The Empty Tomb!

[POI]

When discussing/debating the 'facts' for a resurrection claim, theists often cite 'the empty tomb.' But we must first ask ourselves, why should doubters, skeptics, agnostic atheists, scoffers, etc., even consider that a crucified Jesus was placed into a tomb, guarded by Roman soldiers, in the first place?

For debate: Is it even plausible that Jesus's deemed "blasphemous" body was merely chucked into an unmarked hole or grave, along with others of various committed 'crimes'? Or maybe He was not really buried at all? Or maybe buried alone in the ground? Or maybe He was left for the buzzards? Or maybe many other options?

If not, why not? Why MUST He have been placed into a tomb, which was guarded by Roman soldiers, for arguably three days?

[POI]

What does this mean exactly?

It means that the crucifixion narrative is fiction. It may or may not be based on a true story.

Where a "Jesus" character is concerned, are you a mythicist, or maybe he was real in some capacity, or maybe there was more than one character who were then fused into a storyline, other? Curious...

As I told Tanager, I had to draw my line in the sand somewhere....

[Difflugia]

Where a "Jesus" character is concerned, are you a mythicist, or maybe he was real in some capacity, or maybe there was more than one character who were then fused into a storyline, other? Curious...

The Gospels are fiction and the Jesus character is a myth. There may have been a Jesus upon whom the character is based, but I doubt it.

Loosely, there was a church already in existence when Paul became an apostle (Galatians 2). I don't think we know anything about it, because that church was effectively destroyed by the sack of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Paul's Asian churches were effectively unmoored and they absorbed a sort of second- or third-hand tradition left over from the Jerusalem church. That tradition was allegorically retold in the Synoptics. Acts is a sort of theological textbook, allegorically describing the fusion of the Pauline churches and what little remained of the Jerusalem church through the conflict between its Peter and Paul characters and the resoliution of that conflict.

[The Tanager]

[Replying to POI in post #287]

I'm going to try to organize this for my own good. I have tried to respond to everything, but it's possible I've missed or misunderstood something so, if that's the case, I would be thankful if you brought it back to our attention. Here are my thoughts:


1. What have we been discussing?

We haven't been talking about whether the Gospels themselves are true in all they say or whether we should believe Jesus really, physically rose from the dead. We have had a more focused discussion on whether Jesus' crucified body was buried.

2. Can we get at the truth here?

With your "murky waters" comment, are you saying ancient history as a whole can't be a source for reasonable beliefs or just in this specific case with Jesus' burial? If the former, then please support that claim. If the latter, then this seems to be a way to say that you aren't convinced from what I've laid out (i.e., just sharing your conclusion of the whole conversation), rather than a distinct point to have to address.


3. Questionable principles

I have not asked you to treat the Gospels as authoritative without question, but to use and justify the principles you are using to answer the historical question we have been focused on.

One principle you are using that I am disputing is to ignore all internal evidence of the text and focus simply on external evidence. Do you have rational support for that?

Another principle I'm questioning is that having the names/signatures of people corroborating a text's claims is a good test of historical truth. Why do you think that?


4. Questionable reasoning

(a) You seem to keep suggesting that leaving the body up is a neccessary piece of crucifixion being a deterrent and, therefore, Jesus' body would have been left up or never put on the cross. If I understand you correctly there, why do you think this, especially since it contradicts actual non-Christian sources on the matter? If I misunderstand you, please clarify your point there.

(b) You are also saying they had enough time to do everything in the burial process. Where is your support for that? You haven't laid out all the steps, proven which steps the gospels talk about, show how that all would have been able to be done within the timeframe that would have existed between Jesus' death and sundown, etc.

Instead, I'm arguing that we should, at best, be agnostic on this question. Maybe they had enough time; there are good reasons to think they wouldn't have had enough time, but regardless of that, making up a reason that no one would buy for a second because they knew how burials went, is completely and idiotically embarrassing and, therefore, would not have been made up. Therefore, the women must have had some precedent in going to anoint Jesus' body.

You then say there could be motivations for creating these embarrassing details, but we need more than a vague possibility. What would the good motivations be for making up a non-existent burial practice to get the women to the tomb and the person of Joseph?

(c) You've asked me that if no one had asked for Jesus' body, would it have been taken down?

I don't know. Please help me to see the relevance to our discussion.


5. Moving to a further issue, should we believe Jesus physically rose from the dead?

You claimed that it is impossible for a physical resurrection to occur. Why do you think this is true?

[1DoubtingThomas]

Where a "Jesus" character is concerned, are you a mythicist, or maybe he was real in some capacity, or maybe there was more than one character who were then fused into a storyline, other? Curious...

The Gospels are fiction and the Jesus character is a myth. There may have been a Jesus upon whom the character is based, but I doubt it.


^^^ Difflugia,

Relative to your statement above, the first mention of the Jesus Character outside of the Jewish Bible, was with Josephus Flavius who was a Roman Jewish Historian, and through "hearsay only and no eyewitness account" Josephus wrote about Jesus in his Antiquities that were written in 97AD mentioning only a Jesus character. The mythical Jesus left earth at approximately 33 AD with his ascension skyward (Acts 1:9), whereas Jesus that created mankind, animals, birds, fish, etc., and created the 7.7 Billion light year diameter across universe, was not mentioned in written history until 63 years later!!! Huh?

The above proposition is like Neil Armstrong being the first human to step foot upon the moon on July 21, 1969, and history not mentioning this fact until 63 years later?

There are so many biblical narratives that prove beyond any doubt that the Christian Jewish Bible is a myth, and therefore it's lead character Jesus has to be a myth as well.




.

[1DoubtingThomas]

[Replying to POI in post #287]

I'm going to try to organize this for my own good. I have tried to respond to everything, but it's possible I've missed or misunderstood something so, if that's the case, I would be thankful if you brought it back to our attention. Here are my thoughts:


1. What have we been discussing?

We haven't been talking about whether the Gospels themselves are true in all they say or whether we should believe Jesus really, physically rose from the dead. We have had a more focused discussion on whether Jesus' crucified body was buried.

2. Can we get at the truth here?

With your "murky waters" comment, are you saying ancient history as a whole can't be a source for reasonable beliefs or just in this specific case with Jesus' burial? If the former, then please support that claim. If the latter, then this seems to be a way to say that you aren't convinced from what I've laid out (i.e., just sharing your conclusion of the whole conversation), rather than a distinct point to have to address.


3. Questionable principles

I have not asked you to treat the Gospels as authoritative without question, but to use and justify the principles you are using to answer the historical question we have been focused on.

One principle you are using that I am disputing is to ignore all internal evidence of the text and focus simply on external evidence. Do you have rational support for that?

Another principle I'm questioning is that having the names/signatures of people corroborating a text's claims is a good test of historical truth. Why do you think that?


4. Questionable reasoning

(a) You seem to keep suggesting that leaving the body up is a neccessary piece of crucifixion being a deterrent and, therefore, Jesus' body would have been left up or never put on the cross. If I understand you correctly there, why do you think this, especially since it contradicts actual non-Christian sources on the matter? If I misunderstand you, please clarify your point there.

(b) You are also saying they had enough time to do everything in the burial process. Where is your support for that? You haven't laid out all the steps, proven which steps the gospels talk about, show how that all would have been able to be done within the timeframe that would have existed between Jesus' death and sundown, etc.

Instead, I'm arguing that we should, at best, be agnostic on this question. Maybe they had enough time; there are good reasons to think they wouldn't have had enough time, but regardless of that, making up a reason that no one would buy for a second because they knew how burials went, is completely and idiotically embarrassing and, therefore, would not have been made up. Therefore, the women must have had some precedent in going to anoint Jesus' body.

You then say there could be motivations for creating these embarrassing details, but we need more than a vague possibility. What would the good motivations be for making up a non-existent burial practice to get the women to the tomb and the person of Joseph?

(c) You've asked me that if no one had asked for Jesus' body, would it have been taken down?

I don't know. Please help me to see the relevance to our discussion.


5. Moving to a further issue, should we believe Jesus physically rose from the dead?

You claimed that it is impossible for a physical resurrection to occur. Why do you think this is true?

^^^ The Tanager,

You can be going back and forth until you are blue in the face upon this topic, what you should be more concerned about is the biblical axiom that the serial killer Jesus as God, arose from the dead as a walking smelling rotting Zombie and therefore really DID NOT DIE as a true biblical sacrifice! Jesus' final outcome in still living upon earth, was to ascend to his 1400 square mile heaven (Acts 1:10).

Therefore, deducing it down to its irreducible primary, JESUS DID NOT TRULY DIE AS A SACRIFICE FOR THE SINS OF THE WORLD, BECAUSE HE DIDN'T REMAIN DEAD BECAUSE OF HIS RESURRECTION AFTER HIS 2 1/2 DAY TOMB NAP!


"Therefore once again, the following passages are outright LIES, where again, the Christian Jewish Bible contradicts itself as shown above and below!

"For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures," (1 Corinthians 15:3)

"For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, (1 Peter 3:18)



.

[The Tanager]

[Replying to 1DoubtingThomas in post #295]

Okay, so your claim is that a sacrifice for the sins of the world would need to remain dead? If so, why do you think that? If not, what is your claim?

[POI]

[Replying to The Tanager in post #293]

We can go from, '1) Jesus is a myth', (as two others have just stated above), all the way to ' 2) Jesus's dead carcass is missing from a verified/designated tomb.", and also all that lies between these two book ends of 1) and 2). I just don't think I'm quite there yet, in accepting book end 2)? For now, I'm willing to just concede all assertions, up to the point where this OP began. I feel I'm offering quite a bit of grace for doing so.

In honor of these interlocutors comments, I'll prolly start a new topic very soon, to explore....

1) Our discussion gravitates to other subtopics organically, and I appreciate the insight you have added.

2) I think the Gospels, and the rest of the Bible, are so untrustworthy in general, that I find it absurd to consider much in it true at all. But, as I stated above, I'm offering tons of grace, from my end, to get us all the way to a "hung Jesus".

3)
a) Because the Bible is so untrustworthy, it's good to verify any of it's claims from given external source(s).
b) 'Eyewitness' attestation is really one of the only ways one is going to even consider an "extraordinary" claim. When comparing the veracity, from the NT, as compared to the Book of Mormon, the Book of Mormon offers more 'verified' corroboration - in that we have signed testimonials.

4)
a) Like I stated, I have to start somewhere. As I'm sure you are aware, we know little about what was done with all these bodies. However, my definition of deterrence infers keeping the body on display to deter others.
b) I've answered this more than once. They do 95+% of the work, but then come back to do the last 5%, and two women are going ask the guard(s) to roll away the stone so they can do the last little bit? Like I stated, I have to draw the line somewhere. The storyline needed a reason for members to come back to discover the physical body missing.
c) If no one claimed the body, what would the Romans had done with the body? The Bible makes a claim that 'Joseph' requested the body. But we have no external sources affirming the same. Nor, do we have an official/confirmed burial tomb. Seems a little sus...

5) Because dead rotting bodies remain rotting, we can safely eliminate this option for considering. It is not an option to consider. Hence, I'm wondering what really happened instead? Maybe we will never know?

[POI]

Where a "Jesus" character is concerned, are you a mythicist, or maybe he was real in some capacity, or maybe there was more than one character who were then fused into a storyline, other? Curious...

The Gospels are fiction and the Jesus character is a myth. There may have been a Jesus upon whom the character is based, but I doubt it.

Loosely, there was a church already in existence when Paul became an apostle (Galatians 2). I don't think we know anything about it, because that church was effectively destroyed by the sack of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Paul's Asian churches were effectively unmoored and they absorbed a sort of second- or third-hand tradition left over from the Jerusalem church. That tradition was allegorically retold in the Synoptics. Acts is a sort of theological textbook, allegorically describing the fusion of the Pauline churches and what little remained of the Jerusalem church through the conflict between its Peter and Paul characters and the resoliution of that conflict.

I hope you do not mind, but I'm making a topic in your honor. I wouldn't say I'm a mythicist (yet), as I'm still trying to decipher exactly where I stand about this claimed character, but I find the arguments somewhat compelling.

[1DoubtingThomas]

[Replying to 1DoubtingThomas in post #295]


Okay, so your claim is that a sacrifice for the sins of the world would need to remain dead? If so, why do you think that? If not, what is your claim?

^^^ The Tanager, in addressing your statement above,

Firstly: it's called a "Logical Deduction."

Secondly; barring the insidious and needless wars of recent history, even though said wars many died, where subjectively, the TRUE SACRIFICES were in WW2, where the men that gave up their lives for their country so they wouldnt be taken over by their enemies, and that remained dead, were honored throughout the world.

Thirdly, where biblically the Jewish God of the pseudo-christians named Jesus was shown to be responsible for many murdering sacrifices that gave an example to follow, where the person in said sacrifices was to REMAIN DEAD as the passages below so state:

1. God commands Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, to Him (Genesis 22:2)

2. In Exodus 22:29; God commanded the Israelites to sacrifice to Him their firstborn sons: "Thou shalt not delay to offer the first of thy ripe fruits, and of thy liquors: the firstborn of thy sons shalt thou give unto me."

3. In Leviticus 27:28-29, God said that every "devoted thing ... both of man, and beast ... shall surely be put to death."

4. In Numbers 31: 15-18;....And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? ... "Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. BUT ALL THE WOMEN CHILDREN, that have not known a man by lying with him, KEEP ALIVE FOR YOURSELVES.

In speculation, Atheists cringe at the word of the Jewish God named Jesus shown above, where in how the army determined these young women children were deemed to be virgins is deplorable, ewwwwww! Nonetheless, they were obviously to be kept alive for ungodly purposes because why else are you to keep children of your enemies?! Can you spell PEDOPHILIA? Sure you can!

5. In Judges 11:29-40 Jephthah vowed a vow unto the LORD, where he ended up in giving his beloved daughter as a burnt offering to the serial killer Jesus as god.

6. In 2 Samuel 21:1, 8-14; God sent a famine on David's kingdom for three years. Then to appease God and end the famine that was caused by his predecessor (Saul), David agreed to have two of Saul's sons and five of his grandsons killed and hung up "unto the Lord." God stopped the famine after they were killed and hung up for Him.

7. At 1 Kings 13:1-2; Josiah "did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord" when he killed "all the priests of the high places" and burnt their bones upon their altars."



SACRIFICE DEFINITION: an act of slaughtering an animal or person or surrendering a possession as an offering to God or to a divine or supernatural figure.


TAKE NOTE: When the innocent baby killer Jesus as god (1 Samuel 15:2-3) came back to life subsequent to his resurrection, and then as a rotting smelly Zombie walked amongst his disciples, and then ascended skyward towards heaven in front of his disciples (Acts 1:10), can hardly be called a true biblical or a war sacrifice that is needed to remove the sins from his Jewish Creation, simply because HE DID NOT REMAIN DEAD AS A TRUE DEFINED SACRIFICE!!! .... GET IT? ..... 2+2=4!






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[The Tanager]

[Replying to POI in post #297]

POI,

I understand not being at book end 2 and I don't think you should be at book end 2 from what we've talked about in this discussion. There are many more questions that must be answered to get there, including ones that should affect how we see the trustworthiness of the Gospel accounts. I thank you for sharing your thoughts in this discussion and summing those up in this last post.

There is only one thing I'll comment on, as it is taking this discussion in a newer direction that we weren't originally focused on.

You claimed that it is impossible for a physical resurrection to occur. Why do you think this is true?

5) Because dead rotting bodies remain rotting, we can safely eliminate this option for considering. It is not an option to consider. Hence, I'm wondering what really happened instead? Maybe we will never know?

This is just restating your claim, not showing why you think it is true. Why is it impossible for a dead body to not remain dead? Saying they remain dead isn't support for that they actually must remain dead.