Proving The Resurrection By the Minimal Facts Approach

[Randy Carson]

If you have any opposing arguments you wish to make regarding any of the material I have presented, please make your case in response to the appropriate post(s):

Post 1 - My OP
Post 65 - Fact 1: Jesus died by crucifixion
Post 148 - Fact 2: Jesus' disciples believed that He rose and appeared to them
Post 283 - Fact 3: Paul, the enemy of the Church, was suddenly converted
Post 460 - Fact 4: James, the skeptical brother of Jesus, was suddenly converted.
Coming Soon - Fact 5: Jesus' tomb was found to be empty

Thanks.

Jesus died by crucifixion  He certainly was crucified, but he was determined dead after a fairly short time for a crucifixion.  It's possible, though unlikely he wasn't dead.  But the likelihood of his not being dead is considerably higher that that he rose from the dead. Many people have been pronounced dead and woken up in the morgue.  

No, Jenny. The Romans were professional soldiers with LOTS of experience crucifying people. Jesus died on the cross, and hanging your coat on this peg looks like mere denial - not rational evaluation of the evidence.

Jesus' disciples believed that he rose and appeared to them.  Your evidence is primarily Paul in I Corinthians 15. 

15 Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance[a]: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas,[b] and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

I don't think "received" means anything like spoken to in this context.  That he "received" the information does not mean he had it from the apostles lips.

This is incorrect. Paul is using formal language of the rabbinic schools here. Students "received" from their teachers. Since Paul was a student of Gamaliel in one of the two great Rabbinic schools in Jerusalem, he would have been very careful to use precise wording with regard to teaching that came to him from his "master".

Further, I have no knowledge of Greek, but I have read that in 1 Co. 15, even the style of the passage changes from that which is commonly attributed to Paul; IOW, he is repeating something that he learned VERBATIM rather than expressing it freely in his own words.

This won't work for you, Jenny.

In fact, he makes it clear in Galatians that for three years after his conversion the only apostles he saw were Peter and James:

Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas[a] and stayed with him fifteen days. 19 I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord’s brother. 20 I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie.

Galatians 1:18-20

As he wrote Galatians after Corinthians, I don't see how Corinthians can be used to claim he talked to the disciples personally.  He must mean something else.  Second hand news is all he could have had.  Further, Paul said Jesus appeared to the twelve, a rather odd statement in light of Judas don't you think?  Obviously, he did speak to Judas who is supposed have killed himself.

No, Jenny. In Galatians, Paul is telling is the chronology of events related to his conversion and subsequent years. IOW, he tells us in Galatians precisely when he most likely "received" the proto-creed that he recited from memory in 1 Co. 15.

This doesn't work for you, either.

For the rest you refer to the oral tradition of the church, which only slightly better than nothing.

Then you really ought to do some reading on just how solid that oral tradition was.

The earliest gospel Mark noticeably neglects to include any appearance of Jesus to anyone. 

"He is Risen!" (Mark 15:7)

You can't get past that, can you?

Clement was born too late, about the year Jesus died, and Irenaeus is even later. 

Doh! More bad ideas. Clement was known to both Peter and Paul and is mentioned by Paul in Philippians 4:3. Irenaeus was a disciple of Polycarp who heard all of the gospel directly from John.

You're grasping at straws, Jenny. This is the kind of stuff historians drool over, and we have nothing like this for any other figure of antiquity. These are FACTS that you cannot simply brush aside.

Verdict, certainly possible, not not rock solid by any means.

Possible? Oh, yeah. Probable?

But supposing they did believe they'd seen Jesus resurrected?  A ridiculous number of people think they've abducted by aliens.  Simple eyewitness testimony is insufficient to prove such a claim.  And in this case, not only can we not cross-examine the disciples about their experience, but we only have third, fourth, or more news of it.

And a ridiculous number saw Jesus, too. Over 500 actually. But we can examine the written statements that they paid in blood for.

Paul, the enemy of the Church, was suddenly converted  This really comes down to who cares?  Many people suddenly convert to all sorts of religions all the time.  This has essentially no probative value.

Really, Jenny. No value? A sworn enemy of the Church who approved the stoning of Stephen and was throwing Christians in jail suddenly becomes the Church's greatest evangelist and all you have is "no probative value"?

That's gotta be gnawing at you.

James, the skeptical brother of Jesus, was suddenly converted.  See above.  Second, you only have Mark saying his family were skeptical at one early point; and John who is so late and describes a Jesus rather differently than the one described in the synoptic gospels.   Any later martyrdom, is of little if any probative value.  People do die willingly for false things.  If you don't think so, I suggest you because a follower of Islam immediately as we seem to have a slew of recent suicide bombers for the faith.

As you know, and I patiently remind you again, people die for beliefs ALL THE TIME.

They do not die for something that they know they made up out of whole cloth.

And now, my turn.  

This was posted by Contarini at Catholic Answers in my identical thread on this subject; when I read it, I thought of you:

If these were fictional accounts, it would be the easiest thing in the world to have Jesus appearing directly to the male disciples, instead of this weird two-step process in which first the women discover the tomb, and _then_ Jesus starts appearing to people (just to whom, and in what order, varies from one source to another).

Sure, the point might be to reinforce the theme of Jesus doing the opposite of what he would be expected to do, and yes, there's plenty of OT precedent for that. But it isn't, as far as I know, a theme that anyone particularly emphasized except where reality forced them to. From a skeptical point of view, this common Biblical theme would be an attempt to adjust to disappointed expectations. We think that if YHWH is a powerful god and has made a covenant with us, then the city will never falls. The city falls. Oops! That shows that YHWH is even more powerful than we thought--so powerful that even the Babylonians are instruments in his cosmic plan.

We thought that the return from exile would lead to a glorious restoration, better than anything we had before. Actually it leads to hundreds of years of sort of puttering along, often under pagan domination. Oops! This shows that God's plans are more long-term than we thought, and that there will be a final restoration inaugurated by the Messiah.

We thought that the Messiah would defeat the Romans and set up a glorious kingdom. Oops! the guy we thought was the Messiah got crucified. That shows that God's plan for the world is so profound that he redeems the world by death, and overcomes death by resurrection.

If God did that, we'd think that Jesus would appear to his leading male disciples. Oops! Actually the first report was brought by women. Well, that's just part of the pattern established so far.

My point is that these "oops" moments were consistently imposed from outside.

Yes, it's possible that Mark, seeing the pattern, would invent a story in which women saw the tomb first. But it doesn't seem very likely.

In the end, with the resurrection, we face the old Sherlock Holmes choice: impossible vs. improbable. A lot of us find Sherlock Holmes' answer to be, well, improbable.