Dear Steven
How kind to reply so swiftly and with such detail. Thank you.
I should apologise and say that I think I meant to refer to String Theory rather than Strong theory.
I would find it helpful to understand a bit more about what would constitute proof for you.
The embarrassment of Female Testimony I think still holds given their standing in a court of law. So when trying to persuade distant people they might not accept it as proof that some women saw an empty tomb. On the other hand, meeting a woman who excitedly gives her story about how Jesus knew everything about her, would be a different situation.
You seem at one stage in your argument to prefer the proof from personal testimony – I saw and touched the resurrected body! (the sort of stuff that we see in John with Thomas for example, or the whole approach of Luke in both his gospel and sequel). And yet I have often found that people are not persuaded by other people’s stories – they need to know that can really trust you. Perhaps to see the difference that it makes to your life (pragmatic). Perhaps if they could experience something (though then we enter the problem of whether One experience is enough to get you going!).
And then curiously later in your response you downplay St Paul’s use of reason. Of course his style of reasoning would have been Rabbinic rather than Cartesian but nonetheless as clear a style of reasoning as you might get (and in 2 Corinthians he gets positively Greek, an impressive step I feel).
St Paul’s proof consists not just in Reason but also in an experience and clearly one that shook his paradigm upside down. Perhaps a wiser rabbi would have helped him come to terms with his blindness and would have helped him understand the voice he had heard and so on. However, Paul’s own experience mingled with his deep learning and reason leads him to another conclusion.
Your suggestion of Disciples Doubting (in Matthews Gospel) as a deliberate spin shows a helpful example of two people (you and I) seeing the same words and coming to quite radically different conclusions. Its not new: Jesus performs a miracle and the crowds say we must follow him and the religious leaders say we must stop him. I’m not quite sure how to respond to such an argument except to say That’s not how I see it. I can’t possibly see how its in the Gospel’s interest, in Matthews interest, how its going to help readers to take up this faith that Matthew has spent the last 27 chapters telling you about, it seems to me to undermine his very purpose. Likewise there’s other stuff that’s not helpful such as Matthew alone telling us about multiple resurrections. Really, Matthew, you should understand that this is not helpful to your readers, either it did or didn’t happen and frankly if it did happen (these others restored to life) then its not that helpful!
I do find most thought provoking this notion that these early Christians didn’t know about a bodily resurrection. Your use of 2 Corinthians is very clever in this respect. I remember from my studies of early church history something about how some people found the notion of Jesus as God as being really quite easy, the problem was explaining to them that he was fully human too. St John alludes to something like this in his epistles and in jargon we refer to it as the rise of Gnosticism. When preaching to people with this propensity then, you might want to emphasise that Jesus did come in the Flesh – an odd expression from St John given his negative use of the motif of the World, the Flesh [and the devil]. In this way, to see St Paul as dealing with diverse culture from Corinth who seem to have had a mix of extreme views that seem to be built on the idea that Its my body that does the sinning whilst my soul and leads to the conclusion – therefore Go Sin! Or therefore deny your body everything! In that setting, I’m not surprised to find Paul trying to help them receive the gospel by shaking up their world view.
This leads me to ask, if the Church had gotten by for so long without needing a physical resurrection that no one was expecting and they didn’t need anyway, Why invent it later? Its not as if it has done us any favours! People say to me: I love the teachings of Jesus but do I have to believe in the miracles? (as if belief is a tick list and if you can tick enough of them we’ll give you eternal life plus a free gift of some nice hand luggage.)
Saturday, 16 February 2008
Friday, 15 February 2008
Response to James Hollingsworth
James asks me what would constitute proof? I feel a bit like a poker player asked what he would accept as proof that his opponent has a full house. Seeing a full house would constitute proof.
Sadly, James only seems to have a pair of two's, so I find his request for what counts as proof that he has a full house a little strange.
His main argument for his full house is that women were witnesses. So what is his evidence that Joanna, to name one of these alleged women, actually was a credible witness.
Of course, a glance at the gospels shows that the first person to announce the resurrection in the 4 Gospels was a young man, an angel of the Lord, two young men in dazzling clothes and Jesus himself.
It seems the gospellers took no chances on people thinking women were the first to announce the resurrection and made sure that their readers knew that it was an angel of the Lord or Jesus himself who told the world that a resurrection had taken place.
Suppose I did know that women were regarded as not credible witnesses. How would I use such a prejudice to persuade my readers of what I wanted them to believe.
First I would have a women examine the evidence and come to a false conclusion – that the body had been taken by persons or persons unknown. The first-century reader would smile at the foolishness of a woman, always getting the wrong idea. No wonder women’s testimony was unreliable.
Then I would have some men examine the evidence that the woman looked at. Naturally, they would do a more thorough job than an unreliable woman, and they would not jump to such a false conclusion that somebody had taken the body.
Then I would have the woman’s unreliable testimony corrected by a man, or possibly by two angels, or even Jesus himself, who would explain why it was wrong for the woman to conclude that the body had been taken.
So starting from a belief that a woman’s testimony was unreliable, and that somebody would use that prejudice to discredit ‘false’ claims about the body being taken, we have pretty much got to John’s Gospel as a perfect example of how a false story would be written about an alleged resurrection.
James seems to think it perfectly fine for early converts to Christianity not to believe in stories of Jesus rising from the tomb. Perhaps they only went to church for a good sing, and free bread and wine on Sunday
And James thinks it fine for Paul not to draw on any first-hand experience of what a resurrected body was like, when trying to teach people what a resurrected body was like. In 2 Corinthians 11, Paul complains about people preaching a different Jesus to the one he preached, yet Paul apparently saw no need to refer to any of these supposedly true stories about Jesus. Perhaps stories of corpses rising were one of the many stories that Paul knew Christians were fabricating about his Jesus - the one who 'became a life-giving spirit, and the one where the body that was planted into the ground was not the body to be'.
James is right that Paul is trying to shake up the world view of these converts to Jesus-worship who scoffed at the idea of a corpse rising, but who accepted the idea of God creating Adam from dead matter. He is trying to tell them that their beliefs that a resurrection involves a corpse rising is wrong, and that they will be resurrected in the same manner as Jesus, who had revealed himself in a 'revelation' to Paul.
This is what Paul knew had to be corrected - the belief in resurrection as a process of a corpse coming back to life. The converts did not understand that they too would be given a spiritual body. 'If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body', writes Paul. So these converts could believe in a resurrection because they would be given a spiritual body, even if they mistakenly believed they only had their natural body, which, of course, died, as everybody knew.
Paul had no concept of a corpse coming back to life. Perhaps some of the false Christians that Paul mentions in 2 Corinthians 11 did, but Paul did not.
Sadly, James only seems to have a pair of two's, so I find his request for what counts as proof that he has a full house a little strange.
His main argument for his full house is that women were witnesses. So what is his evidence that Joanna, to name one of these alleged women, actually was a credible witness.
Of course, a glance at the gospels shows that the first person to announce the resurrection in the 4 Gospels was a young man, an angel of the Lord, two young men in dazzling clothes and Jesus himself.
It seems the gospellers took no chances on people thinking women were the first to announce the resurrection and made sure that their readers knew that it was an angel of the Lord or Jesus himself who told the world that a resurrection had taken place.
Suppose I did know that women were regarded as not credible witnesses. How would I use such a prejudice to persuade my readers of what I wanted them to believe.
First I would have a women examine the evidence and come to a false conclusion – that the body had been taken by persons or persons unknown. The first-century reader would smile at the foolishness of a woman, always getting the wrong idea. No wonder women’s testimony was unreliable.
Then I would have some men examine the evidence that the woman looked at. Naturally, they would do a more thorough job than an unreliable woman, and they would not jump to such a false conclusion that somebody had taken the body.
Then I would have the woman’s unreliable testimony corrected by a man, or possibly by two angels, or even Jesus himself, who would explain why it was wrong for the woman to conclude that the body had been taken.
So starting from a belief that a woman’s testimony was unreliable, and that somebody would use that prejudice to discredit ‘false’ claims about the body being taken, we have pretty much got to John’s Gospel as a perfect example of how a false story would be written about an alleged resurrection.
James seems to think it perfectly fine for early converts to Christianity not to believe in stories of Jesus rising from the tomb. Perhaps they only went to church for a good sing, and free bread and wine on Sunday
And James thinks it fine for Paul not to draw on any first-hand experience of what a resurrected body was like, when trying to teach people what a resurrected body was like. In 2 Corinthians 11, Paul complains about people preaching a different Jesus to the one he preached, yet Paul apparently saw no need to refer to any of these supposedly true stories about Jesus. Perhaps stories of corpses rising were one of the many stories that Paul knew Christians were fabricating about his Jesus - the one who 'became a life-giving spirit, and the one where the body that was planted into the ground was not the body to be'.
James is right that Paul is trying to shake up the world view of these converts to Jesus-worship who scoffed at the idea of a corpse rising, but who accepted the idea of God creating Adam from dead matter. He is trying to tell them that their beliefs that a resurrection involves a corpse rising is wrong, and that they will be resurrected in the same manner as Jesus, who had revealed himself in a 'revelation' to Paul.
This is what Paul knew had to be corrected - the belief in resurrection as a process of a corpse coming back to life. The converts did not understand that they too would be given a spiritual body. 'If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body', writes Paul. So these converts could believe in a resurrection because they would be given a spiritual body, even if they mistakenly believed they only had their natural body, which, of course, died, as everybody knew.
Paul had no concept of a corpse coming back to life. Perhaps some of the false Christians that Paul mentions in 2 Corinthians 11 did, but Paul did not.
Thursday, 14 February 2008
Reply from John Twisleton 01/03/2008
Steven is getting value for money from James and I as we devote ourselves to holding him to address the facts of the matter. This in the face of a rhetorical flow that jumps all over the place and has, in some instances, appeared before on related blogs Steven has engaged with.
I was in Brighton this afternoon talking to some people who were handing out tracts on the resurrection and they’d heard of Steven all right.
I’m still in for this debate but I would appreciate a little more candour from Steven about his own presuppositions and motivation for engaging repeatedly in this debate.
I’m in for a resurrection debate because it points people to absolute love and absolute certainty. However Steven interprets St. Paul on the resurrection a third of dwellers on the earth concur with the apostle’s certainty that ‘neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Romans 8:38-39)
If this debate is going to be effective and enriching, yes, we need to clarify the objective, historical basis - but we also need to get into one another’s shoes as best we can.
I have always admired Albert Camus for his protest atheism. It has a deep moral thrust to it. In the Myth of Sisyphus Camus affirms life as being like the continual rolling of a stone up a hill only to see it run back down again. Where is the meaning of suffering? For Camus it does not lie in the death and resurrection of the Son of God as it does for me but it lies in the voicing of protest at the meaninglessness of life. Camus addresses the worst things in the world and sees the resurrection as a terrible thing. It seems to minimise suffering by saying ‘all will be right in the end’. How can it ever get right again? Camus says.
A similar line of thinking can be found in Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov where one brother describes a child being torn apart by dogs in front of his mother. He says however wonderful heaven is he would refuse a place there so appalled is he at the thought of all ever being right in the end.
I’m doing Steven’s job for him in presenting what I see as the most powerful argument against Christian faith in the resurrection. I would accept it - if I did not know Jesus to be alive and yet still wounded by iniquity. In three weeks time I will be blessing the Easter Candle and will be sticking what are effectively nails in its side. As Charles Wesley wrote ‘Those dear tokens of his passion still his glorious body bears’.
Steven, what are the most powerful arguments you can see for Christianity or are you in no doubt at all that it is absolutely misguided? You rebuke James for his candour in admitting the various nuances of Christian allegiance but his humility and honesty rather commend him in my book. To refuse to admit the possibility at least of being mistaken is at the heart of the world’s woes and it is not just religious people who think like that. In my experience magnanimity is found all the more where the resurrection of Christ is acclaimed.
Back to your second response to me on the historical basis of the resurrection. I think you would find very few contemporary scholars rubbishing the solidity in history of the New Testament record despite its theological interest in Jesus.
I read that Tacitus’ Annals of Imperial Rome (116 AD) survive mostly in one manuscript from 850AD whereas manuscript testimony of the New Testament amounts to 5,000 Greek manuscripts that date from 100AD earliest.
The gospel narratives contrast with the apocryphal gospels rejected for their fancifulness by the early church in favour of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Yes, you are right strictly to query these as original authors, but the associated traditions eg. Papias (125AD) linking the gospels eg. to St. Peter (Mark’s Gospel) are never lightly dismissed.
One of the problems we have in this debate is that when you see Jesus is alive, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:16, you do not ‘see him from a human point of view’ any more. That being said I value the debate because Christians are not entitled to the sort of triumphalism Camus would abhor which forgets that the Lord who is raised is the one who expects nothing of us that he is not prepared to go through himself. As we read in 1 Peter Chapter 2 ‘Christ also suffered…when he was abused he did not return abuse…He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live…’
I want a debate on the resurrection that is as generous and accommodating and intelligent as Jesus himself would want!
I was in Brighton this afternoon talking to some people who were handing out tracts on the resurrection and they’d heard of Steven all right.
I’m still in for this debate but I would appreciate a little more candour from Steven about his own presuppositions and motivation for engaging repeatedly in this debate.
I’m in for a resurrection debate because it points people to absolute love and absolute certainty. However Steven interprets St. Paul on the resurrection a third of dwellers on the earth concur with the apostle’s certainty that ‘neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Romans 8:38-39)
If this debate is going to be effective and enriching, yes, we need to clarify the objective, historical basis - but we also need to get into one another’s shoes as best we can.
I have always admired Albert Camus for his protest atheism. It has a deep moral thrust to it. In the Myth of Sisyphus Camus affirms life as being like the continual rolling of a stone up a hill only to see it run back down again. Where is the meaning of suffering? For Camus it does not lie in the death and resurrection of the Son of God as it does for me but it lies in the voicing of protest at the meaninglessness of life. Camus addresses the worst things in the world and sees the resurrection as a terrible thing. It seems to minimise suffering by saying ‘all will be right in the end’. How can it ever get right again? Camus says.
A similar line of thinking can be found in Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov where one brother describes a child being torn apart by dogs in front of his mother. He says however wonderful heaven is he would refuse a place there so appalled is he at the thought of all ever being right in the end.
I’m doing Steven’s job for him in presenting what I see as the most powerful argument against Christian faith in the resurrection. I would accept it - if I did not know Jesus to be alive and yet still wounded by iniquity. In three weeks time I will be blessing the Easter Candle and will be sticking what are effectively nails in its side. As Charles Wesley wrote ‘Those dear tokens of his passion still his glorious body bears’.
Steven, what are the most powerful arguments you can see for Christianity or are you in no doubt at all that it is absolutely misguided? You rebuke James for his candour in admitting the various nuances of Christian allegiance but his humility and honesty rather commend him in my book. To refuse to admit the possibility at least of being mistaken is at the heart of the world’s woes and it is not just religious people who think like that. In my experience magnanimity is found all the more where the resurrection of Christ is acclaimed.
Back to your second response to me on the historical basis of the resurrection. I think you would find very few contemporary scholars rubbishing the solidity in history of the New Testament record despite its theological interest in Jesus.
I read that Tacitus’ Annals of Imperial Rome (116 AD) survive mostly in one manuscript from 850AD whereas manuscript testimony of the New Testament amounts to 5,000 Greek manuscripts that date from 100AD earliest.
The gospel narratives contrast with the apocryphal gospels rejected for their fancifulness by the early church in favour of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Yes, you are right strictly to query these as original authors, but the associated traditions eg. Papias (125AD) linking the gospels eg. to St. Peter (Mark’s Gospel) are never lightly dismissed.
One of the problems we have in this debate is that when you see Jesus is alive, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:16, you do not ‘see him from a human point of view’ any more. That being said I value the debate because Christians are not entitled to the sort of triumphalism Camus would abhor which forgets that the Lord who is raised is the one who expects nothing of us that he is not prepared to go through himself. As we read in 1 Peter Chapter 2 ‘Christ also suffered…when he was abused he did not return abuse…He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live…’
I want a debate on the resurrection that is as generous and accommodating and intelligent as Jesus himself would want!
Wednesday, 13 February 2008
Response by Steven Carr 02/03/2008
It appears John has simply no idea how to produce any evidence of a resurrection. This is not too surprising, as there is no evidence of a resurrection.
His evidence now consists , apparently, in the fact that the Holy Roman Empire made and preserved a lot of copies of the New Testament, while the works of Tacitus were not copied as frequently.
There are literally millions of copies of the Book of Mormon, but I'm sure John would laugh at the claim that every time the Book of Mormon is reprinted, it becomes more and more backed by evidence.
How can the number of times a Gospel was copied possibly count as evidence for it?
His claim that the earliest copy is from 100 AD is simply unfounded. The earliest manuscript is called p52. It does not contain the name 'Jesus', and dates from 125 to 150 AD.
His other claim is that a Christian called Papias alleged that somebody called Mark based his book on what Peter had said.
This is all just hearsay, as meaningless as claims by Mormons that Brigham Young believed that Joseph Smith was a prophet.
It is a plain fact that the Gospel of Mark never identifies any author or any source. It never gives any even half-decent attempt at chronology, or any attempt at showing how the author came to learn things like Pilate thinking it was out of envy that the chief priests had handed Jesus over to him , or what Satan said to Jesus in the desert.
It has none of the markers that ancient historians used to indicate that they were writing history.
It is a theological tract , using the Old Testament to create stories about Jesus.
For example, the stories of Elijah and Elisha were plundered by the anonymous author of Mark to create new stories about Jesus.
Take 2 Kings 4:27-37, where a distraught parent of an only child comes to Elisha just as in Mark 5:22-24 (which continues in verses 35-43) a distraught parent of an only child comes to Jesus,pleading for help.
In both stories someone tries to discourage the parent from bothering Elisha and Jesus.
In both stories it is unclear to some people in the story whether the child is dead ,dying or asleep.
In both stories the child is in a house some distance away.
In both stories a second source comes from the house and confirms that the child is dead.
In both stories Jesus and Elisha continue anyway to the house.
In both stories the parent precedes Elisha or Jesus
In both stories Elisha and Jesus seek a high degree of privacy by turning people out of the house before their miracle .
The story in Mark is such an obvious rewrite of the story in Kings that if I remind you that Jairus in Mark 5 falls at Jesus's feet, you can guess what the parent in 2 Kings 4 did.
The name Jairus has 2 meanings. 1 is 'he enlightens'. The other is 'he awakens'. Is not 'he awakens' a remarkably apt name for someone in a resurrection story, where Jesus says that the child is not dead but sleeping?
As confirmation that Mark used 2 Kings 4 for his stories of the feeding of a crowd, and the raising of a dead child, Mark 5:42 says that after the miracle, the parents were 'amazed with great amazement' (exestesan ekstasei megale), while 2 Kings 4:13 we have 'amazed with all amazement' (exestesas... pasan ten ekstasin tauten)
Another example of the Elijah/Elisha miracle stories being recycled to provide material for Mark's book is the feeding of the 5,000.
In 2 Kings 4:42-44, Elisha has a great many people to feed with only a few loaves of bread and a little other food. He delegates the task of feeding. There is a complaint that the quantity is too small. The feeding continues and everyone is fed. There is surplus bread left over. This older story from Kings has exactly the same plot as the feeding of the 5,000 - only the numbers are different.
The feeding of the 5,000 is such an obvious rewrite of the story from Kings that if I remind you that Jesus used barley bread, you can guess what type of bread Elisha used.
On page 176 of the New Jerome Biblical Commentary, written by a raft of Catholic scholars, it says that 2 Kings 4:42-44 is 'obviously the inspiration for the NT multiplication miracles'. I like the word 'obviously'.
It is obvious, isn't it?
Which is more likely, that somebody fed 5,000 people with a few loaves of bread or that a religion was based on frauds and lies - as every religion throughout history has been based on?
We know from modern experience that when Paul says Jesus 'appeared' to 500 brethren, he means no more than what is meant when followers of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi claimed that he levitated in front of them.
At least the followers of the Maharishi produced photographs of the Yogi in mid-air. 1 Corinthians 15 doesn't even have anything other than bare claims that Jesus 'appeared'. No details, no confirmation, no dates, no times - this all adds up to no evidence.
John asks me to get back to the facts.
The facts are that early Christians claimed Jesus 'appeared' to them (in much the same way as modern Christians claim Jesus appears on the side of a slice of toast??), but early converts to Jesus-worship simply scoffed at the idea of God choosing to raise a corpse.
From this solid fact, attested to by primary evidence - namely the letters of somebody who was there - we know that early Christians did not spread tales of corpses rising from graves.
Or else early Christians would have believed what had converted them.
What had converted them was vague tales of 'appearances'.
Only when we come to anonymous works, works which plagiarise each other and plagiarise the Old Testament, only then do we come to stories of Jesus eating fish and ascending into the sky.
But there is nothing to back up these anonymous works, or anything which says there are anything other than the fabricated stories we know Christians were making up as early as when Paul was writing 2 Corinthians 11:4.
But if John has any real evidence, then he should start producing some very quickly.....
His evidence now consists , apparently, in the fact that the Holy Roman Empire made and preserved a lot of copies of the New Testament, while the works of Tacitus were not copied as frequently.
There are literally millions of copies of the Book of Mormon, but I'm sure John would laugh at the claim that every time the Book of Mormon is reprinted, it becomes more and more backed by evidence.
How can the number of times a Gospel was copied possibly count as evidence for it?
His claim that the earliest copy is from 100 AD is simply unfounded. The earliest manuscript is called p52. It does not contain the name 'Jesus', and dates from 125 to 150 AD.
His other claim is that a Christian called Papias alleged that somebody called Mark based his book on what Peter had said.
This is all just hearsay, as meaningless as claims by Mormons that Brigham Young believed that Joseph Smith was a prophet.
It is a plain fact that the Gospel of Mark never identifies any author or any source. It never gives any even half-decent attempt at chronology, or any attempt at showing how the author came to learn things like Pilate thinking it was out of envy that the chief priests had handed Jesus over to him , or what Satan said to Jesus in the desert.
It has none of the markers that ancient historians used to indicate that they were writing history.
It is a theological tract , using the Old Testament to create stories about Jesus.
For example, the stories of Elijah and Elisha were plundered by the anonymous author of Mark to create new stories about Jesus.
Take 2 Kings 4:27-37, where a distraught parent of an only child comes to Elisha just as in Mark 5:22-24 (which continues in verses 35-43) a distraught parent of an only child comes to Jesus,pleading for help.
In both stories someone tries to discourage the parent from bothering Elisha and Jesus.
In both stories it is unclear to some people in the story whether the child is dead ,dying or asleep.
In both stories the child is in a house some distance away.
In both stories a second source comes from the house and confirms that the child is dead.
In both stories Jesus and Elisha continue anyway to the house.
In both stories the parent precedes Elisha or Jesus
In both stories Elisha and Jesus seek a high degree of privacy by turning people out of the house before their miracle .
The story in Mark is such an obvious rewrite of the story in Kings that if I remind you that Jairus in Mark 5 falls at Jesus's feet, you can guess what the parent in 2 Kings 4 did.
The name Jairus has 2 meanings. 1 is 'he enlightens'. The other is 'he awakens'. Is not 'he awakens' a remarkably apt name for someone in a resurrection story, where Jesus says that the child is not dead but sleeping?
As confirmation that Mark used 2 Kings 4 for his stories of the feeding of a crowd, and the raising of a dead child, Mark 5:42 says that after the miracle, the parents were 'amazed with great amazement' (exestesan ekstasei megale), while 2 Kings 4:13 we have 'amazed with all amazement' (exestesas... pasan ten ekstasin tauten)
Another example of the Elijah/Elisha miracle stories being recycled to provide material for Mark's book is the feeding of the 5,000.
In 2 Kings 4:42-44, Elisha has a great many people to feed with only a few loaves of bread and a little other food. He delegates the task of feeding. There is a complaint that the quantity is too small. The feeding continues and everyone is fed. There is surplus bread left over. This older story from Kings has exactly the same plot as the feeding of the 5,000 - only the numbers are different.
The feeding of the 5,000 is such an obvious rewrite of the story from Kings that if I remind you that Jesus used barley bread, you can guess what type of bread Elisha used.
On page 176 of the New Jerome Biblical Commentary, written by a raft of Catholic scholars, it says that 2 Kings 4:42-44 is 'obviously the inspiration for the NT multiplication miracles'. I like the word 'obviously'.
It is obvious, isn't it?
Which is more likely, that somebody fed 5,000 people with a few loaves of bread or that a religion was based on frauds and lies - as every religion throughout history has been based on?
We know from modern experience that when Paul says Jesus 'appeared' to 500 brethren, he means no more than what is meant when followers of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi claimed that he levitated in front of them.
At least the followers of the Maharishi produced photographs of the Yogi in mid-air. 1 Corinthians 15 doesn't even have anything other than bare claims that Jesus 'appeared'. No details, no confirmation, no dates, no times - this all adds up to no evidence.
John asks me to get back to the facts.
The facts are that early Christians claimed Jesus 'appeared' to them (in much the same way as modern Christians claim Jesus appears on the side of a slice of toast??), but early converts to Jesus-worship simply scoffed at the idea of God choosing to raise a corpse.
From this solid fact, attested to by primary evidence - namely the letters of somebody who was there - we know that early Christians did not spread tales of corpses rising from graves.
Or else early Christians would have believed what had converted them.
What had converted them was vague tales of 'appearances'.
Only when we come to anonymous works, works which plagiarise each other and plagiarise the Old Testament, only then do we come to stories of Jesus eating fish and ascending into the sky.
But there is nothing to back up these anonymous works, or anything which says there are anything other than the fabricated stories we know Christians were making up as early as when Paul was writing 2 Corinthians 11:4.
But if John has any real evidence, then he should start producing some very quickly.....
Tuesday, 12 February 2008
Response from James Hollingsworth 05/03/2008
Dear John, Dear Steven
Thank you for adding a bit more.
Both sides of this discussion (and that’s how I see it) need to be careful in our use of language.
Eg: John’s use of Absolute: absolute love, absolute certainty – it’s the kind of church language that we like and are familiar with. I suppose by it we mean a sense of love (and by that word we would mean agape, a choosing sacrificial, self-giving sort of love) that is unconditional, regardless of our previous sin or behaviour and welcomes us.
Where as Absolute Certainty – I suppose I would take that to mean not unconditional certainty, nor even the sort of certainty that cannot be doubted, but the sort of certainty that shapes a life and gives purpose and meaning and opens us up to that Love. Its that sort of absolute certainty that enabled me to propose to my wife.
You even invite Steven to fall for an old trick asking him if he thinks religion is ‘absolutely misguided’. Its only a trick because the moment he says Yes, he has chosen the easy option of extremism and demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of anything any religion might be about. Perhaps it was wise that Steven ignored this point altogether!
Meanwhile, Steven’s use of the word “obvious” is an excellent example of good rhetoric. When I took my philosophy degree we had lots of fun pointing out the inadequacies of the expression ‘common sense’. Likewise the repeated insistence that neither Paul nor the early Christians believed in a corporeal resurrection, as if the repetition makes it read as if this is now established fact. It is an excellent style of arguing though I remain unconvinced.
Steven calls for proof and evidence but won’t seem to allow the gospels to be submitted. He plays the trick of willfully misunderstanding John’s point: the large number of copies of Gospels etc is not offered as evidence of what they say but merely that this is what the early church believed from a very early stage. As opposed to much else that passes for ancient history but was written hundreds of years later and where there are very few copies to check to see how they have been adjusted across the centuries. A really exciting example of this would be to compare the Masoretic Isaiah Scroll (something like 900ad) with the Dead Sea Scroll version – they show an astonishing reverence for the art of accurate copying and this gives us good reason to think that these are the words that started with Isaiah.
And alas St Mark failed to put in footnotes. Unlike modern journalism which is obviously always correct and truthful and gives full references to their sources, Mark fails to meet up to modern standards. Indeed his greek is really quite shoddy, so shoddy that posh scholars had to give it a special name Koinonia Greek (common greek) and Mark’s appalling use of the Present tense is called by scholars The Historic Present. Luke’s Greek is tidier and he gives some signs of his sources but it won’t be enough for Steven. Though I think that the remark from Papias is helpful (that Peter was Mark’s primary source)
The Elisha / Elijah parallels are obvious. As are the Moses, Joseph, Jacob, David ones, goodness me, I think I can spot some Isaiah in there too, Hosea even a bit of Jeremiah. We in the trade refer to this as Typology. So we’re okay with the thought that Mark is writing the History of Jesus from his standpoint and using his form of interpretation.
Alas that doesn’t mean that the feeding of four and five thousand didn’t happen. (odd that Mark should use both when he didn’t need to having invented the ‘fairytale’ point that Jesus is like Elisha. Perhaps there were two separate occasions oh but wait that would undermine Steven’s point). And it is somehow disappointing that Jesus can’t ascend in a more exciting way than Elijah. Luke is an intelligent doctor you would have thought that he could have invented something at least as exciting as the Old Testament writers. Unless of course there were still enough people around to say No, that’s not how it happened.
Now look at me, I’ve written a long winded reply and managed to do the thing that irks me with Steven’s reply. You have asked for proof and I have given you none. Of course, I cannot submit the gospels (you are determined that they are biased and written too late). I cannot submit St Paul because you are convinced that he didn’t know anything of a corporeal resurrection. So I cannot submit written evidence.
This is a shame as we cannot use that hard work done in that old book “Who moved the stone” initially written by a convinced atheist (you can tell by his style of writing) who ended up converting himself (you can tell by the style at the end of the book!).
If I were to produce Jesus, a living person with holes in all the right places then you could say Its not the real Jesus. He could then talk to you (in Aramaic) and you could still insist that he was as good / bad an actor as the bloke from the film Passion of Christ. The only proof I can think of would be one where Steven got to push in the nails and then sat inside the tomb himself to wait.
Meanwhile John has offered what others have felt to be helpful, perhaps not proof in the strictest sense of the word but something that helps. He writes of ‘knowing Jesus to be alive’ of when ‘you see Jesus is alive’. For some of us this refers to a spiritual experience which whilst these can be right or wrong can at least be tested by the life that is lived as a consequence. For others it refers to a weight of evidence, the earliness of the gospels, the integrity of the apostles, the tomb remains empty, yes even the witness of the women, but then broader, the explosion of the church - a peaceful revolution across the known world that came about by persuasion and prayer.
My apologies for such a lengthy reply. I fear I’m about to be quite busy over the next couple of weeks so if I don’t reply before Easter please don’t take it the wrong way.
Thank you for adding a bit more.
Both sides of this discussion (and that’s how I see it) need to be careful in our use of language.
Eg: John’s use of Absolute: absolute love, absolute certainty – it’s the kind of church language that we like and are familiar with. I suppose by it we mean a sense of love (and by that word we would mean agape, a choosing sacrificial, self-giving sort of love) that is unconditional, regardless of our previous sin or behaviour and welcomes us.
Where as Absolute Certainty – I suppose I would take that to mean not unconditional certainty, nor even the sort of certainty that cannot be doubted, but the sort of certainty that shapes a life and gives purpose and meaning and opens us up to that Love. Its that sort of absolute certainty that enabled me to propose to my wife.
You even invite Steven to fall for an old trick asking him if he thinks religion is ‘absolutely misguided’. Its only a trick because the moment he says Yes, he has chosen the easy option of extremism and demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of anything any religion might be about. Perhaps it was wise that Steven ignored this point altogether!
Meanwhile, Steven’s use of the word “obvious” is an excellent example of good rhetoric. When I took my philosophy degree we had lots of fun pointing out the inadequacies of the expression ‘common sense’. Likewise the repeated insistence that neither Paul nor the early Christians believed in a corporeal resurrection, as if the repetition makes it read as if this is now established fact. It is an excellent style of arguing though I remain unconvinced.
Steven calls for proof and evidence but won’t seem to allow the gospels to be submitted. He plays the trick of willfully misunderstanding John’s point: the large number of copies of Gospels etc is not offered as evidence of what they say but merely that this is what the early church believed from a very early stage. As opposed to much else that passes for ancient history but was written hundreds of years later and where there are very few copies to check to see how they have been adjusted across the centuries. A really exciting example of this would be to compare the Masoretic Isaiah Scroll (something like 900ad) with the Dead Sea Scroll version – they show an astonishing reverence for the art of accurate copying and this gives us good reason to think that these are the words that started with Isaiah.
And alas St Mark failed to put in footnotes. Unlike modern journalism which is obviously always correct and truthful and gives full references to their sources, Mark fails to meet up to modern standards. Indeed his greek is really quite shoddy, so shoddy that posh scholars had to give it a special name Koinonia Greek (common greek) and Mark’s appalling use of the Present tense is called by scholars The Historic Present. Luke’s Greek is tidier and he gives some signs of his sources but it won’t be enough for Steven. Though I think that the remark from Papias is helpful (that Peter was Mark’s primary source)
The Elisha / Elijah parallels are obvious. As are the Moses, Joseph, Jacob, David ones, goodness me, I think I can spot some Isaiah in there too, Hosea even a bit of Jeremiah. We in the trade refer to this as Typology. So we’re okay with the thought that Mark is writing the History of Jesus from his standpoint and using his form of interpretation.
Alas that doesn’t mean that the feeding of four and five thousand didn’t happen. (odd that Mark should use both when he didn’t need to having invented the ‘fairytale’ point that Jesus is like Elisha. Perhaps there were two separate occasions oh but wait that would undermine Steven’s point). And it is somehow disappointing that Jesus can’t ascend in a more exciting way than Elijah. Luke is an intelligent doctor you would have thought that he could have invented something at least as exciting as the Old Testament writers. Unless of course there were still enough people around to say No, that’s not how it happened.
Now look at me, I’ve written a long winded reply and managed to do the thing that irks me with Steven’s reply. You have asked for proof and I have given you none. Of course, I cannot submit the gospels (you are determined that they are biased and written too late). I cannot submit St Paul because you are convinced that he didn’t know anything of a corporeal resurrection. So I cannot submit written evidence.
This is a shame as we cannot use that hard work done in that old book “Who moved the stone” initially written by a convinced atheist (you can tell by his style of writing) who ended up converting himself (you can tell by the style at the end of the book!).
If I were to produce Jesus, a living person with holes in all the right places then you could say Its not the real Jesus. He could then talk to you (in Aramaic) and you could still insist that he was as good / bad an actor as the bloke from the film Passion of Christ. The only proof I can think of would be one where Steven got to push in the nails and then sat inside the tomb himself to wait.
Meanwhile John has offered what others have felt to be helpful, perhaps not proof in the strictest sense of the word but something that helps. He writes of ‘knowing Jesus to be alive’ of when ‘you see Jesus is alive’. For some of us this refers to a spiritual experience which whilst these can be right or wrong can at least be tested by the life that is lived as a consequence. For others it refers to a weight of evidence, the earliness of the gospels, the integrity of the apostles, the tomb remains empty, yes even the witness of the women, but then broader, the explosion of the church - a peaceful revolution across the known world that came about by persuasion and prayer.
My apologies for such a lengthy reply. I fear I’m about to be quite busy over the next couple of weeks so if I don’t reply before Easter please don’t take it the wrong way.
Monday, 11 February 2008
Response by Steven Carr 08/03/2008
It seems that James has no evidence at all for any corpse rising from the grave.
His only evidence is that Mark wrote shoddy Greek, and that the Dead Sea Scrolls show that out of the 38 Old Testament books which were found there, either whole or in part , one manuscript of Isaiah is very close to a later copy.
What about the other 37 Old Testament books found among the Dead Sea Scrolls? They show little sign that the text was fixed, so James concentrates on the one from the 38 which he thinks is relevant. But what relevance is it to show that there were no more changes 600 years after Isaiah allegedly wrote chapters 1 to 66 of his book, than there were 1500 years after Isaiah allegedly wrote all 66 chapters?
James claims the point of citing the 5,000 Greek manuscripts , of which 4000 date more than 4 centuries after any alleged resurrection is to show what the early church believed.
How can making a thousand copies of a manuscript 400 years after the people lived provide proof of what those people believed? How would it be relevant if we had a million copies from 4 centuries after they lived? What does writing the same thing out over and over again make it true?
In any case, we know what the early church believed. We know from 2 Corinthians 11 that Christians were fabricating stories about Jesus. We know that the church in Thessalonia was clearly getting worried about the fate of Christian corpses. We know from 1 Corinthians 15 that early converts to Jesus-worship were scoffing at the idea that God would choose to raise a corpse.
We know from Romans 7:24 that Paul wanted to be rescued from his body. In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul says 'For we know that if our earthly dwelling, a tent, should be destroyed, we have a building from God, a dwelling not made with hands'.
Paul preached the destruction of the body, and preached that we moved from our present body to a new body.
The Christians he was writing to also believed in the destruction of the present body, which is why they doubted that they could live after they died. Paul thinks this is foolish, because they do not know that there are two bodies 'If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body'
Paul did not believe in corpses rising from tombs. He believed that there was a spiritual, heavenly body which would be our home in the resurrection. He believed that our present body was the body inhabited by 'psyche' , (by which he seems to mean life), and that it was useless once we lost our psyche. So it would perish. Paul never mentions anything about a dead body rises, even to people who doubted that dead bodies rise. Paul claims only that the dead rise, and that they will have new bodies. If Paul believed dead bodies rose , he would say so. Instead, he says 'You do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed.' What rises from the ground is not the seed . The seed is simply there to tell God what to create. Plant seeds of wheat and God gives it a body of wheat. Plant human corpses, and God creates spiritual bodies, made out of entirely different material to our present bodies.
This contradicts the Gospels where the body that was planted was the body which came out of the ground, complete with wounds.
Now we turn to the Gospels. Paul preached the destruction of the body, not its salvation. The Gospels preach the salvation of the body, not its destruction.
The Gospels are anonymous works, of no historical value. They clearly plagiarise each other and the Old Testament.
James calls this 'typology'. This is a meaningless word.
The Gospels simply contain Old Testament stories rewritten to become stories about Jesus.
Jesus in Luke 7 raises the son of a widow from the dead. In 1 Kings 17, Elijah raises the son of a widow from the dead. Both stories employ exactly the same words - and he gave him to his mother.The Greek is 'kai edoken auton te metri autou', copied word for word from the Septuagint version of 1 Kings 17.
Did Luke use 1 Kings 17 as a basis for his story? Jesus met the widow at the gate of a city. Elijah met his widow in 1 Kings 17:10. It should come as no surprise that it was at the gate of a city. Luke 7 also copies other phrases from the Septuagint version of 1 Kings 17.
Luke copies 'kai egeneto' (and it came to pass). 'Kai egeneto' is used many, many times in the Greek Old Testament and Luke used this phrase from the Septuagint so much that it has become a cliche. When writing the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith also used 'and it came to pass' a lot. Here he was copying from the King James Bible , but we can see that the writer of Luke's Gospel copied in a very similar manner to Joseph Smith.
Luke writes 'tay pulay tays poleos kai idoo' (to the gate of a city and behold), which is almost identical to the Old Testament Greek of 'tou pulona tays poleos kai idoo'.
Luke often used the Greek Old Testament for his stories. In Acts 10, Peter is told in a dream to eat unclean animals. In the Old Testament, Ezekiel 4 also has a story of somebody who is asked to eat unpalatable food.
According to Acts , Peter, an Aramaic-speaking Jew managed, in a moment of terror, to remember the exact phrase from the Greek translation of Ezekiel 4:14! Was it realistic for somebody described in Acts itself as ignorant (idiotes) and illiterate to bring to mind a Greek translation that he would not have known? I think not. I suspect Luke 'borrowed' words from the Greek translation of Ezekiel 4:14 to put into the mouth of Peter. It is not as though it is a common phrase which Peter might have hit on himself. 'Medamos, Kyrie' (By no means,Lord) is used only here and in Acts 11:8 , which is basically the same story again.
James calls this 'typology'. It is not. It is fraud and lies. It is as fraudulent as when Joseph Smith took Old Testament stories and rewrote them to become stories in the Book of Mormon.
James claims Luke gives hints as to his sources. He does not. All he ever claims is that some written accounts were based on eyewitnesses, (whom he never names), and that these anonymous accounts from anonymous eyewitnesses have been passed down to 'us' (ie Christians of his time), and that he has read them and is now rewriting them.
We can take a real historian , Josephus, and compare him with the fake historians of the Gospels.
Josephus mentions his sources frequently, among them: Berosus, Jerome, Mnaseas, Nicolaus, Manetho, Moschus, Hesiod, Menander, Dios, Herodotus, Megasthenes, Philostratus, 1 Maccabees, Polybius, Strabo, Livy, etc. Not all these sources are good but at least we can see where Josephus is coming from. Some of these sources are still extant and we can see how Josephus used them. We can see where Josephus changed from one source to the next, as his knowledge gets more or less detailed.
James says that Mark isn't as good as modern historians.
James has hit the nail on the head. The anonymous author of Mark isn't any good.
That is why James cannot find any evidence for the resurrection. For some reason, the God James worships has had people write works which look just like every other fraudulent religion based on lies, and which look nothing like any decent history.
His only evidence is that Mark wrote shoddy Greek, and that the Dead Sea Scrolls show that out of the 38 Old Testament books which were found there, either whole or in part , one manuscript of Isaiah is very close to a later copy.
What about the other 37 Old Testament books found among the Dead Sea Scrolls? They show little sign that the text was fixed, so James concentrates on the one from the 38 which he thinks is relevant. But what relevance is it to show that there were no more changes 600 years after Isaiah allegedly wrote chapters 1 to 66 of his book, than there were 1500 years after Isaiah allegedly wrote all 66 chapters?
James claims the point of citing the 5,000 Greek manuscripts , of which 4000 date more than 4 centuries after any alleged resurrection is to show what the early church believed.
How can making a thousand copies of a manuscript 400 years after the people lived provide proof of what those people believed? How would it be relevant if we had a million copies from 4 centuries after they lived? What does writing the same thing out over and over again make it true?
In any case, we know what the early church believed. We know from 2 Corinthians 11 that Christians were fabricating stories about Jesus. We know that the church in Thessalonia was clearly getting worried about the fate of Christian corpses. We know from 1 Corinthians 15 that early converts to Jesus-worship were scoffing at the idea that God would choose to raise a corpse.
We know from Romans 7:24 that Paul wanted to be rescued from his body. In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul says 'For we know that if our earthly dwelling, a tent, should be destroyed, we have a building from God, a dwelling not made with hands'.
Paul preached the destruction of the body, and preached that we moved from our present body to a new body.
The Christians he was writing to also believed in the destruction of the present body, which is why they doubted that they could live after they died. Paul thinks this is foolish, because they do not know that there are two bodies 'If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body'
Paul did not believe in corpses rising from tombs. He believed that there was a spiritual, heavenly body which would be our home in the resurrection. He believed that our present body was the body inhabited by 'psyche' , (by which he seems to mean life), and that it was useless once we lost our psyche. So it would perish. Paul never mentions anything about a dead body rises, even to people who doubted that dead bodies rise. Paul claims only that the dead rise, and that they will have new bodies. If Paul believed dead bodies rose , he would say so. Instead, he says 'You do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed.' What rises from the ground is not the seed . The seed is simply there to tell God what to create. Plant seeds of wheat and God gives it a body of wheat. Plant human corpses, and God creates spiritual bodies, made out of entirely different material to our present bodies.
This contradicts the Gospels where the body that was planted was the body which came out of the ground, complete with wounds.
Now we turn to the Gospels. Paul preached the destruction of the body, not its salvation. The Gospels preach the salvation of the body, not its destruction.
The Gospels are anonymous works, of no historical value. They clearly plagiarise each other and the Old Testament.
James calls this 'typology'. This is a meaningless word.
The Gospels simply contain Old Testament stories rewritten to become stories about Jesus.
Jesus in Luke 7 raises the son of a widow from the dead. In 1 Kings 17, Elijah raises the son of a widow from the dead. Both stories employ exactly the same words - and he gave him to his mother.The Greek is 'kai edoken auton te metri autou', copied word for word from the Septuagint version of 1 Kings 17.
Did Luke use 1 Kings 17 as a basis for his story? Jesus met the widow at the gate of a city. Elijah met his widow in 1 Kings 17:10. It should come as no surprise that it was at the gate of a city. Luke 7 also copies other phrases from the Septuagint version of 1 Kings 17.
Luke copies 'kai egeneto' (and it came to pass). 'Kai egeneto' is used many, many times in the Greek Old Testament and Luke used this phrase from the Septuagint so much that it has become a cliche. When writing the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith also used 'and it came to pass' a lot. Here he was copying from the King James Bible , but we can see that the writer of Luke's Gospel copied in a very similar manner to Joseph Smith.
Luke writes 'tay pulay tays poleos kai idoo' (to the gate of a city and behold), which is almost identical to the Old Testament Greek of 'tou pulona tays poleos kai idoo'.
Luke often used the Greek Old Testament for his stories. In Acts 10, Peter is told in a dream to eat unclean animals. In the Old Testament, Ezekiel 4 also has a story of somebody who is asked to eat unpalatable food.
According to Acts , Peter, an Aramaic-speaking Jew managed, in a moment of terror, to remember the exact phrase from the Greek translation of Ezekiel 4:14! Was it realistic for somebody described in Acts itself as ignorant (idiotes) and illiterate to bring to mind a Greek translation that he would not have known? I think not. I suspect Luke 'borrowed' words from the Greek translation of Ezekiel 4:14 to put into the mouth of Peter. It is not as though it is a common phrase which Peter might have hit on himself. 'Medamos, Kyrie' (By no means,Lord) is used only here and in Acts 11:8 , which is basically the same story again.
James calls this 'typology'. It is not. It is fraud and lies. It is as fraudulent as when Joseph Smith took Old Testament stories and rewrote them to become stories in the Book of Mormon.
James claims Luke gives hints as to his sources. He does not. All he ever claims is that some written accounts were based on eyewitnesses, (whom he never names), and that these anonymous accounts from anonymous eyewitnesses have been passed down to 'us' (ie Christians of his time), and that he has read them and is now rewriting them.
We can take a real historian , Josephus, and compare him with the fake historians of the Gospels.
Josephus mentions his sources frequently, among them: Berosus, Jerome, Mnaseas, Nicolaus, Manetho, Moschus, Hesiod, Menander, Dios, Herodotus, Megasthenes, Philostratus, 1 Maccabees, Polybius, Strabo, Livy, etc. Not all these sources are good but at least we can see where Josephus is coming from. Some of these sources are still extant and we can see how Josephus used them. We can see where Josephus changed from one source to the next, as his knowledge gets more or less detailed.
James says that Mark isn't as good as modern historians.
James has hit the nail on the head. The anonymous author of Mark isn't any good.
That is why James cannot find any evidence for the resurrection. For some reason, the God James worships has had people write works which look just like every other fraudulent religion based on lies, and which look nothing like any decent history.
John Twisleton 08/03/2008
Have I really no idea how to produce any evidence of a resurrection as Steven claims?
I cannot accept as obvious that my 3,600 words so far on this blog are so empty!
I will summarise the evidence I have presented so far in our debate:
1The existence of a community founded on the resurrection with a dynamic inexplicable without it
2The credibility of the New Testament witness to the resurrection surviving two centuries of critical scholarship with the arguments running onwards
3There is no grave claimed for the founder of Christianity, something even Muslims concur with, so this is obvious to well over half the world today
4Throughout history men and women whose living encounter with Jesus led them to face torture and death rather than agree his corpse lies in Palestine
5In the New Testament records the change in the disciples is inexplicable without a cataclysmic external impact upon their lives
6The abandonment by devout Jews of traditions like Friday Sabbath that ran in the face of centuries of tradition within weeks of the claimed resurrection has no rival explanation
7Josephus, Pliny and Tacitus give substantial independent back up to the remarkable phenomenon of the growth of the community of the resurrection which is the church
8What usually happens doesn’t always happen.
9Even if we rightly suspect supernatural claims this one is exceptional in its moral basis in a God who accepts suffering and brings it meaning
10There is a philosophical basis for particular phenomenon having universal
significance
Steven has made his choice to argue number 2 and a small section of it ignoring the rest of my arguments so far!
Belief in the resurrection of Jesus is built on an accumulation of evidence. It is not the accumulation of people and documents saying the same thing deafening out opposition as Steven suggests and James has already countered. That would be Maria’s song from Sound of Music ‘I have confidence in confidence’ – this isn’t Christianity! Christian confidence is well based on both God and the facts.
It is ironic that Steven’s whole argument with the facts is from Paul. Steven disclaims Paul’s belief in Christ’s bodily resurrection. Since he rejects the Gospel accounts as historically based he rests his case even if billions see otherwise!
I find Steven’s case ironic because the whole thrust of St. Paul’s writings, the earliest Christian documentation, repeats the strain again and again that Jesus Christ was and is raised as first born of the dead (Romans 4:24f, 6:4, 6:9, 7:4, 8:11, 29, 34, 10:9; 1 Corinthians 6:14, 15:4, 12-17, 20, 29, 32, 35, 42-44, 52; 2 Corinthians 1:9, 4:14, 5:15; Galatians 1:1; Ephesians 1:20; Colossians 2:12; 1 Thessalonians 1:10)
Critical biblical scholarship has established these Pauline texts as the earliest evidences of the resurrection followed by the later gospel narratives. The empty tomb narratives are a solid part of this documentation. The reason the tomb’s emptiness has come down to us is the witness from the start of Christianity to Jesus Christ being raised and appearing.
Steven is saying a contemporary perception of Jesus on a piece of toast weighs as much as what he would see as totally subjective appearances to the apostles including Paul. I am saying that the appearances related in the New Testament are linked to an astonishing event – it’s obvious as you read the book unless your philosophical bent is some how skewed against objective truth. ‘Christ was raised on the third day…and…he appeared (to several people and groups)’ (1 Corinthians 15:4f).
How is that event of Christ being raised best described? Indeed we have a choice but would it not be less credible if we did not have a choice? Textual critics have yet to undermine the potentially complementary witness of the seven passages Mark 16:1-8, Matthew 28, Luke 24, John20 and Mark 16:9-13, Acts 1:1-11 and 1 Corinthians 15:3-8.
The main inconsistencies are in geography and timing. When you are recording an event that stretches the boundaries of space and time that is unsurprising. That has not deterred the ongoing digestion of these passages over centuries and their acceptance by eminent historians and lawyers as I have said.
I am very impressed by Steven’s rhetorical play in his treatment of the alleged recycling of the Elijah/Elisha miracle stories. James has dealt with this already. It is a real problem for 21st century minds to get into typology. This is nothing that makes Mark a manufacturer of history despite his theological standpoint. How can you avoid a theological standpoint anyway if you are writing about something like this? Something shouting to the world that God is after all not above us or beyond us but with us and ahead of us making a place for us beyond the grave so that ‘man (sic) is the macrocosm and the whole created order is the microcosm’ (Nicodemus the Solitary)?
If 2 Kings 4:42-44 is to Catholic scholars ‘obviously the inspiration for the NT multiplication miracles’ it doesn’t mean it wasn’t also obvious to God as he came on earth to set the scene for the resurrection by such miracles. People do say they’d believe in God if they could see him doing miracles once again (he does!).
I deliberately put the existence and dynamic of the church as community of the resurrection first in my top 10 for the resurrection because the feeding by Jesus in the Eucharist is my own day by day encounter with the resurrection. This is nothing out of the blue for the God of the Old Testament was known to be a miraculous provider.
When it comes to the resurrection what happened to Jesus and the apostles can and must be argued about but what has happened to the world in the arrival of a new form of living in radical forgiveness (the community of the resurrection, the church) would be my first talking point!
In his book on the resurrection our Archbishop of Canterbury says he attempts to sail ‘between the Scylla of critical pedantry and the Charybdis of vaguely religious psychology’. I see something of both in this debate, Steven.
If we make the establishing of the empty tomb narratives our goal that can reduce to pedantry because it’s not the prime issue. This to me is ‘who left that tomb and where can he be found?’
If we make the resurrection a helpful symbol of love’s triumph, bringing meaning to suffering etc. we also make it less than it is as rooted in the historical order.
You are a great help in holding me down to the facts of the matter and of history.
I cannot accept as obvious that my 3,600 words so far on this blog are so empty!
I will summarise the evidence I have presented so far in our debate:
1The existence of a community founded on the resurrection with a dynamic inexplicable without it
2The credibility of the New Testament witness to the resurrection surviving two centuries of critical scholarship with the arguments running onwards
3There is no grave claimed for the founder of Christianity, something even Muslims concur with, so this is obvious to well over half the world today
4Throughout history men and women whose living encounter with Jesus led them to face torture and death rather than agree his corpse lies in Palestine
5In the New Testament records the change in the disciples is inexplicable without a cataclysmic external impact upon their lives
6The abandonment by devout Jews of traditions like Friday Sabbath that ran in the face of centuries of tradition within weeks of the claimed resurrection has no rival explanation
7Josephus, Pliny and Tacitus give substantial independent back up to the remarkable phenomenon of the growth of the community of the resurrection which is the church
8What usually happens doesn’t always happen.
9Even if we rightly suspect supernatural claims this one is exceptional in its moral basis in a God who accepts suffering and brings it meaning
10There is a philosophical basis for particular phenomenon having universal
significance
Steven has made his choice to argue number 2 and a small section of it ignoring the rest of my arguments so far!
Belief in the resurrection of Jesus is built on an accumulation of evidence. It is not the accumulation of people and documents saying the same thing deafening out opposition as Steven suggests and James has already countered. That would be Maria’s song from Sound of Music ‘I have confidence in confidence’ – this isn’t Christianity! Christian confidence is well based on both God and the facts.
It is ironic that Steven’s whole argument with the facts is from Paul. Steven disclaims Paul’s belief in Christ’s bodily resurrection. Since he rejects the Gospel accounts as historically based he rests his case even if billions see otherwise!
I find Steven’s case ironic because the whole thrust of St. Paul’s writings, the earliest Christian documentation, repeats the strain again and again that Jesus Christ was and is raised as first born of the dead (Romans 4:24f, 6:4, 6:9, 7:4, 8:11, 29, 34, 10:9; 1 Corinthians 6:14, 15:4, 12-17, 20, 29, 32, 35, 42-44, 52; 2 Corinthians 1:9, 4:14, 5:15; Galatians 1:1; Ephesians 1:20; Colossians 2:12; 1 Thessalonians 1:10)
Critical biblical scholarship has established these Pauline texts as the earliest evidences of the resurrection followed by the later gospel narratives. The empty tomb narratives are a solid part of this documentation. The reason the tomb’s emptiness has come down to us is the witness from the start of Christianity to Jesus Christ being raised and appearing.
Steven is saying a contemporary perception of Jesus on a piece of toast weighs as much as what he would see as totally subjective appearances to the apostles including Paul. I am saying that the appearances related in the New Testament are linked to an astonishing event – it’s obvious as you read the book unless your philosophical bent is some how skewed against objective truth. ‘Christ was raised on the third day…and…he appeared (to several people and groups)’ (1 Corinthians 15:4f).
How is that event of Christ being raised best described? Indeed we have a choice but would it not be less credible if we did not have a choice? Textual critics have yet to undermine the potentially complementary witness of the seven passages Mark 16:1-8, Matthew 28, Luke 24, John20 and Mark 16:9-13, Acts 1:1-11 and 1 Corinthians 15:3-8.
The main inconsistencies are in geography and timing. When you are recording an event that stretches the boundaries of space and time that is unsurprising. That has not deterred the ongoing digestion of these passages over centuries and their acceptance by eminent historians and lawyers as I have said.
I am very impressed by Steven’s rhetorical play in his treatment of the alleged recycling of the Elijah/Elisha miracle stories. James has dealt with this already. It is a real problem for 21st century minds to get into typology. This is nothing that makes Mark a manufacturer of history despite his theological standpoint. How can you avoid a theological standpoint anyway if you are writing about something like this? Something shouting to the world that God is after all not above us or beyond us but with us and ahead of us making a place for us beyond the grave so that ‘man (sic) is the macrocosm and the whole created order is the microcosm’ (Nicodemus the Solitary)?
If 2 Kings 4:42-44 is to Catholic scholars ‘obviously the inspiration for the NT multiplication miracles’ it doesn’t mean it wasn’t also obvious to God as he came on earth to set the scene for the resurrection by such miracles. People do say they’d believe in God if they could see him doing miracles once again (he does!).
I deliberately put the existence and dynamic of the church as community of the resurrection first in my top 10 for the resurrection because the feeding by Jesus in the Eucharist is my own day by day encounter with the resurrection. This is nothing out of the blue for the God of the Old Testament was known to be a miraculous provider.
When it comes to the resurrection what happened to Jesus and the apostles can and must be argued about but what has happened to the world in the arrival of a new form of living in radical forgiveness (the community of the resurrection, the church) would be my first talking point!
In his book on the resurrection our Archbishop of Canterbury says he attempts to sail ‘between the Scylla of critical pedantry and the Charybdis of vaguely religious psychology’. I see something of both in this debate, Steven.
If we make the establishing of the empty tomb narratives our goal that can reduce to pedantry because it’s not the prime issue. This to me is ‘who left that tomb and where can he be found?’
If we make the resurrection a helpful symbol of love’s triumph, bringing meaning to suffering etc. we also make it less than it is as rooted in the historical order.
You are a great help in holding me down to the facts of the matter and of history.
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