Belief in The Resurrection - Faith, or Fact Based

[William]

Q: Is belief in The Resurrection based on fact or based on faith?

From a discussion in another thread;
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[Replying to Realworldjack in post #222]

Let us recall that it was you who stated,

that the stories of the empty tomb where anything other than given as hearsay and expected to be received in faith.

This is what I stated;

"What has been reported from the different sources do not altogether align - and one thing which does come across is that folk did not seem to recognize that the person claiming to have resurrected was the same person they had followed for all those months. I am happy to examine what you table as explanation for this phenomena."

I also stated;
I am not arguing that the stories themselves were or were not penned as true accounts of actual events by the very one(s) who experienced these things they claim to have experienced.
My argument is that we can only take their stories as hearsay, because we did not witness those events. What we each DO with the hearsay depends upon our faith in the stories being true, our faith that the stories being false, or in our lack of faith due to the nature of the evidence.

Are you saying, NONE of it aligns?

A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.

Because you see, we have those who complain that much of the information is so closely the "aligned", they want to insist that there must, and had to be copying going on between the authors.

Apparently there are biblical scholars who accept that in those cases, copying may have occurred.

So then, exactly what would we expect? If they all report the same exact events, in the same exact way, I think we would have complaints that something would not be right here.

Yes - that it was unnecessary to have four exact copies of the same data.

If they report completely different, and contradictory information, then we would complain that something is not quite right.

Yes.

However, it seems to me we have exactly what we would expect.

Which still wouldn't do away with the idea that the stories were concocted by the priesthood...such would be intelligent enough to realize that to sell the story there needs to be more than one version, especially since there are no coinciding stories circulating outside of the religion.
For example - some believe that [historical] Jesus had scribes, but there is no evidence that anyone was recording his words and nothing of the sort has been found so far.

In other words, we have some events describe in almost the same way, while we have others who record events the others may leave out, and we have some who report the same events with differences in the story. So??????? What exactly would are you looking for?

I am looking for evidence to the claim that Jesus died. [and was thus resurrected.]

Would you want them to record the same exact stories, in the same exact way? Would you want them to tell completely different stories which would contradict each other? I mean, exactly what would you accept?

Based upon the stories regarding Jesus, I would expect that Jesus didn't really die.

First, your wording is sort of strange here? You seem to be saying, they did not recognize him as the same person as they had followed, as if they recognized him as someone else? However, this is not the way it is recorded. In Luke 24 we read,

"While they were talking and discussing, Jesus Himself approached and began traveling with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing Him".

So here we see, it is not as though they recognize him as someone else, but rather, they simply were, "kept from recognizing him". However, as we move on a few verses later we read,

"And then their eyes were opened and they recognized Him".

Firstly they must have seen him as 'someone else' for them to recognize that 'someone else' had entered into their company.
But what we do not know [and thus cannot assume] is what the writer meant in the use of the words.
Does it mean that their minds were being played with in some unknown manner or does it mean that it was something else about the stranger suddenly in their company which lead them to conclude they were in the presence of someone who was so just like the Jesus they knew, that it must have been him, or was Jesus' body was capable of 'shape-shifting' [changing it's appearance.]

However, in relation to the story of the stranger in the company, we see that the story unfolds over the course of a whole day, with the stranger telling them all sorts of things so that the dots connected [starting out by calling them 'fools' for not being able to do this for themselves] and by the end of the day, we are informed that they had no choice but to accept the evidence that the stranger [who they did not recognize as Jesus because it was a different body] was the same person that they had followed all those previous months.

As soon as they came to that conclusion, the stranger then vanished. [became invisible to them/appeared to no longer be in their company.]

Okay, as we turn our attention to the incident with Mary Magdalene, what we see as recorded in John 20, is (Mary) "Thinking that He was the gardener". Notice, it does not say, "recognizing him as the gardener".

Why would Mary know what the gardener looked like? Clearly she assumes a stranger there with the two other strangers is the caretaker and clearly she is confused and distressed.
But most importantly, she does not recognize the stranger until he calls her by her name...so it must have been how the stranger had done this which convinced Mary that it was Jesus.

Well, the only other incident I know of would be at daybreak, with the disciples in a boat off shore, and see Jesus on shore, as they have been fishing through the night with no catch. Jesus instructs them where to cast the net, and of course they have a net so full, it is difficult to pull the net in, and it is at this point, one of the disciples, does not "recognize" (as if he can actually see him) this as Jesus, but simply says, "It is the Lord"! Once they were all on shore, as it is recorded, they all seem to recognize this person as Jesus.

These are the only events such as this I am aware of. The above would not be my "explanation for this phenomena" because I have no explanation. Rather, this is the way it is recorded.

So we have hearsay [the stories] and within that, we have incidences which align and form an image of someone who has a distinctly different body than the normal Human form as it appears to be able to do things which normal human forms are not seen to be capable of doing.

But overall, there is nothing about the story of the resurrection [The Subject] which can be pointed to as factual [rather than hearsay] and thus, to believe in said story - one has to do so on faith.

[bluegreenearth]

The facts of the case here are an empty tomb, people claiming post-mortem appearances, and people claiming their leader resurrected as the center of their movement, which are things that are demonstrable in reality.

1. Even if tombs are things which demonstrably exist in reality, the empty tomb described in NT is not demonstrable in reality. Only the highly contested claim of an empty tomb is demonstrable.
2. Even if people demonstrably exist in reality, the people described in the NT as claiming post-mortem appearances from their resurrected leader are not demonstrable in reality. Only the claim that there were people claiming post-mortem appearances from their resurrected leader is demonstrable.

So, the facts of the case here are claims of an empty tomb, claims about people claiming post-mortem appearances, and claims about people claiming their leader was resurrected.

This is why I’ve talked about things like electrons. The existence of electrons is a conclusion to an argument concerning the cause of observed effects.

No. The existence of electrons is the conclusion of experiments involving novel testable predictions which have all been demonstrated to occur in reality. If a purely philosophical argument had been made for the existence of electrons, it would not be considered the evidence, and its conclusion would need to be demonstrated by the evidence.

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #651]

I'm not sure your post affects the argument, but in case you think it does, I thought I should begin to respond and go further if you like. I think your theory here is full of ad-hoc speculation. Sharing names were common back then, just like today. That James becomes a leader is common knowledge, not something hidden. Simon the Zealot and Judas were both disciples, not one the father of the other. You are just assuming Paul misrepresents the letter from James with no evidence for doing so. You aren't providing the OT quotes ripped out of context, or how it is obviously a departure from Abraham's righteousness, how Paul is teaching salvation by works instead of salvation to works.

Yes. I am doing a lot of theorising there, I know. Sharing names or rather different people having the same names was common. The Talpiot tomb business rather flags that up. It was easy for some to connect them with Jesus' circle but it was probably a lot of other people. I don't believe that I ever implied that it had been hidden that James was leader of the Jesus group. Acts makes that pretty clear and Paul makes it clear that James ' letter was authoritative as to how a Godly gentile should act.

I'm pretty sure that the Bible (I think in John) says that one Simon or the other was the father of Judas - one or other of them. I'll have a check of that. So the suspicion is that if they are mirror images Judas is the son of Simon - in both cases.

Yes, It's all a suspicion that James' letter was not quite how Paul represented it and I suggested that he would have been more explicit about the rules, perhaps just imposing Noahide rules. I hope I was making it clear that these are just suspicions I have, like how Jesus' family sound rather like they might have formed the core of the disciples. Like Arimathea might have been Jesus' father ..didn't we wonder where Jospeh had gone?... and Peter perhaps related by marriage to Jesus. And I'm not going to employ the theist method of saying: 'It's believably Plausible unless you can disprove it'

And sorry if I seemed to be saying that Paul taught salvation by works. I had thought I was making it clear that he taught salvation was by Faith - even though he later (I Corinthians) had to backtrack and say that their bad behavior could imperil the salvation that Jesusfaith had bought them. Works, and not just Faith, whatever Paul taught.

[JoeyKnothead]

The facts of the case here are an empty tomb...

An empty tomb for which we have no means to determine if there was ever anything in it to begin with.
Where is this tomb? Has a forensic analysis established reliably that there was ever a body in it?
Please present supporting documentation or other physical evidence for analysis.

people claiming post-mortem appearances...

Alleged claims by alleged "witnesses", neither of which you've yet to provide for cross examination.

Where is this "post-mortem" entity / thing, that we may examine?
Where are these "witnesses" you claim to exist?

Your repeated assertions of "fact", devoid of confirmatory data or evidence clearly indicates a, shall we say, faithful reliance on unproven, unprovable claims.

Face it, your faith that these "facts" are indeed facts doesn't make em facts.

and people claiming their leader resurrected as the center of their movement, which are things that are demonstrable in reality.

Then by all means, show us where at least one dead person was resurrected in reality.

Ya can't. Ya take "witnesses" on faith.
Ya take their "testimony" on faith.
Ya take this entire resurrection deal on faith.

These are the facts of this case.

... ... ...

(Late edit to delete a little bit that wasn't sposed to be here)

I stand by my comments, as they relate to the implications of your claims. You keep on atelling how the "rise of the Christian movement" somehow supports a "factual" claim regarding the OP/resurrection. That they "wouldn't have made that up" is no better'n, "but danged if they didn't". We have no means of confirming this, either way.

What we can say, what evidence does support, is sometimes, well, humans think em up some goofy stuff. They might be good folk, they might mean well, but, well, goofy.

If we only had that one fact, I’d agree. But the argument is built off of 3 (4 if you count Jesus’ existence separately) facts. Theories need to account for all of them. I’ve shared why I think the disciples making it all up (intentionally or not) doesn’t account for everything as well as the resurrection hypothesis.

Absolutely not.

You've not established these "eywitnesses" existed.
You've not established their alleged claims are even accurate representations of what they may have claimed.
You've not established an empty tomb means there was something in it to begin with.
You've not established this particular Jesus feller was the one you've not established was in it.
And you've most certainly not established that dead Jesus hopped up and left that tomb you can't establish he was ever in.

Your faith in this resurrection story is a pile of faiths, and at the top of that steaming pile is your empty assertion of "facts".

Then bring Cephas here, that we may cross examine. Bring one, or all them 500, that we may confirm Cephas accurately and reliably recorded what it is they had to tell.

I’ve shared already, numerous times, about why I think requiring cross examination is flawed and have nothing new to say there.

And so we see, you can't present not one single "eyewitnesses" who can testify to the following...

They actually witnessed the alleged event in question.
They actually told folks about it.
Some who wrote their recollections down did so accurately.

Your faith is all you've got, and you will never, ever show otherwise.

At least until you can put actual fact to these claims you declare to be "fact".

I propose that's exactly your argument, on account of that's the argument you keep presenting.

I don’t see why you are still thinking that. There are three facts (empty tomb

Please present this tomb for analysis.

, claims of post-mortem appearances,

Claims ain't facts.
We have no means of confirming there were eyewitnesses, and thus no means of confirming they even claimed to have seen these alleged "post-mortem appearances".

a central message of resurrection for the Christian movement.

A central message of Gone With The Wind is that there was this plantation called "Tara".

Are we to assume Miss Scarlett also rose from the dead?

Yet you continue to say that my argument is only the third one,

Let me correct that...

Your argument is only faith. It has no supporting evidence beyond your assertions of it being "fact". Just saying something is a fact don't mean it is.

that it’s just about the resurrection claim being passed down.

I have repeatedly referred to your claims of "eyewitnesses", and how you've failed completely to present just one for cross examination.

I don't care if they never "passed down" their testimony.

I ask you present em, that we can examine their testimony, from their words, not the words you or others might -ahem- pass down for em.

I don’t know how else to put it.

Put "it" to us in the form of reliable, confirmable evidence. Not "It's facts y'all, I swear it!"

It seems straightforward to me that you are wildly misunderstanding my argument if you think the above.

Let's clear this'n then...

It's "straightforward" to me that you can't put reliable, confirmable evidence to your claims regarding a resurrection, and that, best I can tell, you misunderstand faith as somehow evidence for fact. The only fact there is your faith in claims you can't even show to be truth.

I have every faith that your faith will continue to guide your conclusions in this matter.

[POI]

You are missing my point here... We already know Paul was not there himself. He obtained his 'information' from another, or made it up.

What is the fact used in the argument? That the earliest disciples claimed to have experienced post-mortem appearances. Do you dispute this fact? Are you claiming that all claims of experiencing post-mortem appearances were made up by later Christians?

I'm asking you to locate the actual source(s) for the claim of '500'? Do we know the source(s)? In oral tradition, stories are passed down, over and over and over again. Did Paul get his information from a direct eyewitness? Meaning, was the source(s) one or more of the original '500+"? I will answer for you... You cannot answer. Why? Because we have no record of deposition/corroboration to THIS particular claim for 500+ eyewitnesses. Hence, as I have alluded to many times prior, it's logical to throw out this claim entirely, and move on to the others... You must admit this claim is based upon faith, and faith/hope alone. Unless you can produce the source(s), and also their independent attestation(s).

So, if we are to throw out this claim of 500, I guess we can move forward.... Which claim to a direct eyewitness, (as defined), would you like to investigate first? And before you do, I submit a small recap...

- The 4 Gospels are written by anonymous authors. Meaning, we do not know if these writers were told what to write by the 'church'? Or, if they wrote what they heard in oral tradition alone. Or other?

- The Gospels were written many decades after the claimed event. Which means it's virtually impossible the author(s) could have been a direct witness to anything themselves.

- Nearly half the NT was written by Paul, who was not there to witness the 'resurrection' himself.

[TRANSPONDER]

Jhn 6:71. He spake of Judas Iscariot the son of Simon: for he it was that should betray him, being one of the twelve.
Jhn 12:4. Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, which should betray him,
Jhn 13:2. and supper being ended, the devil having now put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him;
Jhn 13:26. Jesus answered, He it is, to whom I shall give a sop, when I have dipped it. And when he had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon.

Of course we don't know that this Simon was either Cephas or Simon the Zealot, but John (assuming we can believe anything of what he says) also mentions Judas (not Iscariot - 14.22) and doesn't say he's the son of anyone. We get the sons of Zebedee and we know who Zebedee is. So there's a suspicion that Judas' father is either Cephas or the zealot. And if they were the same person, we get a father and son Zealot, the father becoming a right hand man to the leader after Jesus, whose son died on a field of blood after the 'soldiers' and officers come to grab Jesus at Gethsemane, and just as they went to Pilate for a tomb guard, why not to Pilate for a posse? There's the basis for a conspiracy theory .

[brunumb]

A universe is all there can be; a multiverse is a cop out.

Why? You need to demonstrate the truth of that claim. That said, God is surely an even bigger cop out. Invent something that can do anything and then use it to explain everything is a neat trick.

A t0 in a universe, means eternity and in eternity, nothing ever starts/begin or ends.

That doesn't even make sense let alone explain anything.

[brunumb]

Again, at the point of the facts, we aren’t saying they didn’t lie about it. The lying theory suffers in the second part of the argument when trying to make sense of all 3 facts.

There are no substantiated facts. All we have are claims. The Bible itself is essentially a book of claims, not facts.

[Difflugia]

I wasn’t intending to make as all encompassing a claim as you seemed to have taken it. And the gospels are not meant as exhaustive accounts on the terms/groupings, so we shouldn’t hold it to that kind of standard. My thought was more about that this was the main, initial leadership group that was singled out and sent by Jesus. This is true regardless of whether Thaddeus/Lebbaeus and Judas of James are the same person or there was disagreement on that one member.

So, we should trust the witness attributed to the Twelve because the Twelve are given names, but it's still trustworthy even if the names are wrong?

I agree that Paul doesn’t name them. Why is the “plain reading” a reading that requires us to assume all terms are meant to be mutually exclusive of each other?

It doesn't require anything, but is the plain reading for the same reason one wouldn't normally write "the first graders, the second graders, and the elementary students." You can (and I'm sure will) read it however you want, but with no other information, the most straightforward reading of a list of items is that they're independent items.

The twelve are explicitly called apostles in 3:14.

Mark 3:14 is a contested reading with several variants. NA28 puts the Greek phrase "who he called apostles" in brackets, which indicates "words of letters of doubtful authenticity." English translations are split about whether that phrase belongs. C.S. Mann described it this way in his Anchor Bible volume on Mark:

There are difficulties in the account as we now have it. The commission to evangelize and exorcise is not acted upon until 6:7, which may indicate Mark's desire to suggest that there was indeed a time of close companionship with Jesus before the mission. But our present text has two instances of he appointed, here and in v. 16, though some manuscripts omit the second use. The position is complicated further by the fact that the manuscripts which omit the second he appointed are the very ones that also omit "whom he also called apostles." All we can usefully say is that the original text—whatever it may have been—is now corrupted beyond our recovery.

The twelve and disciples are mentioned in the same contexts (such as 3:7-13, 9:30-37, 11:11-14, 14:12-17, 14:32-33, 16:7).

Are you correcting me or agreeing with me? I said that they are rarely mentioned in the same contexts and when they were, the relationship between the Twelve and the disciples is ambiguous. Your short list and a quick look at each item support what I said.

Mark doesn’t address your question directly, so there will always be some wriggle room. The three options are that:

1. The twelve and the disciples are mutually exclusive terms
2. They are identical synonyms
3. There is some overlap but the ‘twelve’ is more narrow

I agree.

If it were (2) or (3), then using them interchangeably within the same context makes sense. If it were (1), then why would they be used in the same contexts without making the distinction clear?

I don't understand why you think the distinction would be made clear in (1), but not (2) or (3). With the full text of Mark to choose from, I would expect at least a single unambiguous reference to a named character being a disciple if that were Mark's intention. Your complaint applies pretty equally to all three possibilities: "why would they be used in the same contexts without making the distinction clear?"

For that reason, I think (1) is the weakest option. One should also look at how other Christian sources use these terms, when there is some ambiguity. The oral traditions are already being passed down and used by Mark and Matthew. It doesn’t make sense to assume that Mark wrote it first and then everyone else is changing things.

Considering that the statement I bolded is exactly what modern scholarship says happened, you'll need to do better than merely assert that it "doesn't make sense."

Matthew names the Twelve using mostly the same list Mark does, but manuscripts are confused about whether the tenth named member is Lebbaeus, Thaddeus, or both ("Lebbaeus, also called Thaddeus"). Perhaps tellingly, one manuscript went the other way and changed Mark's Thaddeus to Lebbaeus. Matthew explicitly refers to the Twelve as both apostles and disciples and treats all three as identically the same group (Matthew's Jesus has exactly twelve disciples that are also the apostles).

The strength of manuscripts seems to be behind Thaddeus or they would have Thaddeus in the footnote.

Since there is a footnote in the first place and six distinct variants mentioned in NA28 (including one that harmonizes the passage with Luke instead of Mark), I'm not sure how you think this challenges what I wrote.

There is some room in Matthew’s text in some contexts that leaves open the possibility that there are more disciples than just the twelve disciples. You can use the term “the twelve disciples” in a context to speak to a specific, known group and still allow for more than twelve disciples in other contexts.

"Why would they be used in the same contexts without making the distinction clear?"

The twelve disciples is pretty straightforward and a phrase that is used multiple times by Matthew and only Matthew. Of course it's possible to add virtual disciples whenever "twelve" isn't specified, but I can see no reason to ever do so if Matthew is being read on its own. None of the stories is improved by it and the claim that Matthew didn't know how to tell his own story only helps if we're trying to harmonize details with the other gospels.

That the twelve were chosen from a larger group is consistent with the text in Mark and Matthew. They could be different names for the same person or one could be wrong.

Of course the stories can be harmonized that way. That Christians have been doing so for nearly two millenia is ample evidence of that. The question is if such harmonizations respect the stories that the authors themselves were trying to tell.

That wouldn’t change my claim about knowing the twelve as the leadership nor about the three facts the argument is built upon.

But that wasn't your claim as I understood it. Your claim was that testimony attributed to the Twelve is trustworthy because early readers knew who the Twelve were supposed to be. You're now backing off on that claim. If I've misunderstood, then I'd ask that you clarify exactly what was clear to early audiences about the Twelve and how that impacts the reliability of reported testimony.

John explictly names only three of the Twelve: Simon Peter, Judas Iscariot, and Thomas. The Twelve may be disciples (it's not clear), but are not the entire group (6:66-70). Andrew, Philip, and Nathaniel are named in contexts that may mean that they were also of the Twelve, but it's not explicit. John never uses the word "apostle." John is potentially the only one that refers to Peter as Cephas (all references to Peter in the Pauline epistles are likely harmonizations based on an interpolated Galatians 2:7-8).

First, In 14:22 John speaks of a Judas who isn’t Judas Iscariot. This is during the passover when Jesus is with his disciples. This adds reason to believe Thaddeus and Judas could be the same person.

Of course they could be. You're now just repeating inerrantist harmonizations that hinge on "possible" and "probable" being the same thing.

Lebbaeus, itself, seems to mean “courageous” and could be another nickname, just like Simon being nicknamed Rock and James and John being nicknamed the sons of thunder and Thomas being nicknamed the Twin.

Of course they could.

Second, not using the term ‘apostle’ doesn’t mean he doesn’t think it existed.

It's reasonable to expect "apostle" was in John's vocabulary, but I think we can also reasonably conclude that since he didn't mention it, he didn't think it had any part in the story he was trying to tell. He didn't use the term "rocketeers," either. Did he think they were the twelve rocketeers?

Third, if Galatians 2:7-8 is the outlier, then wouldn’t Paul have referred to him as Cephas in his writings, rather than only John doing that?

Paul only referred to him as Cephas. The Synoptics and catholic epistles only referred to him as Peter. John is the only one that equated Cephas and Peter.

The only malleability was on one of the twelve and even that could be the same person with different ways to refer to him.

It was three ways, but we also talked about the malleable relationships between the Twelve, the disciples, and the apostles.

Each text is open to the same relationships between the groups and do not directly contradict each other on that front. They simply aren’t focused on that question when writing. Thus, I see no good reason to infer your conclusions of “legend”.

That requires us to assume that while each gospel author changed details in his or her story, each also still expected the story to be read the same way as the others. Harmonizing away intentional detail changes seems to me a poor means of understanding an author's story. The big assumption that I make is that the New Testament authors expected audiences to read their works exactly as they were written. Christians apparently find that assumption uncomfortable.

I’m not stating it as an established fact. I’m saying this seems to make the most sense to me. Whoever the originals were, people would have come into contact with them and knowledge of who they were would be passed down, especially since the apostles were probably included in the 500. It also doesn’t make sense to list all 500 names and, even if they did, this would accomplish nothing further towards the types of issues we are discussing.

As long as you're clarifying that this is speculation, I have no problem with it. You're using "probably" in a way that's a bit of a stretch, but considering the rest of the conversation, that's a minor quibble.

Edit: I just realized I messed up my quotes, so I fixed them.

[JoeyKnothead]

Well about that...

First'n to get em the the exclusive wheelbarrow brain toting concession on this'n here, they gonna go broke just buying em up the mills to provide.

I'm like, "Can you show that's the truth?!" That's all I got.

This'n here's like, "Well about that, naw, that's... naw, you're wronger'n a two headed snake in a bucket of grits, even if we allow that bucket of grits was right, and that two headed snake had the best of intentions."

[Clownboat]

The point about the rise of the Christian movement pointing to an actual resurrection basically concerns how they wouldn’t have made that up as their central message and stuck with it unless they really thought it occurred. Them thinking it occurred is not proof that it occurred. That isn’t the argument. The argument is that it actually occurred makes the best sense of this fact coupled with an empty tomb and the post-mortem appearances.

With that line of thinking, we have just evidenced many competing religions and their claims. I don't see how this is logical or how it helps support one being true over another.

Consider claims about Mohammed or Joseph Smith and his magic glasses, hat and golden plates. That the claims are true hardly makes the best sense when we consider this as a whole.