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

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Pilate nailed him to the cross. He's dead and will stay that way.

I say this as a believer.

Here in brief is the evidence:

First Paul writes writes in or around 50 C.E. but before the Jewish Wars which began in 66. What we have is seven letters of Paul: 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Romans, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon. The other letters attributed to him appear to be later forgeries. These seven letter of Paul are letters congregations to whom he has preached rather than a straight forward narrative. He does not claim to have seen the live Jesus nor to have learned from those who did. His knowledge of Jesus visionary and decidedly not historic. He tells essentially nothing about Jesus' life. He quotes the OT rather than any utterances of Jesus. Ordinarily historians don't give any credence to the writing of persons who say that their knowledge comes from supernatural means, and so we should give any real credence to Paul.

I'm sure your last few words should have said "and so we should not give any real credence to Paul," if I am reading the entire content correctly.

If so, I disagree. Sure, Paul didn't quote much of Jesus, but all that says to me is that the Gospel may not have been written at this time. Since he never met the man, he wouldn't know much about what Jesus said other than a few phrases he picked up from the apostles in the church of Jerusalem.

The point however is that Paul was a contemporary writer, and he wrote about the crucifixion of Jesus. This alone is considered to be contemporary evidence of the existence of Jesus as a historical person, and it fits well with other accounts of the crucifixion of Jesus.

Many who support the mythical argument fail to consider this rather obvious fact. It doesn't matter in the slightest whether or not Paul ever met Jesus, because that is not the point. The point is clear, and I stress that mythicist like Carrier tend to miss the obvious because:

Paul is a 1st century contemporary of Jesus of Nazareth, and wrote of the crucifixion of Jesus.

Outside the Bible, and there is no reason to treat evidence outside the Bible as lesser, the next source we have is 1 Clement in a letter to the Corinthians written in the 60s (as it references the death of Paul as recent event) though there are historians who would like to put it out as late as 95 since that would place it after the Gospels and make it of lessor importance. It may or may not have been written by Clement the Bishop of Rome. It laments the death of Paul in Spain (no Rome as the Gospels state) and like Paul it tells of a decidedly unfleshly, unhistoric Jesus. Like Paul it uses OT quotes as stand-in for what Jesus says, on the rare occasion it mentions what he says. Also like Paul, Clement is all about the resurrection and nothing at all about Jesus' life or teachings. He suggests that Jesus, Noah, Moses, Joshua, David, and Isiah, are all prophets through whom God allowed salvation through repentance.

Actually, there's nothing in the NT that indicates that Paul died in Rome. It merely shows that he was imprisoned there.

Not sure you or Carrier actually took the time to read 1 Clement, for in CHAPTER 13 -- AN EXHORTATION TO HUMILITY we see him quoting several of the teachings of Jesus as so, and I have placed the corresponding Gospel verse at the end of each quote:

"Be merciful, that you may obtain mercy (Matt 5:7); forgive, that it may be forgiven to you (Luke 6:37); as you do, so shall it be done to you (Luke 6:31); as you judge, so shall you be judged (Luke 6:37); as you are kind, so shall kindness be shown to you; with what measure you measure, with the same it shall be measured to you. (Mark 4:24)"

There's at least 5 quotes of the teachings of Jesus there in one single quote from Clement.

Another quote of Jesus from 1 Clement includes:

"Woe to that man [by whom offences come]! It were better for him that he had never been born, than that he should cast a stumbling-block before one of my elect. Yea, it were better for him that a millstone should be hung about [his neck], and he should be sunk in the depths of the sea, than that he should cast a stumbling-block before one of my little ones. Your schism has subverted [the faith of] many, has discouraged many, has given rise to doubt in many, and has caused grief to us all. And still your sedition continues." - Found in various places of the Gospels.

Carrier is sadly mistaken, as there's are so many obvious quotes of Jesus in 1 Clememt that I must conclude that he never actually studied it.

Also, not sure how carrier could have missed the following from 1 Clement:

"Jesus Christ our Lord gave His blood for us by the will of God; His flesh for our flesh, and His soul for our souls."

And ...

"Let us reverence the Lord Jesus Christ, whose blood was given for us;"

If Clement was not speaking of a flesh and bone Jesus, I am perplexed how some kind of specter or non human entity could shed his blood, or give his flesh.

Anyone want to speculate on that?

Next we have the canonical Gospel which were written around 70 C.E. for Mark, Mathew around 80 C.E., Luke and Acts about 90 C.E. and John around 100 C.E. So they follow Paul by 20 to 50 years. These are the first writings to attempt to place Jesus historically. The Jesus they describe lived somewhere during the early first century and died sometime around the 30 C.E. by crucifixion by Pilot, with or without depending on the Gospel the involvement of Herod. The do not agree as to the date or place of Jesus' birth or the date of his death. Most of them have Jesus crucified on Passover which is not something the Hebrews would have done. They include many miracles. And most importantly at least the first three written are so much alike that they really only count as a single source. And unlike His Majesty, I don't suppose I have to remind you that they weren't written by the disciples or Paul's secretary.

Firstly, the Jews didn't crucify Jesus. The Romans did. The Jews could not crucify him as they had no law to do that, and also, they could not kill him during the passover. That's why they took him to Pilate and accused Jesus of claiming to be a king. The claim to be a king while under the kingship of Caesar is a captital offence punishable by crucifixion.

The miracles are merely an embellishment of the life of a local folk hero.

Josephus, if you accept that he really wrote about Jesus, doesn't write until 93 C.E.

Of course he did. That is almost universally acknowledged. Those who disagree must almost bend the laws of physics just to posit a grossly impoverished argument.

And based on that I was willing to grant that Jesus probably existed even though the late appearance of the Gospel is rather odd. But then I was introduced to Epiphanius, a 4th century Christian scholar who wrote about heresies and thus unwittingly tells us much about Christian beliefs that would not have otherwise survived. The Panarion heresy describes Christians that believed Jesus lived and died in the time of Alexander Jannaeus. The Babylonian Talmod accepts this particular heretical group as the only Christians they know of. That would place Jesus some one hundred years before the Jesus of the Gospels. This Jesus was known as Ben Stada "Son of the Unfaithful" Mary who is supposed to have slept with a Roman soldier Pandera. This Jesus is tried and executed in Lydda, not Jerusalem by Herod. He was stoned then crucified.

Now, the puzzle of Jesus unstuck in time and contradictory life story deepens. Muddling the dates within a few years might be explainable, but a 100 years? That's hard to believe. That for me at least begins to tip the likelihoods towards historicised myth.

Not sure what this demonstrates other than some early rumors that appear to confuse two different people named Jesus. The names of Jesus and Mary appear to have been very common back in those days. With the Talmod constantly being censured and forced to erase information by the Christian church over the years, how can anyone use this as any kind of useful information for either historicity of mythology?

It's just far too unreliable, and if Carrier is trying to use this mess to further his agenda then all that demonstrates to me is an act of total desperation.

Add that the Christ myth follows a similar pattern to that of: Oedipus, Moses, Theseus, Dionysus, Romulus, Perseus, Hercules, Zeus Bellerphon, Jason, Osiris, Pelops, Aesculapius, and Joseph in that most of them share the majority of these elements: born of a virgin, father was a king or heir of a king, the conception was unusual, he is reputed to be a god, there was an attempt or attempts to kill him as a child, he is taken away as an infant to a strange land or family to escape, we don't know anything else about his childhood, he returns to his kingdom at adulthood, he is crowned or hailed as king, he reigns uneventfully, he loses favor with the gods or his subjects, he is driven from the throne, he dies mysteriously on a high place, he has no children, his body turns up missing and you have a pretty good idea how such a myth might form. It's a story we continued to invent through the Middle Ages as King Arthur fits the basic pattern.

Finally add that other rabbis were preaching a message similar to Jesus and Apollonius preached a similar message after, and myth begins to look much more plausible.

--- All of the above is taken primarily from On the Historicity of Jesus, Why We May Have Reason to Doubt, by Richard Carrier.

Unfortunately Carrier is not exactly someone I trust to provide any good evidence for his position. After all, he predisposes himself in the quote above by assuming that Jesus was a myth with the words, "the Christ myth." He made up his mind before he said anything else. He also fails to provide any good evidence against Josephus, Tacitus, or anything else that points to historicity.

Carrier is absolutely no different than any other Mythicist I contend with, despite his credentials. He really doesn't provide any evidence at all, just smoke and mirrors.