Your religion is nothing more than luck and geography

[NavyDave]

So does that mean both Soccer fans on ES are unlucky and think that God has forsaken them because they were born in the USA instead of a place that has only soccer as an activity?

On a serious note, regardless of geography, people would still accuse me of thinking I am Allah, Dairy Cow, God, Head of lettuce, Smiling Buddha, or Tree Spirit's gift to mankind which I don't. But I do think that of my little princess....

[elkabong82]

Your religion is also likely an ancient and vain attempt to answer the mysteries of life by men nowhere even close to being sufficently prepared to answering them, and originally was meant as a means of control over a population.

[techboy]

If people deviate so little from what they are taught when they are kids and the brain is like a sponge that soaks up pretty much anything adults tell them, tabla rasa if you will, then does this fact not destroy the argument from many people who say that jesus is the only way to "heaven."

1. You start with an "if" that is totally unproven, so the rest of your statement is at best idle speculation.

I just today read that Tony Blair, who grew up in one of the most secular countries on Earth, a place where churches are tourist attractions and not places of worship, converted to Catholicism.

Sir Antony Flew was the greatest and most influential atheist philosopher of the 20th century, and he became a deist before he died.

There are multiple other personal stories in this thread that defy the notion.

Geography and upbringing would seem to have an influence, but it seems that it's hardly a Skinnerian determinism at work.

2. Even making that rather large assumption that what you suggest is true, the answer is still no, as I explained earlier. There are multiple possible explanations that fit with both geographical determinism and a loving, exclusive God.

and originally was meant as a means of control over a population.

As I mentioned earlier, when it comes to Christianity, this is simply not borne out by the historical record.

Christianity orginated as a faith of the powerless, downtrodden, and poor, and it was brutally suppressed by those in power, not used as a means of anything. Becoming a Christian earned you ridicule, shunning, jail, torture, and even execution, and this did not change for around three centuries.

[WVUforREDSKINS]

1. You start with an "if" that is totally unproven, so the rest of your statement is at best idle speculation.

But for those who claim the only way to heaven is through Jesus Christ (or any other way for that matter), does that not completely kill odds for some people to "heaven" from day one?

[Trippster]

Buddhism is really the best one. No one declares war in the name of inner peace.

But there is no evidence that Buddhism is a tenable religion. What evidence is there for Buddhism? Even though Christianity is blamed for deaths around the world, you shouldn't judge a religion based on its fringe elements. Christianity makes much more sense to me because it is not a blind faith but rather has evidence in its favor.

[elkabong82]

\

As I mentioned earlier, when it comes to Christianity, this is simply not borne out by the historical record.

Christianity orginated as a faith of the powerless, downtrodden, and poor, and it was brutally suppressed by those in power, not used as a means of anything. Becoming a Christian earned you ridicule, shunning, jail, torture, and even execution, and this did not change for around three centuries.

I wasn't referring to Christianity under Jesus Christ, I was referring to those who gathered all the texts together and decided what would be included after his death. I should have been more specific, or just stated that they are used at times to control/manipulate groups and populations and left it at that.

[Hunter44]

Christianity makes much more sense to me because it is not a blind faith but rather has evidence in its favor.

Is this a serious statement?

[Drew_Fl]

No one chooses where they are going to be born, it is all by chance. By chance, I had Catholic parents. By chance therefore, I was Catholic. I could have very well been born in the Middle East and therefore I would be a Muslim. Same as China, I would have been told there is no god. India, I could have been sikh, Hindu, or Muslim. New York, I could have been a Jew (ok kinda a joke) but you get the idea.

You're beliefs are just that, chance, and what you have convinced yourself is true and right. It doesn't make them right. It is sheer luck and the power of the human mind.

And for all of you who believe that accepting Jesus is the only way into heaven, what about everyone who lived before he walked the earth?

don't you just sound all high and mighty...what made you come on here to bad mouth everyone's way of life? if you were born in the US in modern times, there is more religous variety than in any country in the history of the recorded world. you can believe whatever you want and i don't think anyone on here has a problem with it, but when you start talking down about people who believe things just b/c you don't, you lose credibility with everyone.

[Zguy28]

Is this a serious statement?

Sure it is. You don't think there is historical evidence for the claims of Christianity?

[Zguy28]

I wasn't referring to Christianity under Jesus Christ, I was referring to those who gathered all the texts together and decided what would be included after his death. I should have been more specific, or just stated that they are used at times to control/manipulate groups and populations and left it at that.

Then that wasn't the originally about. :whoknows:

[elkabong82]

But there is no evidence that Buddhism is a tenable religion. What evidence is there for Buddhism? Even though Christianity is blamed for deaths around the world, you shouldn't judge a religion based on its fringe elements. Christianity makes much more sense to me because it is not a blind faith but rather has evidence in its favor.

Christianity is based on the teachings of Jesus Christ, Buddhism is based on the teachings of Siddhartha Guatama. The existence of both men are based on second-hand accounts from their followers and historical texts written many years afterward.

[Hunter44]

Sure it is. You don't think there is historical evidence for the claims of Christianity?

Not in the way that I think the OP is implying. What kinda claims do you believe have true historical evidence??

[elkabong82]

Then that wasn't the originally about. :whoknows:

I don't understand what you are trying to say here.

[WVUforREDSKINS]

don't you just sound all high and mighty...what made you come on here to bad mouth everyone's way of life? if you were born in the US in modern times, there is more religous variety than in any country in the history of the recorded world. you can believe whatever you want and i don't think anyone on here has a problem with it, but when you start talking down about people who believe things just b/c you don't, you lose credibility with everyone.

Never talked down to anyone.

Sure, the US allows more religious freedom than anywhere else. A good thing too, that I support.

[techboy]

But for those who claim the only way to heaven is through Jesus Christ (or any other way for that matter), does that not completely kill odds for some people to "heaven" from day one?

It seems to me that rather than proving your point, that chart does exactly the opposite. Those numbers are similar, but they are hardly the same, proving that nobody's locked in irrevocably because of location or upbringing.

I wasn't referring to Christianity under Jesus Christ, I was referring to those who gathered all the texts together and decided what would be included after his death.

In point of fact, that doesn't really fly either historically, at least in terms of what you seem to be implying. Perhaps it would be helpful to review the process by which the Christian Canon was actually formed. It's not what a lot of people think.

While it is true that certain texts were chosen to be included in the Bible and others were not, this was for good reason, and the criteria were not all that different than modern historians today use when assessing sources. To wit:

The following quotations are taken from Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels, by Dr. Craig A. Evans.

First, on why the New Testament texts are considered to be the best sources of information about Jesus (pg.55):

Not only do the earliest New Testament Gospel sources date to the middle of the first century, Paul also refers to Jesus' teaching, to his words at the Last Supper, to his death and burial, and to his resurrection. This is important, for Paul, who was converted to the Christian faith in the 30s, knew some of the original disciples and apostles, such as Peter and James, the brother of Jesus. Consequently, the New Testament writings provide us with early information about Jesus. This is why writings believed to have originated in the first century, especially in the middle of the first century, are widely accepted as our best sources of information about the historical Jesus.

How do these compare to the Gnostic Gospels? From page 56:

When were the Gnostic Gospels and other extracanonical sources written? All of the Gnostic Gospels and extracanonical sources were written in the second century or later. Typical dates range from A.D. 140 to 160. Some scholars argue for earlier dates, such as 120 to 140 (and some argue for later dates). Although it is theoretically possible that early, reliable information about Jesus not found in the New Testament writings could be preserved in some of these second-century writings, it is not likely. This is why biblical scholars in the past have rarely appealed to writings such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter and the Gospel of Mary for additional information about Jesus. These writings are viewed as simply too late- written at least one hundred years after the death of Jesus, or fifty to eighty years after the New Testament Gospels were written.

So what about the Gospel of Thomas specifically? From page 67:

Most of the codices that make up the Nag Hammadi Library have been dated to the second half of the fourth century, though of course many of the writings within these old books date to earlier periods. The codex that contains the Gospel of Thomas may date to the first half of the fourth century. In the case of the Gospel of Thomas itself we have the three Greek fragments from Oxyrhynchus that date to the beginning and middle of the third century. One of the fragments may date as early as A.D. 200. Although almost all scholars concede that Thomas could have been composed as early as the middle of the second century, the evidence strongly suggests that Thomas was not composed before A.D. 175 or 180.

Why A.D. 175 or 180? From page 76-77

Let me make this emphatically clear: This is where all of the evidence takes us: (1) the association of the Gospel of Thomas with "Judas Thomas," (2) the arrangement and order of the sayings explained by hundreds of Syriac catchwords that link the sayings, and (3) the coherence of the readings in Thomas, which differ from the Greek New Testament Gospels, with the readings either in the Diatessaron or other Christian Syriac works from this period compellingly argue for a late-second-century Syrian origin of the Gospel of Thomas. In short, it is this flood of factors that point to the Eastern, Syriac-speaking church, a church that knows the New Testament Gospels primarily- perhaps exclusively- through Tatian's Diatessaron, a work not composed before A.D. 170 , that persuades me that the Gospel of Thomas does not offer students of the Gospels early, independent material that can be used for critical research into the life and teaching of Jesus. Reliance on this writing can only lead to a distorted portrait of the historical Jesus.

Please note, even if one does not accept Evans' strong arguments about Thomas' late dating, scholars still don't place it earlier than the mid-second century.

What's more, there's usually a sense of conspiracy and sneakiness when some discuss how the Canon came to be, which is kind of what you seem to be talking about. People talk like a bunch of leaders got together in a smoky room and took a vote.

In point of fact, the formation of the canon occured by acclamation, and there was never really a vote at all. Eventually, pronouncements were made (seperately) by the Western and Eastern church as to what the canon was, but there was never a vote, and in point of fact, the Eastern Church kept the canon open longer, with some interesting implications, as discussed in Reinventing Jesus, pgs 131-132:

The canon of the New Testament was a list of authoritative books "that imposed themselves as such" (24) upon the early church. As early as the label Scripture was applied to any books of the New Testament, the four Gospels and Paul's thirteen letters were included. As well, Acts, 1 Peter, and 1 John were generally undisputed. The same can be said for the most part for Hebrews and Revelation. By the end of the fourth century, the canon was effectively, though not officially, closed in the West. In the East, certain influential voices argued for a canon of twenty-seven books, but some writers dissented. It is important to realize that their dissent did not move in the direction of a larger canon but a smaller one. Only a few books on the edges of the canon were disputed. These same writers rejected outright the heretical books, if they discussed them at all.

What are we to make of the fact that in the East the canon remained an open question for a long time? This belongs to the larger question of why no official churchwide council or no ancient creed made a pronouncement on the canon. We can draw at least three implications from this fact.

First, there was never any great pressure within the church to accept certain books as canonical (25). This makes it all the more impressive that the church came to such firm conclusions about the majority of books early on, and the rest in due time.

Second, because there was no pronouncement, some books naturally were debated, at least ina part of the church. the debates always related to apostolicity, catholicity, and orthodoxy. On this score, the shorter letters came up short on catholicity because their very brevity made them easy to overlook. 2 Peter was suspect because its apostolic authorship was questioned, and Revelation was doubted for reasons of orthodoxy. But Paul's letters and the Gospels were always the core on all three fronts. The very lack of a council's decree allowed the ancient church to wrestle with the legitimacy of these books. And on this score, the most important books were never doubted.

Third, that no decree ever announced what books were canonical also tells us implicitly that the canon was a list of authoritative books rather than an authoritative list of books.

As you can see, there was never a vote, never a decree. Eventually councils in the East and West made it "official", at different times, but it wasn't a top down process, and it wasn't an election. It was acclimation, and it certainly didn't have anything to do with Nicea.

You might be wondering why the early church did question certain books. I'm glad you asked.

On pages 148-149 of the same book we find...

Was the early church totally naive about which books belonged in the canon and which did not? Hardly. As we noted in chapter 9, the majority of New Testament books were accepted as authentic from the very beginning. the notion that all the books were disputed is a gross exaggeration. Although it is likely that someone could dig up a stray quotation here or there to this effect, it hardly represents the facts. (26)

We have seen that the ancient church did not instantly and uncritically assign apostolic authorship to anonymous books, even though that would have been a temptation. Even when a book had an apostle's name on it, the church could be very skeptical. Ultimately, they questioned whether the book was cited from the earliest era of the church, was accepted widely, and was orthodox. Most New Testament books made the cut without much ado- but precisely because they obviously met all three criteria. Others struggled for acceptance. This very struggle should put an end to the question of whether the early Christians were terribly gullible about their sacred books.

On the other hand, some unworthy books were accepted as Scripture in parts of the church for a limited time. But these books could not pull the wool over the church's eyes for long. (27)

Eventually, three kinds of literature were decisively rejected as noncanonical. (1) Those that were obvious forgeries; (2) those that were late productions (i.e, second century or later); and (3) those that did not conform to the orthodoxy of the core books already known to be authentic. That this method is not an antiquarian peculiarity- a curiosity from the past- is seen in the fact that the same three criteria are used by scholars today. One has to wonder, then, why some modern writers simply refuse to give the ancient Christians the benefit of the doubt. Indeed, one has to wonder who really is being naive about the canon

That is why some texts were rejected, and the process really wasn't centralized at all.

Some people like to point to Constantine and the Council of Nicea, but that's largely historical myth as well.

First, Constantine didn't decide anything. He called the meeting, but the decision was made by the bishops in attendance.

Second, lest we think that they were forced by Constantine to do anything, keep in mind that these bishops were, just a few years earlier, running their church in violation of Roman law, facing down the prospect of torture, death, etc. They had defied emperors before (on pain of death), and would no doubt have done so again, had they seen the need. From Reinventing Jesus, page 210:

The bishops at Nicea were more accustomed to persecution than pampering. Many of them had lived through the injustices of Emperors Diocletian (ruling c. 284-305) and Maximian (ruling c. 286-305). Diocletian was eager to confiscate Christian writings, burn Christian buildings, and arrest Christian clergy. Maximian didn't hesitate to execute, disable, or exile those who refused to renounce Christ. At least one of the bishops at Nicea had personally experienced Maximian's cruelty. Paphnutius lost his right eye and gained a limp in his left leg- before being banished to the mines - as a result of confessing his faith. (5) There were more victims of persecution at the hands of others. Some lost use of their fingers because their nerves had been seared with hot pokers. Still others lost limbs all together. The marks of persecution were so prevalent that one ancient writer said, "The council looked like an assembled array of martyrs"! (6) Of course, men who had suffered such physical injuries for the sake of spiritual integrity were not about to be told what they should believe about Christ- imperial pressure or not."

These guys didn't and wouldn't compromise their faith for anybody. The Nicene Creed truly reflected the beliefs of the vast majority of Christians, which is why the vote was almost unanimous.

Third, the vote wasn't close. It was nearly unanimous, which is reflective of the beliefs of the Christian Church throughout the centuries (that Jesus was God). There was no debate, per se, and it wasn't controversial.

From the Catholic Encyclopedia

The creed they settled on:

We believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten of the Father, that is, of the substance [ek tes ousias] of the Father, God of God, light of light, true God of true God, begotten not made, of the same substance with the Father [homoousion to patri], through whom all things were made both in heaven and on earth; who for us men and our salvation descended, was incarnate, and was made man, suffered and rose again the third day, ascended into heaven and cometh to judge the living and the dead. And in the Holy Ghost. Those who say: There was a time when He was not, and He was not before He was begotten; and that He was made our of nothing (ex ouk onton); or who maintain that He is of another hypostasis or another substance [than the Father], or that the Son of God is created, or mutable, or subject to change, [them] the Catholic Church anathematizes.

The vote:

The adhesion was general and enthusiastic. All the bishops save five declared themselves ready to subscribe to this formula, convince that it contained the ancient faith of the Apostolic Church. The opponents were soon reduced to two, Theonas of Marmarica and Secundus of Ptolemais, who were exiled and anathematized. Arius and his writings were also branded with anathema, his books were cast into the fire, and he was exiled to Illyria. The lists of the signers have reached us in a mutilated condition, disfigured by faults of the copyists. Nevertheless, these lists may be regarded as authentic. Their study is a problem which has been repeatedly dealt with in modern times, in Germany and England, in the critical editions of H. Gelzer, H. Hilgenfeld, and O. Contz on the one hand, and C. H. Turner on the other. The lists thus constructed give respectively 220 and 218 names. With information derived from one source or another, a list of 232 or 237 fathers known to have been present may be constructed.

Here's a list of the other issues discussed:

Canon 1: On the admission, or support, or expulsion of clerics mutilated by choice or by violence.

Canon 2: Rules to be observed for ordination, the avoidance of undue haste, the deposition of those guilty of a grave fault.

Canon 3: All members of the clergy are forbidden to dwell with any woman, except a mother, sister, or aunt.

Canon 4: Concerning episcopal elections.

Canon 5: Concerning the excommunicate.

Canon 6: Concerning patriarchs and their jurisdiction.

Canon 7: confirms the right of the bishops of Jerusalem to enjoy certain honours.

Canon 8: concerns the Novatians.

Canon 9: Certain sins known after ordination involve invalidation.

Canon 10: Lapsi who have been ordained knowingly or surreptitiously must be excluded as soon as their irregularity is known.

Canon 11: Penance to be imposed on apostates of the persecution of Licinius.

Canon 12: Penance to be imposed on those who upheld Licinius in his war on the Christians.

Canon 13: Indulgence to be granted to excommunicated persons in danger of death.

Canon 14: Penance to be imposed on catechumens who had weakened under persecution.

Canon 15: Bishops, priests, and deacons are not to pass from one church to another.

Canon 16: All clerics are forbidden to leave their church. Formal prohibition for bishops to ordain for their diocese a cleric belonging to another diocese.

Canon 17: Clerics are forbidden to lend at interest.

Canon 18: recalls to deacons their subordinate position with regard to priests.

Canon 19: Rules to be observed with regard to adherents of Paul of Samosata who wished to return to the Church.

Canon 20: On Sundays and during the Paschal season prayers should be said standing.

The business of the Council having been finished Constantine celebrated the twentieth anniversary of his accession to the empire, and invited the bishops to a splendid repast, at the end of which each of them received rich presents. Several days later the emperor commanded that a final session should be held, at which he assisted in order to exhort the bishops to work for the maintenance of peace; he commended himself to their prayers, and authorized the fathers to return to their dioceses. The greater number hastened to take advantage of this and to bring the resolutions of the council to the knowledge of their provinces.

Note that they never discussed the books of the Bible at all, and it was never a close vote as to Jesus' divinity. Those are two historical myths. Constantine died soon after, and the councils that closed the Canon occured after that.

Executive summary: The Council of Nicea formalized the Christian doctrine of the Trinity (which almost everyone held to already), banned self-castration (ouch!), pronounced anathema on a few people and things, and went home.

I should have been more specific, or just stated that they are used at times to control/manipulate groups and populations and left it at that.

Well, that is certainly correct, but I'd point out that this has precisely zero bearing on whether or not said texts/religions are actually true.

[techboy]

The existence of both men are based on second-hand accounts from their followers and historical texts written many years afterward.

Don't get carried away, there.

The simple fact is that pretty much anyone who has done any reading at all in the field of Jesus history knows that virtually no serious scholar in the field argues that Jesus was not an historical person. No one. Not the atheists, not the skeptics, not the Christians. No one.

It's not even an area of dispute, in a field where virtually everything is disputed by somebody.

For some of the reasons for this, try this log of a academic listserv discussing the historical Jesus. Consider, for instance, this answer by John Dominic Crossan (his Wiki page)

If I understand what Earl Doherty is arguing, Neil, it is that Jesus of Nazareth never existed as an historical person, or, at least that historians, like myself, presume that he did and act on that fatally flawed presumption.

I am not sure, as I said earlier, that one can persuade people that Jesus did exist as long as they are ready to explain the entire phenomenon of historical Jesus and earliest Christianity either as an evil trick or a holy parable. I had a friend in Ireland who did not believe that Americans had landed on the moon but that they had created the entire thing to bolster their cold-war image against the communists. I got nowhere with him. So I am not at all certain that I can prove that the historical Jesus existed against such an hypothesis and probably, to be honest, I am not even interested in trying.

It was, however, that hypothesis taken not as a settled conclusion, but as a simple question that was behind the first pages of BofC when I mentioned Josephus and Tacitus. I do not think that either of them checked out Jewish or Roman archival materials about Jesus. I think they were expressing the general public knowledge that "everyone" had about this weird group called Christians and their weird founder called Christ. The existence, not just of Christian materials, but of those other non-Christian sources, is enough to convince me that we are dealing with an historical individual. Furthermore, in all the many ways that opponents criticized earliest Christianity, nobody ever suggested that it was all made up. That in general, is quite enough for me.

There was one other point where I think Earl Doherty simply misstated what I did. In BofC, after the initial sections on materials and methods (1-235), I spent about equal time in Galilee (237-406) , or at least to the north, and in Jerusalem with pre-Pauline materials (407-573). I agree that if we had a totally different and irreconcilable vision/program between Paul and Q (just to take an example), it would require some very good explaining. Part of what I was doing, for example, in talking about the Common Meal Tradition was showing how even such utterly distinct eucharistic scenarios as Didache 9-10 and I Cor 11-12 have rather fascinating common elements behind and between them. It is a very different thing, in summary, for Paul to say that he is not interested in the historical Jesus (Jesus in the flesh) than to say that "no Galilee and no historical Jesus lie behind Paul."

Paragraph 3 is especially telling, I think.

One more passage by Crossan:

I am not certain, Neil, that I have much to add to my previous post. I do not claim "ideological immunity" against the possibility that the historical Jesus never existed. That such a person existed is an historical conclusion for me, and neither a dogmatic postulate nor a theological presupposition. My very general arguments are: (1) that existence is given in Christian, pagan, and Jewish sources; (2) it is never negated by even the most hostile critics of early Christianity (Jesus is a **** and a fool but never a myth or a fiction!); (3) there are no historical parallels that I know of from that time and period that help me understand such a total creation. There is, however, a fourth point that I touched on in BofC 403-406. It is crucially important for me that Jesus sent out companions and told them to do exactly what he was doing (not in his name, but as part of the Kingdom of God). The most basic continuity that I see between Jesus and those companions was, as I put it, not in mnemonics, but in mimetics. In other words, they were imitating his lifestyle and not just remembering his words. I find that emphasized in the Q Gospel’s indictment of those who talk, but do not do, and in the Didache’s emphasis on the ways (tropoi) of the Lord (not just words/logoi). When, therefore, I look at a phrase such as "blessed are the destitute," and am quite willing to argue that it comes from the historical Jesus, I am always at least as sure that it represents the accurate summary of an attitude as the accurate recall of a saying. For analogy: If Gandhi had developed a large movement after his death of people who are living in non-violent resistance to oppression, and one of them cited an aphorism of Gandhi, namely "if you do not stand on a small bug, why would you stand on a Big Bug," I would be more secure on the continuity in lifestyle than in memory and could work on that as basis.

That about sums it up, and again, this not seriously disputed by just about anybody. Michael Grant (here's his Wikipedia page) was an eminent classical historian, and in his Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels writes on page 199-200:

"...if we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned...To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory. It has 'again and again been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars'. In recent years 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus' -- or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary.

[elkabong82]

don't you just sound all high and mighty...what made you come on here to bad mouth everyone's way of life? if you were born in the US in modern times, there is more religous variety than in any country in the history of the recorded world. you can believe whatever you want and i don't think anyone on here has a problem with it, but when you start talking down about people who believe things just b/c you don't, you lose credibility with everyone.

I think his point about religion, at least initially, being geographically-based is valid. He mentioned other places besides the US. If you are born in Mexico, for example, 95% chance you are Catholic.

A lot of people grow up to question their religion and some change religions, and others' re-affirm their religion through research and study. However, there is inherent bias towards the religion one was taught as a child, and many religions typically do not encourage their members to question whether or not the religion is correct, and some state that if you don't follow them specifically or subscribe to certain beliefs, that there is a negative eternal consequence (such as hell).

I'd say whatever religion you are raised on, that has to do with chance, much as what state, country, economic class, race, etc. you are born into has to do with chance. After that you have the ability to research, question, even change religions, so that then has more to do with it then just chance in adult life.

[techboy]

I'd say whatever religion you are raised on, that has to do with chance, much as what state, country, economic class, race, etc. you are born into has to do with chance. After that you have the ability to research, question, even change religions, so that then has more to do with it then just chance in adult life.

I could quibble with the fact that this statement begs the question to some degree (since it assumes God does not exist, else it might not be chance at all), but I generally think it's fair.

Of course, this weak form doesn't really support the main contention of this thread.

[Drew_Fl]

Never talked down to anyone.

Sure, the US allows more religious freedom than anywhere else. A good thing too, that I support.

i'm interpreting your comments as making people who believe in a religion of some sort as suckers, or less intelligent for doing so even though your reasoning has no more concrete proof than most religions. you say you value these religious freedoms we have, but your post seems to make people seem like idiots for using them.

[elkabong82]

Don't get carried away, there.

I didn't say I doubted Jesus existed. I responded to Trippster who asserted there was historical evidence for Christianity, but not for Buddhist. I merely pointed out that the origins of both are similar in the origins of their sources, hence if one is to be viewed as having historical backing, then both should.

On the other post, we can only debate over the intentions of those who constructed the New Testament based off the teachings of Christ, so I'll just drop that point about control. To be fair though, I never said nor even insinuated that religion being used as a method of control meant the religion was false. A lot of bad things have been done in the name of religion, it doesn't make those religions bad. I was simply, in my original post, adding to the more dubious aspects of the origins of various religions that the OP had raised.

[elkabong82]

I could quibble with the fact that this statement begs the question to some degree (since it assumes God does not exist, else it might not be chance at all), but I generally think it's fair.

Of course, this weak form doesn't really support the main contention of this thread.

So if there is no chance, then you believe in a God that controls all i.e. fate. I'm not a big believer in fate, more like likely outcome based on certain chains of events, but I still believe in chance as well.

YOU assume my post assumes God does not exist. My post merely assumes chance exists.

[Homercles82]

These threads crack me up. Everyone wanting to argue and claim they are more right than someone else. Inaccuracies about how God speaks to people and even people proclaiming to be Christians flatly denying the words that Jesus said run rampant in threads of these types. Ignorance of the fall of man through Adam that runs through all humans and still believing that we, fallen people, are smart enough to comprehend why some are chosen and others are not is laughable. Why was Jacob chosen over Esau? He was a liar and a thief. He tricked his brother, lied to his blind father and still was a key cog in God's plan. King David was a jerk. Rahab was a prostitute who was chosen to help the Israelites. All these people are perfect examples of the sinful nature we all possess and are unable to run from yet for some reason God used them to further His plan, His kingdom.

But what do I know?

EDIT:

For the record. I was born and raised in a home that did not go to church and never really spoke about God or Jesus. My father was raised Catholic, went to Catholic school and fell away from said church due to financial issues. My mother went to Baptist churches growing up but stopped in her late teens. We never went as a family. In high school I went with my girlfriend to a small baptist church but never really felt called to anything.

I started going to a Presbyterian church with my wife, then friend, and felt the call from God and the conversion through the Holy Spirit. I don't know how my parents way of raising me influenced that nor how my time in and out of churches influenced that. Divine providence maybe?

[techboy]

I didn't say I doubted Jesus existed. I responded to Trippster who asserted there was historical evidence for Christianity, but not for Buddhist. I merely pointed out that the origins of both are similar in the origins of their sources, hence if one is to be viewed as having historical backing, then both should.

In point of fact, the evidence for Jesus of Nazareth as an historical personage is much stronger than that for Buddha, or really, many figures of ancient history. I'll go into that in a minute.

That being said, I'm pretty sure Buddha existed too, and I'm also pretty sure that this is not the kind of evidence he's talking about.

Not in the way that I think the OP is implying. What kinda claims do you believe have true historical evidence??

What about the evidence for the central event of Christianity, the Ressurection of Jesus of Nazareth?

Part One: Approaches to the Evidence

One of the first things I always hear in response to the evidence I'm about to present is that I'm "just quoting the Bible", or "Just because the Bible says it's true doesn't mean it is!", to which I'd have to reply no, and I'm not saying that's the case, respectively.

What the reader needs to understand is that below, I am using the approach of the historian, not the theologian. The historian has tools he can use to look at even the worst and most biased of sources, and from them arrive at factual information.

A.N. Sherwin-White (here's his Wikipedia entry) was an eminent historian of ancient Rome at Oxford University. He wrote Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament, among other works.

On page 186 he writes (emphasis is the author's):

So much for the detailed study of the Graeco-Roman setting of Acts and Gospels. But it is fitting for a professional historian to consider the whole topic of historicity briefly and very generally, and boldly to state a case. Though for two short periods of our history we are lucky enough to have two major contemporary historians of remarkably objective character in Thucydides and Polybius, we are generally dealing with derivative sources of marked bias and prejudice composed at least one or two generations after the events which they describe, but much more often, as with the Lives of Plutarch or the central decades of Livy, from two to five centuries later. Though connecting links are provided backwards in time by series of lost intermediate sources, we are seldom in the happy position of dealing at only one remove with a contemporary source. Yet not for that do we despair of reconstructing the story of the tyranny of Pisistratus or of the tribunates of the Gracchi.

Sherwin-White goes on to say that the New Testament texts are much better than those, being vastly earlier and much better attested, but that's not my point at this time.

My point here is simply that historians can and do pull historical facts from the worst, most biased, legend tainted sources, and so it is possible to derive facts from the texts of the New Testament, without treating them as holy or special, but just by applying those same methods.

Michael Grant (here's his Wikipedia page) was another eminent classical historian, and in his Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels writes on page 201:

A short way back, exception was taken to the view that everything the evangelists say must be assumed correct until it is proved wrong. Should we, therefore, accept the opposite opinion, which has been locked in an agonizing struggle with it for two hundred years, that all the contents of the Gospels must be assumed fictitious until they are proved genuine? No, that is also too extreme a viewpoint and would not be applied in other fields. When, for example, one tries to build up facts from the accounts of pagan historians, judgement often has to be given not in the light of any external confirmation- which is sometimes, but by no means always, available- but on the basis of historical deductions and arguments which attain nothing better than probability. The same applies to the Gospels. Their contents need not be assumed fictitious until they are proved authentic. But they have to be subjected to the usual standards of historical persuasiveness.

Grant definitely follows through with this in his book, taking a very skeptical stance. For instance, he rejects as genuine any fulfilled prophecy, assuming that it was either written after the event or inserted later by pious forgers (or, in some cases, deliberately engineered by Jesus himself).

So, I'm not asking the reader to treat the Bible as a holy book, or divinely inspired, or anything like that. I am simply asking instead that we approach the texts of the New Testament as historians, like Grant and Sherwin-White, and see what facts we can uncover from the data.

As we will see, it's quite a lot.

Part Two: Jesus Claimed to be God

The high Christology of the early Church came from Jesus himself. One example of this comes from the Parable of the Tenants.

Mark 12 (ESV)

The Parable of the Tenants

1(A) And he began to speak to them in parables. "A man planted( a vineyard© and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the winepress and built a tower, and(D) leased it to tenants and(E) went into another country. 2When the season came, he sent a servant[a] to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. 3(F) And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 4(G) Again(H) he sent to them another servant, and(I) they struck him on the head and(J) treated him shamefully. 5(K) And he sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others: some they beat, and some they killed. 6He had still one other,(L) a beloved son.(M) Finally he sent him to them, saying, 'They will respect my son.' 7But those tenants said to one another,(N) 'This is the heir. Come,(O) let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.' 8And they took him and killed him and(P) threw him out of the vineyard. 9What will the owner of the vineyard do?(Q) He will® come and destroy the tenants and(S) give the vineyard to others. 10(T) Have you not read(U) this Scripture:

(V) "'The stone that the builders rejected

has become the cornerstone;

11this was the Lord’s doing,

and it is marvelous in our eyes'?"

12And(W) they were seeking to arrest him(X) but feared the people, for they perceived that he had told the parable against them. So they(Y) left him and went away.

Before we look at what this saying of Jesus is, uh, saying, I'd like to take a moment to explain why I chose this passage.

One of the things Jesus scholarship tries to do is determine what, if anything, can be determined about the life, works, and sayings of Jesus in an historical sense. Scholars only take seriously those things that can be verified via one or more historical criteria. It doesn't mean that other things in the text didn't happen, necessarily, just that they can't be proven.

It turns out that the Parable of the Tenants is accepted as an authentic saying of Jesus by scholars, even the most radical (such as the infamous Jesus Seminar, which famously voted and found only about 20% of the sayings of Jesus to be authentic).

There are a number of reasons for this. The saying is early, and multiply and independently attested. It is unlikely to be a later Christian invention, because, among other reasons, it includes no mention of ressurection. It also has been found to be very accurate in terms of actual absentee landowner practices of the day, historically, and it reflects and employs stock images found in rabbinic parables of the day, so it coheres with a Jewish mileu.

So, it's pretty much accepted that this is a provably genuine saying of Jesus. As Dr. Craig Evans (his Wikipedia page) notes in his Fabricating Jesus on page 138:

When understood properly and in full context, everything about the wicked vineyard tenants- including its context in the New Testament Gospels- argues that it originated with Jesus, not with the early church.

But what is Jesus saying? In this parable, as in other rabbinic parables of the day, the Vineyard is Israel and the owner is God (a common reference because of Isaiah 5). The tenants are the Jewish religious leaders (which is why they are angered). The servants are the prophets of God, sent to Israel, but beaten, turned away, and sometimes killed (as the history of the Old Testament shows).

And then we come to the son, Jesus. The son in this parable is the owner's only son. He is unique. He is more important than the servants. He is last to be sent.

This passage clearly shows that Jesus thought he was the Son of God, unique in relationship, above all the prophets. Further, in this passage, he predicts his own death at the hands of the Jewish authorities, outside the walls of Jerusalem.

All of this was blasphemy to the Jewish leadership, as can be seen from their reaction, and is why they eventually had him killed.

Another reason to believe that the historical Jesus had a divine self-understanding is found in Grant's Jesus on page 160 (emphasis is the author's):

But Jesus' specific claim that, as inaugurator of the Kingdom of God, he was able to forgive sins seemed, as the Pharisees and scribes had already noted in Galilee, to lend a sinister overtone to his own assertion, or the assertion of his disciples, that he was God's son. For since Jews regarded the forgiveness of sins as the prerogative of God alone, the claim to confer this forgiveness, especially if supported by a claim to the Sonship of God, implied that he himself was divine; in which case the sacrosanct Jewish monotheism was deliberately breached.

So, we have two historically supported authentic sayings of Jesus, accepted as genuine by even the most skeptical scholars, that tell us that Jesus had a divine self-understanding.

I can add more if needed, but for (relative) brevity's sake, I will provide this link to Glenn Miller's excellent list of all of the explicit and implicit claims of Jesus of Nazareth and his followers that he was God.

The question then, really, is was he right? Which brings us to...

Part Three: God raised Jesus from the dead

There's actually quite a lot of evidence for Jesus' Resurrection in a variety of forms, and countless books and articles have been written on the topic (and I will provide some links for further reading, if interested, at the end), but again, here we are only making use of facts that can be derived by the solid historical method, and in this section, I will further limit myself by only using facts agreed upon by the vast majority of critical scholars, a method used by people like Craig and Dr. Gary Habermas.

Of course, scholarly consensus only allows us to know that we are on firm ground, and is not a replacement for actual evidence, so for each fact, I will also present a couple of the best arguments for it, and of course I will expound on any point if asked.

Fact #1 Jesus died by crucifixion

Grant notes on page 162 that:

Then follows the horrible conclusion of the story, the Crucifixion. This again must be true because no one would have invented such a degraded end, a fatal objection to Jesus' Messiahship in Jewish eyes.

An important fact to keep in mind for later is that crucifixion was, indeed, a cursed death in the eyes of the Jews (which all Jesus' disciples were). Here, Dr. Grant is using the Criterion of Embarrassment, an important historical tool, but that's not the only reason the Crucifixion is seen by scholars of all stripes as fact.

As Dr. William Lane Craig notes in The Evidence for Jesus:

According to the gospels Jesus was condemned by the Jewish high court on the charge of blasphemy and then delivered to the Romans for execution for the treasonous act of setting himself up as King of the Jews. Not only are these facts confirmed by independent biblical sources like Paul and the Acts of the Apostles, but they are also confirmed by extra-biblical sources. From Josephus and Tacitus, we learn that Jesus was crucified by Roman authority under the sentence of Pontius Pilate. From Josephus and Mara bar Serapion we learn that the Jewish leaders made a formal accusation against Jesus and participated in events leading up to his crucifixion. And from the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 43a, we learn that Jewish involvement in the trial was explained as a proper undertaking against a heretic. According to Johnson, "The support for the mode of his death, its agents, and perhaps its coagents, is overwhelming: Jesus faced a trial before his death, was condemned and executed by crucifixion."{11} The crucifixion of Jesus is recognized even by the Jesus Seminar as "one indisputable fact." {12}

Fact #2 Jesus was honorably buried by Joseph of Arimathea

Grant again appeals to the Criterion of Embarrassment, on page 175:

After the Crucifixion, Joseph of Arimithea, a member of the Sanhedrin who did not share its unfavourable opinion of Jesus, sought and obtained permission from Pilate to grant the body private burial, thus rescuing it from the two common burial-grounds reserved for executed criminals (1). This story is likely to be true since the absence, which it records, of any participation by Jesus' followers was too unfortunate, indeed disgraceful, to have been voluntarily invented by the evangelists at a later date.

Further, historians assign more reliability to reports that have multiple attestation (more than one source reports something) and to reports that are early (close to the actual events). In the case of the burial of Jesus, we have upwards of 5 independent sources, dating as early as 7 years (or earlier) from the event.

As Dr. Craig notes in his 2006 debate with Dr. Bart Ehrman:

We have four biographies of Jesus, by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which have been collected into the New Testament, along with various letters of the apostle Paul. Now the burial account is part of Mark's source material for the story of Jesus' suffering and death. This is a very early source which is probably based on eyewitness testimony and which the commentator Rudolf Pesch dates to within seven years of the crucifixion. Moreover, Paul also cites an extremely early source for Jesus' burial which most scholars date to within five years of Jesus' crucifixion. Independent testimony to Jesus' burial by Joseph is also found in the sources behind Matthew and Luke and the Gospel of John, not to mention the extra-biblical Gospel of Peter. Thus, we have the remarkable number of at least five independent sources for Jesus' burial, some of which are extraordinarily early.

To expound a bit upon this, the Pauline report Dr. Craig is referring to is the kerygma (a formula used by the early church to state beliefs) in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, which scholars have dated to within 5 years of the Resurrection (and some as early as the same year), because while Paul wrote this letter perhaps 20 years later, he very likely received this formula when he first met with Peter and the others, which happened at the much earlier date. Consider this from Dr. Gary Habermas (his Wikipedia page) in his Resurrection Research from 1975 to the Present: What are Critical Scholars Saying?:

Paul probably received this report from Peter and James while visiting Jerusalem within a few years of his conversion.[46] The vast majority of critical scholars who answer the question place Paul’s reception of this material in the mid-30s A.D.[47] Even more skeptical scholars generally agree.[48] German theologian Walter Kasper even asserts that, “We have here therefore an ancient text, perhaps in use by the end of 30 AD . . . .” [49] Ulrich Wilckens declares that the material “indubitably goes back to the oldest phase of all in the history of primitive Christianity.”[50]

Also, as noted in the Craig-Ehrman debate, Joseph of Arimathea, as a Jewish member of the Sanhedrin, is highly unlikely to have been a Christian invention for another reason besides embarrassment. Dr. Craig puts it thusly:

There was an understandable hostility in the early church toward the Jewish leaders. In Christian eyes, they had engineered a judicial murder of Jesus. Thus, according to the late New Testament scholar Raymond Brown, Jesus' burial by Joseph is "very probable," since it is "almost inexplicable" why Christians would make up a story about a Jewish Sanhedrist who does what is right by Jesus. [1]

Finally, there is no competing burial tradition.

To sum it up, as Dr. Craig notes in the Evidence article:

According to the late John A. T. Robinson of Cambridge University, the honorable burial of Jesus is one of "the earliest and best-attested facts about Jesus."{15}

Fact #3 Jesus' disciples genuinely believed that they had experiences with the risen Jesus, despite having every reason not to

As Grant notes on page 176 of Jesus:

The Ressurection is the subject of some of the greatest pictures ever painted, but there is no actual description of it, and nobody claimed to have seen it happen. Yet those who believed that Jesus had appeared to them on the earth after his death have their alleged experiences recorded in a number of passages of the New Testament. Their testimonies cannot prove them to be right in supposing that Jesus had risen from the dead. However, these accounts do prove that certain people were utterly convinced that that is what he had done.

Some excerpts from the Habermas article:

From considerations such as the research areas above, perhaps the single most crucial development in recent thought has emerged. With few exceptions, the fact that after Jesus’ death his followers had experiences that they thought were appearances of the risen Jesus is arguably one of the two or three most recognized events from the four Gospels, along with Jesus’ central proclamation of the Kingdom of God and his death by crucifixion. Few critical scholars reject the notion that, after Jesus’ death, the early Christians had real experiences of some sort.

An overview of contemporary scholarship indicates that Fuller’s conclusions are well-supported. E.P. Sanders initiates his discussion in The Historical Figure of Jesus by outlining the broad parameters of recent research. Beginning with a list of the historical data that critics know, he includes a number of “equally secure facts” that “are almost beyond dispute.” One of these is that, after Jesus’ death, “his disciples . . . saw him.”[83] In an epilogue, Sanders reaffirms, “That Jesus’ followers (and later Paul) had resurrection experiences is, in my judgment, a fact. What the reality was that gave rise to the experiences I do not know.”[84]

Bart Ehrman explains that, “Historians, of course, have no difficulty whatsoever speaking about the belief in Jesus’ resurrection, since this is a matter of public record. For it is a historical fact that some of Jesus’ followers came to believe that he had been raised from the dead soon after his execution.” This early belief in the resurrection is the historical origination of Christianity.[91]

As we have mentioned throughout, there are certainly disagreements about the nature of the experiences. But it is still crucial that the nearly unanimous consent[92] of critical scholars is that, in some sense, the early followers of Jesus thought that they had seen the risen Jesus.

This conclusion does not rest on the critical consensus itself, but on the reasons for the consensus, such as those pointed out above. A variety of paths converge here, including Paul's eyewitness comments regarding his own experience (1 Cor. 9:1; 15:8), the pre-Pauline appearance report in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7, probably dating from the 30s, Paul's second Jerusalem meeting with the major apostles to ascertain the nature of the Gospel (Gal. 2:1-10), and Paul's knowledge of the other apostles' teachings about Jesus' appearances (1 Cor. 15:9-15, especially 15:11). Further, the early Acts confessions, the conversion of James, the brother of Jesus, the transformed lives that centered on the resurrection, the later Gospel accounts, and, most scholars would agree, the empty tomb. This case is built entirely on critically-ascertained texts, and confirmed by many critical principles such as eyewitness testimony, early reports, multiple attestation, discontinuity, embarrassment, enemy declarations, and coherence.[93]

Further, the disciples not only believed it, but they were willing to die for those beliefs, as recorded in the documents of the New Testament as well by extra-Biblical writers like Josephus and Polycarp.

Fact #4 Mutations of the Jewish beliefs about resurrection and the Messiah

We saw in Fact #3 that the disciples and other early Christians suddenly and sincerely came to believe that Jesus rose from the dead. What is often missed about this is that they had absolutely no reason to believe that this would happen. As Grant noted earlier, they were shattered by Jesus' shameful death. As Jews, his crucifixion seemed to argue that he had been cursed by God. Further, Jews of the day had no conception of the ressurection as an event that occured in time. To those Jews that believed in ressurection, it was to be a general event for all the righteous at the end of time.

Consider this from a short article by Dr. Larry Hurtado (here's his faculty page, as he doesn't seem to have a wikipedia entry), That Curious Idea of Resurrection:

How early Christians grappled to accept the idea that Jesus returned from the dead.. The relevant excerpt:

The ancient Jewish and early Christian idea of personal resurrection represented a new emphasis on individuals and the importance of embodied existence beyond the mere survival or enhancement of the soul, although there was debate about the precise nature of the post-resurrection body. Some seem to have supposed it would be a new body of flesh and bones, closely linked to the corpse in the grave but not liable to decay or death. Others imagined a body more like that of an angel. But whatever its precise nature, the hope of resurrection reflected a strongly holistic view of the person as requiring some sort of body to be complete. With ancient Jews, early Christians saw resurrection as an act of God, a divine gift of radically new life, not an expression of some inherent immortality of the soul. That is, the dead don't rise by themselves; they are raised by God and will experience resurrection collectively as one of the events that comprise God's future redemption of the world and vindication of the righteous.

So we see that the disciples had absolutely no reason to expect that Jesus would return from the dead, and every reason not to. Further, as Jews, they did have accepted frameworks for seeing the honored dead, such as visions of the person in Abraham's Bosom.

N T Wright (his wikipedia page) discusses this more in depth in his Jesus’ Resurrection and Christian Origins. What we find is that although the disciples and early Christians were devout Jews, their beliefs about ressurection were changed from that in Judaism, both in specifics and in range. While the Jews had a variety of beliefs about resurrection from group to group, for the Christians, the belief was remarkably consistent and markedly changed, a fact that requires an historical explanation. First, a quick overview of Jewish beliefs about ressurection:

I merely sketch the overall shape of Jewish belief. The spectrum runs from those who deny the resurrection to those who insist upon it. The Sadducees deny the world to come altogether, reminding us that resurrection was and remained an explicitly political doctrine, about God turning the present world and its power structures upside down. Thus the Pharisees’ belief in the resurrection was part of their generally revolutionary ideology: as in Daniel and Maccabees, resurrection was an incentive to martyrdom. I am not convinced that the Essenes believed in resurrection; but I do hold that Wisdom of Solomon 3.7-8 teaches resurrection, a re-embodiment for the righteous whose souls are presently in the hand of God, who will be given a new life in which, to the consternation of their former persecutors, they will return and rule over nations and kingdoms. Finally, a much more Platonic picture is held by Philo of Alexandria, who believed in disembodied bliss for the immortal soul. This belief is shared by Jubilees.

Resurrection is thus one point on the spectrum of Jewish beliefs about life after death. If Christianity had been simply a sect of miscellaneous Jews who had followed Jesus or approved his teaching, we might have expected a similar spread of views, and the fact that we do not is a major part of our question about Christian origins; but that is to run ahead of my story. The second point to note about Jewish belief in resurrection is that, where it did occur, it was never a detached belief. It was always part of a larger picture of what God was going to do for the nation and indeed the world.

In contrast...

Almost all early Christians known to us believed that their ultimate hope was the resurrection of the body. There is no spectrum such as in Judaism.

And now the changes...

First, the early Christian belief in resurrection had a much more precise shape and content than anything we find in Judaism. In early Christianity, obviously in Paul but not only there, resurrection will be an act of new creation, accomplished by the Holy Spirit, and the body which is to be is already planned by God. This will not be a simple return to the same sort of body as before; nor will it be an abandonment of embodiedness in order to enjoy a disembodied bliss. It will involve transformation, the gift of a new body with different properties. This is so engrained in earliest Christianity that it already affects teaching on other subjects, such as baptism (Romans 6) and ethics (Colossians 3).

The third way in which early Christian belief about resurrection is significantly different from that of second-Temple Judaism is that, particularly in Paul, ‘the resurrection’ has split into two. Paul still sees ‘the resurrection of the dead’ as a single theological event,7 but it takes place in two phases: first the Messiah, then at his coming all his people.8 This too only makes sense within second-Temple Judaism, but it is something no second-Temple Jew had said before. Resurrection had been a single all-embracing moment, not a matter of one person being raised ahead of everybody else.

I'll skip some of the others (see the article for the full list), but perhaps the most obvious change demanding explanation was how they saw the Messiah:

Jesus had not done what Messiahs were supposed to do. He had neither won a decisive victory over Israel’s political enemies, nor restored the Temple (except in the most ambiguous symbolic fashion). Nor had he brought God’s justice and peace to the world; the wolf was not yet lying down with the lamb. But the early gospel traditions are already shaped by the belief that Jesus was Israel’s Messiah; Paul regularly calls him Christos, and if that term had become for him merely a proper name (which I dispute) that only goes to show how firmly Jesus’ messianic identity was already established by Paul’s day. For Revelation, Jesus is the Lion of the tribe of Judah. The historian is bound to face the question: once Jesus had been crucified, why would anyone say that he was Israel’s Messiah?

Nobody said that about Judas the Galilean after his revolt ended in failure in AD 6. Nobody said it of Simon bar-Giora after his death at the end of Titus’s triumph in AD 70. Nobody said it about bar-Kochbar after his defeat and death in 135. On the contrary. Where messianic movements tried to carry on after the death of their would-be Messiah, their most important task was to find another Messiah.14 The fact that the early Christians did not do that, but continued, against all precedent, to regard Jesus himself as Messiah, despite outstanding alternative candidates such as the righteous, devout and well-respected James, Jesus’ own brother, is evidence that demands an explanation. As with their beliefs about resurrection, they redefined Messiahship itself, and with it their whole view of the problem that Israel and the world faced and the solution that they believed God had provided. They remained at one level a classic Jewish messianic movement, owing fierce allegiance to their Messiah and claiming Israel and the whole world in his name. But the mode of that claim, and the underlying allegiance itself, were drastically redefined.

This is probably the most significant one. The Messiah was not supposed to be killed. The Messiah was not supposed to be cursed by God because he hung on a tree. The Messiah was supposed to be a powerful political ruler, and he was only supposed to come once.

When other "Messiahs" died, the groups either disbanded or found a relative to follow. But not here. Here, the disciples and early Christians, despite every reason not to, proclaimed that their executed leader was still the Messiah.

Fact #5 The conversions of James, the brother of Jesus, and Paul, an enemy of Christianity

James was a skeptic who did not accept Jesus' ministry. Yet, after Jesus' crucifixion, James went from skeptic to vocal leader in the early church who believed so strongly that he was martyred for his faith, as recorded by Jospehus and others.

This point is agreed upon by virtually every critical scholar for a variety of reasons, but one of the most important is the Criterion of Embarrasment. It was embarrassing to the early church and to James that he rejected Jesus initially, and if they were making up the story, they probably wouldn't have put that in.

As for Paul, we know more about him than perhaps any other Biblical figure because of his prolific letters, which comprise a treasure trove of historical data. From these letters, as well as other sources, we learn that Paul was a Jewish official who brutally oppressed the early Christians, sometimes putting them to death, until one day he experienced what he saw as the risen Christ, and became a fervent Christian, enduring repeated beatings, torture, and martyrdom.

An important thing to note about Paul is that although he was not around for the actual events, he did interview and fact-check with the disciples, so he would have been able to judge the validity of the claims of the early Christians. This also makes his letters the excellent source of information that they are.

And so, we have two opponents of Christianity (one an outright to-the-death enemy), that came to follow Jesus. This must be explained.

Fact #6 The empty tomb

To be totally honest, unlike most of the other points I have presented, this one does not enjoy nearly unanimous support by the community of scholars. However, as noted in the Habermas article, roughly 75% of critical scholars accept one or more arguments for the empty tomb:

Of these scholars, approximately 75% favor one or more of these arguments for the empty tomb, while approximately 25% think that one or more arguments oppose it. Thus, while far from being unanimously held by critical scholars, it may surprise some that those who embrace the empty tomb as a historical fact still comprise a fairly strong majority.

So, we're still on pretty solidly accepted ground, here.

As Grant writes in Jesus on page 176:

Even if the historian chooses to regard the youthful apparition as extra-historical, he cannot justifiably deny the empty tomb. True, this discovery, as so often, is described differently by the various Gospels- as critical pagans early pointed out. (3) But if we apply the same sort of criteria that we would apply to any other ancient literary sources, then the evidence is firm and plausible enough to necessitate the conclusion that the tomb was indeed found empty.

There are several points that support the historicity of the empty tomb (Dr. Craig lays out eight here, for instance), but I'll just mention the three I find most convincing.

1) The Disciples and early Christians preached the risen Jesus in Jerusalem, the very place he was buried. The Roman authorities and Jewish leaders found this rather inconvenient, and could they have produced the body, they would have, ending the whole thing right there before it could even begin.

Further, it seems inconceivable that the disciples could convince anyone (including themselves) that Jesus had bodily risen from the dead if they could just pop over to the tomb and see the body still there. And someone would have, if for no other reason than that Second Temple Judaism burial practices involved removing the bones from the tomb after a year or two, for placement in ossuaries to await the ressurection at the end of time.

2) As with the story of the burial of Jesus, we have very early and multiple independently attested sources indicating that the tomb was empty.

3) Perhaps the most persuasive argument is the fact that the Gospels report that it was women who found the tomb empty. Again, we can apply the Criterion of Embarrassment.

The story of the women finding the empty tomb is highly embarrassing and difficult for the early Christians for two reasons.

First, it shows the Disciples in a rather bad light. Even though mere women (keep in mind that this is first century Palestine we're talking about) remained loyal and had gone to the Tomb to annoint Jesus' body, the Disciples at the time were huddled in a room, in hiding, having lost their faith, and basically looking totally pathetic.

Second, under Jewish Law, women weren't even allowed to be witnesses in court. Highly embarrassing, as the primary witnesses to the event were totally worthless by the prevailing cultural standards.

In any case, though it does not enjoy quite the same support among critical scholars, the strength of the evidence makes me comfortable asserting the historicity of the empty tomb. As Dr. Craig notes in the article I linked above:

Taken together these eight considerations furnish powerful evidence that the tomb of Jesus was actually found empty on Sunday morning by a small group of his women followers. As a plain historical fact this seems to be amply attested. As Van Daalen has remarked, it is extremely difficult to object to the fact of the empty tomb on historical grounds; most objectors do so on the basis of theological or philosophical considerations.{87} But these, of course, cannot change historical fact. And, interestingly, more and more New Testament scholars seem to be realizing this fact; for today, many, if not most, exegetes would defend the historicity of the empty tomb of Jesus, and their number continues to increase.{88}

Inference to the best explanation: the argument

Having listed these six facts, what are we to do with them? (Here of course, I diverge from the majority of critical scholars, though in logic, not in evidence. )

In order to determine what most probably happened, historians use a technique known as “Inference to the Best Explanation”. This technique says that the theory which best fits all the facts and has the most explanatory power, without being ad-hoc, is the most likely to be true, and while I would agree that naturalistic explanations should be given priority in historical investigation, no non-adhoc naturalistic explantion exists that fits all the facts.

For example, the idea that the early Christians experienced guilt-induced visions for failing their leader fits the fact that they had some sort of experience with the risen Jesus, but cannot explain the empty tomb, or the conversion of Paul and James, who had no reason to feel guilty. It also fails because as we have seen, the disciples had no reason to expect to meet the risen Jesus, and every reason not to. If they had been hallucinating, they would have seen something they expected, such as Jesus in Abraham's Bosom. They certainly wouldn't have imagined their dead leader as a Messiah.

Another idea might be that the disciples were lying (and perhaps stole the body). This would cover the empty tomb, but does not account for the fact that the disciples genuinely believed they had experienced the risen Jesus, to say nothing of the fact that liars make poor martyrs. It also doesn't explain why Paul and James would be on board.

All other naturalistic explanations similarly fail, or are so ad hoc as to be useless, and some facts, such as the drastic changes in beliefs about ressurection and the Messiah within the devout Jews that comprised the early Christian movement, are difficult to explain naturalistically at all.

On the other hand, I think that there are good reasons to believe in God generally, so we should at least include the possibility that God exists and took action in our pool of live options when looking at possible explanations.

Further, Jesus made claims and statements that indicated a divine self-understanding, so explaining the Ressurection in that context is not ad hoc.

Finally, let's look at the hypothesis that God raised Jesus from the dead. Such a thing, we have seen, can be in our pool of live options. It is not ad hoc, because Jesus had a divine self-understanding. The disciples claimed it was true. It fits all the facts, and has a great deal of explanatory power.

It explains how the tomb could be empty after Jesus was executed and buried.

It explains the otherwise inexplicable change in the views of those devout Jews about ressurection and the Messiah, and why those Jews, despite having no reason to believe it and every reason not to, suddenly and sincerely came to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead.

And, it explains how James, a skeptic embarrassed by his brother, and Paul, a virulent enemy, would suddenly become a follower of the man they rejected.

It is easily the best explanation, outstripping all rival hypotheses.

God really did raise Jesus from the dead.

This verified his claim to divinity. Jesus was (is) God.

Further Reading

That's just one approach. For more, I recommend the following articles. Dr. Craig is my favorite author on the subject, though his stuff is more scholarly. I also list some more popular level stuff.

Contemporary Scholarship and the Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ by Dr. William Lane Craig (probably the best)

The Evidence for Jesus, also by Dr. Craig

The Resurrection: Fact or Fiction? by Pat Zukeran

Cruci-fiction and Resuscitation: The Greatest Hoax in the History of Humanity? by Russ Wise

Evidence for the Ressurection by Josh McDowell

Easter: Myth, Hallucination, or History? by Edwin M. Yamauchi

Beyond Blind Faith by Paul E. Little

Finally, one very good book on this subject is The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. He used to be an atheist and a reporter for the Chicago Tribune (so he's a good writer). In the book, he goes around the country and interviews a variety of top-notch experts on issues surrounding Jesus of Nazareth and his claims. I've already sent a few copies to Extremeskins members, but the offer is general.

PM me your address, and I'll send you a copy, free of charge.

[grego]

i'm interpreting your comments as making people who believe in a religion of some sort as suckers, or less intelligent for doing so even though your reasoning has no more concrete proof than most religions. you say you value these religious freedoms we have, but your post seems to make people seem like idiots for using them.

i attend a small church with a noble prize winner (physics). not a dumb guy, i think we'd all agree. stands to reason, though, that if you are an atheist, it would make you feel better if you felt that the only people that were 'religious' (for lack of a better word) were kinda dumb.

So if there is no chance, then you believe in a God that controls all i.e. fate. I'm not a big believer in fate, more like likely outcome based on certain chains of events, but I still believe in chance as well.

YOU assume my post assumes God does not exist. My post merely assumes chance exists.

i actually believe that just because god knows all does not mean he predetermines all. in other words, there is free will. without it, there is no true 'love'.

[techboy]

So if there is no chance, then you believe in a God that controls all i.e. fate. I'm not a big believer in fate, more like likely outcome based on certain chains of events, but I still believe in chance as well.

YOU assume my post assumes God does not exist. My post merely assumes chance exists.

My point is actually a bit more subtle than that, but I find its value significantly lower than the amount of work I'd probably have to do to properly unpack it, so I'll let it go. I said I could quibble, not that I'm going to.