Introduction
In discussions about the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus, it is common to start with the Gospels. But in my opinion, I think it is best to back up and start with Paul. After all, Paul’s writings are the earliest records we have for the resurrection of Jesus.
Paul, who was a very competent rabbi who was trained at the rabbinic academy called the House of Hillel by ‘Gamaliel,’ was a key rabbinic leader and member of the Sanhedrin. Of his 13 books, critical scholars even accept six of them as being authentic in that we can be certain of the author and date of these writings. There are other scholars such as Luke Timothy Johnson and Raymond Brown who think more than six of them are authored by Paul.
But of the 13 books, the six are Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, and 1 Thessalonians. Bart Ehrman has written a book called Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why The Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are.
In this book, he discusses the Pauline books that are in question as to authorship. I will provide a response to this here by Mike Licona. I think Mike shows there can be a plausible case for the traditional authorship of the disputed New Testament letters that are attributed to Paul.
One common tactic by skeptics is to say Paul yielded no information about the earthly Jesus. In other words, Paul only speaks of the “heavenly Jesus.” Greg Boyd and Paul Eddy tackle this issue in greater detail in their book The: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Tradition. I have written more on that here in my post called “What Can Paul Tell Us About Jesus.” or see Paul and the Historical Jesus: A Case Study in 1 Corinthians by Stephen J. Bedard.
Another tactic is to assert that since Paul never met Jesus, his writings are of no great value. I have heard this objection on several occasions. In response, do you just pitch every writing you have written about someone else if the author never met the person they are writing about? I doubt it. Secondly, remember the following:
As Louis Gottschalk says:
“Written and oral sources are divided into two kinds: primary and secondary. A primary source is the testimony of an eyewitness….A secondary source is the testimony of anyone who is not an eyewitness – that is, of one who was not present at the events of which he tells. A primary source must thus have been produced by a contemporary of the events it narrates. It does not, however, need to be original in the legal sense of the word original – that is, the very document (usually in a written draft) [autographa] whose contents are the subject of discussion – for quite often a later copy or a printed edition will do just as well; and in the case of the Greek and Roman classics, seldom are any but later copies available.” (Understanding History, 53-54).
As we see, since Paul was a contemporary of Jesus, he can be considered as a primary source. He also claimed to have a personal encounter with Jesus (Acts 9:5-9).
Furthermore, Richard Bauckham notes in his book, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, that the Greek word for eyewitness, autoptai, does not have forensic meaning, and in that sense the English word “eyewitnesses” with its suggestion of a metaphor from the law courts, is a little misleading. The autoptai are simply firsthand observers of those events. Bauckham has followed the work of Samuel Byrskog in arguing that while the Gospels though in some ways are a very distinctive form of historiography, they share broadly in the attitude to eyewitness testimony that was common among historians in the Greco-Roman period. These historians valued above all reports of firsthand experience of the events they recounted.
Best of all was for the historian to have been himself a participant in the events (direct autopsy). Failing that (and no historian was present at all the events he needed to recount, not least because some would be simultaneous), they sought informants who could speak from firsthand knowledge and whom they could interview (indirect autopsy).” In other words, Byrskog defines “autopsy” as a visual means of gathering data about a certain object and can include means that are either direct (being an eyewitness) or indirect (access to eyewitnesses).
Byrskog also claims that such autopsy is arguably used by Paul (1 Cor.9:1; 15:5–8; Gal. 1:16), Luke (Acts 1:21–22; 10:39–41) and John (19:35; 21:24; 1 John 1:1–4).
A little time line may be helpful: Remember Paul’s Letters are dated 48 A.D to 60 A.D. However, the information he receives about the death and resurrection of Jesus predate his writings.
The death of Jesus: 30 A.D.—–33A.D
Paul comes to faith between 33 and 35 A.D.
Paul’s Death: 60-65 A.D.
Temple Destroyed: 70 A.D.
Here are some of Paul’s remarks about the resurrection in his letters:
Romans: Date: 55-56 A.D
Romans 1: 1-5
“ Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Here we see that:
1. Jesus is a descendant of David
2. Jesus was spoken of in the Tanakh (the O.T.)
3. Jesus rose from the dead
Romans 6: 1-5
“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”
We see here:
1. Jesus died
2. He was buried
3. He rose from the dead
4. Paul can’t exhort his readers to understand their identity in Jesus without these historical facts
1 Thessalonians: Date: 50 A.D
1 Thess.1: 9 “ For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.”
We see here that 1. Jesus rose from the dead
1 Thess.4: 13-14
“But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.”
Here we see that:
1. Jesus died
2. Jesus rose from the dead
1 Corinthians: 50-55 A.D.
Paul’s usage of the rabbinic terminology “passed on” and “received” (“παραλαμβάνω”) is seen in the creed of 1 Cor. 15:3-8:
“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.”
Here, Paul mentions:
1. Jesus died
2. He was buried
3. He rose
One of the key words in this text is “receive.” While the word “received” (a rabbinical term) can also be used in the New Testament of receiving a message or body of instruction or doctrine (1 Cor.11:23; 15:1, 3; Gal. 1:9, 12 [2x], Col 2:6; 1 Thess 2:13; 4:1; 2 Thess 3:6), it also means means “to receive from another.” This entails that Paul received this information from someone else at an even earlier date. 1 Corinthians is dated 50-55 A.D. Since Jesus was crucified in 30-33 A.D. the letter is only 20-25 years after the death of Jesus. But the actual creed here in 1 Cor. 15 was received by Paul much earlier than 55 A.D.
The majority of scholars who comment think that Paul probably received this information about three years after his conversion, which probably occurred from one to four years after the crucifixion. At that time, Paul visited Jerusalem to speak with Peter and James, each of whom are included in the list of Jesus’ appearances (1 Cor. 15:5, 7; Gal. 1:18–19). This places it at roughly A.D. 32–38.
Even the co-founder Jesus Seminar member John Dominic Crossan writes:
Paul wrote to the Corinthians from Ephesus in the early 50s C.E. But he says in 1 Corinthians 15:3 that “I handed on to you as of first importance which I in turn received.” The most likely source and time for his reception of that tradition would have been Jerusalem in the early 30s when, according to Galatians 1:18, he “went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas [Peter] and stayed with him fifteen days” -Crossan, J.D. & Jonathan L. Reed. Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts. New York: HarperSanFrancisco, A Division of HarperCollins Publishers, 2001, 254.
To read more about this in detail, see my post here called The Earliest Record for The Death and Resurrection of Jesus: 1 Corinthians 15: 3-7.
The point is that Paul received this information long before he even wrote his letter.
Conclusion:
In the end, when it comes to the resurrection, I understand some apologists like to start with the Gospels. But from a tactical perspective, I think a wiser approach is to start with Paul.
Also, feel free to look at our post called Why the Resurrection of Jesus is the Best Explanation For What Happened To Paul.
Unfortunately for believers, nothing Paul says is proof that he understood what he saw- in other words, it is entirely consistent (and way more probable) that he had visions and believed these visions to be the resurrected Jesus. We know from Acts that all the followers of the early church had ‘visions.’ That’s simply quite unreliable evidence.
Well sorry I missed this response. No, the evidence is the opposite of visions which are internal. And Paul and the other authors were already familiar with the difference between the category of visions and what resurrection is. Greek specialist Robert Gundry says “the consistent and exclusive use of soma for the physical body in anthropological contexts resists dematerialization of the resurrection, whether by idealism or by existentialism.” – see Norman Geisler. Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books 1999), 668.
Furthermore, N.T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God shows that the Greek word for resurrection which is “anastasis” was used by ancient Jews, pagans, and Christians as bodily in nature.
“As we see, since Paul was a contemporary of Jesus, he can be considered as a primary source. He also claimed to have a personal encounter with Jesus”
This is inaccurate. He claims he saw Jesus years AFTER Jesus’s death and alleged resurrection — exactly the same caliber of evidence used by Mohammed claiming he saw the angel Gabriel, and Jo Smith claiming visits by the angel Moroni. As 21st century first-world citizens, we require substantial evidence to elevate such claims beyond ordinary exaggeration, hagiography, and plain human invention (perhaps inspired by the fertile religious ideas of competing sects; all taking place in a dynamic environment with socially disrupting pressures due to foreign military occupation, various violent separatist sects, apocolyptical hysteria, etc.)
I will grant Paul is sincere. However, history is FULL of examples of religiously inspired people acting in ways that seem irrational from our perspective. Such does not make claims of wild miracles true. That does NOT constitute hard evidence, not when history offers countless examples of human irrationality, especially among oppressed social groups.
Paul, writing at least 20
No Felix. Go back and read the post very carefully again and read what a historian says is the difference between primary and secondary sources. Also, as far as your vision hypothesis, I have dealt with that in greater detail elsewhere. http://chab123.wordpress.com/2014/02/06/what-did-the-disciples-see-a-closer-look-at-the-resurrection-appearances/
Your 20 years later doesn’t work as well. And please see our The Earliest Record for The Death and Resurrection of Jesus: 1 Corinthians 15: 3-7- http://chab123.wordpress.com/2012/04/02/the-earliest-record-for-the-death-and-resurrection-of-jesus-1-corinthians-15-3-7/
And judging by the rest of your comments, you’ve failed to understand the Second Temple period. You are striving for the analogical objection which fails. There is zero external evidence for Mormonism .
I’m sorry you are unaware that there is no consensus on gospel composition date. Bauckam has a nice convenient theory for christians, but it is simple speculation. An intellectually honest answer is that we simply do not KNOW who wrote the gospels, which parts were eye-witness accounts, and which were 2nd and 3rd hand hearsay. Those are the sources, as is Paul- none of whom are real contemporaries of Jesus. I understand that your faith compels you to assert categorically which history doesn’t reveal. That’s just the way it is.
It’s no more irrational to be a muslim than it is to be a christian. Both necessitate belief in things which cannot be proven, and both necessitate belief in things which we know cannot happen by normal laws of physics. Therefore a greater standard of proof is necessary to support both beliefs than is currently offered by defenders. I’m sorry, history simply does not support christianity.
(jesus crucifiction is irrelevant- it’s the resurrection that demands proof, and you’ve got nothing but ancient hearsay, no matter how angry that makes you and Bauckham. Facts are facts, sorry).
Nice, and you fail to show you have taken historicity 101 of the NT. Your high standard associated with hearsay testimony won’t work with examining the claims of eyewitnesses related to historical events. Once an eyewitness of an historical event dies, everything that witness claims is no longer open to cross examination. by your standards, we would have to ignore anything that can’t be offered by a living eyewitness (and therefore vigorously cross examined). So please apply your hearsey charge with everything in antiquity and see what you can know.
And please go back and read the difference between primary and secondary sources that is given by an actual historian.
“we simply do not KNOW who wrote the gospels, which parts were eye-witness accounts, and which were 2nd and 3rd hand hearsay.”—
Once again, you make a knowledge claim and act as if you’ve figured this out. You need to put some more work in to this topic.
Now, no need to get insulting. I understand you are upset because you are defending claims of extremely uncommon miracles based on 2000-year-old contentious second-hand sources.
Eric: “Your high standard associated with hearsay testimony won’t work with examining the claims of eyewitnesses related to historical events.”
Historical events are explainable without altering laws of physics nor claims of superhuman powers. When the latter claims are introduced, a proportionally larger burden of proof must be met. Apples and oranges.
I do not claim to have anything figured out. To the contrary, I’m arguing with any fundamentalist who pretends to believe there is sufficient historical evidence to ‘prove’ the gospel accounts as more likely than the normal, mundane human processes that we’ve seen elsewhere so many times.
I was not trying to insult you at all. You keep making assertions and you are making knowledge claims.
You say “Historical events are explainable without altering laws of physics nor claims of superhuman powers. When the latter claims are introduced, a proportionally larger burden of proof must be met. Apples and oranges.”
Well, I won’t resort to calling you a fundamentalist here. After all, you think this is “proven”- do you have certitude? In order for a judgment to belong in the realm of certitude, it must meet the following criteria: (1) it cannot be challenged by the consideration of new evidence that results from improved observation, nor can it be criticized by improved reasoning or the detection of inadequacies or errors in the reasoning we have done. Beyond such challenge or criticism, such judgments are indubitable, or beyond doubt.
A judgment is subject to doubt if there is any possibility at all (1) of its being challenged in the light of additional or more acute observations or (2) of its being criticized on the basis of more cogent or more comprehensive reasoning.
You keep making comments such as “altering laws of physics”….I am not sure if in this case if you are trying to really say “the laws of nature can’t be altered in any way.” If so, I can do that right now when I throw my phone in the air and catch it. I just intervened into the law of gravity. Now I didn’t change the law. But I as a human can intervene into it. This goes back to Hume. See Hume’s Abject Failure, by John Earman.
I don’t need to ‘prove’ the Gospels and the NT. All I need is reasonable certainty or sufficient evidence. I don’t need exhaustive knowledge or exhaustive evidence, or certitude. I have enough evidence to know the historical bedrock- Jesus died, Paul was converted, and his followers think they saw him rise from the dead. I have plenty of atheists that concede those points as well. Whether we believe in miracles or resurrections is a philosophical argument that really goes back to Hume. But given the laws of nature cannot exist without nature itself existing, you will eventually see you need a transcendent cause that allows you to offer all your naturalistic explanations.
I was not trying to insult you at all. You keep making assertions and you are making knowledge claims. I was advising you to go deeper and make sure you have the correct info.
You say “Historical events are explainable without altering laws of physics nor claims of superhuman powers. When the latter claims are introduced, a proportionally larger burden of proof must be met. Apples and oranges.”
I won’t resort to calling you a fundamentalist here. After all, you think your comments here are “proven”- in that you have certitude? In order for a judgment to belong in the realm of certitude, it must meet the following criteria: (1) it cannot be challenged by the consideration of new
evidence that results from improved observation, nor can it be criticized by improved reasoning or the detection of inadequacies or errors in the reasoning we have done. Beyond such challenge or criticism, such judgments are
indubitable, or beyond doubt.
A judgment is subject to doubt if there is any possibility at all (1) of its being challenged in the light of additional or more acute observations or (2) of its being criticized on the
basis of more cogent or more comprehensive reasoning.
You keep making comments such as “altering
laws of physics”….I am not sure if in this case if you are trying to really say “the laws of nature can’t be altered in any way.” If so, I can do that right now when I throw my phone in the air and catch it. I just intervened into the
law of gravity. Now I didn’t change the law. But I as a human can intervene into it. This goes back to Hume. See Hume’s Abject Failure, by John Earman.
I don’t need to ‘prove’ the Gospels and the NT. All I need is reasonable certainty or sufficient evidence. I don’t need exhaustive knowledge or exhaustive evidence,
or certitude. I have enough evidence to know the historical bedrock- Jesus died, Paul was converted, and his followers think they saw him rise from the dead. I have plenty of atheists that concede those points as well.
Whether we believe in miracles or resurrections is a philosophical argument that really goes back to Hume. But given the laws of nature cannot exist without nature itself existing, you will eventually see you need a transcendent cause that allows you to offer all your naturalistic explanations.
You have me confused for someone who disputes that Jesus died and that followers believe they saw him afterwards .I don’t dispute that, so please save yourself the trouble of repeating those claims.
If you are asserting that the gospel accounts of wild miracle claims are true, then yes, you absolutely need to prove them beyond reasonable doubt. You have not, nor can you given the dearth of evidence. I’ll simply repeat (since you keep implying otherwise) that I’m not certain the gospel accounts are false. Anyone with a decent education in anthropology, psychology, and comparative religion can come up with several hypotheses that better explain the gospel than a literal reading.
No, I do not need a transcendent cause for my naturalistic explanations. At least, not on the historical level, which is the subject at hand.
From my experience with christians on forums, many of those more intellectually inclined try to defend christianity by referring to the god of the philosophers. Unfortunately for them, such a god has nothing to do with the god/gods of the anthology better known as the bible. Let’s try to keep the god of the philosophers out of this, since it is irrelevant.
Hmmm.
“Anyone with a decent education in anthropology, psychology, and comparative religion can come up with several hypotheses that better explain the gospel than a literal reading. ”
Sure, you can come up with any hypothesis as people have done centuries starting at the time of Jesus. I know people in these fields and others that still think the resurrection hypothesis holds up fine. For those that come up with alternatives, that doesn’t mean the hypothesis can meet the tests of explanatory power, explanatory scope and plausibility. And making false analogies such as the resurrection is just as like another claim like Mormonism, or whatever won’t get a hearing as well. Please stick with the Second Temple Jewish context where the resurrection claim is.
Beyond Reasonable doubt? Well using Bayes confirmation theory we can get a pretty good rating on the likelihood of the resurrection. I haven’t said anything about the various naturalistic hypothesis that are on the floor and that have been leveled at us for centuries. You are welcome to give me some.
You seem to concede these points 1. Jesus’ death by crucifixion 2. Jesus’ followers sincerely believed Jesus rose from the dead 3. Early eyewitness testimony to belief in Jesus’ resurrection 4. The conversion of Jesus’ skeptical brother, James 5. Paul, once an enemy of the early faith, became a commited follower of Jesus the Messiah. Given I haven’t said anything about the various naturalistic hypothesis that are on the floor and that have been leveled at us for centuries, you are welcome to give me some. But whatever you present will need to account for:
1. The postmortem appearances 2. The origin of the disciple’s use of the category of ‘resurrection’ vs them using categories like apparitions, translation, etc… I left a post in this discussion called “What did the Disciples See?” You can read more about it there if needed.
3. A high Christology in a very short time period/The birth of the Messianic Movement-pre 70 A.D.
I have heard just about every one of naturalistic possibilities for the last 20 years. Remember, please provide first century evidence and avoid anachronisms.
As far as the issue of natural laws/nature, I guess I will drop that. It is a matter of causality. And the God of the philosophers being irrelevant is a simple way to avoid the issue. But since you kept bringing up the laws of physics issue, maybe you can get to where Fred Hoyle (the British astrophysicist )was before he died when he said,
“A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”
As far as what is literal and not, that is an issue of hermeneutics.
As to the list of your concessions, I concede only 1 and some version of 2. Nobody can say with strong certainty what people closest to Jesus really thought. Unfortunately, they did not leave any writings, unlike Paul. Paul, of course, explicitly claimed his gospel was direct revelation- not that he heard it through disciples. I do know that early on one faction believed in a bodily resurrection- we know from heretical sources that there were factions that believed in non-bodily resurrections.
You’ve heard every naturalistic hypothesis and you believe each and every one is less likely than send-hand miracle claims!? It sounds like you are special pleading, assuming we have sufficient ANE sources to rule out EVERY single one of the naturalistic explanations. While each culture is unique, we are all humans. Jesus grew up in a tinderbox. Brutal occupation by pagans even though God promised to keep the holy land for the Jews, various sects springing up, apocalyptic preachers, faith healers/miracle workers, demon-possessed peasantry- there are too many factors to rule out ordinary, human invention- no matter how sincere the inventors.
My point is NOT that the resurrection did not happen- maybe it did. I’m simply saying the dearth of unambiguous sources from ANY of the key players (no, I certainly do not count Paul since he wrote years after Jesus’s crucifiction and was not from the Aramaic peasant culture of Jesus’s galilee) doesn’t allow the detailed knowledge necessary to adduce what actually happened.
“As to the list of your concessions, I concede only 1 and some version of 2. Nobody can say with strong certainty what people closest to Jesus really thought. Unfortunately, they did not leave any writings, unlike Paul. Paul, of course, explicitly claimed his gospel was direct revelation- not that he heard it through disciples. I do know that early on one faction believed in a bodily resurrection- we know from heretical sources that there were factions that believed in non-bodily resurrections. “
Response:
I am sorry, but it seems you just don’t have the info about the writings of the NT. We have the“eyewitness”
(autoptai) which includes both direct and indirect forms of this in the Gospels. The autoptai are simply firsthand observers of those events. “Autopsy,” is a visual means of gathering data about a certain object and can include means that are either direct (being an eyewitness) or indirect (access to eyewitnesses). Autopsy is arguably used by Paul (1 Cor.9:1; 15:5–8; Gal. 1:16), Luke (Acts 1:21–22; 10:39–41) and John (19:35; 21:24; 1 John 1:1–4).
Matthew and John are direct witnesses and Luke and
Mark are indirect. It doesn’t matter if you have either direct or indirect. You have already shown me you are simply
dismissing what an historian claims about the difference between primary and secondary sources. I have already pointed out the problems with the hearsay charge. If you want to stick with this, then do be it. But please apply that standard to all of history and see what you can know.
As far as Paul,
“ For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For
I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” (Galatians 1:11-12).
Let’s look at 1 Corinthians 15: 3-5:
“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.”
While we always need to look at the context of where the word “recieved” is used, in both 1 Cor. 15:3 and Galatians 1:12, the word “received” (“παραλαμβάνω”) means to receive something transmitted from someone else, which
could be by an oral transmission or from others from whom the tradition proceeds. So in this case, what is helpful here is to differentiate between essence and form. The essence
of the gospel, that Jesus of Nazareth was truly the Son of God, was revealed to Paul (he received it) on the life changing moment on the Damascus road. Paul realized that the Christians that he had been persecuting had been right all along about Jesus being the Messiah.
As far as the form the gospel, this includes the historical undergirding of certain events, certain phraseology used to express the new truth and doubtless many other
things that were passed onto Paul (which fits in a Jewish culture), by those other than him as we see in the creed in 1 Cor. 15 (I already left me ink which you have dismissed). As I said, Paul’s usage of the rabbinic terminology
“passed on” and “received” is seen in the creed of 1 Cor. 15:3-5. This entails that Paul received this information from someone else at an even earlier date (within 2 ro 3 yrs after Jesus died and rose).
Also,let’s go over it again:
Paul’s Letters are dated 48 A.D to 60 A.D.
30 A.D.—–33A.D (The death
of Jesus)
Paul comes to faith between 33 and 35 A.D.
60-65 A.D. Paul’s Death
70 A.D. (Temple Destroyed)
But the info about the resurrection in 1 Cor. 15:3-8 and 1 Cor. 11:23 along with other, short Christian creeds include II Timothy 2:8, and Romans 1:3-4 show that the core
teachings of the Gospel (Jesus died for our sins and rose again) pre-date Paul’s Letters. The earliest record we have for the resurrection is 1 Cor. 15:3-8 which two atheists and one very liberal Christian scholar agree with me here:
Michael Goulder (Atheist NT Prof. at Birmingham) “…it (the creed of 1 Cor. 15:3-8) goes back at least to what Paul was taught when he was converted, a couple of years after the crucifixion.” – Goulder, Michael, “The Baseless Fabric of a Vision,” in Gavin D’Costa, editor, Resurrection Reconsidered (Oxford, 1996), 48.
Gerd Lüdemann (Atheist Prof of NT at Göttingen): says: “the elements in the tradition are to be dated to the
first two years after the crucifixion of Jesus…not later than three years… the formation of the appearance traditions mentioned in I Cor.15.3-8 falls into the time between 30 and 33 CE.” – Lüdemann, Gerd, The Resurrection of Jesus, trans. by Bowden (Fortress, 1994), 171-72.
Robert Funk (Non-Christian scholar, founder of the Jesus Seminar) says: “The conviction that Jesus had risen from the dead had already taken root by the time Paul was converted about 33 C.E. On the assumption that Jesus died about 30 C.E., the time for development was thus two
or three years at most.” – Hoover, Roy, and the Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus, 466
Conclusion: the resurrection claim didn’t start 20 years later.
As far as the word “resurrection”–The two words are used for resurrection in the New Testament “anastasis” (rising up) and “egersis” (waking up), both imply a physical body.
Furthermore, the use of the word “opethe” (the Greek word for appeared) shows the Gospel writers did believe that Jesus appeared physically. “There you will see (opethe) him” (Matt. 28:7); “The Lord has risen and has appeared (opethe) to Simon” (Luke 24:24). When they used “opethe” here, it means that He appeared physically to them. So when Paul gives his list of appearances in 1 Cor. 15,
the issues becomes whether the appearance to him is the same as it was to the disciples.
There is no doubt the post resurrection body of Jesus (after the ascension) had to be somewhat different than the body the disciples saw. Also, whenever the New Testament mentions the word body, in the context of referring to an individual human being, the Greek word “soma” always refers to a literal, physical body.Greek specialist Robert Gundry says “the consistent and exclusive use of soma for the physical body in anthropological contexts resists dematerialization of the resurrection, whether by idealism or by existentialism.
No, I am not using special pleading at all. I have taught, written, and spoken on the resurrection for a long time, read the sources on both sides and am familar with just about all the naturalistic alternatives on the table. I might suggest reading Tim McGrew’s published article here. Lots on the miracles subject as well. http://www.lydiamcgrew.com/Resurrectionarticlesinglefile.pdf
Thanks for responding. I guess our differences boil down to our confidence in assessing Jesus’s ANE environment. You believe there is sufficient evidence to discount every single natural explanation (explanations which work when dealing with thousands of miracle claims (some very different from the ANE, while others sharing commonalities)) for NT miracles. I believe the relevant history is insufficient to rule out normal, human invention.
All your sources post-date Jesus’s death. And any evidence you have that Matthew and John were eyewitnesses is nothing but conjecture. May be true and may not be true, while most historians would argue that such is not likely.
It is a tiresome red herring, the claim that my holding ancient miracle claims to a higher standard than standard history constitutes a disregarding of historical method wholesale. I’ll trust you to re-read and to reassess your epistemological conflation.
Well I know a lot about the ANE environment. I have been in mission work to Jewish people for awhile and have studied it quite a bit. Each miracle claim needs to be studied its own context and then we can ask what the evidence is for it. You keep talking about naturalistic possibilities, but you have yet to list one actual hypothesis.
You have totally dismissed my points about Paul’s ltters as I figured you would. So the Gospels need to be dated at 33 ad or maybe 35 ad? Luke’s Gospel, only being dated at 60 -65 ad shows displays a variety of historical figures that have been confirmed. For example, Luke gives correct titles for the following officials: Cyprus, proconsul (13:7–8); Thessalonica, politarchs (17:6); Ephesus, temple wardens (19:35); Malta, the first man of the island. Each of these has been confirmed by Roman usage. In all, Luke names thirty-two countries, fifty-four cities, and nine islands without an error. (see See Geisler, N. L., BECA, pg 431).
So you are assuming the Gospels can’t be trusted which lays the burden of proof on you. Not to mention, there is the entire oral phase before the written Gospels. I already showed the resurrection was being proclaimed from the very start. In the end, it is really your epistemology and metaphysics that needs to be worked out. You metaphysics dictates what you can KNOW in an epistemological sense. I will be moving on now. I hope you get the time to read the McGrew article from Blackwell’s Companion.
Take care.
No, you are misunderstanding me. Like many apologists, once you hear that I dispute a part of the gospels, you fallaciously argue that I’m claiming “they cannot be trusted.” I’m simply saying the more extravagant the claim (especially in ancient sources documenting the lives of illiterate peasants), the more sourcing necessary to confirm the claim. So just because Luke mentions a governor, that says absolutely nothing about Luke’s claim of supernatural miracles.
I don’t need to list a single naturalistic hypothesis, since my position is that there’s insufficient data to draw firm conclusions. I need not defend any specific hypothesis- I simply note what you cannot challenge- that we have no unambiguous sources of the key players and this dearth limits the conclusions that can be drawn. You, apparently, don’t let this stop you from declaring NT miracle claims true and ALL naturalistic fallacies false (or less likely). I think the dearth of sourcing and the incredibly parochial nature of the events in question strongly suggest mundane explanations. Occam’s razor is on my side.
I like how apologists always try to pretend the burden of proof is on the skeptics of wild miracle claims. It’s a neat rhetorical trick that allows believers to tell themselves that their unreasonable beliefs are in fact reasonable, when simple logic proves otherwise. I understand this need to have religious views seen as intellectually valid- I was a devout christian myself until I became a young adult. Even after my reading of history and psychology started revealing problems in my theological assumptions, I also resisted this and found rhetorical tricks to justify my belief in ancient supernatural claims.
“We have the“eyewitness”(autoptai) which includes both direct and indirect forms of this in the Gospels. The autoptai are simply firsthand observers of those events. “Autopsy,” is a visual means of gathering data about a certain object and can include means that are either direct (being an eyewitness) or indirect (access to eyewitnesses).”
I’m sorry, but you most certainly do not. You have nothing more than a theory which MIGHT be true, and very well might be false. You do not know who wrote the gospels, you do not know which parts were supplied by eyewitnesses or by rumor or fabricated by the author. You simply do not and cannot know, yet here you are proclaiming we have direct witnesses in the gospels.
You confuse wishful thinking for certitude. They are quite different, sorry.
Hi Felix, I believe OI already responded to you in the past. You are welcome to read our post called “What did the Disciples See?” http://chab123.wordpress.com/2014/02/06/what-did-the-disciples-see-a-closer-look-at-the-resurrection-appearances/