He came back to life

[Zzyzx]

.
He came back to life

A book was written about the execution of a preahcer a hundred years ago on trumped-up charges of crimes against the state. His body was put into a mausoleum. A few days later the mausoleum was opened and the body was gone. Some of his parishioners said they saw him a few times then he was gone for good and hasn’t been seen since. The book describes the event.

Before one accepts the story as true, perhaps it would be wise to ask a few questions.

1. Are there records that the person lived at the time in question?

Yes, there are church records.

2. Are there any non-church records (civil records, historical accounts, impartial witness accounts)?

No answer

3. Are there records of the execution?

Yes, there are church records

4. Are there any non-church records?

No answer

5.Did anyone examine the body to insure that death had occurred?

Someone probably did

6. Who did and what were their qualifications to determine the presence or absence of life?

No answer

7. Into which mausoleum was the body placed?

No answer

8. Who witnessed the body being placed in the mausoleum?

There were witnesses

9. Who?

No answer

10. How does one know that the body was not removed?

There was a large stone over the door and there was a guard

11. Was the stone ever moved by humans?

Yes, but . . . . . . .

12. If it was moved once by humans is it possible that it was moved again by humans?

Yes, but . . . . . it was moved by an angel

13. How do we know that?

It is written in the book

14. Is there other evidence?

No answer

15. Other than the stone, is there any reason to believe the body was not removed?

There were guards

16. Who were the guards?

They were soldiers

17. Can you identify them, their unit or their commander?

No answer

18. Are guards completely reliable?

Yes

19. Can you say that no guard has allowed something in his care to be taken, stolen or moved?

No answer

20. How do we know that the body was gone?

There were eyewitnesses

21. Who were they?

I don’t know but some people said that they knew the people and wrote about it in letters.

22. Can you identify the witnesses?

No answer

23. Can you identify the people who wrote for the book?

I can give you their first names

24. Can you provide credible identification of the writers?

No answer

25. Did the witnesses leave any written record of what they saw?

No answer

26. What evidence is there that the preacher came back to life?

He appeared to some members of his congregation

27. Did people other than members of his congregation see him alive and make a record of their account?

No answer

28. Where is he now?

He went to heaven

29. How do we know that?

It is written in the book.

30. Is there any other evidence?

Lots of people believe it

31. Does wide acceptance guarantee truth?

It should count for something




Now. Would you believe the above account on the basis of the information provided?

[cnorman18]

In fundamentalist circles, it's my impression that the professionals are as ignorant as the laymen. One can hardly be accused of concealing information of which one is unaware. Of course, there we must deal with the issue of willful ignorance. "My mind is made up, don't confuse me with the facts" seems to be a rather common attitude on many matters, and evolution seems to be foremost these days.

Greetings.

Having spent a great deal of time in "fundamentalist circles," there are some who, as you say, have their minds made up and please don't confuse me with the facts. But there are plenty more who have their minds made up based on the facts , and will be glad to debate their views with Orthodox Jews who think the same way. And then again there are, no doubt, fundamentalist Jews who don't want to be confused with the facts either. You have to take all that on a one-to-one basis.

You are quite right, of course. One is more or less forced to discuss these things in generalities, and of course there are always exceptions.

In my experience, the arguments used to counter evolution are generally (there's that generalization again) based on a closed-minded reliance on a literal reading of the Bible, together with some incredibly contrived and convoluted arguments to explain away an enormous amount of biological, archaeological, and geological research.

But then, that's MY experience, and MY opinion.

Frankly, it's not a subject I care to debate, since I consider the matter as closed as the argument over whether the Sun revolves around the earth or vice versa, another issue where the Bible was thought to have the final word.

[Zzyzx]

.

If I can demonstrate verification of the existence of Genghis Khan, Spartacus, or Mohammad from sources other than the “biased sources” you cite, will you concede that acceptance of historical figures is based on more evidence than reports from people who are likely to be biased?

Will you attempt to defend the existence of Jesus Christ with similarly impartial sources?

My point is that, aside from government records which were spotty up until around the Renaissance, nearly all historical accounts are biased in some manner.

I make no claim to be an historian; however, it is my understanding that impressive records were kept and are available from Roman times.

My other point is that I have seen an account in which the author pulled apart the Gospel accounts with an eye towards historical accuracy, and proved to my satisfaction that Jesus was a real human being who was followed by a small group of people who themselves built upon his legend after his execution.

I would be very interested in reading the account (and others probably would too) if you could somehow point us in a direction?????

Many can accept that JC was a human around whom a legend was built. However, being human does not meet scriptural requirements for the “savior”.

If JC was human and not godman, some statements attributed to him are grossly in error OR he was a madman – “No one can go the father except through me”, for instance – and many others.

The most likely scenario is, as you say, a human around whom a legend was built, a book was written and a religion was built. Statements were likely added, changed or expanded with retelling of the legend. “Miracles” were invented to make the godman seem more than human – more godlike – to be convincing. That seems reasonable.

Organized religion has a vested interest in disputing this rational theory because it conflicts with their theories.

[Assent]

I make no claim to be an historian; however, it is my understanding that impressive records were kept and are available from Roman times.

From what I recall about history, what records we have from Roman times were kept in Constantinople, as Rome was sacked and burned by illiterate barbarians, and any records that survived likely did not survive the Barbarian Kingdoms period. The problem with the Byzantine records is that they are limited mainly to the most important happenings (i.e., what's going on in Rome), and they have been translated between Greek, Arabic, Turkish, and whatever language the reader speaks. The translations were at least faithful, though, which is a sight better than pre-Charlemagne Western scribes.

Besides, even most Roman accounts would be considered biased; the number of Roman chroniclers a modern historian would consider unbiased is probably countable on one hand. And Roman government documents fade in detail the further from Italy they get; one crazy Jewish prophet (in the old use of the word) among many such would have easily gone unnoticed.

I would be very interested in reading the account (and others probably would too) if you could somehow point us in a direction?????

I've mentioned it in other threads, but here. According to the author, a historical approach to the Gospels is not new, but instead has been discouraged and condemned by most churches.

Many can accept that JC was a human around whom a legend was built. However, being human does not meet scriptural requirements for the “savior”.

If JC was human and not godman, some statements attributed to him are grossly in error OR he was a madman – “No one can go the father except through me”, for instance – and many others.

I agree; you may recall that I have never claimed to be or have been a Christian. Those words attributed to Jesus appear to be as frequently made up as quoted faithfully; the so-called gospel of Thomas appears to be one source for the more real (but still likely altered) sayings of Jesus of Nazereth, and the hypothesized document Q would be the other.

The most likely scenario is, as you say, a human around whom a legend was built, a book was written and a religion was built. Statements were likely added, changed or expanded with retelling of the legend. “Miracles” were invented to make the godman seem more than human – more godlike – to be convincing. That seems reasonable.

Organized religion has a vested interest in disputing this rational theory because it conflicts with their theories.

Against this I cannot argue.

[Goat]

.Why would pastors choose to NOT discuss from their pulpits what is taken for granted in seminaries?

Probably because that, as well as some other things that are known to serious scholars of the Bible, would get them run out of town. In the rural South, tar and feathers might be involved.

Here's another: the NT, by and large, does not teach the immortality of the human soul. It teaches resurrection, which is quite a different thing.

There is, and has been since the Middle Ages, a tendency in the Christian church to allow the lay people to remain ignorant of genuine scholarship and leave them to the simple and even childlike beliefs with which they are comfortable. The process of educating people about the true content of the faith as known to professionals is not considered worth the trouble of overcoming the inevitable resistance.

Hey, you didn't think doubts about Jesus were the only reason I left the church, did you?

Why did you chose to go to Judaism? Did you have a Jewish heritage? Or, was it something you felt comfortable with because of your past religious beliefs?

[cnorman18]

Why did you chose to go to Judaism? Did you have a Jewish heritage? Or, was it something you felt comfortable with because of your past religious beliefs?

A question I get frequently, especially from other Jews.

There's a short answer, a long one, and a really long one. Here's the short version:

No, I have no Jewish heritage at all. My people, on both sides of the family, are of Scots descent. About all I have from that heritage are a fondness for bagpipes and an appreciation of good Scotch whisky. I don't care for haggis, and I always wear trousers.

There were not even many Jews in the town where I grew up. Central Texas is not widely known as a center of Jewish culture.

So where did this come from?

There is a Jewish legend that every now and then, a child meant to be Jewish is born to a Gentile family. I would seem to be one of them. Even as a small child, I was more enamored with the OT than with the NT; the Torah, the Prophets, the Psalms, and all the rest sang to me, while the Gospels were an unaccountably closed book. Paul bored me silly.

I was also fascinated with the land of Israel--not as the land "where Jesus walked," but as the land promised to Abraham and Jacob, the land of David and Solomon and of Isaiah and Jeremiah and Amos.

I also never quite bought into Jesus. I tried; I really did. Only God knows how many times I "opened my heart" to him, accepted him as my personal savior, and all that. But I could never quite understand how he could be God and not-God simultaneously (praying to himself, for example), or how his sacrifice could save anybody, or why what ideas you held--what you "believed"--could save you, either. I never even understood why people had to have a big heavenly lollipop as a reward for being good and a big hellish spanking as a punishment for being bad--oops, no; not for being bad, but for believing the wrong things, which made even less sense. Shouldn't people be good just because it's good?

All the emotional trappings of being a Christian left me pretty cold, too, especially the personal veneration and passionate devotion to Jesus himself. I've been a teacher, and it seemed obvious to me; did I want my students to love and admire and adore me personally, or to actually learn what I teach them and use it?

(I will here parenthetically admit that I am neurologically incapable of emotional attachment to anyone or anything, so perhaps this criticism is peculiar to myself. About that I choose to say no more here.)

My religion has always been the center of my life, and I tried my best to make Christianity work for me, even going to seminary to try to resolve my doubts. Surely the next volume of badly-translated German theology would make it all clear to me. No such luck. I eventually left the ministry, and more or less abandoned the church, retaining a kind of eclectic faith that took what I knew to be right from Scripture and other places (some Eastern philosophies, for example), and ignored what I thought to be nonsense.

I never doubted that there was a God; I just couldn't see what Jesus had to do with Him. (In my younger days, I tried on atheism for size, too; it had much appeal, but that fit me even less than Christianity, an I couldn't make that work either.)

In my late forties, I finally began to read about Judaism in books actually written by Jews. Like many Christians, I thought I knew all about the Jewish faith, but I really knew only a little about first-century Judaism, and most of that was wrong, too.

The more I read, the more I discovered that these were the ideas and values I had always held, these the things I had always instinctively known to be true: Anybody can go to Heaven, and it depends on what you do, not what you think; Heaven isn't all that important anyway--if it were, God wouldn't have bothered making this world in the first place; the most important thing in life is not worrying about what happens to me, in eternity or anywhere else, but how I treat others; it's OK to question God and even get mad at Him; it's OK, even required, to question the beliefs you are taught and work out the truth for yourself; and so very much more.

I stopped counting the books on Judaism that I've read at around 100, and never heard a false or discordant note. I still haven't. I knew I was home, and knew that conversion was not so much a decision as an acknowledgment of everything I had always believed.

So that's why, at the age of 50, I became a Jew. In a certain sense, I always was; and Jewish tradition agrees with that perception. It is often taught that those who convert to Judaism are merely finding their way home, and that was certainly the case for me.

(Now just imagine what the long version would look like.)

[Easyrider]

No, I have no Jewish heritage at all. My people, on both sides of the family, are of Scots descent. About all I have from that heritage are a fondness for bagpipes and an appreciation of good Scotch whisky. I don't care for haggis, and I always wear trousers.

There were not even many Jews in the town where I grew up. Central Texas is not widely known as a center of Jewish culture.

So where did this come from?

There is a Jewish legend that every now and then, a child meant to be Jewish is born to a Gentile family. I would seem to be one of them.

Here's something you might find interesting. My son did the blood test and has the marker (we came from England). I reckon I might have it also but haven't done the test.

The fascinating story of how DNA studies confirm an ancient biblical tradition

Solidifying their hypothesis of the Cohens' common ancestor, they found that a particular array of six chromosomal markers was found in 97 of the 106 Cohens tested. This collection of markers has come to be known as the Cohen Modal Hapoltype (CMH) -- the standard genetic signature of the Jewish priestly family. The chances of these findings happening at random is greater than one in 10,000.

The finding of a common set of genetic markers in both Ashkenazi and Sephardi Cohanim worldwide clearly indicates an origin pre-dating the separate development of the two communities around 1000 CE. Date calculation based on the variation of the mutations among Cohanim today yields a time frame of 106 generations from the ancestral founder of the line, some 3,300 years -- the approximate time of the Exodus from Egypt, the lifetime of Aaron HaCohen.

http://www.aish.com/societywork/science ... ection.asp

Studies of Cohens and Levites

"More than 2,000 years after they first claimed to have set foot in India, the mystery of the world's most obscure Jewish community - the Marathi-speaking Bene Israel - may finally have been solved with genetic carbon-dating revealing they carry the unusual Moses gene that would make them, literally, the original children of Israel. Four years of DNA tests on the 4,000-strong Bene Israel, now mainly based in Mumbai, Pune, Thane and Ahmedabad, indicates they are probable descendants of a small group of hereditary Israelite priests or Cohanim, according to new results exclusively made available to the Sunday Times of India.... [Tudor] Parfitt, who initiated and led the research, says this is the first concrete proof that 'exiles from Palestine made it as far as India and managed to maintain Judaism in the sea of Hinduism and Islam'... Aharon Daniel expressed doubt about the new findings. 'Many scientists have claimed to have found Israeli or Cohenim genes in tribes in black Africa and other communities around the world and many here were sceptical about this,' he told STOI.... By studying certain genetic markers on the DNA chain, found only in male descendants of Aaron, Moses' elder brother, who founded the line of Jewish priests, the Bene Israel could well claim to be the purest of the pure."

Manoj Nair. "Thane Jews pass the blood test." Mumbai Mid-Day Newspaper (July 23, 2002). Excerpts:

"The news that recent DNA tests have linked India's Bene Israel Jewish community to the patriarch Moses has delighted the small Jewish community in Thane. For hundreds of years, the Bene Israel (meaning Children of Israel), now largely concentrated in and around Thane had fought Western prejudice that denied them their claim as descendants of one of Israel's 12 lost tribes. Now the Jews of Thane, home to 2,000 or 40 per cent of India's Jewry, can hold their head high among the rest of the Jewish community. '...Now science has proved that we are descendants of the Cohanim or hereditary priests. This will improve our status in the Jewish community,' says Ezra Moses, honorary secretary and trustee of Thane's Shaar Hashamaim or Gate of Heaven synagogue.... '...Now the DNA tests have confirmed our claims,' says Rachel Gadkar, a retired schoolteacher who recently published a book in Marathi called 'Bharatiya Bene Israel', that traces the origins of her community.... The current finding that the Bene Israel carry Moses's genes is the result of a research project that started seven years ago.... Sixty-six-year old Phinas Bamnolkar, the hazan or cantor at the Thane synagogue says, 'It was always our claim that we are descendants of Moses. Our claim has now been scientifically proved.'"
http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/abstra ... evite.html

You might want to check it out further. There could be a Cohen / Levite in your woodpile.

[cnorman18]

Here's something you might find interesting. My son did the blood test and has the marker (we came from England). I reckon I might have it also but haven't done the test.

....

You might want to check it out further. There could be a Cohen / Levite in your woodpile.

Yes, I had heard about the Cohen marker some years ago, though I wasn't aware it had turned up among Gentiles in the UK.

There was an Indian family with a child in the Jewish school where I formerly taught, from that very community. Their tradition has it that they are descended from a group of Jews shipwrecked on the Indian coast before the time of Jesus. This is borne out by the odd fact that they do not celebrate Hanukkah; they left Israel before the rebellion of the Maccabees and did not hear of that holiday for more than a thousand years. It never became a part of their tradition.

Since that gene marker is carried by the male line, I would think it pretty certain that you have it as well as your son.

I might have the test done someday, just out of curiosity, but I might not get around to it. My people have always been about as Protestant as it gets, at least back to the Revolution. Roots of the family go back to Clan MacLeod on the Isle of Skye, and before that to Norway (Norman = Norseman).

One of the odd things about Jewish genetics is that tribal membership is determined by the father, but whether or not one is Jewish is determined by the mother. In other words, the child of a male Cohen and a Gentile woman may be in some sense or other a Cohen, but he is not Jewish.

As a matter of practical fact, virtually no Jews today (other than Cohens and Levites) know their tribal affiliation. There are exceptions; there was a family of Armenian extraction in the school mentioned above whose surname, Issakharian, left little doubt that they were of the tribe of Issachar.

It's often a puzzle. Jews with the family names of Ashkenaz or Ashkenazi are almost invariably Sephardic, for instance.

I distinctly remember a dorm-room discussion in college when the subject got around to geneaology. One guy talked about being descended from a younger son of some King of France or other, and I talked about the MacLeods; then my roommate, who was at the time the only black student in our school, remarked that his great-grandfather came over from Africa on a slave ship and his family could be traced no farther (this was long before Roots).

We all chewed on that for a while, and then the next guy was asked, "How far can you trace back your family?" He replied, "To Adam," and of course we all laughed; then he said, "My name is Cohen. Sons of Aaron, tribe of Levi, sons of Jacob. Look it up." and of course he was right.

How remarkable to find one's family tree in the Bible.

Maybe I will take that test...

[Assent]

There's a short answer, a long one, and a really long one. Here's the short version:

Blah blah blah

So that's why, at the age of 50, I became a Jew. In a certain sense, I always was; and Jewish tradition agrees with that perception. It is often taught that those who convert to Judaism are merely finding their way home, and that was certainly the case for me.

(Now just imagine what the long version would look like.)

I am glad that you have found your path. Just remember to always keep seeking; there is more than one satisfactory answer to every metaphysical question.

Also, why would you need to test your genetics to tell you what you already know?

[cnorman18]

There's a short answer, a long one, and a really long one. Here's the short version:

Blah blah blah

So that's why, at the age of 50, I became a Jew. In a certain sense, I always was; and Jewish tradition agrees with that perception. It is often taught that those who convert to Judaism are merely finding their way home, and that was certainly the case for me.

(Now just imagine what the long version would look like.)

I am glad that you have found your path. Just remember to always keep seeking; there is more than one satisfactory answer to every metaphysical question.

Also, why would you need to test your genetics to tell you what you already know?

My reading and study continues, and will not end till I lie in the ground.

I doubt that I'll ever get the genetic test, and for exactly the reason you say; as I said, though, I might do it out of curiosity someday.

By the way, an ellipsis (....) might be a little less off-putting than "blah blah blah." I took no offense, but others might.

Thanks for reading and for your comments.

[The Nice Centurion]

[Replying to cnorman18 in post #29]
While we are speaking about genetic tests;

Since Dogma explains Christ on earh to have been Full human and Full god all in one at the same time, how would a genetic test of him have looked like

Anyone

Or is that a question that people will resist to debate, like they do when it comes to inquirements about the mechanics of The Resurrection