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

[His_Majesty]

H_M,

You proposed that the majority of non-Christian historians believe there is a historical Jesus. You, after much badgering came up with five names and no citations. I pointed out that with one possible exception all of their academic training is theological not historical and that several of them are Christians. And for all your large caps, that remains the case.

Several of them? I only listed 5, and each one is a historian some capacity...they all specialize in specific kinds of history..namely, the NT, origins of Christianity, etc...and they are all leading authorities in the field.

They are writing articles, peer reviewed journals, books, etc, based on this specific genre of history, and that is Christianity/the Historical Jesus.

Interesting you should post Craig's assessment of Crossan rather than Crossan himself. Crossan does not believe in Jesus embodied the his corpse after death or that it happened as outlined in the Gospels. But he does believe in the resurrection. https://earliestchristianity.wordpress.c...valuation/http://ionofhope.wordpress.com/2012/04/0...c-crossan/----So no, he's not an atheist and is by his own account a Christian.

Well, replace him with Will Durant, who is a historian, who said himself that he is an agnostic, apparently in a book before his death..

"I am still an agnostic, with pantheistic overtones. The sight of plants and children growing inclines me to define divinity as creative power, and to reverence this in all its manifestations, even when they injure me. I cannot reconcile the existence of consciousness with a deterministic and mechanistic philososphy. I am skeptical not only of theology but also of philosophy, science, history, and myself. I recognize supersensory possibilities but not supernatural powers."

So he is an agnostic, and he said this about Jesus...


The Christian evidence for Christ begins with the letters ascribed to Saint Paul. Some of these are of uncertain authorship; several, antedating A.D. 64, are almost universally accounted as substantially genuine. No one has questioned the existence of Paul, or his repeated meetings with Peter, James, and John; and Paul enviously admits that these men had known Christ in his flesh. The accepted epistles frequently refer to the Last Supper and the Crucifixion.... The contradictions are of minutiae, not substance; in essentials the synoptic gospels agree remarkably well, and form a consistent portrait of Christ. In the enthusiasm of its discoveries the Higher Criticism has applied to the New Testament tests of authenticity so severe that by them a hundred ancient worthies, for example Hammurabi, David, Socrates would fade into legend. Despite the prejudices and theological preconceptions of the evangelists, they record many incidents that mere inventors would have concealed the competition of the apostles for high places in the Kingdom, their flight after Jesus' arrest, Peter's denial, the failure of Christ to work miracles in Galilee, the references of some auditors to his possible insanity, his early uncertainty as to his mission, his confessions of ignorance as to the future, his moments of bitterness, his despairing cry on the cross; no one reading these scenes can doubt the reality of the figure behind them. That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so loft an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospel. After two centuries of Higher Criticism the outlines of the life, character, and teaching of Christ, remain reasonably clear, and constitute the most fascinating feature of the history of Western man.

So, it still remains at 5. For every one you take out, I can add another...but wait, it gets better.

WOW and admission you're wrong. Congratulations.

I wasn't wrong, I was "mistaken"...there is a difference

You have to read the article in context. He is listing the events as found in the Bible.

But he is a Christian. Read before you post. E.P. Sanders is your addition now, not on your earlier list.

Saunders and Crossan are Christian, though you wouldn't get along well with their theology. So that's two. You may have found a substitute for Saunders, but he is a Christian that was on your list. Tabor is a possible third.

Skeptic does not equal atheist. It's very hard to determine what Tabor believes.

And that has what to do with your proposition that there are numerous non-Christian historians who believe in the historicity of Jesus? Your list was supposed to be of non-Christians.

Again has nothing to do with whether there are many non-Christian historians who believe in the historicity of Jesus.

Theologian and historian are rather different disciplines and often at odds with each other as one requires faith and the other does not. Most of the men on your list are actually historians. But none of them with the possible exception of Tabor has any formal historical education. They all come out of Divinity school.

Note: I agree that the vast majority of historians believe in the historicity of Jesus. But the vast majority of biblical historians are Christian and unlike historians of other areas they tend to be theologians and literary people by training. You've had a hard time coming up with five historians who aren't Christian but do believe in a historical Jesus. In fact, you haven't managed it quite yet.

Grant, Erhman, Ludmann, and possibly Tabor. You're two short even after adding Grant.

Let's take everything that you said above and compare that to what actual historians regarding this particular subject matter say.

"I don't think there's any serious historian who doubts the existence of Jesus .... We have more evidence for Jesus than we have for almost anybody from his time period."

Prof Bart Ehrman, University of North Carolina

"We can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned. ..... In recent years, 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary."

The late Michael Grant, eminent historian of the Roman Empire

"Jesus did exist; and we know more about him than about almost any Palestinian Jew before 70 C.E."

Prof James Charlesworth, Princeton Theological Seminary

"Biblical scholars and classical historians now regard it [the theory that Jesus didn't exist] as effectively refuted."

Robert Van Voorst, Western Theological Seminary

"The historical evidence for Jesus himself is extraordinarily good. .... From time to time people try to suggest that Jesus of Nazareth never existed, but virtually all historians of whatever background now agree that he did"

NT Wright

All of that is derived from http://www.is-there-a-god.info/belief/wa...real.shtml

But wait, there's more... http://www.bede.org.uk/price1.htm (Scholarly opinions on the Jesus Myth )

And watch this freakin' video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP15Pc2Lljc

You can only fight it for so long, Jenny.