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?

[Clownboat]

[Replying to post 868 by Claire Evans]

It is through suffering that we can become better people.

Are you saying that in order to become better people we should desire MORE suffering ?

No, we should just not ask, "Why me?" when times are hard.

I fine this to be false.
If things are hard, especially due to direct actions by said person, asking 'why me' can be very enlightening.

Imagine a person that loses their driving license after numerous infractions. Said person needs to ask 'why me' in order for them to understand that it was due to their poor driving. If only they would have asked such a question before things got too far out of control.

Don't you agree?
I'm not saying you should always ask 'why me' either.

[Blastcat]

[Replying to post 848 by Claire Evans]

The silence is suspicious because, according to the gospels, Jesus was to rise from the dead, which the Jews took much care of avoiding that claim. As we know, there were claims that Jesus rose from the dead, yet no Jewish source refutes it. It could have been recorded that the body was shown to refute the resurrection.

If I make a claim and nobody refutes it.. do you think that my claim is automatically true?

Why would anyone believe a claim JUST BECAUSE it wasn't bothered with?

Silence means NOTHING.... Not for not against.
You can be suspicious all you like.

[Blastcat]

[Replying to post 880 by Claire Evans]

[Replying to post 868 by Claire Evans]

It is through suffering that we can become better people.

Are you saying that in order to become better people we should desire MORE suffering ?

No, we should just not ask, "Why me?" when times are hard.

But what about the amputees, Claire?

When asked about it, you answered this:

"God is not a genie. I have clinical depression but I don't expect God to get me off my medication. I am blessed to have them. Likewise, an amputee can have a full life with prosthesis. It is through suffering that we can become better people. Why stop at praying for limbs growing back? If this happened left, right and centre, people who don't have faith would be attracted to Christianity for the wrong reasons. The motive would be to get something out of God rather than a wish to serve God."


Do you believe that Jesus heals anyone?

We are talking about real healing here.. physical ailments. A lot of Christians claim that "Jesus heals".

IF SO.. the question was "Why doesn't Jesus ever EVER EVER heal amputees? .. because according to some Christians, he doesn't seem to have a problem with CANCER victims... are all amputees UNWORTHY?

That was the question.

Do you have an actual answer to it?

[rikuoamero]

Likewise, an amputee can have a full life with prosthesis.

No they can't. It's only recently that full limb prosthetics that actually work (somewhat) have become available. What about the thousands of years before hand?
Also, your comment about a 'full life with prosthesis' ignores other things that we non-amputees take for granted, such as touch. A man who's lost both arms will no longer be able to feel the softness of his wife's hair for example.

[Claire Evans]

Only by faith could anyone be healed by miracles

So you're saying that there hasn't been a single instance of an amputee having enough faith in God?

God is not a genie. I have clinical depression but I don't expect God to get me off my medication. I am blessed to have them. Likewise, an amputee can have a full life with prosthesis. It is through suffering that we can become better people. Why stop at praying for limbs growing back? If this happened left, right and centre, people who don't have faith would be attracted to Christianity for the wrong reasons. The motive would be to get something out of God rather than a wish to serve God.

My point is that every single prayer that God has ever supposedly answer can be explained through non-divine means. The only exception would be limb regeneration as limb regeneration is absolutely impossible. Coincidentally, limb regeneration just happens to be an ailment that God has never bothered curing. Doesn't this coincidence strike you as rather odd? Especially considering Matthew 21:22 - "If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.". Does limb regeneration fall outside of "whatever you ask for"?

Other things are impossible like just making a blind man see by the touch of Jesus' hand. Anyway, just because it wasn't reported in the gospel, doesn't mean it didn't happen. However, I don't believe it happened.

I think Matthew 22 is about this:

Munster's Hebrew Gospel reads it, "in prayer, and in faith"; and the Arabic version renders it, "in prayer with faith"; both to the same purpose, and aptly express the sense of the words, which design the prayer of faith; or that prayer which is put up in the strength of faith; and is of great avail with God: for whatever is asked in faith, agreeable to the will of God, which is contained in his covenant, word, and promises, and makes for his glory, and the good of his people, shall be given, be it what it will; though to carnal sense and reason it may seem impracticable and impossible:

http://www.biblestudytools.com/commenta ... 21-22.html

Matthew 17 seems to relate to Matthew 22:

17 “You unbelieving and perverse generation,� Jesus replied, “how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy here to me.� 18 Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of the boy, and he was healed at that moment.

19 Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?�

20 He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.� [21] [a]

If the disciples had 100% faith and had asked for it, they would have been able to have driven out those demons. Faith is there to glorify God. It is "me" orientated to just ask for whatever one wants. Sometimes I want things to go my way but I know that if I ask for anything I want, I may be transgressing God's will.

If this happened left, right and centre, people who don't have faith would be attracted to Christianity for the wrong reasons.

So selfish gain is "the wrong reason" to become Christians? Why then does the Bible promise eternal life for being a Christian? If God wanted people to join him for non-selfish reasons, why did he promise something that would attract selfish people?

Yes, it is selfish. No one gets eternal life for just being a Christian. There's a difference between being nominally Christian and being Christ-committed to do God's will. Selfish people would not want to do God's will because it requires to much of them and that is the denial of the self. Doing the will of God is hard. In order to truly know God, one actually gets humiliated. It is needed to truly make us realize that we are nothing without Him. How many Christians want that? The reason why one must want to be a Christian is because one love's Him and wants to do His will. How many people would want to be Christian if they had to suffer the fate of the martyrs? That was the result of doing God's will yet they now have eternal life.

Therefore, being Christ-committed is not meant to be appealing. Look at the rich man who did not want to abandon his worldly wealth to follow Jesus.

And why is faith taken out of the equation?

It doesn't. Many people still have faith in Mark 16:9 - 20. If Mark 16:9 - 20 doesn't belong in the Bible, then they are placing their faith in words that were spoken by Jesus. Why would God allow people to mistakenly have faith in Mark 16:9 - 20?

Because it truly doesn't matter. Knowing Christ is not done by the scriptures. If one has the Holy Spirit, then that is sufficient to teach them. Scriptures are secondary.

"Magic coating" would not prove that Jesus did it.

No, but those who have faith in Jesus would not mistakenly believe that Jesus said what was written in Mark 16:9 - 20

As I said, it matters not.

There is no other way to know Jesus but through faith.

Yes and many who have faith in Jesus believe a lie as they have no way of knowing Mark 16:9 - 20 is suspect

Would that affect their faith if they knew Mark was suspect? What a lack of faith in God then! I don't believe some things are literal in the New Testament or even true but that doesn't dent my faith in the slightest.

[Claire Evans]

He could have been accused of being a magician. People won't believe without faith and that is hard to come by.

You act as if this is a bad thing which strikes me as odd.

Magician as in using the power of demons. Simon the Sorcerer is an example:

Acts 8:9-24

9 Now for some time a man named Simon had practiced sorcery in the city and amazed all the people of Samaria. He boasted that he was someone great, 10 and all the people, both high and low, gave him their attention and exclaimed, “This man is rightly called the Great Power of God.� 11 They followed him because he had amazed them for a long time with his sorcery.

You see, faith does not lead to the Christian god, faith is required to believe in any god concept. This makes fakes faith being hard to come by a good thing IMO. I just disagree with the part that it is hard to come by because I know far to many that are capable of having faith and then applying it to one of the many god concepts.

I do not mean having faith that God exists. I mean having faith in God to lead one in one's life knowing full well He exists. A child has faith in his father. He does not doubt his father's existence.

I don't believe that a gospel of Jesus would convince you that prophecy He made about dying and resurrecting is true. I think any wisdom a person would think Jesus had would be replaced as being branded a whack job for claiming He is the Son of God. There is no way a gospel of Jesus would ever convince non believers that He is.

I accept your opinion that Jesus could not have written anything impressive, but I'm no longer saddles with being forced to believe that he is/was divine.

Absolutely.

What criteria would be needed for you to convince you that it was written by Jesus. Not only that, what would make you believe what He wrote is true? You could think he was a magician, a fraud, an anything but the Son of God.

I don't know why you struggle with this. Don't you think a god could write in a way that is beyond what us mere humans can do? Wouldn't you expect some divine wisdom to be present in it?

Instead of using grand scriptures with magic coating to understand Him, He offers us the Holy Spirit that is the Teacher who gives us wisdom and understanding of God. That is far more valuable than any scripture.

Instead we have stories about a punishing (Adam and Eve, Noah...) genocidal barbaric (keep the virgin girls for yourself) god that does things that are very human in nature.

That's Yahweh you are talking about, not the Father.

Can you point to anything in the Bible that we cannot imagine a human coming up with?
An actual divine book written by Jesus is truly needed, otherwise what is special about the current 66? Nothing that I can see.

Why would that be needed? I think Revelation is indicative of the writer truly having no clue of what he was writing about. That could be divine inspired.

[polonius]

Clair Evens posted:

I think Revelation is indicative of the writer truly having no clue of what he was writing about.

QUESTION: Do you think it is wise to pay any attention to a writer that truly doesn't know what he is writing about?

That could be divine inspired.

QUESTION: Do you really think that writers who truly do not know what they are writing about are divinely inspired?

[Clownboat]

You see, faith does not lead to the Christian god, faith is required to believe in any god concept. This makes fakes faith being hard to come by a good thing IMO. I just disagree with the part that it is hard to come by because I know far to many that are capable of having faith and then applying it to one of the many god concepts.

I do not mean having faith that God exists. I mean having faith in God to lead one in one's life knowing full well He exists. A child has faith in his father. He does not doubt his father's existence.

It matters not where you apply your faith, because faith is needed in order to believe in false things. That is the point. How is a mechanism that leads to false beliefs a good thing?

What criteria would be needed for you to convince you that it was written by Jesus. Not only that, what would make you believe what He wrote is true? You could think he was a magician, a fraud, an anything but the Son of God.

I don't know why you struggle with this. Don't you think a god could write in a way that is beyond what us mere humans can do? Wouldn't you expect some divine wisdom to be present in it?

Instead of using grand scriptures with magic coating to understand Him, He offers us the Holy Spirit that is the Teacher who gives us wisdom and understanding of God. That is far more valuable than any scripture.

Your Holy Ghost is just an excuse you use to justify for the scriptures not being wise nor divine.
So my question was, "don't you think a god could write in a way that is beyond what us mere humans can do?"
Holy Spirit or not, such a divine and wise being would have wisdom/knowledge far beyond that of the humans of the time when these things were written. Yet this is not demonstrated in the Bible.

Instead we have stories about a punishing (Adam and Eve, Noah...) genocidal barbaric (keep the virgin girls for yourself) god that does things that are very human in nature.

That's Yahweh you are talking about, not the Father.

Do you not serve the god of Israel? If not, who is Yahweh when compared to this 'Father'. When I was a Christian, I was taught to pray to my 'Father god', the god of Israel. Thus my confusion.

Can you point to anything in the Bible that we cannot imagine a human coming up with?
An actual divine book written by Jesus is truly needed, otherwise what is special about the current 66? Nothing that I can see.

Why would that be needed?

Why!? Simple, you believe that there is a god concept behind the scriptures. The scriptures themselves betray you. That is why it is needed.

I think Revelation is indicative of the writer truly having no clue of what he was writing about. That could be divine inspired.

Why would you jump to such conclusions? If you were not a Christian with a Christian bias, I don't believe you would read Revelations and jump to said book being divinely inspired. I assume you have read Revelations?

[Claire Evans]

What does it matter? It is not by reading the scriptures that one knows Jesus. It is through a personal relationship with the Holy Spirit. It doesn't matter what is suspect or not. It cannot change the core of Christianity.

So if you never read the Bible before in your life, nor have heard about Jesus Christ, would you have had a relationship with the Holy Spirit?

Obviously we need the Bible to tell us who Jesus is and what He did. However, knowing that and truly knowing Him can be completely different things.

[Justin108]

Obviously we need the Bible to tell us who Jesus is and what He did

And in order for us to believe what the Bible tells us about who he is and what he did, the Bible cannot be suspect. If you suspect some parts of the Bible to be untrue, how can you be sure the whole story about Jesus and the Holy Spirit aren't untrue as well?