RE: Proving The Resurrection By the Minimal Facts Approach
July 1, 2015 at 1:07 am
(This post was last modified: July 1, 2015 at 1:07 am by Redbeard The Pink.)
You're kind of assuming that Jesus of Nazareth existed in the first place. You're forgetting that despite many mainstream scholars' insistence that he must have existed (why they insist on this I'm not quite sure), there is legitimately NO reliable, historical evidence that Jesus existed historically. I know this because I've looked for it. Christians try to jump through a bunch of hoops by talking about the "nature of historical evidence" and then going on to extoll the number of manuscripts we have and/or the meticulousness of the copying methods, depending on whether they're talking Old or New Testament, but that's basically a bunch of misleading gibberish.
When it comes down to it, there are only two non-christian texts that christians try to use to argue for the historicity of Jesus: the writings of Josephus and the writings of Tacitus. Tacitus is the later of these two sources, and he briefly mentions a cult who call themselves Christians and serve a crucified savior named Jesus. He does not mention any details other than these, and this information could come from interacting with the cult and/or their writings without their beliefs necessarily having a historical foundation. As for Josephus, historians can't even agree on how much of that wasn't forged, but at least part of it definitely was. Neither of these men were alive when Jesus was supposed to have been, so none of their writings could possibly be first-, second-, or likely even third-hand even if Jesus had existed.
On the other hand, there's a good bit of evidence to support the notion that the Jesus character was originally a purely celestial god-being whose death and resurrection took place in the various heavens and hells. In the earliest redactions of a story called "The Ascension of Isaiah," Jesus descends through various levels of both heaven and hell, disguising himself as denizens of each as he goes. When he gets to the bottom of hell, he is slain by demons while still disguised as one of them and passes back up through the levels to be resurrected, paying off all mankind's sins with celestial trickery. The "gospel" version of the story is a later one and features a human Jesus, though there's some evidence that this story was originally meant as one big parable and the church later decided that they wished to present it as historical.
The really interesting thing is that when you look at the Epistles that aren't forged and throw in Hebrews (which wasn't written by Paul but was likely written by someone who knew him personally and shared his beliefs), it becomes clear that the Paul and the other writers of the first few Epistles were originally referencing this older story of a celestial Jesus who was slain by demons and not men and never appeared on Earth except in visions to humans AFTER his supposed celestial resurrection. In fact, they appear to be completely ignorant of Jesus' human story altogether.
So yeah...before you can even start talking about the historicity of the resurrection, you pretty much have to establish the historicity of Jesus first, and that's not as sure a thing as you might think.
When it comes down to it, there are only two non-christian texts that christians try to use to argue for the historicity of Jesus: the writings of Josephus and the writings of Tacitus. Tacitus is the later of these two sources, and he briefly mentions a cult who call themselves Christians and serve a crucified savior named Jesus. He does not mention any details other than these, and this information could come from interacting with the cult and/or their writings without their beliefs necessarily having a historical foundation. As for Josephus, historians can't even agree on how much of that wasn't forged, but at least part of it definitely was. Neither of these men were alive when Jesus was supposed to have been, so none of their writings could possibly be first-, second-, or likely even third-hand even if Jesus had existed.
On the other hand, there's a good bit of evidence to support the notion that the Jesus character was originally a purely celestial god-being whose death and resurrection took place in the various heavens and hells. In the earliest redactions of a story called "The Ascension of Isaiah," Jesus descends through various levels of both heaven and hell, disguising himself as denizens of each as he goes. When he gets to the bottom of hell, he is slain by demons while still disguised as one of them and passes back up through the levels to be resurrected, paying off all mankind's sins with celestial trickery. The "gospel" version of the story is a later one and features a human Jesus, though there's some evidence that this story was originally meant as one big parable and the church later decided that they wished to present it as historical.
The really interesting thing is that when you look at the Epistles that aren't forged and throw in Hebrews (which wasn't written by Paul but was likely written by someone who knew him personally and shared his beliefs), it becomes clear that the Paul and the other writers of the first few Epistles were originally referencing this older story of a celestial Jesus who was slain by demons and not men and never appeared on Earth except in visions to humans AFTER his supposed celestial resurrection. In fact, they appear to be completely ignorant of Jesus' human story altogether.
So yeah...before you can even start talking about the historicity of the resurrection, you pretty much have to establish the historicity of Jesus first, and that's not as sure a thing as you might think.
