Let's cut to the chase: did the resurrection happen?

[Haven]

Recently, there have been a lot of threads on topics related to the resurrection of Jesus (empty tomb, supernaturalism vs. naturalism, historical records, and so on). I think it may be helpful to discuss the big picture: did the resurrection of Jesus happen or not? This thread is the place to discuss it: offer any argument for or against the resurrection. Hopefully this will be a good discussion.

Debate question: Was Jesus resurrected from the dead?

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Thread rules:
1) Offer evidence or logical argument. Simply providing Bible quotes isn't sufficient.
2) Faith, while valid on a personal level, isn't evidence for a claim. Provide empirical evidence from history, textual criticism, physics, and so on, not simply statements of faith.
3) Be kind to each other. All of us, regardless of our religious position, are conscious beings deserving of respect and civility.

[FinalEnigma]

[Replying to post 8 by FinalEnigma]

Are you really saying that the word "Adam," was kept, but the name of God was lost? LOL.

LOL? That's your argument?

Yes, the name of God was lost, because nobody is allowed to say it. you can say 'Adam' all day long. In the times when literacy was minimal, and at one point only the high priest at any given time actually knew the name of God, and the written form of the word does not contain any vowels...yes, the vowels in the name of God were lost.

[Willum]

[Replying to post 11 by FinalEnigma]

You bring up an excellent point.

Who was the Garden of Eden story documented by: A handful of people.
The legacy of the Bible was carried on by Lot and his daughters, (eww, but let's not go into inbreeding) or just three people. Noah what, 10 people?

There is no chance that history was recorded accurately by multiple iterations on a few people who couldn't write. It was not accurately recorded even up until recently.

When you think about it, the multiple destruction of cities, worlds, peoples, nations, is a literary device used by teenage writers today. Since they claim no one else was left alive, they must have the truth.

In practice though, the truth can't survive a trip around the room, if you've ever participated in the exercise when a few sentences are passed from one person to another.

My point is-if your argument is that they can't keep track of THE most important thing, then what is the good in the rest? Your own argument defeats itself.

Respectfully yours,

[FinalEnigma]

I've already laid out the factors as to why the name of God was lost. Indeed, given it was only fully known by one person at a given time, it seems inevitable it would be lost. What bearing does this have on the rest of it?

Regarding your other comment, who in the world made the claim that god's name is the most important thing? God certainly didn't, or he'd have instructed us to ensure it would be remembered.

[liamconnor]

[Replying to post 1 by Haven]

Come on Haven!!

This is so loaded and you know it.

There are a plethora of questions to come first; I give the first couple (err, few, if Danmark is reading) off the top of my head and not in logical order:

1) Is there a God? If yes, What kind of God is he/it/she? (afterall, the question "How probable is it that God should raise Jesus" is quite different from "How probable is it that the God of the O.T. should raise Jesus").

2)Is metaphysical naturalism the best philosophy of nature to hold?

3) Is naturalism (as held by Hume) the best philosophy of nature to hold?

4) What is the definition of "miracle".

The question at bottom is a theistic question. No one is claiming that Jesus rose from the dead; they are claiming he was raised from the dead.

[Haven]

[Replying to post 8 by FinalEnigma]
I am not the first one to make the suggestion. Indeed deeper research will show you that many scholars, respectables ones to, not like me, have been making the same discovery on and off for the last 2000 years.
http://hiddenbible.com/jesuszeus/jesuszeus.html

That's not a scholarly source. It's anti-Christian apologetics; essentially the anti-Christian version of Answers in Genesis.

Here is another: You know Spanish for God is Dios. French, Dieu, Italian, etc.. Well these are all derived from Deus, the Latin for God.

Well, Deus is really Dzeus, or Zeus. So most of the Catholic world prays to Zeus. Check it out.

This is true, but there's a reason for that: Romance languages are all derived from Latin, which in turn is derived from Proto-Indo-European, the most recent common ancestor of Latin, Greek, English, Sanskrit, and a host of other languages spoken in Europe and Asia. These languages are not related at all to Aramaic and Hebrew (which are Afro-Asiatic languages), where the Jewish name for God (YHWH) originated. Jesus is a Romanized form of Yeshua--a very common Hebrew name (at the time) meaning YHWH is salvation--and has nothing to do with any Roman or Greek deities.

Again, similar sounds don't mean words are related, and different sounds (or meanings) don't mean words are not related.

Here's an interesting fact: haven, capable, head, and capture, despite sounding completely different and having different meanings, are all etymologically related (all of these words originate from the Proto-Indo-European root *kaput meaning to hold). Conversely, English occur and Japanese okoru, despite sounding almost exactly the same and meaning the same thing, are etymologically unrelated. Words can evolve to the same form by sheer coincidence.

[Haven]

Linguistics, if you care to pursue the subject, does work that way, and the connection to Yeshua is far more tenuous than the connections I've made.

No it isn't. Ancient Greek and Latin both lacked the SH sound (they rendered it as S), lacked the letter Y (spelling that sound with "I"), and changed Hebrew names that ended in vowels to end in "S." Following these rules gives you Yeshua --> Ies(o)us, Yirmiyahu --> Ieremias, Yonah --> Ionas, and so on. All of these names are found in the New Testament in these forms (if you read Greek or Latin versions).

[Haven]

[Replying to post 1 by Haven]

Come on Haven!!

This is so loaded and you know it.

There are a plethora of questions to come first; I give the first couple (err, few, if Danmark is reading) off the top of my head and not in logical order:

1) Is there a God? If yes, What kind of God is he/it/she? (afterall, the question "How probable is it that God should raise Jesus" is quite different from "How probable is it that the God of the O.T. should raise Jesus").

2)Is metaphysical naturalism the best philosophy of nature to hold?

3) Is naturalism (as held by Hume) the best philosophy of nature to hold?

4) What is the definition of "miracle".

The question at bottom is a theistic question. No one is claiming that Jesus rose from the dead; they are claiming he was raised from the dead.

So you don't think it's possible to discuss the resurrection without first slogging through these very complex philosophical and theological issues?

Aren't you really saying that it's impossible for Christians and non-Christians to have any meaningful conversation on the resurrection of Jesus?

[DefenderofTruth]

Is nature all there is? While some people have closed their minds to that which is the miraculous, I think there is plenty of evidence available to support the idea that we haven't even came close to explaining all the mysteries of the universe. There are mysteries everywhere we look, including science, just as there are mysteries of the miracles that Christ is believed to had done.

No informed naturalist would ever claim that we've solved all the mysteries of the universe. Of course we haven't. However, mystery isn't the same thing as supernatural. The fact that something is unexplained doesn't mean it's beyond nature (people once thought lightning, which was unexplained, was supernatural, but now we know it's natural). Separate evidence would be needed to show that an unexplained phenomenon is supernatural.

Look at the Crucifixion, which isn't a supernatural event in itself but at the same time fulfills the role of a mystery of God. The Crucifixion is accepted has a literal event but when studied has many unexplainable miracles imbedded in it.

What miracles took place at the crucifixion of Jesus? How do you know these miracles took place? The Romans executed thousands by crucifixion, were those also miracles?

How come Christ Crucified fit the role perfectly?

The role of what? How did Jesus fit this undefined role?

Thats an important question and i think it points to an explanation of a Holy God being behind it. And if the Crucifixion can be accredited to a Holy God then the resurrection likewise could be a result of a Holy God.

Where is the evidence that the crucifixion was caused by a "holy" (what does that mean?) god?

But for the resurrection itself, what evidence is there? Of course we have the written testimony of the Gospels which won't be accepted as evidence but thats one source of the resurrection.

The gospels are the claims. Where is the evidence that the gospels' claims are true?

We can look to the "empty tomb" to establish a physical representation of the resurrection, but like we have pointed out in other debates the early apostles and the other 500 who witnessed Christ Resurrected did so by "visions" of Christ.

1. There likely was no empty tomb. Roman crucifixion victims were rarely buried, and most found themselves either let to rot on the cross or taken to the city dump to experience a dishonorable end. Jesus was likely no different, and the gospels' burial narratives (which all contradict each other) were likely later embellishments meant to counteract the stigma of Jesus crucifixion.

2. There's no evidence that there were 500 witnesses to Christ resurrected. That claim comes from Paul, citing an unknown source. There's nothing else supporting this claim. I could claim that 500 people saw Elvis today, but that wouldn't make the claim true. Where is the evidence?

3. The visions were probably legendary accretions: again, the gospels were written by anonymous authors decades after Jesus' death. Notably the vision stories differ greatly between the gospels, suggesting separate, and the earliest gospel, Mark, contains no vision stories at all. This suggests legendary accretion.

Bart Ehrman is a New Testament Scholar, he is agnostic, and he has said that this belief that the first apostles held was a genuine belief. Dr. Ehrman says that the apostles "really did believe that Christ was resurrected". You can see evidence of that kind of spirit in Paul.

I don't dispute this at all: early Christians believe Jesus was, in some sense, resurrected. The questions are:

1. What evidence did they have for this belief?

2. What did they mean by "resurrected" (was it a physical rising or merely a spiritual rebirth?)? Paul's works, the earliest extant Christian writings, don't seem to suggest a belief in a physical resurrection, only a spiritual one (1 Corinthians 15 clearly indicates this).

In fact, another piece of evidence that would need to be explained would be Paul's conversion. We believe Paul didn't even believe in Christ until he witnessed a "vision" of the resurrected Christ. Thats literally why Paul converted, so if there was no resurrection why in the world would Paul convert? He even persecuted Christians.

Again, Paul's experience--if it happened at all (the two accounts in Acts contradict each other, and there's no other evidence for it--was likely hallucinatory (especially since those with Paul did not have the same experience). Paul, a minor Hellenistic Jew before his conversion, also stood to benefit from joining the nascent Christian movement (in terms of gaining power over churches, and so on).

How does this demonstrate a resurrection?

Why would a man who persecuted a certain religion, convert to that same religion?

Why? Guilt, money, and power are three possible reasons.

Also, it's not as though Paul was the only person to convert from one religion to another.

Take all you atheist and nonbelievers, look at your own beliefs. What would make you convert to Christianity?

Strong evidence that Christianity is true.

You say "Strong evidence the Christianity is true" would convert you.. But you literally took the evidence presented and basically made it out to be a lie. Like that of Paul's conversion, you basically said it was either a lie and he converted for power in the church but said his story was a hallucination...

So which is it? He converted because of a lie to gain power or because he had a "hallucination" and what evidence do you have?

If you had a vision of Christ would that be "strong evidence" that you are looking for or would you make it out to be a hallucination and discredit it on those terms?

[Haven]

You say "Strong evidence the Christianity is true" would convert you.. But you literally took the evidence presented and basically made it out to be a lie.

You presented claims, I refuted them. There was no strong evidence in what you posted.

Like that of Paul's conversion, you basically said it was either a lie and he converted for power in the church but said his story was a hallucination...

I said either it was an invention ("lie" is such a loaded term) or he hallucinated. Two thousand years later I can't pretend to know which one it was, only that both are plausible explanations for his conversion.

What evidence do I have? Well, it's historically known that Paul was a rather minor figure before his conversion, and it's also known from his writings that Paul was given to beliefs in the esoteric and supernatural as well as "visions." From this, it seems likely (far more likely than a supernatural event) that Paul hallucinated his encounter with Jesus (which could explain why the story differs so much in Acts 9 vs. Acts 22). It also seems likely that Paul could have invented the story to gain power within Christianity. Why? Money, influence, an escape from the boring life of a first-century Hellenized Jew . . . there are many reasons why Paul may have done this, and all of them are more likely than a supernatural event.

If you had a vision of Christ would that be "strong evidence" that you are looking for or would you make it out to be a hallucination and discredit it on those terms?

I'd take it as strong evidence that I need to see a local mental health professional.

[liamconnor]

[Replying to post 17 by Haven]

Christians vs. Non-Christians?! Of course not. Christainity is not the only faith that attests miracles.

But the philosophical question comes first, ALWAYS!

Methodological Naturalists vs. Metaphysical naturalists vs. Deists vs. Theists vs. every brand of any....that is where things get tricky.

No metaphysical naturalist should ever get into a historical debate regarding the resurrection. It is a waste of his time, and the time of Naturalist/theistic historians. Th former will present historical explanations at random and without really thinking about what they are saying. It is not their fault; miracles are intrinsically impossible for them. But the pretense that they are fighting on historical grounds is exhausting for those who have not rejected the possibility of miracle on philosophical grounds.

An atheist naturalist can debate miracles, so long as we define miracle to exclude supernatural agency, and so long as there are no theological consequences to be drawn from the event. No Christian cares to debate the resurrection on those grounds. Christians don't think it is probable that Jesus rose from the dead; they think God raised him from the dead (note the active vs. the passive). Totally different.

Even then we need more definition. To isolate a random claim in the 1st c. AD is not enough; no Christian has ever just read the last chapters of each gospel and concluded a dead guy rose. He came to believe that a very specific God has been bringing a narration of the world to its culmination in an empty tomb.

The person who has, on other grounds, come to believe that supernatural influences were at work within the Israelite culture that produced the O.T. are more likely to accept the resurrection of Jesus (and its theological significance as expounded by the n.t.) than those that isolate that single event. Such believe that a certain god was uniquely at work with the historical person Jesus.

If a fair (or even less annoying) debate is to begin, people need to lay down their cards. Announce, "I am a metaphysical naturalist" "I am a Theist"


So. Everyone is obligated to reflect in this debate on their starting point and announce it: are you a metaphysical naturalist? Then say it and debate it. Are you a theist? Then debate the nature/character of your "god". Are you a mere atheistic naturalist? Well, I suppose you can debate the definition of probability, if you get any takers.