How did the myth of Jesus' resurrection originate?

[max-greece]

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.

Great information but I have to say I am a bit confused by your analysis myself.

As I figured it David precedes Jesus by some 1000 years which we can equate to 50 generations (20 per).

Assuming David's line survived, which is not unreasonable as he was a King, I got to the point working from him chronologically that every Jewish man, woman and child at the time of Jesus would, to a statistical certainty, have been a descendant. In other words both Joseph and Mary would have been descendants.

Essentially I assume 2 viable progeny from each generation so the number of potential progeny at the 50th generation is 2^50. This is obviously impossible but cousins marrying cousins explains it, effectively cutting down the total number to that of the Jewish population at the time.

What that means is that not only would Joseph be a descendent, but, there would be multiple pathways for it. I haven't done a name by name, generation by generation analysis but from what I can see, as long as you have similarity in the father and grandfather the rest could be entirely different.

I seem to recall that there is a statistical analysis kicking around somewhere on the net that proves that every man woman and child of Western European origins living today is a descendent of Charlemagne.

Very much the same thing.