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

[Minimalist]

Sadly, the only guy alive and writing at the time, a jew himself, who actually did write a letter of complaint to an emperor in which he discussed Pilate's crimes doesn't know anything about that one.

Curious....although probably not to you.

You would be speaking of Philo of Alexandria. He was in no position to know anything about Jesus, since he was in Egypt at the time.

Yes, because news never traveled along the trade routes, did it?

You're getting desperate. How come he knew about Pilate's other "crimes." Did he take a field trip to Jew-town?

[Jenny A]

I haven't been holding my breath for the case or any proof. I decided well.

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

I say this as a believer.

I agree with you that if there was a historic Jesus, he was crucified, he's dead, and he's going to stay that way. I don't have much emotion bound up in whether he was a real person, and I don't see why you should either. If it's his philosophy that interests you, then whether that philosophy is born out of a historic man later legendised, or and legend later historicised shouldn't affect the value of his philosophy. .

I've been an atheist in a Christian family all my life and it never occurred to me until recently to doubt that there was a historic basis for Jesus. However, the historical evidence for Jesus is to say the least odd, and I'm slowly becoming persuaded that the best explanation for the oddities is the historization of a mythical being rather than the mythalogical amplification of a historical man.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

[DeistPaladin]

I think that the "god as a title" thing can work if we treat it thusly: there can be many senators, but they are part of only one senate. Thus there are many, and there is one.

If we're changing the definition of "God" to being a title or, in the case of your Senate analogy, a collection of divine beings that created and manage the universe, we already have a word for that.

We call that a "pantheon".

The Greek gods, like your Senate analogy, were many members of a group of divine beings that lived on Olympus. They were many but they were also part of the same pantheon. Shifting the definition of "God" to replace "pantheon" is playing a game of slight-of-hand to mask the polytheistic nature of Christianity.

But then again, that's the real reason we have the Trinity, now isn't it?

Let's be honest. The real explanation for the Trinity that everyone can understand is early Christian theologians were wrestling with a core problem with Christology that they couldn't solve. Jesus forgave sins and Christians pray to him. If he is not a god, then he can't legitimately forgive sins or offer salvation. If he is a god, then he is in conflict with strict Jewish monotheism, especially in his role as intercessor for a god who specifically forbade such a practice in his first commandment.

Such is the price for a synchratic theology of different pagan and Jewish ideas rammed together to give birth to a patchwork religion. Christianity's greatest strength, it's marketing capabilities with its slick incorporation of local pagan ideas and customs, is also its greatest weakness if inspected too closely (or at all). It's just how it is with multiple script writers working in a science fiction TV series: continuity gaffes slip in to the story line which must be rationalized away by studious fanfic writers. The only problem is this one is a beaut. This gaffe is central to the entire story: what is Jesus exactly?

Unable to answer this question in a satisfying way and squaring it with their belief of Christ being the savior, they apparently went for the "he's-both-yet-neither" solution. He is one with his father and yet separate from his father. He is fully divine and yet also fully human. They are three beings and yet just one god. It's a round square, a curved straight line, an invisible purple nothing.

This highly buggy fix is like the emperor walking buck naked down the street as all true believers pretend they see his clothing. "Why can't you get it? Three separate beings in one god." They babble on with conviction as if they've stated that water is wet and the sky is blue. What else can we expect? The greatest Christian minds for 2000 years have already wrestled with this puzzle and come up empty handed. How is an amateur apologist wannabe trying to cut his teeth in the lion's den going to do any better but fall on his face while abusing the laughing icon?

But still, I can't help asking. Maybe it's my mother's influence as a psychologist. The delusional architecture is perplexing.

[Free]

You would be speaking of Philo of Alexandria. He was in no position to know anything about Jesus, since he was in Egypt at the time.

Yes, because news never traveled along the trade routes, did it?

You're getting desperate. How come he knew about Pilate's other "crimes." Did he take a field trip to Jew-town?

It's not desperation. Aside from the distances, Philo was a Hellenized Jew, and Hellenized Jews were generally ostracized by the orthodox Jews in Judea. Therefore, news may not have traveled as well as you think.

Also, your argument may work for the Christian version of Jesus who walked on water, rose from the dead, etc, for such feats would indeed spread like wild-fire in those times.

But your argument utterly fails against a mere historical person, who's fame would be limited to his immediate vicinity.

[Free]

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.

[Losty]

well lets put Bill Nye up to hovind. Bill Nye Gotten ken ham to defeat himself and the bible.

Nahhh, Bill Nye needs more of a Craig booty spanking...Hovind will only spank Nye on evolution, but Craig would spank Nye on cosmology, naturalism, evolution, morality, miracles...it would be more of an all-around spanking.

All this talk of spanking...makes my panties we...where am I again,

[DeistPaladin]

All this talk of spanking...makes my panties we...where am I again,

Not in Area 69. Don't worry, Lotsy. Just listen to HM's apologetics some more. That should kill the mood.

It's like 20 cold showers taken at once.

[Losty]

All this talk of spanking...makes my panties we...where am I again,

Not in Area 69. Don't worry, Lotsy. Just listen to HM's apologetics some more. That should kill the mood.

It's like 20 cold showers taken at once.

...meanwhile inside Losty's head...

WARNING: DANGER ALERT: Abandon thread! Abandon thread!

[His_Majesty]

What's a Godhead?

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/godhead

It has been one big lexicon party up in this joint for the last few pages.

Zeus, Poseidon and Hades all share the same divine attributes. All three are gods. All three are masters of one domain (sky, sea and underworld). All three are very powerful. All three are immortal.

Dude, Zeus was born...he began to exist...his existence isn't necessary. So before he existed, he had no power, no immortality.

Jesus' spiritual existence preceded his earthly birth. He never began to exist...neither did the Father, neither did the Holy Spirit. They are all eternal.

So stop trying to fight it, bro. You've just compared apples and oranges, and that is either out of ignorance, or just some lame way to attack a concept just for the sake of argument.

The Trinity is the doctrine of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit sharing a divine nature of Deity. One God, three persons which the title of "God" applies to.

If you don't understand it, or disagree with it...I can't help you any further. So just continue erraneously misrepresenting the doctrine...it is your right to be continuously in error.

[Minimalist]

Yes, because news never traveled along the trade routes, did it?

You're getting desperate. How come he knew about Pilate's other "crimes." Did he take a field trip to Jew-town?

It's not desperation. Aside from the distances, Philo was a Hellenized Jew, and Hellenized Jews were generally ostracized by the orthodox Jews in Judea. Therefore, news may not have traveled as well as you think.

Also, your argument may work for the Christian version of Jesus who walked on water, rose from the dead, etc, for such feats would indeed spread like wild-fire in those times.

But your argument utterly fails against a mere historical person, who's fame would be limited to his immediate vicinity.

I don't give a shit about that but in his catalog of the crimes of Pilate it seems remarkable that Philo would not have mentioned the crucifixion of one who "multitudes" of jews were hailing as god.

as he feared least they might in reality go on an embassy to the emperor, and might impeach him with respect to other particulars of his government, in respect of his corruption, and his acts of insolence, and his rapine, and his habit of insulting people, and his cruelty, and his continual murders of people untried and uncondemned, and his never ending, and gratuitous, and most grievous inhumanity.

So much more effective to have a real murder to talk about rather than the generalized crap which we see he presented to Caligula. Perhaps that part of the myth had not been written before Philo's death...c 50 AD. Maybe that's why Caligula threw the Alexandrian Jews out on their asses?