The Resurrection of Jesus - did it really happen?

Agian, your only source is the Bible more respectively the NT which is not a credible source. As far as that video goes I do not watch them.

 

Well, I guess we better not waste both our time then.

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Well, I guess we better not waste both our time then.

 

You have not had my experiences of things that are physically and scientifically impossible, and guess what? You never will, because faith is like opening a door. If you don't open it, you'll never know what's inside. And it seems to me, you darn well don't want to open it.

 

Yes, but how many of those so called Messiahs were able to split time into BC and AD?

 

None. This was man's doing. If followers of Odin would have won the war then we would be basing our Calender on something else.

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None. This was man's doing. If followers of Odin would have won the war then we would be basing our Calender on something else.

 

It's no longer called BC and AD it's BCE and CE.....

 

They can call it whatever they want, it is still based on the birth of Christ.

 

And you can't convince an atheist to believe in God, because their pride limits their comprehension.

 

Maybe thats the reason its been changed to BCE and BC. They realized they were basing it on myth.

 

Got nothing to do with comprehension. Your entire belief system is based on FAITH it does not matter if a god exist or not you have been brain washed into thinking he does. That said a god is not provable, not by you, not by me or anyone else he's a man made concoction. See my signature.

 

Who realized it was based on myth? You? I guess then we should bow to your superior knowledge. Wasn't it Aristotle who said wisdom starts when we realize how little we know?

 

You are telling me the experiences I had because of my faith, were not really experiences but simply 'illusions'? Interesting, what else do you know about me?

 

It had more to do with political correctness and religious neutrality than anything else. Only a fringe group of scholars actually believe Jesus didn't exist.

 

Oh hell! Stop trying to be all prim and proper!

 

If the shoe fits wear it....illusions can work miracles it did for Paul....he never saw a jesus and only heard a voice. Voices in your head can be dangerous especially if you obey them. Your experiences "so called" are FAITH based in so far as the brain washing as did it's job.....Faith is one of the most dangerous things they are. Faith starts wars, causes bombings and it all starts with FAITH in a sight unseen god man or deity. I do not see this sight unseen deity coming to anyone's rescue......

Misdirection. I said "your faith".....DAMN! Another Fundie on ignore this is getting old.

 

You speak with incredible arrogance. Strobel is brainwashed, because he diligently researched the available evidence and was honest with himself when he came to the inevitable conclusion?... He wasn’t subjected to any brainwashing, he did research on his own, starting out as an unbeliever and skeptic.

What makes you think you’re not the one who’s been brainwashed?

After all, you and all of us, are bombarded with the secular revisionist view on this. The media, the academic elites, all the documentaries you see on television, the “official” version presented as legitimate is only the version of atheists and revisionists, when it comes to the Bible. The possibility of brainwashing is therefore greater.

To claim that first century Christians who lived at the same time with Jesus and even a few decades later, worshipped and followed an imaginary man who didn’t live, is very revisionist, and foolish.

Why does a dialogue between a secular agnostic and a spiritual believer always have to be on the terms of the agnostic?

What is there so intelligent and legitimate about secularism or atheism, as a philosophy in itself?!

I know what you’re probably going to tell me. I know the old secular “humanist” mantra used for simple minded people who know very little history and have very little ethics and strong convictions of their own. “Religion has started wars and used so-called sacred writings to oppress people.”

Given the track record of secularism with two monstrous totalitarianisms, Communism and Nazism, mass murder of tens of millions, dictatorships, two world wars and a cold war, and all of that in the 20th century alone, you’re not in a position to lecture spiritual religious people.

“He who hates me, hates my Father also”. John 15:23

“If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed” Jesus said (John 8:36)

 

And another thing. I think the reason you clicked ignore on my posts, is because you're afraid.

 

I think you’re saying that the Romans or the leaders of the Jews took His body away, to prevent people from turning the grave into a shrine.

They wanted to make the body disappear, in other words. That’s the last thing the Jewish religious leaders wanted. They knew that if Jesus was not in the grave on the third day of after that, his disciples would have used that as an excuse to tell people that he was raised from the dead. And they wanted the contrary, to be able to tell the people that he was still there. that’s where they ran into serious problems. The burden of proof was on them, to explain why Jesus was not in the grave anymore.

So no, this theory doesn’t make sense.

 

It couldn’t have been written around 80-130 AD, because Luke lived before 100 AD. He was a contemporary of John the evangelist and Paul as well.

Speaking of the Gospel of Luke, here’s something to consider.

The Bible has a lot more accurate history than you think.

Sir William Mitchell Ramsay, a British archaeologist, an agnostic, set out in the 1880s to disprove the Gospel of Luke. Like other revisionists before and after him, Ramsay claimed that belief in Luke’s account in the gospel and the Book of Acts had no historical and archaeological basis. He thought there were many exaggerations, and fictional places and characters. After a few years of serious research, Ramsay came to the inevitable conclusion that Luke’s Gospel and Acts, were actually very accurate. He was astonished at the detail of accuracy. He wrote:

“Further study...showed that the book could bear the most minute scrutiny as an authority for the facts of the Aegean world, and that it was written with such judgment, skill, art and perception of truth as to be a model of historical statement' (The Bearing of Recent Discovery, p. 85). on page 89 of the same book, Ramsay accounted, 'I set out to look for truth on the borderland where Greece and Asia meet, and found it there”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Mitchell_Ramsay

In the last one hundred years or so, evidence from archaeology, history and anthropology confirmed the biblical accounts about the Jews and other peoples in the area of the Middle East. Their customs, beliefs and so on. We wouldn’t even know almost anything about the ancient Jews, if it wasn’t for the Bible.

 

The argument here is that the man Tacitus was referring to, could have been any of the Jewish leaders who made Messianic claims. Really? Historically speaking, none of those leaders had a large following or any following after they were dead. Jesus of Nazareth is the only one who had a large following after he wasn’t around. Any secular historian who has done his homework will tell you that. Since the Christians that historians like Tacitus or Pliny are referring to, a few decades after the crucifixion and resurrection, worshipped and followed Jesus of Nazareth and not any other “messianic” leader, then it’s common sense to conclude that Jesus lived and that He is the one called Messiah or Christus, in the above mentioned historical records.

“He who hates me, hates my Father also”. John 15:23

“If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed” Jesus said (John 8:36)

 

I agree that the Bible is full of great history. This has little to do with Luke.

The first thing to realise is that "Luke" did no write the Gospel of Luke. You can find that in the Catholic Encyclopedia.

The dating came from here: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/luke.html

Last, your claim that we would not know anything about the Jews if not for the Bible is simply not true. A Ton of what we know about the Jews around the time of Christ comes from other sources. We have a plethora of writings from historians like Josephus. We have the dead sea scrolls, archaeology and a bunch of sources outside the Bible. These other sources have helped us to better understand the Bible and not the reverse.

 

It is possible that Tacitus was referring to someone else but that is not the point of the argument. Tacitus does not mention Jesus by name but does mention Pilate which corrolates to the Bible story.

The point is to understand that there was a strong messianic tradition around the first century. The Jews at that time believed that this messiah (Christos) would return them to former glory.

As such, many of these Messiah's had large followings. Simon of Perea was killed by the Romans, was thought to have risen from the dead 3 days later, and his followers continued to worship him as such after death.

The Jewish tradition had 2 messiahs. One was fortold to die after which a second would come and this one would return the Jews to former glory and be their king.

Unfortunately for the Jews there were many Messiahs who were killed but the one that was supposed to lead them to glory like Joshua never came.

Simon was killed a few years before Yeshua/Joshua aka Jesus was born. There were other messiah's that came after Jesus was killed.

This is not the case. We are now digging up the past and finding that indeed these messiah's did have a following after death as part of the Jewish tradition and in expectation of a great leader that would follow the death of the first messiah.

Tacitus does not mention the name Yeshua and nor does he mention the crucifixion.

That there was a Messiah named Joshua killed by a Roman makes perfect sense. The Bible gives name Pilate and so does Tacitus so it is quite possible that it is Joshua who he is referring to.

There is little doubt in my mind that there was a messianic leader who was the founder of Christianity and his name was probably Joshua.

The point here is to realize that there was a strong messianic tradition. The stories attribute to this Joshua may have been done so after the fact, especially in relation to the physical resurrection.

Paul refers to the resurrection as spiritual ( like his own vision). We now know that the original Mark did not have a physical resurrection story.

Since Matt and Luke used Mark as a source document, and are thought to have been written decades after Mark, it is quite possible that the physical resurrection stories in Luke and Matt were the product of artistic license as Christianty evolved.

We have known for a long time that the Gnostics believed that the resurrection was spiritual. The "Sophia of Jesus Christ" may predate Mark and it specifically claims the resurrection was spiritual but tells a similar story to that found in Matt and Luke.

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/sophia.html

What is perhaps even more compelling is the Ebionites. The Ebionites rejected Paul in favor of the teachings of the brother of Jesus, James the Just, and believed Jesus was a man, albeit a prophet. Recent scholarship are not suggesting that the Ebionites were the original Judeo Christians.

Pauls following were not Jewish in general. The Church of Jerusalem, led by James, consisted of the disciples of which were all Jews. It is now being suggested that this group is what became the Ebionites.

 

For starters there is no evidence that the Jews were ever in Egypt. Secondly I see we are still beating this Tacitus thing to death. No matter how you slice it, dice or try and twist it Tacitus is no witness to a jesus.



The above photo shows that the word chrestianos has been altered to read christianos (the christians). And why would Nero make such a distinction? The christian cult was little more than a small thorn in the side of the Roman Empire at the time and still were considered little more than a Jewish sect. The embellishment of adding Pilate to the story was nothing more than a way to sure up the already exploding mythology. Pilate had no reason to execute a jesus.

 

I think the facts are simple for anyone to see. The thing about 2 Messiahs, came later, after the Talmud was compiled. That's after 100 AD. I know about that rabbinical doctrine, they came up with it because they couldn't understand why in their tradition the Messiah was called both the Son of Joseph and the Son of David. Jesus was called the "son of Joseph" because that was the name of Mary's husband and he was alos called the son of David because he was a descendant of David, and because he will save Israel from anihilation at his second coming.

Speaking of Jesus of Nazareth being a descendant of David, the first century Jews knew that because they kept the genealogy of every family, including a copy of it in the Temple records. That genealogy is in the New Testament.

You keep saying that other "messiahs" had a large following after they were gone. Maybe among some Jews who thought they were going to drive the Romans out and were waiting for a political and military leader. But most rabbinical Jews didn't follow any leader who made those claims, after he was dead. They would look for another "messiah", as soon as the former one was gone.

As for the Jewish Christians and Gentiles who became Christians, it's obvious that they followed and believed in Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah. The argument that Luke didn't write his gospel has no evidence for it other than the opinions of revisionists and you quote the Catholic Encyclopedia. It's ironic that agnostics usually despise the Catholic church but when it suits their purposes, they'll quote some Catholic source. there are revisionists even among Catholic scholars.

The point is, you can't say the Bible is guilty of not being accurate before you even research the evidence. Sir William Mitchell Ramsay was an agnostic, so he had no intention or interest to prove the Bible is accurate. Ironically, he arrived at that conclusion. He was an archaelogist and he did a lot of research, he knew his stuff.

 

If some of you still claim that Jesus was not a historical character, then try to explain the following things.

1. By 55 AD, there were already many Christian communities, both among Jewish and Gentile believers. That’s roughly twenty five years after the time of Jesus. All the books of the New Testament, except the four Gospels and Acts, were addressed to those churches, in different places, even if they were written a little later. Where did those Christians come from? If Jesus was a fictional character, whom did they believe in? I would like to remind you that this was about 25 to 30 years after the time Christ Jesus walked the earth. The majority of people who were around during his time, were still around thirty years later. Consequently, if the story of Jesus was a myth, it would have been easily dismissed as a myth by the people who heard the preaching. But ironically, many of them became believers. It’s estimated that by 55-60 AD, there were approximately ten thousand Jews who were believers in Jesus Christ, in the land of Israel. How could thousands of people who would have known if the story was a myth, become believers? They would have known because it was only about three decades away. It was not something that supposedly happened hundreds of years before. Hundreds of years later, I agree that it would be possible to fool people with a mythological story. But a few decades later, it’s impossible. It’s impossible because most of them were alive when the “mythological story” happened, they lived in the same area where it happened.

2. In Psalm 22, the sacrifice of the Messiah is mentioned and some details are given. It says in verse 16, that they pierced his hands and feet. That’s clearly a description of driving something sharp through a man’s hands and feet. When David wrote this Psalm, one thousand years before the time of Jesus, cruficixion was not even used as a method of execution. The Roman Empire did not exist yet. How could David write something so precise, related to the way Christ was going to die as a sacrifice?

3. If Jesus was only a myth, the Jewish religious leaders in the first and second century would have been the first ones to say that. How come they didn’t deny his existence? In the Talmud it says that Jesus was sentenced to death on the eve of Passover, because he supposedly “led the people astray”. They didn’t deny his existence. They couldn't deny the existence of the man believed by many to be God in human form.

4. Between 60 and 70 AD, the number of Christians in Rome increased. Tacitus wrote in his account that the “there were many in Rome who followed the Christian superstition”. Where did they come from? If Jesus was a fictional character, whom did they believe in?

5. During the fall of Jerusalem, shortly before that, the Christian Jews who believed in Jesus as the Messiah, fled from the city. They survived because they didn’t stay in the city, it’s a historical fact. Since they came from a Jewish background and were familiar with stories and accounts of God delivering the Israelites from their enemies in the past, why did they leave? It’s because they remembered the prophecy made by God through Jesus that Jerusalem was going to be destroyed by the Romans. It’s in Matthew 24:2, Luke 19:44 and Mark 13:2. They took God’s warning seriously and didn’t remain in Jerusalem.