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

[Jenny A]

So what? Who are we to tell a person when to write something? Regardless a damn WHEN he wrote it...what matters is the truth value in what he is saying...and no one can take someone's experiences away from them.

You're missing the point. You see the longer people wait to describe an event, the more likely they are to misremember it. But more importantly the bigger and more public an event, the greater the chance that someone will write about it sooner rather than later. Therefore, if no one records a major event contemporaneously, chances are much higher it didn't happen. Thus the "truth value" of the writing is highly dependent on when it was written.

Which he claims to know by supernatural means. It's not historical evidence.

My point was he knew about the STORY of the Resurrection from one of Jesus' right hand man, Peter. So if the Resurrection is a complete hoax, then the hoax would come from someone that would have known whether or not Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to him, which would be Peter.

Uh huh, he knew it 20 years later, second hand.

You continue to miss the point which is that Paul does not ever discuss the details of Jesus' life, and he is the first "witness." His testimony is based entirely on revelation.

How am I missing it when I responded directly to it?? As I said, if his purpose wasn't to write about Jesus' life, then of course he wouldn't write about Jesus' life. And also as mentioned, he didn't need to write about Jesus' life because we already have four Gospels which have taken that to task.

He predates the gospels, so Gospels have nothing to do with what Paul would write if he had actual knowledge as opposed to supernatural revelation.

Sorry if you're claiming he met Jesus in the flesh after Jesus' death, than we just have another incredible supernatural claim here.

Point? So what?

Claims of miraculous knowledge hurt rather than bolster the veracity of Paul.

And he tells them to live god-like lives without ever referring to what Jesus said about how people should live? Why not? Because he had no details of Jesus' life whatesoever.

First off, I disagree about the notion that Paul had no details about Jesus' life...he said he met with Peter, one of the ORIGINAL disciples and James brother of Jesus...and I doubt they were spending their time having beers and shooting pool. All were missionaries, and they would have been discussing those kinds of things...in fact, Paul probably got the creed from them during that time...where they would have had an extensive conversation where Paul was filled in with the details that Peter and James had first-hand knowledge of.

We really don't know which Paul he met with (Pickup's post above). And more importantly, he never mentions any of those hypothetical discussions of the life of Jesus.

Name some whose training is not theological. Good luck because the vast majority of them are Christian and the vast majority of those who aren't were when they got their biblical training in divinity school. And they say the are in the majority because recently, they have secular competitors who disagree.

Moving the goal posts...now the criterion is someone that doesn't have training in theology...but what you fail to realize is just because you have training in theology doesn't mean you have to grant that Jesus existed or his alleged Resurrection...you can be a Buddhist, train in theology, and still not believe that Jesus existed...hell, being a Christian theologian doesn't even necessarily mean that you are a Christian...it just means that theology is an area of interest for you..

So again, the fact that you think all of them are "thelogicians" says nothing towards the notion that they all believe in the historical Jesus because of the biases that comes with their training in theology...

It is yet another non sequitur coming from your direction.

The study of theology does not prepare one to analyze the veracity of historic documents. That's it. It would be very odd if the only people studying Jefferson were political philosophers. But that is essentially the position we are in with regard to the Bible up until recently. Recently, there have been questions.