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?

[Monta]

.
[Replying to post 519 by JLB32168]

God is an immaterial entity.

WHAT, exactly is an "immaterial entity" and HOW does it differ from an imaginary entity?

Notice that proposed "immaterial entities" include angels, devils, demons, seraphim, souls and other "entities" from Bible tales cannot be shown to be anything other than constructs of human mental processes (imagination).

Fairies, sea monsters (and under-the-bed monsters), zombies, etc populate different genre of storytelling – and are also imaginary. However, most who are beyond childhood recognize the implausibility of such characters being real – and belief is set aside with the development of discernment, judgment and real world experience.

If thoroughly enough ingrained in the indoctrinated and reinforced by repeated storytelling, beliefs can be retained for a lifetime.

If you are going to use words like indoctrination and repeated storytelling,
both believers and unbelievers are in the same boat.

[Zzyzx]

.

If you are going to use words like indoctrination and repeated storytelling.

"If the shoe fits . . . ."

both believers and unbelievers are in the same boat.

We are all in the same boat -- planet Earth. It is prudent to learn about the real world we inhabit.

Fantasy does not address real world issues and problems.

[Tired of the Nonsense]

[Replying to JLB32168]

God is an immaterial entity.

"Immaterial" means to be without material or physical form; incorporeal. Can you explain for us how this is in any way different from imaginary?

[Monta]

.

If you are going to use words like indoctrination and repeated storytelling.

"If the shoe fits . . . ."

both believers and unbelievers are in the same boat.

We are all in the same boat -- planet Earth. It is prudent to learn about the real world we inhabit.

Fantasy does not address real world issues and problems.

No fantasy no willful blindness.

[Claire Evans]

[Replying to Claire Evans]

I appreciate your time also but I have not found your case satisfactory at all. I do not know of anyone who thinks that the chief priests would assign guards to a tomb where they don't know if there was a body inside or not. The logical approach would be for the chief priests to get Roman guards involved to inspect the tomb. We know that Jewish guards would not have been able to guard the tomb on the Sabbath. It is forbidden to do any work.

The priests did not have the power to "get Roman guards involved to inspect the tomb." Pilate did not offer Roman guards nor did the priests specifically ask for Roman guards. Not that it would have done any good. Verse 66 says nothing about Roman guards, but it specifically places the priests at the tomb. For anyone to have opened the tomb and, potentially at least, exposed the priests to a corpse would have rendered the priests too ritually unclean to have proceeded with the holy day ceremonies.Not to mention that It would have been an affront to God. Nor does the author of Gospel Matthew make such a incendiary claim. The Priests made the obvious choice by placing seals on the tomb, setting a guard, and waiting until the holy day had passed. You are forced to invent the priests doing these inconceivable things and then inserting them into the story .

Pilate would have given them permission to have guards to inspect the tomb.

It was forbidden to come into contact with a dead body on the Sabbath. Therefore the family and friends of Jesus would not have taken His body elsewhere for burial. That is why nobody visited the tomb on the Sabbath.

It was forbidden for high priests, someone who is a Kohen, to be in the direct presence of a corpse. It made them ritually unclean. As long as the entrance was covered with the stone, and the priests were uncertain if the corpse was even there, they were within the limits of their own laws. But you see, people cannot plan their deaths in accordance with Jewish Sabbath laws. People die on the Sabbath as well as any other day. And the body MUST be handled in accordance with Jewish law, by those who are NOT Kohen. The real question is, would the followers of Jesus have conformed to Jewish Sabbath laws, or would they have felt compelled to ignore them? First, as you mentioned earlier, they would have had a very perishable cargo. They were also faced with the problem that as soon as the Sabbath passed, all roads leading away from Jerusalem would have been choked with thousands of pilgrims returning home. The obvious solution would have been to get a head start while the roads were clear, to stay ahead of the crowds. Would the followers of Jesus have felt compelled to respect Sabbath laws, or would they have been disdainful of the Sabbath laws?

You think I invent things when you are making inferences yourself. Nowhere in the gospels does it say that Jesus was taken away on the Friday night. You are alluding that they took Jesus' body away that night? That they planned transport for the body at a drop of a hat? Did I not mention that that a body must be left where it is on the Sabbath?

https://books.google.co.za/books?id=ROL ... th&f=false

To purposely violate the Sabbath when not necessary is forbidden. Have you thought of what the crowd would have reacted if they saw Jesus' body being transported over the Sabbath? Do you not think there would not be attempts to forcefully snatch the body and destroy it? Many of the Jews hated Jesus and wanted His death. It is inane to believe that Jesus' friends and family would risk this. Why not wait until after the Sabbath to transport His body? Why the roaring hurry?

Mark 2:
[24] And the Pharisees said unto him, Behold, why do they on the sabbath day that which is not lawful?
[27] And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:
[28] Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.

Disdain for Sabbath laws was in fact a distinct part of their repudiation of the existing system.

Jesus was not saying that no one should observe the Sabbath. He was just saying that no one must make it more important than Jesus. No one must be a slave to the Sabbath. So Jesus' friends and family would not have gone out of their way to violate the Sabbath. They may have placed more importance on Jesus rather than the Sabbath, but the crowd didn't.

I did not invent the insertion that there were Roman guards. That is a widely held belief.

This is true, yet the guards are not scriptural. It is popularly believed to be true, which is significantly different. It's an indication of just how unfamiliar most Christians actually are with what the Bible says, relying instead on popularly held assumptions. For example, it's also popularly believed that Satan tempted Eve with an apple in the garden. Most people will state with absolute certainty that Satan was responsible. But of course Genesis specifically says that Eve ate from the fruit of the tree of knowledge. And Genesis specifically refers to her tempter as "the serpent." God subsequently condemned serpents to crawl on their bellies from then on. No mention is made of Satan whatsoever, and unless you conceive of Satan as forever armless and legless, when Genisis says serpent, it means serpent. Satan is nowhere to be found in this story at all. In fact, Satan is mentioned nowhere in the Torah at all.

We aren't going to get anyway in this argument unless you acknowledge that Kustodia was an elite Roman military group.

Your points aren't in the narrative. You are making these points on what makes the most sense to you but then you say I'm deviating from the narrative. That is no different to what you are doing.

You are not deviating from the narrative so much as adding things to the narrative that are not there. Nor am in in the position of necessarily defending Gospel MAtthew as unassailable.

The words "Roman guards," or "opened and inspected the tomb," are nowhere to be found in the narrative. The empty tomb is easily explained by the realization that the followers of Jesus ALREADY HAD POSSESSION THE BODY, and had been in possession of it since the previous day. No one besides his followers were EVER clearly in possession of the body of Jesus in point of fact. The priests took possession of a CLOSED TOMB, which proved to be empty the following day. These things are completely consistent with the narrative. My departure is to deny that the empty tomb proves that a corpse came back to life and subsequently flew away. A perfectly reasonable conclusion.

But you are adding on that Jesus body' was transported over the Sabbath so why have a problem when I do it? This is by far not consistent with the narrative. Why was it not included in the scriptures.

And you forgot to consider that Jewish guards were not allowed to work on the Sabbath and that means guarding tombs. A logical conclusion to that would be to assume that they got the Romans to be guards to not to violate the Sabbath.

[Claire Evans]

Claire Evans wrote:

I did not invent the insertion that there were Roman guards. That is a widely held belief.

RESPONSE:

So is belief in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny!

Are you seriously arguing that because a belief is widely held, it must therefore be true?

We are arguing based on the premises of the Bible.

RESPONSE:

Unless the Bible is historically accurate, that's sort of a waste of time isn't it?

Then why does this site exist? It's debating Christianity. In a debate, something doesn't necessarily need to be truth but an opponent is testing to see how valid their opponent's argument is.

[Claire Evans]

Clair Evens posted:

>>Matthew 24:3 3 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,� they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?�

>>But when Jesus says that “Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened� (Matthew. 24:34, Mark 13:30, Luke 21:32) he does not say ‘age’.

>>In the Olivet Discourse in all three Synoptic Gospels, Jesus uses the word γενεά (genea) which is translated as ‘generation’. Here are all the other places the Synoptic Gospels where Jesus uses that word. Can you find any place where it does not mean generation in the ordinary sense of a human generation?


>>Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. 2 “Do you see all these things?� he asked. “Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.�

>>We know this prophecy came true. Therefor the credibility of what Jesus said would come at the end of the age is better than in Luke 17. So which one are we to believe?

RESPONSE: Since Matthew wasn't written until ten years AFTER the destruction of the Temple, Matthew knew what had happened before he wrote the prophecy.

Why didn't the author of Matthew say that the prophecy had been fulfilled? We have that same passage in Mark 13 which is said to have been written between 50-70 AD.

>>I believe it is a case of wishful thinking. It was a widespread belief, and wish, that Jesus would return within their generation. We have the same thinking today. I believe the gospel writers misunderstood Jesus and possibility inserted the Luke 17:25 themselves which Jesus didn't say.

RESPONSE: Scripture is supposed to be "God breahted" and therefore inspired and inerrant. But now you say that scripture contains errors and thus is not always inspired.[/b]

No, it isn't inerrant. Humans are fallible.

>>The Matthew 24 scriptures must have been written before 70 AD because then the scriptures would have mentioned that this prophecy came to pass. Not even Acts mentions the destruction of the Temple.[/quote]<<

RESPONSE: No. Matthew was written about 80 AD largely copying from Mark written in 70 AD. Please note that John was written sometime after 95 AD and he says nothing about the destruction of the Temple either.

Douay-Rheims Bible

It seems to be logical that the Gospel of Luke and Mark were written before 70 AD:

"The date of the fall of Jerusalem serves to show an early date for the Gospels better, in my opinion, that it shows a later date. This is especially true in the case of Luke. Luke is the only Gospel writer who wrote a sequel to his Gospel, which we call the Acts of the Apostles. In Luke’s Gospel he depicts Jesus predicting the destruction of the temple, but does not make that prediction come true in his sequel. Acts ends with Paul’s house arrest in Rome in AD 60-62. Just eight years later the temple would be destroyed and the prediction Jesus made in chapter 21 of his Gospel would have come true. If Luke was writing Acts after the destruction of the temple it seems rather strange that he didn’t continue the story beyond Paul’s imprisonment in Rome and conclude his story with a fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecy. Especially since continuing the story past Paul’s imprisonment would cause the story to also include Paul’s untimely death in AD 65. Since Luke was Paul’s traveling companion, it would seem highly appropriate for Luke to pay tribute to his fallen comrade if he were writing the book of Acts after his death. As it is, Luke spends the last five chapters of Acts anticipating Paul’s trial before Caesar and ends the book with no mention of it. Clearly, Luke finished the book before Paul had his trial before Caesar and before he was beheaded in AD 65. Since Acts is the sequel to the Gospel of Luke, it had to have been written before Acts, and since Luke probably used Mark as a source, Mark had to be written before Luke. This means that both Mark and Luke were living at the same time as the eyewitnesses they interviewed for their Gospels. Matthew and John were eyewitnesses themselves and were therefore based their Gospels on their own memory."

http://evidenceforchristianity.org/gospeldates/

So it is very telling that Luke didn't mention the destruction of the Temple in Acts. That would have definitely been mentioned if he wrote Acts after 70 AD. And we know Acts is a sequel to the Gospel of Luke.

John doesn't mention the destruction of the temple because John was not interested in the events as he was in writing about Jesus as a person. It was mystical and that is why it is not one of the Synoptic gospels.

Luke 9:27 But I tell you of a truth: There are some standing here that shall not taste death, till they see the kingdom of God.

Matthew 16:28 Amen I say to you, there are some of them that stand here, that shall not taste death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.

Matthew 10:23 And when they shall persecute you in this city, flee into another. Amen I say to you, you shall not finish all the cities of Israel, till the Son of man come.

Jesus repeatedly prophecized that his return would occur during his generation. but, of course, it didn't. Thus he is shown to be lacking in divine knowledge.

Why do we have two prophecies then? Are we to assume that Jesus was lying about one of them? It is not possible that Jesus did not say generation but the gospel writers wrote that He said that? Is it not possible that they wanted to believe it so they put words in Jesus' mouth? Everybody wants to believe Jesus will come back in their own life-time.

An example of a made up story was the story of the possessed pigs. It was an allegory for the Jewish Wars and actually did not happen.

[Claire Evans]

Clair Evens posted:

>>Matthew 24:3 3 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,� they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?�

>>But when Jesus says that “Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened� (Matthew. 24:34, Mark 13:30, Luke 21:32) he does not say ‘age’.

>>In the Olivet Discourse in all three Synoptic Gospels, Jesus uses the word γενεά (genea) which is translated as ‘generation’. Here are all the other places the Synoptic Gospels where Jesus uses that word. Can you find any place where it does not mean generation in the ordinary sense of a human generation?


>>Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. 2 “Do you see all these things?� he asked. “Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.�

>>We know this prophecy came true. Therefor the credibility of what Jesus said would come at the end of the age is better than in Luke 17. So which one are we to believe?

RESPONSE: Since Matthew wasn't written until ten years AFTER the destruction of the Temple, Matthew knew what had happened before he wrote the prophecy.

Why didn't the author of Matthew say that the prophecy had been fulfilled? We have that same passage in Mark 13 which is said to have been written between 50-70 AD.

>>I believe it is a case of wishful thinking. It was a widespread belief, and wish, that Jesus would return within their generation. We have the same thinking today. I believe the gospel writers misunderstood Jesus and possibility inserted the Luke 17:25 themselves which Jesus didn't say.

RESPONSE: Scripture is supposed to be "God breahted" and therefore inspired and inerrant. But now you say that scripture contains errors and thus is not always inspired.[/b]

No, it isn't inerrant. Humans are fallible.

>>The Matthew 24 scriptures must have been written before 70 AD because then the scriptures would have mentioned that this prophecy came to pass. Not even Acts mentions the destruction of the Temple.[/quote]<<

RESPONSE: No. Matthew was written about 80 AD largely copying from Mark written in 70 AD. Please note that John was written sometime after 95 AD and he says nothing about the destruction of the Temple either.

Douay-Rheims Bible

It seems to be logical that the Gospel of Luke and Mark were written before 70 AD:

"The date of the fall of Jerusalem serves to show an early date for the Gospels better, in my opinion, that it shows a later date. This is especially true in the case of Luke. Luke is the only Gospel writer who wrote a sequel to his Gospel, which we call the Acts of the Apostles. In Luke’s Gospel he depicts Jesus predicting the destruction of the temple, but does not make that prediction come true in his sequel. Acts ends with Paul’s house arrest in Rome in AD 60-62. Just eight years later the temple would be destroyed and the prediction Jesus made in chapter 21 of his Gospel would have come true. If Luke was writing Acts after the destruction of the temple it seems rather strange that he didn’t continue the story beyond Paul’s imprisonment in Rome and conclude his story with a fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecy. Especially since continuing the story past Paul’s imprisonment would cause the story to also include Paul’s untimely death in AD 65. Since Luke was Paul’s traveling companion, it would seem highly appropriate for Luke to pay tribute to his fallen comrade if he were writing the book of Acts after his death. As it is, Luke spends the last five chapters of Acts anticipating Paul’s trial before Caesar and ends the book with no mention of it. Clearly, Luke finished the book before Paul had his trial before Caesar and before he was beheaded in AD 65. Since Acts is the sequel to the Gospel of Luke, it had to have been written before Acts, and since Luke probably used Mark as a source, Mark had to be written before Luke. This means that both Mark and Luke were living at the same time as the eyewitnesses they interviewed for their Gospels. Matthew and John were eyewitnesses themselves and were therefore based their Gospels on their own memory."

http://evidenceforchristianity.org/gospeldates/

So it is very telling that Luke didn't mention the destruction of the Temple in Acts. That would have definitely been mentioned if he wrote Acts after 70 AD. And we know Acts is a sequel to the Gospel of Luke.

John doesn't mention the destruction of the temple because John was not interested in the events as he was in writing about Jesus as a person. It was mystical and that is why it is not one of the Synoptic gospels.

Luke 9:27 But I tell you of a truth: There are some standing here that shall not taste death, till they see the kingdom of God.

Matthew 16:28 Amen I say to you, there are some of them that stand here, that shall not taste death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.

Matthew 10:23 And when they shall persecute you in this city, flee into another. Amen I say to you, you shall not finish all the cities of Israel, till the Son of man come.

Jesus repeatedly prophecized that his return would occur during his generation. but, of course, it didn't. Thus he is shown to be lacking in divine knowledge.

Why do we have two prophecies then? Are we to assume that Jesus was lying about one of them? It is not possible that Jesus did not say generation but the gospel writers wrote that He said that? Is it not possible that they wanted to believe it so they put words in Jesus' mouth? Everybody wants to believe Jesus will come back in their own life-time.

An example of a made up story was the story of the possessed pigs. It was an allegory for the Jewish Wars and actually did not happen.

[Claire Evans]

We are arguing based on the premises of the Bible.

Dead wrong. Read Guidelines for the C&A subforum We are not assuming the Bible is accurate or that its 'premises' are valid. On this subforum, it has no more authority than any other book.

In a debate, a participant is challenging their opponent's case to test the validity of their argument. Just because one is arguing from the premises of the Bible, doesn't mean they believe it or that it is true.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 634 by Claire Evans]

First, just some helpful constructive criticism. Can you please tidy up your response formats? You've got parts in double arrows <<>> and then you have a quote from polonius using the actual QUOTE function of this site, and I'm having trouble figuring out...are both the double arrow parts and the QUOTE box from polonius? Who is saying what?
Basically, I'm having trouble following the conversation.

An example of a made up story was the story of the possessed pigs. It was an allegory for the Jewish Wars and actually did not happen.

I'd like to know your reasoning for why you think the pig story was made up, is a metaphor. It seems strange coming from a Jesus believer to say that. Why couldn't it be true, as written? Usually a Jesus believer says that Jesus had all sorts of abilities, and routinely cast out demons and did all sorts of other great miraculous acts.