Is belief in the resurrection reasonable?

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

Here are a few things skeptics need to explain if they wish to position themselves as motivated by reason in their rejection of Christ:

1. His life and crucifixion is a matter of historic record - Roman and Jewish. It happened.
2. The only people that could have a motive for making up his resurrection were the apostles, most of whom died rather horrible deaths rather than deny that resurrection. While I know that people will die for what they believe in, if the apostles knew that Christ was not risen, why did they die for what they knew to be a lie?
3. His resurrection was witnessed by hundreds, perhaps thousands and referred to by Paul within 3 years of the event in front of crowds of people. If it didn't happen, why don't we have record of objections to Paul's statements?
4. Jesus was a nobody who appeared on the scene for 3 years and was then killed as a criminal, just like thousands of others were killed by the Romans in the same manner. Yet within a few years of his death, a religion in his name based almost exclusively on his resurrection had spread throughout the Roman empire. What was different about this man to all those others who claimed to be the Messiah?
5. The Jewish rulers were scared witless of revolutionary movements and would do anything to head one off at the pass. The Romans took challenges to their authority about as seriously as any group of people in history. Given that there were people running all over the place saying they had seen the risen Christ, if it wasn't true, why not just torture a few into denial of the fact and kill the movement in its tracks? Pliny the Younger re-counted doing just that a hundred years or so later and was astonished to see how many Christians went to their deaths rather than deny what they also knew to be true.

Yes, a belief in the resurrection is reasonable, but I'd love to hear the reasons why it is not.

[Goat]

From Post 171:

That statement could only be made by someone with a philosophically driven "pre-condition to acceptance" of a universe without meaning.

Can Starboard Tack show this is a universe with meaning?

What would such meaning be? 42?

When you mean "show", do you mean as in a mathematical proof? Well, I can show by mathematical proof that the universe must have a cause by something outside of the thing caused, and I can show mathematically that the nature of the thing caused cannot vary in its features by 1 part in 10^1000+ for life to exit in the thing caused. Does that prove meaning? No. Does it strongly suggest meaning? Yes. Does it strongly suggest that the position that it doesn't have meaning is fanciful? Yes. But does it prove it? No, nothing can be proved.

When you mean you can show a 'mathematical proof' does that include having it in a peer reviewed scientific journal, with each piece carefully researched, or is it 'throwing numbers out there and seeing what sticks'? I noticed some people love to through big numbers out there for improbabilities, but can they can not show that the numbers they throw out have any meaning in the real world. Throwing numbers out there doesn't mean anything. Often, it starts with the unreasonable and unproven assumption that where we ended up was a goal.

[Composer]

Starboard Tack wrote:
Here are a few things skeptics need to explain if they wish to position themselves as motivated by reason in their rejection of Christ:


1. His life and crucifixion is a matter of historic record - Roman and Jewish. It happened.

I asked Starboard to provide legitimate evidence of this, so I was wondering where the evidence of this is in the Posts? (I have been away and haven't searched all the pages I admit). Could Starboard or any one else please refer me to Starboard's alleged evidence?

Thank you

Starboard provided the usual late first century reference to Josephus, and references to second century historians Pliny the Younger and Tacitus, which it was pointed out to him are simply reactions to the existence of Christians and the stories they were telling many decades after the time of Jesus. He DID NOT provide evidence taken from the actual time of Jesus, because there is not any. Begin on page one and catch up. The question at this point is whether Starboard has deserted the discussion or not.

Please provide evidence that the information provided by Josephus and Tacitus "are simply reactions to the existence of Christians."

Still waiting for legitimate evidence this biblical jesus literally existed as written about?

What others may or may not have said about this fictional character is of no particular importance for it is ALL spurious and beliefs in a fantasy and YOUR efforts haven't changed that one iota!

If what may have been said about Jesus is not important, because it's ALL spurious and beliefs in a fantasy, what exactly do you mean by 'legitimate evidence'?

We have two very widely acknowledged primary sources of information regarding the brother of Jesus (Josephus and Paul), one of whom was a contemporary of Jesus himself,

That is a false claim and ' who ' claims it is a primary source and what is their alleged supportive evidence?

and arguably two other primary/contemporary sources regarding Jesus (Mark and John), plus the circumstantial evidence of the movement which spread in his name and the non-primary sources of Matthew, Luke/Acts, Tacitus and so on. As far as I can see the fact that he existed is all but indisputable by any normal standards of historical investigation.

a) The legitimate evidence outside of bible Story book land for a literal biblical jesus = 0.
b) Paul is another biblical Story book fictional character! The legitimate evidence outside of Story book land otherwise also = 0.
c) Hypothetically allowing that any such a biblical jesus literally existed outside of bible Story book land the following can correctly be said of Josephus' - (quote) But first things first. Josephus was not a contemporary historian. He was born in the year 37 C.E., several years after Jesus' alleged death. There is no way he could have known about Jesus from his own personal experience. At best, he could have recorded the activities of the new cult of Christianity, and what they said about their crucified leader. So, even if Josephus wrote about Jesus, it is not a credible source. ((unquote) RED by Composer)) - (Source: http://freethought.mbdojo.com/josephus.html)

Based upon your last ending comments to me I'll accept that you are not to be taken seriously in future and are an admitted time-waster.

[Tired of the Nonsense]

Hello Starboard Tack. Today is Friday, Oct. 21. The end of the universe is today. .

Welcome back to the "Is belief in the resurrection reasonable" string, if not, it seems, back to our actual discussion on that subject. This string has been viewed more than 4,000 times as I write this. It's not like no one is paying attention. And yet you are now strangely silent. It's almost as if you are unwilling, or unable, to provide an answer. The question is simple enough. If the story of the empty tomb and the "risen" Jesus can be answered perfectly well, even within the pages of Christian documents, to have been the probable actions taken by the living rather than actions taken by the dead man, is it reasonable to continue to maintain that, no, the exact opposite unquestionably occurred? Your version, which ends with a reanimated corpse flying up into the sky and disappearing, is perfectly absurd. There is no other way to put that. If you can't establish that it MUST have occurred, to the exclusion of all other reasonable conclusions, then what exactly do you bring to the table? Your personal fancy and best good feelings that it must be true? It's an absurd claim! Personal good feelings do not change that fact. If you can't eliminate the disciples of Jesus as the obvious suspects for moving the body and spreading the false rumor that he had come back from the dead, then your claim has nothing at all to do with reason, does it? It's all about maintaining a belief that gives you warm fuzzy feelings inside personally.

I hope you understand now, at least, that non-theists are not simply rejecting your claims for the purpose of grandstanding, or just to be contrary and obstinate. Given the nature of what you are claiming to be true, we have rejected those claims because detailed investigation of them has shown them to be complete and total nonsense. This conclusion really should have been obvious to everyone right from the start. Of course people 2,000 years ago lived in a world where evidence of the supernatural was manifest around them every day. Reason and modern science should have changed all of that.

[Mithrae]

A Roman historian, hostile to Christians, stated that Christ "suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus" - on face value that seems to validate half of Starboard's first point. You stated your opinion that Tacitus was simply parroting the claims of those he denigrated, and I responded. You may describe that as detail and minutiae, but I personally do not consider it to be particularly sound research or debate methodology.

A Roman historian in the second century tells us what we know Christians were already saying about Jesus in the second century. The first three Gospels, at least, had already been written by the time Tacitus takes notice of Christians. As historian Will Durant pointed out: "These references prove the existence of Christians rather than Christ." Quite right! But I do not deny that Jesus existed, and I made that clear to Starboard Tack.

No-one denies that Tacitus could have got information from Christians - though note that neither "extreme penalty" in reference to Jesus' death nor "procurator" in reference to Pilate is used in the NT, or likely to have been in common use by early 2nd-century Christians. What is dubious is the assumption that (if he did get it from Christians) he didn't even bother to seek additional confirmation; that he simply took on face value the claims of a sect he manifestly disliked, and wrote them up as history. This is a mere assumption, since from you or any other source I've not yet seen evidence to that effect.

You may still believe that Jesus existed regardless, but I think it's a point worth making; doubly so since a couple of others are suggesting that he didn't exist. If such casual dismissal of a Roman historian's statements is even slightly indicative of anyone's study and thinking methods in general, it should probably be highlighted rather than dismissed as detail and minutiae.

It's also interesting how easily "is belief in the resurrection reasonable" can turn into "move us inexorably to the undeniable conclusion..." No conclusion is undeniable, which is why from page 2 I've pointed out the foundational importance of establishing sources and the general role of presuppositions in the discussion.

Of course conclusions are undeniable. For example, it is impossible for a person to throw a baseball entirely off of planet Earth. Try as hard as you wish. Get as many people helping you as you can find. None of you will ever throw a baseball off of planet Earth using as many attempts as you want. And in fact we know scientifically through experimentation just how much velocity it takes to reach escape velocity. It's a little over 11 km/s. No human in the history of humans has ever possessed the ability to throw an object 11 kilometers a second. That would be one helluva fast ball! The conclusion that a person cannot throw a baseball entirely off of planet Earth is undeniable and will remain undeniable until such time as a person DOES throw a baseball entirely off of planet Earth. I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you. But I will change the wording from "undeniable conclusion" to "unavoidable conclusion" if that will make you more comfortable.

We're talking about 'reasonable' or 'undeniable' in the context of ancient history here, not constant observation backed by modern science. Even then, despite being quite a good example it's quite possible that the likes of flat-earthers might deny that conclusion, or that somewhere out there there's legends about someone who did throw a baseball off earth

Anything is deniable and anything is avoidable, just as there are folk who argue that not only Jesus but Paul also did not exist. I think this really is one of the under-appreciated points of Christian apologists; many of the common arguments used by sceptics (though not by you) would, when applied to virtually an other ancient teacher or philosopher, dismiss information about their lives, teachings (and in the extreme, their existence) as unreliable also.

To my knowledge the best parallel for Jesus in terms of time, location, vocation and influence is Hillel the Elder; died in the early first century, a very significant figure in the development of Pharasaic/rabbinic Judaism, with legendary/mythic elements attributed to his life. Yet he's not mentioned in any early non-Jewish source, nor by Josephus or any Jewish source for well over a century after his death. Compare this with Jesus, regarding whom we have two widely acknowledged primary sources of information regarding his brother (Josephus and Paul), one of whom was a contemporary of Jesus himself, and arguably two other primary/contemporary sources regarding Jesus (Mark and John), plus the circumstantial evidence of the movement which spread in his name and the non-primary sources of Matthew, Luke/Acts, Tacitus and so on.

The problem is not so much a shortage of evidence, as some sceptics claim, but rather in the tedious task of making up our minds which sources are semi-reliable and which are largely unreliable, and within each source which points might be taken as relatively certain and which might plausibly be attributed to bias or agenda.

As I've said in previous posts, your comments don't suggest much if anything in the way of denial or extreme scepticism, but your evaluation and use of sources seems both dubious and inconsistent. On that note:

On that note, please show me where you get this "flying reanimated corpse" from. And in particular, could you explain why you consider the reasonableness of the alleged resurrection to be associated with that particular source. I hope you'll appreciate my hesitation in answering such a loaded question without that further clarification.

The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the central claim of Christianity. Jesus was a corpse, and then the corpse returned to life... it became reanimated.

Acts 1:
[9] "And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight."

The once dead and now reanimated corpse of Jesus flew up into the sky and disappeared into the clouds. A flying reanimated corpse. Is it perfectly reasonable to believe this story; or is there reason to doubt it?

You didn't explain why you consider the reasonableness of the alleged resurrection to be particularly associated with the book of Acts. To be repeating this phrase so frequently, I can only assume that you do indeed consider that Acts is crucial to the issue. So why is that?

Again as I've previously said, a philosophical stance regarding the 'supernatural' which omits such claims from serious consideration certainly has some merit. But for the purposes of this discussion that's essentially a presupposition, and as such it does not in itself cast doubt on the 'reasonableness' of an alleged resurrection for which we may have up to four primary sources (Mark, John, Paul and 1 Peter).

[Flail]

Here are a few things skeptics need to explain if they wish to position themselves as motivated by reason in their rejection of Christ:

1. His life and crucifixion is a matter of historic record - Roman and Jewish. It happened.
2. The only people that could have a motive for making up his resurrection were the apostles, most of whom died rather horrible deaths rather than deny that resurrection. While I know that people will die for what they believe in, if the apostles knew that Christ was not risen, why did they die for what they knew to be a lie?
3. His resurrection was witnessed by hundreds, perhaps thousands and referred to by Paul within 3 years of the event in front of crowds of people. If it didn't happen, why don't we have record of objections to Paul's statements?
4. Jesus was a nobody who appeared on the scene for 3 years and was then killed as a criminal, just like thousands of others were killed by the Romans in the same manner. Yet within a few years of his death, a religion in his name based almost exclusively on his resurrection had spread throughout the Roman empire. What was different about this man to all those others who claimed to be the Messiah?
5. The Jewish rulers were scared witless of revolutionary movements and would do anything to head one off at the pass. The Romans took challenges to their authority about as seriously as any group of people in history. Given that there were people running all over the place saying they had seen the risen Christ, if it wasn't true, why not just torture a few into denial of the fact and kill the movement in its tracks? Pliny the Younger re-counted doing just that a hundred years or so later and was astonished to see how many Christians went to their deaths rather than deny what they also knew to be true.

Yes, a belief in the resurrection is reasonable, but I'd love to hear the reasons why it is not.

I don't think any reasonable person could legitimately maintain an absolute conviction that God was born a virgin and rose from the dead based upon solely on the word of 1st or 2nd century writings. One would have to be emotionally charged and dogmatized to believe such an unfounded and implausible assertion. As to historical accounts, it would be as if not a word was written about the Civil War until the 1970's. For such a miraculous event why aren't there any contemporaneous accounts? Why do the Dead Sea Scrolls not even mention Jesus by name? Why didn't these supposed eye witnesses identify themselves and take steps to make record of events?

It takes time for myth to grow and rumor to spread from fantastical to fact, until finally writers decide to make mention of it and others with an imagination and an agenda begin to spin it for power and profit; it's the stuff of legends and fiction.

[Mithrae]

I don't think any reasonable person could legitimately maintain an absolute conviction that God was born a virgin and rose from the dead based upon solely on the word of 1st or 2nd century writings.

Can a reasonable person legitimately maintain an absolute conviction that this did not happen?

Both the thread title and the quote from Starboard in the OP say 'reasonable.' But like Tired it seems you prefer to speak about absolutes. This is safe ground; it's easy to argue that Jesus' alleged resurrection is not undeniable or unavoidable, as Tired says, or a matter of absolute conviction in your words.

If y'all will pardon my rambling, I've just finished re-reading Thief of Time by comic fantasy author Sir Terry Pratchett. Fantastic author. It occurs to me that aside from that which implies a logical contradiction, anything is possible. It's possible that I am a lone human mind bombarded with innumerable false perceptions, the plaything of Descartes' evil demon. It's possible that our fundamental perception of reality is accurate, but the biological and socio-political development of the human race is ultimately under the covert control of a rather advanced alien species (a la Zechariah Sitchin).

But the things which don't imply a logical contradiction are infinite. Even causation is debatable as a logical principle, rather than a by-product of observation. That I have been touched by His Noodly Appendage is certainly a possibility. That I have been touched by Her Noodly Appendage is possible too. Or that I have been touched by It's Noodly Appendage. Or His Kind-Of-Cylindrical-Lasagne-Like Appendage.

Compared to infinity, what do my perceptions mean? What do the things I've seen and the knowledge I've managed to acquire mean? Compared with the whole, I know virtually nothing even about the accepted facts of 21st-century Earth to date! Of course, I'm no expert on the matter of 21st-century Earth to date, but I suspect that the experts know virtually nothing about my life, or the lives of my friends (about whom I know little) or the lives of those reading this. How much might we imagine an 'expert' in 21st-century Earth to date actually knows? Is there really a significant difference between my 1-in-a-trillion and their (assuming they exist) 3-in-a-trillion?

It seems to me, and I think this deserves to be emphasised, that for all intents and purposes if anything is possible then everything is equally probable.

A person observes reality like the leaf observes the forest. But since we need the illusion of choice, of decisions, of free will, we need the illusion of knowledge and beliefs on which to base them. Our knowledge and beliefs are based partly on observation, partly on habit, partly on desire, partly on communication - and quite possibly on other things also - but as far as 'absolute conviction' goes, I rather suspect that they will all always fall woefully short in any objective sense of the term.

This is not to say that I necessarily disagree with the positions which Flail and Tired are expressing. What I object to is using absolute terms in the discussion of ancient history when they're conspicuously absent in the thread title and OP. The question is whether belief in the alleged resurrection of Jesus is 'reasonable.' I do not see any explicit consequences claimed in the OP, nor any definite consequences following logically from the question. Comparing an alleged factoid of ancient history connected to a religious teacher with throwing baseballs into orbit or the American Civil War are not, in my opinion, particularly sound analogies.

If we're concerned about the 'supernatural' element involved in the alleged event, on a personal level that's all well and good and to no small extent I would agree. But as far as the thread title and OP go, I do feel obliged to re-state and request disproof of this before such distinctions are again raised as a form of 'debate':
If anything is possible then everything is equally probable

[fredonly]

If anything is possible then everything is equally probable

Not strictly true. Consider mortality tables. It is more probable that a 90 year old will die over the coming year, than that a 20 year old will do so.

If all conditions for all possibilities are equal, then - and only then, will each be equally probable. In practice, they hardly ever are equal. When it comes to evaluating historical claims, one can attempt to examine the various factors that influence the likelihood of one hypothesis vs. another. This is called finding the argument to the best explanation, a component of the historical method. It is subjective, but there are tools for moving closer to objectivity (peer review). Nevertheless one must never lose sight of the limitations on historical knowledge. The past is lost to us. All we have are some artifacts of the past, which must be interpreted to attempt to form a historiographic picture of the past. The accuracy of the picture will be limited by the quality and quantity of the data.

[Confused]

Adamoriens wrote:

Also, I think that many religious beliefs (and I'm trying to say this without malice) can seem ridiculous when presented without the usual methods of persuasion and conversion.

IMO, 'religious believing' is an emotional event which has more to do with stage setting, music, the massing of the like-minded and the stage directions of preaching than with anything actual/factual.

In my OP about desire and belief I attempt to explore this idea: that a belief in the BibleGod requires a desire, a passion, a 'wanting to believe' as a pre-condition; and that any cold, rational, logical approach to the Bible will never produce a literal belief in the dogma that surrounds it; which of course is why we have churches and preachers and organists and gaudy, stained-glass Cathedrals; and that by requiring emotional desires and passions as a pre-condition to acceptance we create an unreliable and untrustworthy motive for belief.

That statement could only be made by someone with a philosophically driven "pre-condition to acceptance" of a universe without meaning. Clearly you have very little understanding of the breadth and depth of the reasons why people are religious, much less Christians. Yours is a cartoon version of faith, befitting a child and not someone who has lived as long as you have.

A cold, rational, logical approach to the Bible would cause marvel in the reader as the early conditions of creation are poetically described in Genesis. Relying solely on a logical and rational reading of Scripture, Nahmanides was able to deduce the following simply from reading that Bible at a time before the invention of calculus, the telescope, agreement that we do not live in a geocentric world, and when a trip of 1000 miles on the back of a donkey was the trip of a lifetime (1250 AD):

..."At the briefest instant following creation all the matter of the universe was concentrated in a very small place, no larger than a grain of mustard. The matter at this time was very thin, so intangible, that it did not have real substance. It did have, however, a potential to gain substance and form and to become tangible matter. From the initial concentration of this intangible substance in its minute location, the substance expanded, expanding the universe as it did so. As the expansion progressed, a change in the substance occurred. This initially thin noncorporeal substance took on the tangible aspects of matter as we know it. From this initial act of creation, from this etherieally thin pseudosubstance, everything that has existed, or will ever exist, was, is, and will be formed".

From the same rational reading of the Bible I see numerous references to God "stretching out the heavens", using a Hebrew verb indicating continuous and on-going expansion, mimicking our understanding of cosmic expansion 2800 years before man had a clue about the nature or even the existence of the expansion of space.

From the same rational reading of the Bible I find as good a description of Maxwell's second law of thermodynamics as one could hope to find written 1700 years before Maxwell postulated his laws: (Romans 8)

"For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God".

A mind incapable of reading the Bible and not noting in wonder, even if skeptical wonder, the prophetic nature of the work is a mind without spiritual imagination, much less intellectual curiosity. A mind capable of ridiculing faithful people, including a large number of intellectual giants who find relevance and truth in Scripture is a very small mind indeed.

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[Tired of the Nonsense]

You may still believe that Jesus existed regardless, but I think it's a point worth making; doubly so since a couple of others are suggesting that he didn't exist.

Your argument is with them.

If such casual dismissal of a Roman historian's statements is even slightly indicative of anyone's study and thinking methods in general, it should probably be highlighted rather than dismissed as detail and minutiae.

If the resurrection never occurred then everything else is pointless detail and minutiae, isn't it?

We're talking about 'reasonable' or 'undeniable' in the context of ancient history here, not constant observation backed by modern science. Even then, despite being quite a good example it's quite possible that the likes of flat-earthers might deny that conclusion, or that somewhere out there there's legends about someone who did throw a baseball off earth.

Does a story somehow become more reasonable the older it gets? Does the story of the Minotaur, for example, the half-man half-bull creature that is reported to have roamed the Labyrinth on the island of Crete suddenly take on an aura of authenticity due to it's ancient origins? The island of Crete certainly exists, as does, apparently, the Labyrinth. Are we compelled to conclude therefore that a half-man half-bull, who was the result of a beastial union between Pasiphaë, the wife of King Minos, and a particularly beautiful white bull, must have ACTUALLY EXISTED because the story is quite ancient? Or is there some slim chance that we might exclude the existence of a half-man half-bull as nonsense, based solely on the fact that it has every appearance of being nonsense? And is that not what we normally do with stories that have the appearance of being nonsense?

To my knowledge the best parallel for Jesus in terms of time, location, vocation and influence is Hillel the Elder; died in the early first century, a very significant figure in the development of Pharasaic/rabbinic Judaism, with legendary/mythic elements attributed to his life. Yet he's not mentioned in any early non-Jewish source, nor by Josephus or any Jewish source for well over a century after his death.

If you want a good parallel for Jesus in terms of time, location and vocation, then here is a good one for you. It's generally known as the Pantera Legend, and it can be traced back at least as far as the second century AD. Beyond that, this story gets seriously controversial.

"Throughout the middle ages, the legend of Pandera and Yeshu, considered by most scholars a Jewish invention, continued to persist. The tale however is extremely ancient, for it was known, long before the Christians had the power to persecute, to the Greek Neo-Platonist Celsus, who flourished 175-180 (AD). Origen quotes the Greek as having said, concerning the mother of Jesus, that 'when she was pregnant she was turned out of doors by the carpenter to whom she had been betrothed, as having been guilty of adultery, and she bore a
child to a certain soldier named Panthera." (Contra Celsum, VII, ix).

"Knowledge now available (in the Dead Sea Scrolls) concerning the Teacher of Righteousness (as termed by the Essenes) has thrown an entirely new light on this Pandera-legend, which is related in detail by Morris Goldstein and which, in brief, runs as follows: There lived in the days of King Jannaeus, 103-76 (BC), in Bethlehem, a certain disreputable young man whose name was Joseph Pandera. He seduced the chaste and lovely Miriam by pretending to be her betrothed husband, Johanan; and the result was a son, Yeshoshua, or Yeshu. When it became known that Yeshu was illegitimate, he fled to Galilee, where he practiced magic by learning the letters of the Ineffable Name and where he declared that he was born miraculously of a virgin, according to the prophesy of Isaiah 7:14. Yeshu, thereupon, declared himself the Messiah, and produced various texts from the prophets, which he said applied to him. The Jewish sages then brought Yeshu before queen Helene (probably the wife of Aristobulus II) and accused him of sorcery. A corpse was brought in, and when Yeshu restored it to life the queen became his devotee. The sages now selected a man called Judah Iskarito and taught him also the letters of the Ineffable Name, by which he too could practice magic. In a trial before the queen, both Yeshu and Iskarito lost their memory of the name and fell down powerless. Yeshu was now seized and beaten, was given vinegar to drink, and a crown of thorns was placed upon his head at Tiberias. There was a struggle among the people, and Yeshu escaped with some of his fellow-conspiritors to Antioch or Egypt, where they remained until the passover, at which time Yeshu went to Jerusalem to relearn the letters of the Ineffable Name in the Temple. Riding into Jerusalem on an ass he fulfilled the prophesy of Zechariah.

Identified by Iskarito as a false prophet, Yeshu was seized and put to death on the eve of the passover Sabbath. If Yeshu was born near the beginning of Alexander Jannaeus' reign, he would have been in his thirties at the time of his execution. The bold followers of Yeshu now came to Queen Helene with the report that he was not in his tomb, but had ascended to heaven as he had prophesied. Since his body could not be found, she demanded of the sages that they produce it within three days. It so happened, however, that the gardener, foreseeing conspiracies by the followers of Yeshu, had taken the body from the tomb and buried it in the garden; and when he learned of the queen's ultimatum, he told the sages where it lay. They seized it, tied it to the tail of a horse, and dragged it before Helene, who therefore renounced the false prophet, commended the sages for their wisdom, and derided those who had been deluded by the sorcerer."

"The story concludes with a resume of how the followers of Yeshu sought to overthrow Judaism by re-dating their feast days and their holy celebrations and by repudiating their rituals and their dietary laws; and how they caused a great commotion among the Jews for thirty years by declaring that their prophet was now sitting at the right hand of God and would return as the Almighty Messiah to condemn all unbelievers to the eternal fires of hell."

"This ancient legend prompts theories which, to say the least, are quite fascinating. We know that the Essenes made a fundamental issue over their divergent calendar, which placed their feasts and celebration on days other then those observed by the orthodox; and we have seen that it was a dispute over this which precipitated the trial and execution of the Teacher"
("The Story of Christian Origins," pages 281-283, by Dr. Martin A. Larson (PhD, Theology, Michigan State, 1923).

It's an ancient story so apparently we must give it some extra measure of authenticity. Although I don't, necessarily.

You didn't explain why you consider the reasonableness of the alleged resurrection to be particularly associated with the book of Acts. To be repeating this phrase so frequently, I can only assume that you do indeed consider that Acts is crucial to the issue. So why is that?

Did I imply that I consider Acts to be crucial to the issue? Acts is simply a continuation of the stories found in the Gospels, and written well before ALL of them. But here is the "ascension" of Jesus mentioned in Gospels Mark and Luke as well, if that helps you out.

Mark 16
[19] "So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God."

Luke 24
[51] "And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven."

Is there any chance that you might actually answer the question now?

[Tired of the Nonsense]

If anything is possible then everything is equally probable.

The flaw in this statement revolves around human fallibility. We humans, being fallible, find that it is impossible for us to known things to an absolute degree of certainty. And yet we observe that the universe has limits which we refer to as the laws of physics. We consider them to be laws precisely because they cannot, apparently and according all observation and experimentation, be violated. Therefore "anything" is NOT possible. Things which violate the laws of physics are not possible, to the best of our understanding. It is true however that within the realm of what IS possible, EVERYTHING IS PROBABLE. A better way of putting that is, given enough time, everything that CAN occur, WILL occur.