Is the Resurrurredction really a historical fact, or not?

[polonius]

In Paul’s oldest and first epistle, written in 51-52 AD, he states without qualification that:

“Indeed, we tell you this, on the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord,* will surely not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16For the Lord himself, with a word of command, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God, will come down from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first.g17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together* with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Thus we shall always be with the Lord.� 1 Thes 4:15-17

But it didn’t happen. Thus we must conclude that either Paul or the Lord were incorrect.

How much else of what Paul told us is also incorrect?

Recall, it was Paul who reported the Resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 written about 53-57 AD.

Was his story historically correct (did it actually happen) or is it just a story that was used by and embellished by the writers of the New Testament?

Since the basis of Christian belief is the historical fact of the Resurrection, let’s examine the evidence and see if the Resurrection really happened or can an analysis of the story show that it is improbable if not impossible.

Opinions?

[Tired of the Nonsense]

[Replying to polonius.advice]

In my reading Paul clearly writes ; he was the last of the 500 Christ appeared to , Same Christ. Paul's experience with the resurrected Christ is clearly spiritual, an experience really effecting Paul spiritually intellectually emotionally and physically. IT wa a life changing meeting. Similar to the call of the first disciples. How much more real can it get? Are not thoughts and emotions real?

Christ "appeared to Paul" at a time when he was sick and delirious from dehydration, and was being treated for his condition by a Christian man. Jesus had been dead for some years when this occurred. Surely SOME consideration might be given to the possibility that these facts warrant some modest skepticism that Paul ACTUALLY HAD A CONVERSATION WITH A DEAD MAN? Is that unreasonable?

[Ancient of Years]

REPLYING TO CLAIRE EVANS

Matthew and Luke share some material found in Mark. Matthew has much material not found in Mark or Luke. Luke has much material not found in Mark or Matthew. Matthew and Luke share much material not found in Mark. Luke omits considerable material found in both Mark and Matthew. (The Great Omission) Luke has material found in Matthew but radically rearranged. Luke has considerable material that is the exact opposite of material in Matthew but that no one else has. (Genealogies, Nativities, Sermons, Galilee/Jerusalem dichotomy, post-resurrection narratives)

This is all true. It fails to address the question of why Mark Luke and John left out so incredibly important a detail as the guard at the tomb however. It's as though they didn't believe it themselves, or knew for a fact that it wasn't true. The same might be said for Matthew's "Resurrection of the saints." Resurrected dead people wandering the streets should have provoked SOME reaction one would think. It's very difficult not to conclude that these stories were pure bull snot, and everyone knew it at the time.
And of course even you have acknowledged that the story of the resurrected saints is probably not true. But in doing so you have established the unreliability of Gospel Matthew. Some of the things detailed in the Gospels ARE PROBABLY NOT TRUE. Give that some thought and see of you can begin to understand which of those things probably are not true.

You quoted me, not Claire. But you are clearly replying to Claire, so I will not otherwise respond.

[dio9]

[Replying to polonius.advice]

Do you know Christianity Judaism and Islam are revelatory religions.

[otseng]

It is difficult to argue when the adversary seems not to understand what is being said.

But I fear this will float over your head.

You love supernatural explanations. Nothing I can do about that either.

You have a problem, it seems, assessing the conditional.

Moderator Comment

Please avoid making any comments of a personal nature.

Please review the Rules.


______________

Moderator comments do not count as a strike against any posters. They only serve as an acknowledgment that a post report has been received, but has not been judged to warrant a moderator warning against a particular poster. Any challenges or replies to moderator postings should be made via Private Message to avoid derailing topics.

[dio9]

[Replying to post 340 by rikuoamero]

The point here as I see it is not how many people saw the resurrected Jesus but what is resurrection .

As some kind of definition of the indefinable roughly ; Resurrection is a rebirth and continuance of the living spirit of Christ in believers. What is Christ? again Christ is the unity of God and human. The Gospel of John says only Jesus can be Christ , and here is my particular heresy, we all have the potential to be Christs . This is resurrection , once the genii is out of the bottle it's out for good. Resurrection means the spirit of God continues to be with Man .

For the religious minded Christianity teaches Man aka Adam became alienated from his creator , and Jesus restored Adam's alienation. This Restoration then is resurrection, called variously , being born again , bringing the once dead back to life, giving sight to the blind , healing the sick and so on. Resurrection is a rebirth of the divine spirit in humanity.

Now the question is , is this happening or not, not whether resurrection is real or not. The ball is in Adam's hands , is Christ alive in Christians or not ?

[Tired of the Nonsense]

Replying to Ancient of Years

Sorry about that. I was intending to respond to Claire Evans, but began having trouble with my computer locking up, which in turn caused me to become confused over who wrote what. I rebooted and walked away for a time. Hopefully everything is functioning properly now.

[Inigo Montoya]

What is a resurrection?

Specifically.

In this thread two notions are being used interchangeably.

The first: Lazarus syndrome or autoresuscitation after failed cardiopulmonary resuscitation[1] is the spontaneous return of circulation after failed attempts at resuscitation.[2]

Occurrences of the syndrome are extremely rare and the causes are not well understood. One theory for the phenomenon is that a chief factor (though not the only one) is the buildup of pressure in the chest as a result of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). The relaxation of pressure after resuscitation efforts have ended is thought to allow the heart to expand, triggering the heart's electrical impulses and restarting the heartbeat.[2] Other possible factors are hyperkalemia or high doses of epinephrine.[5] -Wikipedia

The second: Yeshua "the Christ" raised from the dead (by?) after being killed by crucifixion. Dead not less than two days and no more than three.

Where is WinePusher?

When I return home I have much for you and Goose both, though Tired of the Nonsense, Marco, Z, and Rik have been doing a fine job "swatting it out of the air," "annihilating it," and "demolishing" your missteps in reason.

Sounds like the angry dialogue from XBox Live players with a headset...

Anyhow. What is a resurrection? Who is responsible? Is the agency identical in both cases? Are both cases identical?

[polonius]

[Replying to post 350 by dio9]

RESPONSE:

Are? Or claim to be????

[Claire Evans]

What's it to the Romans? Imagine historians writing about a dead man coming back to life. In fact, it was so not believed it was called a mischievous superstition.

I can imagine it readily. Livy happily described in his "Puero dormienti..." account of Servius Tullius the miracle of the sleeping boy's encirclement with fire. Yes, the Romans did think the Jesus tale was a mischievous superstition but you seem to quote the notable historian Tacitus as supporting what you believe. He didn't.

Tacitus was an historian who did not report on hearsay. The Romans would not have mentioned the resurrection if it had not had an impact on the Roman Empire. That is why the Romans were silent until Christianity became a threat.

Tacitus was a great historian who wrote about his father-in-law, Agricola, the famous general, and in that account we have the speech of the native Briton, Calgacus, into whose mouth Tacitus puts the words: solitudinem faciunt , pacem appellant (they make a desert and call it peace). Eloquent as it is, the speech is hearsay. Suetonius, who gives us The Twelve Caesars, delighted in gossip.

Tacitus could not have known about that quote. He made literary work and the so-called speech is empathetic writing that historians use.

"Despite the fact that the concept is not clearly defined up to the present day, it has beenwidely used in psychiatry and psychology.
2 The historian, compared to the psychiatrist or the psychologist, provides a special meaning for the concept of empathy, exploiting it as a tool to solve problems that arise in historical research. With the aid of historical evidence he attempts to
mentally reconstruct the historical event under study. His ability to empathize allows him to place himself in the position of specific historical persons or groups in order to understand how they felt, thought, evaluated the situations, and acted under the special historical conditions they were in.
3 In this way, historical empathy could be defined as a process through which the
historian contextualizes the actions of historical persons in order to understand them. "

http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ944023.pdf


"There were exceptions to Tacitus' reliability. The Tacitean scholar Mellor, notes that Tacitus occasionally reported stories which were false historically but were true in a literary sense or a moral sense; he also occasionally reported a rumor or report that he knew was false. As Mellor says:

"When reporting Augustus's trip to be reconciled with his exiled grandson Agrippa, he alludes to a rumor that the emperor was killed by his wife, Livia, to prevent Agrippa's reinstatement…all the components of such a tale foreshadow the murder of Claudius by his wife Agrippina to allow her son Nero to succeed before the emperor reverted to his own son Brittanicus. Tacitus is content to use the rumors to besmirch, by association, Livia and Tiberius who, whatever their failings, never displayed the deranged malice of an Agrippina and a Nero. It is good literature but it can be irresponsible history."

http://www.tektonics.org/jesusexist/tacitus.php


So he did report on rumours but never stated them as fact. He also would differentiate between the two:

ROME at the beginning was ruled by kings. Freedom and the consulship were established by Lucius Brutus. Dictatorships were held for a temporary crisis. The power of the decemvirs did not last beyond two years, nor was the consular jurisdiction of the military tribunes of long duration. The despotisms of Cinna and Sulla were brief; the rule of Pompeius and of Crassus soon yielded before Cæsar; the arms of Lepidus and Antonius before Augustus; who, when the world was wearied by civil strife, subjected it to empire under the title of "Prince." But the successes and reverses of the old Roman people have been recorded by famous historians; and fine intellects were not wanting to describe the times of Augustus, till growing sycophancy scared them away. The histories of Tiberius, Caius, Claudius, and Nero, while they were in power, were falsified through terror, and after their death were written under the irritation of a recent hatred. Hence my purpose is to relate a few facts about Augustus—more particularly his last acts, then the reign of Tiberius, and all which follows, without either bitterness or partiality, from any motives to which I am far removed.

He writes in his Annals:

‘It is said,’ ‘Some have put it on record,’ etc. for hearsay, and even, ‘I have followed the majority of historians,’ or ‘the most numerous and trustworthy authorities,’

I do not believe the Calgacus speech was meant to be taken as a historical fact.

No, the Romans didn't suppress accounts of enemies. That is why people like Tacitus mentioned Christianity as a threat. When Jesus was alive, He wasn't an enemy of Rome. Yes, He threatened instability but that was not enough to be an enemy.

Sorry, Tacitus regarded the ragbag of Christians at Rome as a social nuisance. You've made up this scenario.

You're right. It was Nero who found Christians a threat, not Tacitus.

Yes, but Lazarus wasn't a figure known to the Romans.

Which is my point. A walking corpse should have been.

So the witnesses are going to run to the Romans to say a dead man has risen from the dead when there was no proof to them that he was dead in the first place?

Jesus was motionless on the cross. They weren't trying to speed up death but to make sure He was dead. No amount of medicines could have saved Jesus.
The Romans would not have allowed any chance of survival.

You've conjured up a description and a diagnosis of your own. From that you can draw whatever conclusion you want. I suggested to you that the whole thing was a fabrication.

But it's true, no Roman is going to let Jesus down from the cross if He wasn't dead. Thrusting a spear in the body was a way to find out. You think my diagnosis is not correct? Do you even know the the extent of Jesus' injuries?

You go on to argue that Rome was silent about Jesus because she feared him. Well, that is a possibility, if he had weapons, ships and armies. Rome ignored him because he was nothing; the Jews went on with their faith, unchanged, because they regarded the claims as rubbish. And they were around to make a judgment. We've painted them all as wicked to rule out their view of Christ's claims.

Let me make this clear. The threat of an uprising was a threat to Pontius Pilate. Let me not suggest that he representing the whole of the Roman Empire.

Christianity has spread not through resurrections of corpses, but through Roman and Spanish steel. Islam has wiped out Christ's eternal message in vast areas, again with steel.

Through Roman and Spanish steel? Please elaborate. Now it's one thing to spread. It's quite another to be established in the first place.

[Claire Evans]

We have to ask ourselves, "Why did the apostles find the courage after Jesus' death to witness for Him to the execute they died for Him?" It's one thing to die for a lie one believes is true as is not. It's quite another to die for the truth when one knows the truth.

You seem to be saying that the Apostles would not have offered their lives for something that was false. Therefore what they believed was true.

I should imagine that you do not subscribe to the truth of Islamic beliefs. Today people offer their lives believing in Allah. Is Allah therefore true?

For people to act fanatically it is sufficient that THEY believe what they are doing is right.

My point is, Muslims do really think Allah is the true god even though, for argument's sake, it isn't true. They believe a lie. However, are the apostles going to die for something they know is a lie?