Proving The Resurrection By the Minimal Facts Approach

[Jenny A]

Okay. But YOU personally need to recognize that although I am willing to have one hand tied behind my back for the purposes of this thread (and no one has laid a glove on me yet despite that), professional scholars do not. And they know, as Ehrman pointed out, that the NT is of significant historical value. therefore, YOU cannot ignore it in the privacy of your own room when you're alone with God.

You made the rules Randy, and whether YOU recognize it or not, you've proven nothing and got beat up here.  Those five "facts" do not prove anything.  Sorry, but it's true. 


Secondly, I certainly admit the gospels and Paul's letters have historic value.  That's not the same as saying they are eyewitness accounts or generally accurate.  Reliable facts can be teased out of them, but they are few and far between.  The Jesus lived, was baptized by John the Baptist, preached around Galilee, and was crucified are about it.  We can make educated guesses about those events and about what he preached.  But that's about it.

I don't think so.  That Pilate executed him for sedition yes.  That he was worried about the jealousy of Jewish leaders?  Probably not.  Romans soldiers and Pilate were not generally in Jerusalem.  They came in during the Passover, because Passover itself was thinly veiled sedition.  The symbolism of Passover was not wasted on the Romans.

The Sanhedrin came in demanding that Jesus be executed. You don't think Pilate was able to get up to speed quickly on the politics?

He understood the Passover was a sign of hope for people who felt oppressed.  He understood that other Jews had claimed to come in order to rescue the Jews and that that was dangerous.  

Almost without exception. Therefore, the exception would require explaination.

Almost? Gee, God almost never performs miracles defying the laws of physics or biology, either. But sometimes...

But I have a plausible explanation for the exception. You don't have a body on a cross or in a tomb. If Jesus was rotting away on the cross, then on the third day, why did the women even go to the tomb???

And when word of the disciples claims of resurrection got out, why is it that no one pointed out across the Kidron Valley to Jesus' rotting corpse still hanging between two thieves?

We don't know when the disciples really, if ever claimed Jesus rose from the dead.  We only know that some people claimed he'd risen some indefinable period in the next ten or twenty years. And we have no proof that this god character exists let alone performs miracles.

Because the Romans didn't much notice Jesus at all for quite some time.  There are few references to Christians early on and none to the "threat" of Jesus.

Heh...the only charge made by the JEWS was that the body was stolen. That's what I'm referring to...not the Romans.

Yes, because the Romans DID NOT NOTICE.  Perhaps because there was nothing to notice?

I haven't accounted for alien abductions, Joseph Smith's witnesses, or the ascension of Augustus, or the miracles of Hindu priests either. People believe and claim to believe the oddest things.  And when we can investigate those things they turn out to be false every time.  Therefore when such claims are made and we cannot test them, I see no reason to believe they are true.  No historical document will ever convince me of a miraculous event.

And we can take each of those one at a time at some point in the future, if you like.

But for the purposes of THIS thread, what theory do you propose as an explanation of the five facts?

Sure, it's the same as for the alien abductions:  the disciples or others after them thought they saw Jesus resurrected.  They didn't, but they thought they did.  That's it.  When we test modern cases like alien abductions that's what we find. I'm certain if we could go back in history that's what we'd find about ALL the miracles Christian, Jewish, Roman, and Egyption.   And make no mistake, they all claim miracles.  

No we really can't.

Yeah, Jenny, we can. People just as smart as you have been looking at the same facts and arguments for 2,000 years. The resurrection is the most plausible explanation of ALL of the facts we know about Jesus.

I'm sorry, but I'm really having a hard time keeping a straight face here.  And my politeness is wearing thin.  It is the least probable explanation.  About a billion to one or more improbable.

And I don't think it's because I'm smarter, but I am more dispassionate about it and more educated than people were a thousand years ago.  And not surprisingly, the more educated people are, the more likely they are to be atheists.  It's training in logical thinking that does the trick.

I really don't care what the IQs of people claim who claim god exists are.  I do care what their arguments are.  That is true for any claim.  Appeals to authority are wasted on me.  You must make their arguments or your own.

I may not be the very smartest cookie there is, but the kinds of tests that tease out the ability to ignore emotion when weighing evidence put me in the upper .01%.  It's a skill I know I have.  It served me well when I was in practice.  And it's one you appear to lack, though you may well be more intelligent than I am in other ways.  So far your arguments fail.

Actually, it's a paraphrase of Ehrman, several of my professors and who know who else, all of them professional historians.  What we can know about the past has limits.  Historians know that.  (Guess my major?)

Limits? Sure. As you well know, history major, our knowledge of the past is all about probabilities.

Jenny, I have Ehrman's Did Jesus Exist? on the desk here as I type. I suspect you have read it since the outline of what you believe about Jesus that you gave previously followed very closely what he said in his introduction.

Ehrman is unambiguous. Jesus existed. We can and do know certain things about him and there are numerous independent sources for this information including the gospels which are historically valuable.
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Sure he most likely existed, though the chances he didn't are more like one in a thousand than impossible.  But that doesn't even scratch the surface for proving he was resurrected.  Elvis existed.  You think his death was faked?  Existence and miraculous claims are very different.