the time of Jesus, and anyone could go down to retrieve the records, and use them to prove his or her lineage. …

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If one detail is wrong in a set of books to which divine inspiration is attributed, all details may (must) be suspect, including the very notion of divine inspiration. The census is ‘way wrong. I think the external source for a Quirinius census has it at quite another time than the NT, and is far more persuasive than the NT timing that is both not supported by independent information and used to support a theological position (Davidic descent) that is also otherwise unsupported.

It's not "way wrong".

• Acts 5:37
  After him Judas the Galilean rose up in the days of the census and drew away some of the people after him.

This refers to the Quirinius Census as we know it, barely anyone at all disputes this.

• Luke 2:1-2
  In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria.

Luke uses different language to describe what you presume to be the one and the same census. Can I prove to you that he's talking about a different census? No I can't, but the internal evidence alone supports the theory.

Other external evidence against the Luke census story is that Romans didn’t care about birth cities for tax purposes, so the trip to Bethlehem, even if you accept for argument’s sake that there was such a trip, would have been entirely unnecessary for Roman taxation. There’s a Galilee/Judea problem also with this notion, but I forget the detail – maybe Quirinius’ census could not apply to Judea? Further, the notion of taking a terminally pregnant woman 100 km over the mountains on a donkey for a tax census is bizarre – how long does it take to be counted? Finally, the Magi in the other NT Bethlehem story came to a house, not a manger. Where did the house come from, and if it existed why did they stay in a manger?

The wise men - Magi - are only in the book of Matthew, and they don't come to the birthplace.

As for Is 7:14, I refer to that because your own words, in “Search for the Septuagint”, show you know the NT text to be quite wrong, a misinterpretation from which a fable was created. And that particular fable leads to doctrine, to the cult of the virgin, to the sex-obsession of the RC Church, and to the further doctrinal kluge of “the immaculate conception [of Mary]”. From just one word you know to be wrong! Thus, we have two errors, this one far more important than the misused census under Quirinius, but related thereto, and to the “genealogies”, none of which has to do with resurrection …

Oh I see. Well, no the translation of Is 7:14 as "virgin" rather than "maiden" isn't wrong. Also, perhaps I'm wrong, Hebrew is not as precise a language as English, and the Hebrew word almah only appears 7 times in the Bible and this is probably why we take its meaning to be precise. In any case, the word refers to a young unmarried woman who is assumed to be a virgin.

But the issue with the LXX is not that the meaning is wrong, but rather whether the focus of the meaning is on "virginity" or "youth", and I argue that it's on youth - and only in hindsight do you translate into English "virgin". But that's not to say that "almah" doesn't mean virgin, in fact it does.

As for your argument though, that the NT quotes are wrong, this isn't true. Yes the NT does quote a primitive form of the LXX at times, but mostly it quotes the Hebrew text or "loosely paraphrases" it.

Matthew quotes from the Hebrew OT, and not from the LXX. In Matthew 1:23, he is in fact not quoting the LXX at all, he is quoting from the Hebrew. Matt 2:17-18 quotes Jeremiah 31:15, from the Hebrew and not the LXX - here's proof:

• Matthew 2:17-18
  Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah:
  
  “A voice was heard in Ramah,
  weeping and loud lamentation,
  Rachel weeping for her children;
  she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.”
  
  Jeremiah 31:15
  Thus says the Lord:
  “A voice is heard in Ramah,
  lamentation and bitter weeping.
  Rachel is weeping for her children;
  she refuses to be comforted for her children,
  because they are no more.”
  
  Jeremiah 38:15 (LXX)
  A voice was heard in Rama, of lamentation, and of weeping, and wailing; Rachel would not cease weeping for her children, because they are not.

Of course, that's not the only example at all, Matthew quotes the OT many times, and he does so from a Hebrew Bible and not a Greek one.

Is 7:14:

• LXX: Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb, and shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Emmanuel.
  
  Matthew: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel”
  
  MT/DSS: Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

As you can clearly see, I hope, Matthew translates from the Hebrew, he isn't copying anything from the LXX. Luke on the other hand does seem to make use of the LXX (or whatever there actually was at the time, I guess a proto-lxx).

Use of the LXX though doesn't make quotations wrong - the Bible doesn't need to be word-for-word quoted every time it is referenced, although one needs to understand the meaning of the text.

As for the confusing bit about genealogies, I apologize, but since you object, here goes. The detail of the exercise is left to you and perhaps a statistician of your acquaintance; I neglected to record the specifics when I did the work some years ago, when I still knew enough statistics to work the figures. The time from David to Jesus is pretty nearly 1000 years (the only external "fact" needed).

According to you. I don't know the length of time from David to Jesus.

Both purported genealogies are of Joseph, neither is of Mary, despite what you hope; they are just written in reverse order.

Did I say that was my argument? No I didn't. It's one possibility, and it isn't the only explanation - but rather the most likely.

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As for the confusing bit about genealogies, I apologize, but since you object, here goes. The detail of the exercise is left to you and perhaps a statistician of your acquaintance; I neglected to record the specifics when I did the work some years ago, when I still knew enough statistics to work the figures. The time from David to Jesus is pretty nearly 1000 years (the only external "fact" needed). Both purported genealogies are of Joseph, neither is of Mary, despite what you hope; they are just written in reverse order. Count them out yourself for the exact numbers, but one genealogy has (say) 50 names, giving an average generational length of 20 yrs. The other genealogy has (say) 25 names, giving an average generational length of 40 years. I assumed a standard deviation for generational length of the human population of some value that I can’t recall, but which made sense to me – maybe 7 years, so that 95+% would be the true population mean +/- 21 years. I realize that the curve would not have been symmetrical or true normal, but close enough for my purpose. I calculated a t-statistic for the difference of the means of the two samples, and the t-value resulted in the odds of more than two billion to one against the average generational lengths of the two samples (the two genealogies) being from the same human population. That is more than the population of the Roman world, and probably of the entire world, at the time. Thus at least one must be phony, a 2 billion to one bet, and certainly not divinely inspired.

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Pulling numbers out ur ass isn't the way to impress me. According to you the only external fact needed is if you know the length of time - well you're assuming the genealogy is complete, without skipping any generations - that's another fact that you need to know before you go making calculations.

As for your assertion that records were a) kept and b) available to anyone under some sort of Freedom of Information Act, aside from the kingly stuff in Chronicles and Kings, what evidence do you have that these actually were kept for other than the kings, for all the Children of Israel, for that entire 1000 years? For all the descendants of kings? Were all of the kings Davidic (my own recall is that not all were)? Were there any concubines of said kings (hah!), did they bear any sons, and do we know that their lineages were equally preserved and available? A tall order. We also know that oral genealogies and genealogy-like strings (in Islam, the authority for hadith) are sometimes contrived.

Look, I'm not exactly sure what you're disputing here, however we know that these records were kept. We don't have them anymore, just like we don't have literally millions of ancient Greek books that were destroyed when the libraries burned down. The same is true for the ancient Jewish materials, the OT is preserved because people had their own copies, however you had to go to the library to review ancestry and while you could certainly take copies - they'd be incomplete and only concerned with the information relevant for you.

C’mon. “Recorded in every gospel” is not proof, since the virginal conception is also misrecorded in every gospel, by your own admission.

No, the virgin-birth is not in every Gospel. Get your facts right.

“Conjecture” as a pejorative for “reasonable inference” is acceptable to me. However, Jews did not embalm. The spices were used to offset the odor of decomposition. And, “recorded in the gospels” is not proof of anything factual, vide Is 7:14, as you know.

Stop misrepresenting 1. what I say, and 2. what the Bible records. The body is wrapped in linen - that's what I mean, I don't mean mummified.

1. “Who” is most reasonably the workers in the cemetery. Somebody had to dig graves. 2. The “Roman seal” seems at least as nonsensical as the version I put forward: Once the body was handed over to the Jews for burial, of what interest would it have been to the Romans, so much so that a Roman seal would have been applied? How does one Roman-seal a large stone put over a cave-opening? Assume there was a seal, if one of the tomb-owner’s family were to die, what then? 3. As for digging, it can’t take long to chop a hole in soft Jerusalem limestone. Shabbat ended when the third star was visible after sundown, so there was plenty of time, even accepting that the women arrived in darkness (why did they?). Too early? Torchlight existed then, one could dig at night. My story is a lot less nonsensical than resurrection, especially since no law of nature is violated, the time and the technology were available, and the story is consistent with Jewish law and practices of the time. Yours requires miracles as well as reliance ahistorical “history”, mine doesn’t.

You have to ignore key facts for your version to make any sense.

Why is that lamb/Jesus/sin-atonement made only in the John story, and in none of the earlier-written ones? Why don’t the disciples, who are said to have no clue what Jesus is about anyway, object to this heretical notion of Passover without lamb?

Because it's not heretical for a start, check your facts before making assumptions. Every meal in the unleavened period is a "special meal". The only thing that sets the Passover meal apart from any other is putting the lamb's blood on the door, and eating the lamb on that day. Since they didn't eat a lamb, that doesn't apply. They were free to enjoy a Passover meal sans-lamb any time during the unleavened period as were any other Jews.

Even if Passover and Shabbat coincided, how does that vitiate the story as I construct it? No gravedigging on Friday as prep day, none on Saturday for two good reasons, still a need for a place to put the corpse. 14th, 15th, and from sundown it was the 16th – three days and out, short-term rental.

1. because the body didn't need to be moved. 2. the women prepared spices, which implies that they're going to unwrap the body, apply them and then re-wrap the body - regardless of whether the body stays in its present location or is moved. Therefore, somebody else had to have also done this independently of them, and without their knowledge. But more likely - if the body was going to be moved, the undertaker would have waited for the women to arrive first.

A further theological-contrivance note: I think that under Jewish law the lambs sacrificed at Passover had nothing to do with atonement for sin, but were in remembrance of the Exodus (doorpost-marking for passing-over by the messenger/angel of death; Jews still use a mezuzah). The sin-atonement with which this Jesus-theology would therefore be wrongly conflated was at the Day of Atonement, when one goat was loaded up with the sins of the people (the “scapegoat”) and sent into the wilderness.

Correct, the unleavened bread represented atonement for sin and not the lamb, and it is eaten throughout the whole period.