Alternately, suppose I’m from Rome and I hear of the two scenarios:
Scenario 1: I tell the people in Rome that all of Israel’s modern day enemies (Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc.) just miraculously got wiped out by hail stones and fire from heaven. This can be easily checked- just dispatch somebody to go look at them.
Scenario 2: The people in a small town somewhere claim that their Sheriff died, then rose from the dead, then vanished. This isn’t nearly as easy to check. You could look for the body- but, canonically, the body was given to one of Jesus’s followers (Joseph of Arimathea; see Matthew 27:57 and John 19:38 for descriptions of him as a disciple of Jesus), so we have no idea where the body is, besides his claim to have put it in a tomb. Even if he’s being honest, there are certainly other ways for the body to have vanished- for example, the Jewish Toledot Yeshu claims that a gardener named Juda stole the body.
We also don’t have solid evidence that he ever died- again, according to the Bible, Herod was astonished at how quickly Jesus died, and had a centurion check. That one man’s check is the reason it was believed he was dead; it’s certainly within the realm of possibility that he was wrong. (Or, for that matter, that the Roman officer didn’t feel actually giving a proper medical check, which would involve walking up to and feeling, closely and repeatedly, Jesus’s bloody, sweating, dirty body.) (And your prior should possibly favor that- after all, there have been many more verified cases of mistaken death pronouncements than there have been resurrections.)
There were witnesses, of course. Almost all of them were Jesus’s disciples, a small band of fanatical followers, some of whom would later demonstrate their willingness to lay down their lives for their faith. (Your claim that he was seen by 500 is flat out non-biblical.) Also, most gospels present the resurrection as having been seen by some Roman soldiers, who were then supposedly bribed to claim that the disciples had stolen the body. In other words, there is no reason to trust the witnesses who definitely were there, and all of the ones whose word could potentially be trusted (and who might not have been there) did testify that Jesus wasn’t resurrected- because they were supposedly bribed.
How exactly do you propose to test this claim, then?
You could look for the body- but, canonically, the body was given to one of Jesus’s followers (Joseph of Arimathea; see Matthew 27:57 and John 19:38 for descriptions of him as a disciple of Jesus), so we have no idea where the body is, besides his claim to have put it in a tomb. Even if he’s being honest, there are certainly other ways for the body to have vanished- for example, the Jewish Toledot Yeshu claims that a gardener named Juda stole the body.
All alternative explanations to what happened to Jesus’ body really point to the fact that his enemies were unsuccessfully scattering to explain the resurrection away, since they couldn’t legitimately counter the claim. Just because there are alternative explanations doesn’t mean the original claim of resurrection is false. Of course there would be alternative explanations, since the Jewish leaders had to formulate some type of response. Those explanations didn’t work back then and they still fall short today.
We also don’t have solid evidence that he ever died- again, according to the Bible, Herod was astonished at how quickly Jesus died, and had a centurion check. That one man’s check is the reason it was believed he was dead; it’s certainly within the realm of possibility that he was wrong. (Or, for that matter, that the Roman officer didn’t feel actually giving a proper medical check, which would involve walking up to and feeling, closely and repeatedly, Jesus’s bloody, sweating, dirty body.) (And your prior should possibly favor that- after all, there have been many more verified cases of mistaken death pronouncements than there have been resurrections.
The Romans were not inexperienced executors. They had it down to a science. It would be strange that these experienced executors would suddenly not be able to tell a dead man from a living one. Maybe it was Billy’s first day on the job? Also, I should think that Joseph Arimathea, who you mentioned earlier, would have noticed that Jesus was still alive before placing him into a tomb, which was guarded by 2 combat hardened soldiers may I add. The Jewish leaders were not stupid, they were quite meticulous. They knew Jesus had made claims to a resurrection and safe guarded against anything that might mislead the public into believing that he actually resurrected. One of the very things they safe guarded against was those sneaky disciples somehow stealing his body and claiming he resurrected. This explains the guarded tomb with two soldiers.
There were witnesses, of course. Almost all of them were Jesus’s disciples, a small band of fanatical followers, some of whom would later demonstrate their willingness to lay down their lives for their faith. (Your claim that he was seen by 500 is flat out non-biblical.
It is not an un-biblical claim because I got it straight out of a passage in the Bible;
1 Corinthian 15:6 - After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep.
Also, most gospels present the resurrection as having been seen by some Roman soldiers, who were then supposedly bribed to claim that the disciples had stolen the body. In other words, there is no reason to trust the witnesses who definitely were there, and all of the ones whose word could potentially be trusted (and who might not have been there) did testify that Jesus wasn’t resurrected- because they were supposedly bribed.
Wild speculations. There is no reason to not trust the eye witness accounts of the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.
All alternative explanations to what happened to Jesus’ body really point to the fact that his enemies were unsuccessfully scattering to explain the resurrection away, since they couldn’t legitimately counter the claim. Just because there are alternative explanations doesn’t mean the original claim of resurrection is false. Of course there would be alternative explanations, since the Jewish leaders had to formulate some type of response. Those explanations didn’t work back then and they still fall short today.
It’s their word against that of the disciples; you have no reason to believe one side or the other, side from the fact that resurrections are so improbable.
Furthermore, I’m now starting to be confused: again, what kind of evidence would you possibly consider a disproof of the resurrection, either today or if you lived in contemporary Rome? After all, the only available evidence, objective non-cult witnesses, all claimed that Jesus did not in fact resurrect. If you don’t consider the resurrection disproved after that, then what available evidence would you consider a disproof? (This question is, after all, your original claim- that had the resurrection not occurred, there would evidence to convince you that it had not occurred.)
The Romans were not inexperienced executors. They had it down to a science. It would be strange that these experienced executors would suddenly not be able to tell a dead man from a living one. Maybe it was Billy’s first day on the job? Also, I should think that Joseph Arimathea, who you mentioned earlier, would have noticed that Jesus was still alive before placing him into a tomb, which was guarded by 2 combat hardened soldiers may I add. The Jewish leaders were not stupid, they were quite meticulous. They knew Jesus had made claims to a resurrection and safe guarded against anything that might mislead the public into believing that he actually resurrected. One of the very things they safe guarded against was those sneaky disciples somehow stealing his body and claiming he resurrected. This explains the guarded tomb with two soldiers.
These kind of screwups happen....not all the time, but there are a fair number of recorded and verified instances. (As opposed, again, to zero recorded resurrections. 5 seconds googling found Maggie Dickson, Anne Green, Zoleykhah Kadkhoda, and William Duell as execution survivors.) Also, the Jews were not in charge at the time, the Romans were- and the Roman leader, Pontius Pilate, didn’t want to kill Jesus, according to all of the Gospels.
It is not an un-biblical claim because I got it straight out of a passage in the Bible;
1 Corinthian 15:6 - After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep.
Fair enough; I’d been only looking at the accounts in the Gospels. (Again, though, there are plenty of easy, non-supernatural explanations. This undoubtedly sounds like hedging to you, but that’s because you do believe, and your belief is high status. Your explanations of why UFO sightings are wrong would sound the same to somebody who had actually seen the alien ships.)
Wild speculations. There is no reason to not trust the eye witness accounts of the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.
Ah. So, you do trust the soldiers who reported that the body was stolen, then? ;)
More broadly, we simply don’t have much solid evidence; it’s a he-said she-said kind of situation- only it’s also one where one side was entirely made up of fanatical cultists (or, equivalently, extremely faithful believers) who were claiming something impossible by natural means.
It’s their word against that of the disciples; you have no reason to believe one side or the other, side from the fact that resurrections are so improbable.
There are ways to test oral testimonies and eye witness accounts for truthfulness and our courts do it all the time. There are lots of reasons to believe the Gospel writers over the other side. The late Simon Greenleaf, a skeptic at one point and also one of the founding members of Harvard Law School, wrote an essay on why the Gospel writers should be taken as innocent of deception if given a fair trial.
Greenleaf, one of the principle founders of the Harvard Law School, originally set out to disprove the biblical testimony concerning the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He was certain that a careful examination of the internal witness of the Gospels would dispel all the myths at the heart of Christianity. But this legal scholar came to the conclusion that the witnesses were reliable, and that the resurrection did in fact happen.
In trials of fact, by oral testimony, the proper inquiry is not whether is it possible that the testimony may be false, but whether there is sufficient probability that it is true.
The credit due to the testimony of witnesses depends upon, firstly, their honesty; secondly, their ability; thirdly, their number and the consistency of their testimony; fourthly, the conformity of their testimony with experience; and fifthly, the coincidence of their testimony with collateral circumstances.
Simon Greenleaf proceeds in the essay to expand on each one of the five tests of the Gospel testimonies. It’s an interesting read.
Okay, so let’s go back to another one of your statements, Randaly.
These kind of screwups happen....not all the time, but there are a fair number of recorded and verified instances. (As opposed, again, to zero recorded resurrections. 5 seconds googling found Maggie Dickson, Anne Green, Zoleykhah Kadkhoda, and William Duell as execution survivors.) Also, the Jews were not in charge at the time, the Romans were- and the Roman leader, Pontius Pilate, didn’t want to kill Jesus, according to all of the Gospels.
It seems that most of the examples you give are cases of execution by hanging or stoning. None of them are cases of people surviving execution by Roman crucifixion.
You also seem to speculate that maybe Pontius Pilate was somehow going soft on Jesus because he really didn’t want to kill him. There’s no need for me to rebuttal that, is there?
More broadly, we simply don’t have much solid evidence; it’s a he-said she-said kind of situation- only it’s also one where one side was entirely made up of fanatical cultists (or, equivalently, extremely faithful believers) who were claiming something impossible by natural means.
Yes, that’s the definition of a real miracle; something that occurs but is impossible by natural means. You will have to absolutely prove that miracles never occur in order for you to be able to completely write-off the claims of the eye witnesses of the resurrection based on the argument that such claims cannot be true because resurrections are impossible due to natural law. If there is a God, it’s not unreasonable to believe that He can bend or supersede His own natural laws whenever He wants to.
The claims of the Bible, upon scrutiny by unprejudiced men and women, are often found to be consistent with sound reason.
Greenleaf also makes a number of claims, like this one:
That the books of the Old Testament, as we now have them, are genuine; that they existed in the time of our Savior, and were commonly received and referred to among the Jews, as the sacred books of their religion; and that the text of the Four Evangelists has been handed down to us in the state in which it was originally written, that is, without having been materially corrupted or falsified, either by heretics or Christians; are facts which we are entitled to assume as true, until the contrary is shown.
Greenleaf has basically no idea what he’s talking about. He appears to be using theory and the bible as his main sources. But most of his claims (eg that the Gospels were written almost immediately after Jesus’ death, or that they didn’t change thereafter) are wrong. (Note: I only skimmed the essay, since it’s long. He may quibble later on.) See Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus, or for that matter, Wikipedia. More generally, every single ancient religion produced numerous claims similar to those of the bible, with countless eyewitnesses; many events that weren’t religious also produced similar claims. For example, Herodotus, a historian, interviewed eyewitnesses of the Persian Wars, who produced the following claims:
the temple of Delphi magically defended itself with animated armaments, lightning bolts, and collapsing cliffs
the sacred olive tree of Athens, though burned by the Persians, grew a new shoot an arm’s length in a single day
a miraculous flood-tide wiped out an entire Persian contingent after they desecrated an image of Poseidon
a horse gave birth to a rabbit
a whole town witnessed a mass resurrection of cooked fish
These claims, and countless others made by almost every other religion in the world, are backed up by the exact same evidence you are claiming: that is, eyewitness testimony. We’ve also seen numerous modern events (UFO’s, ghosts, etc) where eyewitnesses claimed nonnatural causes; these were actually testable, they were tested, and found to be natural.
It seems that most of the examples you give are cases of execution by hanging or stoning. None of them are cases of people surviving execution by Roman crucifixion.
You also seem to speculate that maybe Pontius Pilate was somehow going soft on Jesus because he really didn’t want to kill him. There’s no need for me to rebuttal that, is there?
Yes, there really is. We have numerous examples of people who were ‘executed’ and survived, contradictory witness testimony which isn’t directly available today, reliable evidence from today that people often see ‘supernatural’ things which are perfectly normal, no reliable accounts of resurrections, and very good evidence (aka all of modern biology) that they are impossible. There’s no reason to start out believing the bible without strong evidence, which isn’t available. For something to be regarded as a miracle, you need to rule out natural causes.
Yes, that’s the definition of a real miracle; something that occurs but is impossible by natural means. You will have to absolutely prove that miracles never occur in order for you to be able to completely write-off the claims of the eye witnesses of the resurrection based on the argument that such claims cannot be true because resurrections are impossible due to natural law. If there is a God, it’s not unreasonable to believe that He can bend or supersede His own natural laws whenever He wants to.
No, I definitely don’t need to prove that miracles never occur in order to claim that an event was not a miracle. Miracles by definition are incredible events, and require incredible strong evidence to be believed. Without that evidence then there is no reason to belief that an event was a miracle. More generally, if you claim that something which a) has never been reliably seen and b) goes against all available evidence (aka modern science), then you need strong evidence to believe that claim. (Also, once again, you are ignoring the witnesses who claim that there wasn’t a resurrection.) (Also, you’ve given no evidence that distinguishes your belief in the resurrection from any of the miracles with similar evidence that you don’t believe in.)
The claims of the Bible, upon scrutiny by unprejudiced men and women, are often found to be consistent with sound reason.
I suggest you read through the rest of this site, and/or the heuristics and biases movement and history. People are crazy.
ETA: Also, once again, to bring this back to your original point: if you were a citizen of Rome, perhaps in Gaul or England, what potentially available evidence would have convinced you that the resurrection was false?
“Just because there are alternative explanations doesn’t mean the original claim of resurrection is false.”
Sure. But, y’know, Occam’s Razor.
“Those explanations didn’t work back then and they still fall short today.”
Because...?
“They had it down to a science. It would be strange that these experienced executors would suddenly not be able to tell a dead man from a living one”
Unless they were bribed. Or overworked. Or corrupt. Or a hundred other things.
Maybe it wasn’t typical to fuck up an execution, but I bet it happened sometimes.
“One of the very things they safe guarded against was those sneaky disciples somehow stealing his body and claiming he resurrected. This explains the guarded tomb with two soldiers.”
It also explains why the Israeli Resistance Front would know the soldiers out, roll away the stone, and steal the body.
Now, I’m not sure Jesus ever existed. There’s some evidence, but the strongest evidence is probably forged. But if I knew Jesus existed, then I’d believe that over the Resurrection story for the same reason: Occam’s Razor.
“Wild speculations. There is no reason to not trust the eye witness accounts of the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.”
Dude. You said yourself that a human rising from the dead is impossible. There’s your reason, right there.
Now, you might believe on faith, but as far as I can see, you don’t have much better evidence than the Mormons, the Scientologists, the Muslims or the followers of Charles Manson.
Once you realize why you disbelieve in all other Gods, etc.
Alternately, suppose I’m from Rome and I hear of the two scenarios:
Scenario 1: I tell the people in Rome that all of Israel’s modern day enemies (Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc.) just miraculously got wiped out by hail stones and fire from heaven. This can be easily checked- just dispatch somebody to go look at them.
Scenario 2: The people in a small town somewhere claim that their Sheriff died, then rose from the dead, then vanished. This isn’t nearly as easy to check. You could look for the body- but, canonically, the body was given to one of Jesus’s followers (Joseph of Arimathea; see Matthew 27:57 and John 19:38 for descriptions of him as a disciple of Jesus), so we have no idea where the body is, besides his claim to have put it in a tomb. Even if he’s being honest, there are certainly other ways for the body to have vanished- for example, the Jewish Toledot Yeshu claims that a gardener named Juda stole the body.
We also don’t have solid evidence that he ever died- again, according to the Bible, Herod was astonished at how quickly Jesus died, and had a centurion check. That one man’s check is the reason it was believed he was dead; it’s certainly within the realm of possibility that he was wrong. (Or, for that matter, that the Roman officer didn’t feel actually giving a proper medical check, which would involve walking up to and feeling, closely and repeatedly, Jesus’s bloody, sweating, dirty body.) (And your prior should possibly favor that- after all, there have been many more verified cases of mistaken death pronouncements than there have been resurrections.)
There were witnesses, of course. Almost all of them were Jesus’s disciples, a small band of fanatical followers, some of whom would later demonstrate their willingness to lay down their lives for their faith. (Your claim that he was seen by 500 is flat out non-biblical.) Also, most gospels present the resurrection as having been seen by some Roman soldiers, who were then supposedly bribed to claim that the disciples had stolen the body. In other words, there is no reason to trust the witnesses who definitely were there, and all of the ones whose word could potentially be trusted (and who might not have been there) did testify that Jesus wasn’t resurrected- because they were supposedly bribed.
How exactly do you propose to test this claim, then?
All alternative explanations to what happened to Jesus’ body really point to the fact that his enemies were unsuccessfully scattering to explain the resurrection away, since they couldn’t legitimately counter the claim. Just because there are alternative explanations doesn’t mean the original claim of resurrection is false. Of course there would be alternative explanations, since the Jewish leaders had to formulate some type of response. Those explanations didn’t work back then and they still fall short today.
The Romans were not inexperienced executors. They had it down to a science. It would be strange that these experienced executors would suddenly not be able to tell a dead man from a living one. Maybe it was Billy’s first day on the job? Also, I should think that Joseph Arimathea, who you mentioned earlier, would have noticed that Jesus was still alive before placing him into a tomb, which was guarded by 2 combat hardened soldiers may I add. The Jewish leaders were not stupid, they were quite meticulous. They knew Jesus had made claims to a resurrection and safe guarded against anything that might mislead the public into believing that he actually resurrected. One of the very things they safe guarded against was those sneaky disciples somehow stealing his body and claiming he resurrected. This explains the guarded tomb with two soldiers.
It is not an un-biblical claim because I got it straight out of a passage in the Bible;
1 Corinthian 15:6 - After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep.
Wild speculations. There is no reason to not trust the eye witness accounts of the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.
It’s their word against that of the disciples; you have no reason to believe one side or the other, side from the fact that resurrections are so improbable.
Furthermore, I’m now starting to be confused: again, what kind of evidence would you possibly consider a disproof of the resurrection, either today or if you lived in contemporary Rome? After all, the only available evidence, objective non-cult witnesses, all claimed that Jesus did not in fact resurrect. If you don’t consider the resurrection disproved after that, then what available evidence would you consider a disproof? (This question is, after all, your original claim- that had the resurrection not occurred, there would evidence to convince you that it had not occurred.)
These kind of screwups happen....not all the time, but there are a fair number of recorded and verified instances. (As opposed, again, to zero recorded resurrections. 5 seconds googling found Maggie Dickson, Anne Green, Zoleykhah Kadkhoda, and William Duell as execution survivors.) Also, the Jews were not in charge at the time, the Romans were- and the Roman leader, Pontius Pilate, didn’t want to kill Jesus, according to all of the Gospels.
Fair enough; I’d been only looking at the accounts in the Gospels. (Again, though, there are plenty of easy, non-supernatural explanations. This undoubtedly sounds like hedging to you, but that’s because you do believe, and your belief is high status. Your explanations of why UFO sightings are wrong would sound the same to somebody who had actually seen the alien ships.)
Ah. So, you do trust the soldiers who reported that the body was stolen, then? ;)
More broadly, we simply don’t have much solid evidence; it’s a he-said she-said kind of situation- only it’s also one where one side was entirely made up of fanatical cultists (or, equivalently, extremely faithful believers) who were claiming something impossible by natural means.
There are ways to test oral testimonies and eye witness accounts for truthfulness and our courts do it all the time. There are lots of reasons to believe the Gospel writers over the other side. The late Simon Greenleaf, a skeptic at one point and also one of the founding members of Harvard Law School, wrote an essay on why the Gospel writers should be taken as innocent of deception if given a fair trial.
Here’s the essay if you wish to read it: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/jesus/greenleaf.html
Here are a few quotes from the essay:
Simon Greenleaf proceeds in the essay to expand on each one of the five tests of the Gospel testimonies. It’s an interesting read.
Okay, so let’s go back to another one of your statements, Randaly.
It seems that most of the examples you give are cases of execution by hanging or stoning. None of them are cases of people surviving execution by Roman crucifixion.
You also seem to speculate that maybe Pontius Pilate was somehow going soft on Jesus because he really didn’t want to kill him. There’s no need for me to rebuttal that, is there?
Yes, that’s the definition of a real miracle; something that occurs but is impossible by natural means. You will have to absolutely prove that miracles never occur in order for you to be able to completely write-off the claims of the eye witnesses of the resurrection based on the argument that such claims cannot be true because resurrections are impossible due to natural law. If there is a God, it’s not unreasonable to believe that He can bend or supersede His own natural laws whenever He wants to.
The claims of the Bible, upon scrutiny by unprejudiced men and women, are often found to be consistent with sound reason.
Greenleaf also makes a number of claims, like this one:
Greenleaf has basically no idea what he’s talking about. He appears to be using theory and the bible as his main sources. But most of his claims (eg that the Gospels were written almost immediately after Jesus’ death, or that they didn’t change thereafter) are wrong. (Note: I only skimmed the essay, since it’s long. He may quibble later on.) See Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus, or for that matter, Wikipedia. More generally, every single ancient religion produced numerous claims similar to those of the bible, with countless eyewitnesses; many events that weren’t religious also produced similar claims. For example, Herodotus, a historian, interviewed eyewitnesses of the Persian Wars, who produced the following claims:
the temple of Delphi magically defended itself with animated armaments, lightning bolts, and collapsing cliffs
the sacred olive tree of Athens, though burned by the Persians, grew a new shoot an arm’s length in a single day
a miraculous flood-tide wiped out an entire Persian contingent after they desecrated an image of Poseidon
a horse gave birth to a rabbit
a whole town witnessed a mass resurrection of cooked fish
These claims, and countless others made by almost every other religion in the world, are backed up by the exact same evidence you are claiming: that is, eyewitness testimony. We’ve also seen numerous modern events (UFO’s, ghosts, etc) where eyewitnesses claimed nonnatural causes; these were actually testable, they were tested, and found to be natural.
Yes, there really is. We have numerous examples of people who were ‘executed’ and survived, contradictory witness testimony which isn’t directly available today, reliable evidence from today that people often see ‘supernatural’ things which are perfectly normal, no reliable accounts of resurrections, and very good evidence (aka all of modern biology) that they are impossible. There’s no reason to start out believing the bible without strong evidence, which isn’t available. For something to be regarded as a miracle, you need to rule out natural causes.
No, I definitely don’t need to prove that miracles never occur in order to claim that an event was not a miracle. Miracles by definition are incredible events, and require incredible strong evidence to be believed. Without that evidence then there is no reason to belief that an event was a miracle. More generally, if you claim that something which a) has never been reliably seen and b) goes against all available evidence (aka modern science), then you need strong evidence to believe that claim. (Also, once again, you are ignoring the witnesses who claim that there wasn’t a resurrection.) (Also, you’ve given no evidence that distinguishes your belief in the resurrection from any of the miracles with similar evidence that you don’t believe in.)
I suggest you read through the rest of this site, and/or the heuristics and biases movement and history. People are crazy.
ETA: Also, once again, to bring this back to your original point: if you were a citizen of Rome, perhaps in Gaul or England, what potentially available evidence would have convinced you that the resurrection was false?
Sure. But, y’know, Occam’s Razor.
Because...?
Unless they were bribed. Or overworked. Or corrupt. Or a hundred other things.
Maybe it wasn’t typical to fuck up an execution, but I bet it happened sometimes.
It also explains why the Israeli Resistance Front would know the soldiers out, roll away the stone, and steal the body.
Now, I’m not sure Jesus ever existed. There’s some evidence, but the strongest evidence is probably forged. But if I knew Jesus existed, then I’d believe that over the Resurrection story for the same reason: Occam’s Razor.
Dude. You said yourself that a human rising from the dead is impossible. There’s your reason, right there.
Now, you might believe on faith, but as far as I can see, you don’t have much better evidence than the Mormons, the Scientologists, the Muslims or the followers of Charles Manson.
Once you realize why you disbelieve in all other Gods, etc.