Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

paul didnt say that they checked.

theterminator wrote:paul didnt say that they checked.

It's too bad we don't have more detailed and a wider range of information for about 100 years after the event. We have Celsus' claims, eg. about Pantera being Jesus' father, but seeing that he wrote in 150 AD or so, it is hard to give him more reliability than the gospels in his version.

It appears that these four gospels were preached by the hundreds or thousands of Christians across the empire in that same period of 100 years. If the claims made were too off base and verifiably incorrect, it seems they wouldn't promote such false stories.

The Mormons might claim that Joseph Smith got some tablets in the woods and the gospels can say 17 or so Christians saw Jesus at different times after the resurrection, and who but the witnesses could refute it?
But if the Mormons said 500 witnesses saw the tablets (they don't) or the Christians said 500 witnesses saw Jesus, it seems easier for people at the time to find out the truth about and less likely someone would be bold enough to make up.

Anyway, I don't find the claim of 500 witnesses of Jesus so unrealistic. We have even greater numbers today who claim to see Mary in the sky.

Here is a photo of a crowd watching the Mother of God:


Perhaps you could find a comparable group of people in the 1st century who claimed to have a mass sighting of Jesus. If we are talking about the Ascension, I suppose it could have involved a sky sighting.

i saw a program on nat geo about marian apparitions

my prediction is that in a hundred years from now mary could become the 4th member of trinity.

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theterminator wrote:i saw a program on nat geo about marian apparitions

my prediction is that in a hundred years from now mary could become the 4th member of trinity.

If it didn't happen so far, it won't happen in 100 years unless there is some freak development.
So far the most that happened is that some RCs consider her coredemptrix.

https://www.google.com/search?q=mary+co ... 8&oe=utf-8

The "trinity" is such an entrenched concept that Roman Catholics will never abandon it (p < 0.01), because there is no social pressure to do so and no empirical evidence available. Same thing with "transubstantiation." Questions on which there is both social/political pressure and disagreement within Christendom (such as birth control, etc.) are anyone's guess.

Peter Kirby wrote:The "trinity" is such an entrenched concept that Roman Catholics will never abandon it (p < 0.01), because there is no social pressure to do so and no empirical evidence available.

For that matter, Trinitarianism could be correct even if Jesus is not uniquely a God-Man.
To start with, the word for God in Genesis is in the plural - "Elohim". Etymologically, it says: "Gods".
And then we have the time that Abraham got a visit from God in the form of three beings.

So we are not really stuck with a dilemma between Christ-God and Unitarianism.

Maybe I should start a new thread (I apologize if I haven't read all the comments here), but in a recent book of Richard Miller on Resurrection I read that Justin, First Apology 21 is evidence of three simple facts, precisely that:
1) Justin did recognize that the Gospel empty tomb stories are entirely similar to these of the pagan myths of translation body etc.,
2) Justin did recognize that the Pagans didn't insist on the absolute truth of these stories...
3) and apparently in contradiction with the points 1 and 2, Justin did insist that his Gospel stories were absolute truth while these of the pagans were satanic products. Period.

why is this dogmatism by Justin built on the (by him) recognized "sand" of gospel episodes of resurrection?

Because at Justin's time some Christians did claims of superiority against the pagan world to conquer it. Hence their dogmatic literalism.

Miller points out 1 Cor 15 in a note and he concludes that even if before of Paul early Christians did invent these conventional stories about empty tomb etc with ocular witnesses of postmortem appearances, that has no effect oh his thesis that these stories were invented on paper and added on the original myth.

My personal conclusion is that, even under a MINIMAL historicist paradigm, it's even doubt that an empty tomb was necessary in order to preach the resurrection of Jesus (a claim that becomes per se therefore totally enigmatic, since it refers only to a simple belief, not linked to an empirical reference as the mention of an empty tomb would be). In short, if you want argue for a real resurrection of an HJ, you should be able to do that without doing NEVER mention of an empty tomb.

Giuseppe wrote:Maybe I should start a new thread (I apologize if I haven't read all the comments here), but in a recent book of Richard Miller on Resurrection I read that Justin, First Apology 21 is evidence of three simple facts, precisely that:
1) Justin did recognize that the Gospel empty tomb stories are entirely similar to these of the pagan myths of translation body etc.,
2) Justin did recognize that the Pagans didn't insist on the absolute truth of these stories...
3) and apparently in contradiction with the points 1 and 2, Justin did insist that his Gospel stories were absolute truth while these of the pagans were satanic products. Period.

I am not sure how these raise a major problem about Justin. Justin could recognize similarity to paganism with the empty tomb and that the pagans' empty tomb stories were invented, but still say that Jesus' own empty tomb was a real fact, because of some additional distinguishing criteria. Those criteria could be the ancient Biblical prophecies of the resurrection or the apostles persevering for their faith despite persecution.

This is only a test after some technical feature that I could not log in and ads were popping up. Delete soon I assume.
First let me test if I can edit it. If I can and I also can post a new post without getting logged out, I can delete this.

rakovsky wrote:

Giuseppe wrote:Maybe I should start a new thread (I apologize if I haven't read all the comments here), but in a recent book of Richard Miller on Resurrection I read that Justin, First Apology 21 is evidence of three simple facts, precisely that:
1) Justin did recognize that the Gospel empty tomb stories are entirely similar to these of the pagan myths of translation body etc.,
2) Justin did recognize that the Pagans didn't insist on the absolute truth of these stories...
3) and apparently in contradiction with the points 1 and 2, Justin did insist that his Gospel stories were absolute truth while these of the pagans were satanic products. Period.

I am not sure how these raise a major problem about Justin. Justin could recognize similarity to paganism with the empty tomb and that the pagans' empty tomb stories were invented, but still say that Jesus' own empty tomb was a real fact, because of some additional distinguishing criteria. Those criteria could be the ancient Biblical prophecies of the resurrection or the apostles persevering for their faith despite persecution.

Which are these ''some additional distinguishing criteria'' for Justin? He gives nothing in Apology 21. He gives only his genetic fallacy: demons invented the pagan stories 'therefore' the pagan stories are false. Justin assumes that these stories were similar to Gospel stories and this is sufficient for Miller to establish his case. In addition, Miller lists 77 examples of body translation cases in pagan leterature, about mythical and historical figures.

The best simple explanation, if Jesus existed or not, is that even before of Paul, a tomb was added to the original belief (i.e., the pure and simple resurrection of Jesus, beyond what it did mean for ancient Christians, if a terrextrial or sublunar event) - see 1 Cor 15:4 - only because of mere conformism to mediterranean literary conventions: it was 100% expected that the object of a cult (a historical or mythical personage) had to have an empty tomb and a body translation/ascension.

Occam prohibits that a historical Jesus was buried in a tomb, just as Occam prohibits that a historical Empedocles/Pythagoras/etc did disappear after the death.

Maurice Casey would be right, if a historical Jesus existed: Jesus didn't leave no tomb at all after his death, because he was likely buried in a common tomb of criminals.

Thew was no tomb for a historical Jesus ---> there was no empty tomb for a historical Jesus.