Proving The Resurrection By the Minimal Facts Approach

[Jenny A]

So, I'd like to ask this:

If you were writing a story in order to promote a new God-man, would you:

• Have him die on a cross (which would scandalize your audience, Jews and Gentiles, alike)?
  
• Have the empty tomb found discovered by women (whose testimony was worthless in the eyes of your audience)?
  
• Attribute your play to Matthew (a hated tax collector), Mark (who wasn't even there) or Luke (a Gentile) instead of the more famous players such as Peter, James or John?
  
• Would you have your God-man saying un-Godlike things such as he was less than the Father, that he did not know all things or that he could not do many miracles in his hometown because of the lack of faith of his neighbors?
  
• Would you have your God-man's own brothers and sisters claiming that he was "out of his mind" and not believing in him?
  

You've hit upon one of criterion for  evaluating primary sources, dissimilarity: statements that go against the message the writer wishes to convey are more likely to be true statements. And indeed that is one the reasons I believe Jesus was crucified. 

However, when using that criterion, one must evaluate the bias of the author at the time he was writing.  It is very hard to determine just what it was that early Christians believed about the divinity of Jesus.  As late as the second and third centuries Christians held extremely diverse views on that subject.  Un-godlike statements made by Jesus would not be against bias for several early christologies including an adoptionist or exaultationist one (Jesus became divine when god adopted him as his son either at his baptism or at his resurrection) which appears to be the view of the author of Mark. 

The criterion does not apply to the names affixed the the gospels a hundred years after they were written.  They were quoted simply as "scripture" for some time before any names were attached to them, and traditions closest to the event are more likely than later traditions.   Therefore it's highly unlikely that anyone attributed the gospels to any particular author when they were first circulated.

I wouldn't hammer too hard on the empty tomb if I were you.  It suggests that the empty tomb really was the only evidence the author had for the resurrection and other traditions were made up after Mark.   And in it's case another criterion applies, that of historical context.  And in that historical context it is extremely unlikely the Romans would have allowed Jesus to be buried.

Is that how you would conspire with your friends to get a new religion off the ground?

And would you be willing to die rather than admit that you made the whole thing up even though neither you nor anyone in your family would benefit in any way from maintaining the charade?

New religions start all the time and people do die for them.  People die for all sorts of things, some true, some not.  It does not prove anything.