MERGED: The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (Part 1) & (Part 2)

[Jenny A]

Yes, but who, said George Washington was the first president? When did they say it? On what did they rely for their knowledge? Did they state it as a fact or as merely gossip or something others believe in? Did they have a reason to lie or exaggerate. Did others also say it, or is there just one person who said George Washington was the first president?

All of those questions are irrelevant, because the fact of the matter is when you look at ANY list of Presidents with the list being in sequence order, George Washington is first. Always. So lets not pretend as if this is not the case..second, I could easily play the role of a skeptic and doubt, question, and reject any evidence that you provide..because the fact of the matter is, no one that is alive today was there. All we have is written documents, hearsay, and rumours....even if it is "contemporary", well, how do we know those contemporary accounts weren't lying?

No, the questions aren't irrelevant. They are how we determine what is and isn't true about George Washington. The great number of contemporary documents makes his existence obvious.

There's no need to cease to believe in anything whatsoever to apply reason to the evidence. The documents supporting the existence of old George are consistent with each other, consistent with the time period. A conspiracy to fabricate his existence would be highly improbable give the number of conspirators required.

I mean, anyone can systematically reject anything, as even Bart Erhman pointed out...the question is, "Did the events probably happen" (regarding the existence of Jesus), and the vast majority of all scholars who use the same historical methods for Jesus case as they do in the case for anyone else in history...based on the evidence and these methods which are applied to the evidence, they conclude that Jesus' existence is more plausible than not.

emphasis mine

Nope. That's where the problem lies. It's only recently that historians, as opposed to theologians, tried to piece together the historicity of Jesus. That's when a number of people looked up and said wait a minute, there really isn't much evidence is there?

Should all references to George Washington begin twenty years after his death and only refer to what a certain political party believed about him, we might wonder if he had ever lived or if he were merely a national myth.

As long as the references were from people that were actually there, then it wouldn't be a myth, now would it?

Well, yes and no. We do tend to distrust people who only decide to report on an event 20 years after it happened. If no one at all mentioned a president until 20 years after his death, yes I'd have to declare him myth. Why, because the president fulfills such a historically important role.

Now take Jesus. He wasn't as important in Judea as George Washington was in the U.S., but he is supposed have drawn large crowds, raised the dead, been crucified, and made enough philosophical impact to found a religion. BUT no one wrote about him for at least twenty years. Kinda hard to explain isn't it? But not quite as hard as it would be in the case of George, since fewer people were literate, there was no press, and fewer documents have survived.

But, in the case of George Washington, many people and many documents attest to his presidency.

Yeah but I could question all documents if I wanted to put on my skeptic hat. Just asking one simple question: How do you know that the documents are contemporary? What would you do? Point to other documents? Well, how do yo know that those are valid??

Putting on your skeptic hat and throwing away all common sense aren't synonymous. Yes we rely on archeology and other documents to validate the documents we rely on. Documents which do not fit either the archeology or which contradict the majority of other documents in the period are suspect.

There are not only contemporary writings about him, but also by him, and official documents carrying his signature.

There are contemporary sources, just not in the non-Christian realm. We have four Gospels, and we have the letters of Paul. That is contemporary...but I will get in to that in the other parts.

Nope, not a single document mentioning Jesus for 20 years following his death. None. The Gospels are not contemporary. Paul is the closest we've got and his testimony is all about visions, not first hand knowledge.

If you think Paul's reference in Galatians to meeting Peter and "the Lord's brother James," is significant now is the place to discuss it. Otherwise shut up about it.

The references to George Washington are not only written by U.S. patriots but also by foreigners and not only by his proponents but by those few who opposed his government. And they include references to his military career, political career, children, and married life.

How do you know that those foreign sources weren't basing their narratives of George Washington on hearsay?

The Brits, French, and Germans all had first hand knowledge of him as they fought a little, and highly documented war with him.

Now compare the cherry tree myth. The first mention of this rather odd tale in which a six year old George is naughty enough to cut down a cherry tree but truthful enough to admit it is in 1800, in a single book, published three years after the grown-up George's death by Parson Mason Weems.

Hey, I got one, too!! There is a mention of this rather odd but true tale in which a twelve year old Jesus and his parents traveling to Jerusalem for the Feast of Passover, and they eventually returned home, but they were unaware that they left Jesus behind in Jerusalem. So once they found out he was missing, they searched for him, and when they did not find him they eventually went back to Jerusalem and began a frantic search for him there. They eventually found him him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking questions. His mother rebuked him and the twelve year old Jesus said "Why were you searching for me, didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?". Luke (2:41-52)

See, I have my story, too

Yes, but mine is the result of taking a look at the evidence. And I've only upgraded mine to perhaps.

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Biographies immediately following Weem's do not include the cherry tree. So, given the oddity of the story the vast majority of historians have dismissed it. I was all set to dismiss it too, but in looking I some more evidence.

Even the cherry tree story might be proven IF we look at who said what and when and what their sources were. Weems was both a contemporary and a friend of Washington's. Second, Weems didn't say that George chopped the tree down, he said that he barked it. We know that Weems lived near the Washingtons and had access to his friends, neighbors, and relatives. Weems says a cousin of George's told Weems the story, and yes George had nearby cousins of the appropriate age to know and tell such a story. On the other hand Weems said himself that he was writing his biography through a moral filter to educate other in morality so he might have embellished the story on accepted as true what another writer might not. Conclusion? Perhaps the cherry tree story is partially true. But it is certainly not true that Washington cut it down as so many grade school history texts have declared. http://carlanthonyonline.com/2012/02/20/...tree-tale/

Notice that in partially changing my mind about the cherry tree I paid attention to who said it, what he knew, and what he actually said. Given another witness, not interested in telling George Washington as a moral tale, and I'd believe the barking story absolutely.

Now in the case of Jesus, none of your references is to a contemporary of Jesus. None of them tells you what his sources are. All of the stories are obviously second hand. Three of them merely report what Christians believed. That, is much closer to the cherry tree and a long shot from the kind of proof backing George Washington's presidency.

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Well, then you are basically saying that the Christians were lying. I mean, that is what is all boils down to. So, they falsely accused a well known Roman procucator of barking the orders for the execution of a man that never actually existed?

Now, the belief of the Resurrection itself goes back to within a few months after the cross (the very least)...now, you are telling me that the Christians would have been foolish enough to accuse Pilate of ordering Jesus' execution, while Pilate was still the prefect of Roman???

Makes no sense.

Oh, and let me also point out that when I read all of the accounts, I don't buy into the whole "they were only stating what the Christians believed" thing. They stated that Pilate crucified Jesus, not that the Christians simply BELIEVED that Pilate crucified Jesus.

None of these Christians who believed all this stuff, including mass witnessing of a resurrected man, nor any of the Greeks or Romans in the area, wrote down a thing about it for 20 to 30 years. Sounds mythical to me. Even Joseph Smith managed to get something in writing beyond his own book.

We have no evidence whatsoever from a few months after the supposed resurrection. You'd think that would be news what with the sun going dark at his death and all. What we have is authors who don't even claim to have been there themselves