Again, though, we don't have the those testimonies (to my knowledge), we only have other people saying that those people made testimonies.  It's like the difference between you saying "yes, I agree with Tycho" and me saying "Heath agrees with me" when you're not around to say whether you really do agree or not.

You say all 500 people agreed with Paul's account, but how do you know that?  Where can I look it up to see what those 500 people said?  If we really do have 500 people's independent testimonies that really would be a big deal.  But if we only have a few people's word that 500 people agreed with them, then that's much less convincing.

Considering the letter was sent to Greece, I'm a little confused as to why any of the Corinthians would have been among the 500 hanging out in Jerusalem when Jesus returned.

But yes, from a historical standpoint, I'd still be curious to see anyone say 'Paul wrote this and I agree/disagree with him, it did/didn't really happen'.  I'm not aware of any document on the subject either way.  And since Paul himself wasn't there, not even he counts as an eyewitness.  He's just reporting what someone else (Jesus?) told him.

katisara, his letters were not just circulated in Greece.

I'm not sure why we're assuming he got the information because Jesus told it to him.  I think he would get the information from talking to the Christians/eyewitnesses himself and finding out by them telling him (and him reporting it to the Corinthians).  Jesus would just confirm that, I think, not reveal it.

Is there any evidence tending to show that he DID NOT visit 500 witnesses, as is generally accepted?

Just on some quick searches here on this topic:

http://www.allaboutjesuschrist...ection-of-christ.htm

Here's a chart showing his list of appearances:
http://www.abideinchrist.com/m...surrectionjesus.html


Is the real point here whether he appeared to 500 people as attested to by Paul (and whether Paul was lying), or is it whether Jesus appeared to "anybody" and therefore was resurrected?  I think the latter is the issue here, and so we have multiple eyewitness accounts attesting that he visited them post-resurrection.

You keep saying there are multiple eyewitness accounts, Heath.  Which do you mean?  What keeps being brought up is hearsay about these eye witness accounts, not the accounts themselves.  That's sort of what we're trying to get at.  What are the eyewitness reports that you keep mentioning?

Here is a very well written article.  Chapter 6 deals with Jesus' resurrection:

http://sguthrie.net/resurrection.htm



Tycho, Chapter 6 here mentions the eyewitness accounts.  I'm not sure you've researched this issue...  Although Christ's visit to the 500 is only mentioned by Paul in Corinthians (and this would have been within 6 years of Jesus' death with Paul mingling among those who were actually there), Christ's post-resurrection to the other witnesses is found in several places, not just by Paul.  So I don't see how you would say that was hearsay, even though Paul repeated the accounting of those visits after mingling with those involved and receiving their account.

No, I haven't.  That's why I keep asking you to point me towards the primary sources.  :)


Okay, where?  Do you mean "other people also said 500 people saw it," or "we have records of those 500 people saying they saw it?"  Do you see the difference between the two?


Isn't that sort of the definition of hearsay?  If Paul tells me what someone else said, that's hear say.  Doesn't mean it's not true, but it does mean we're still taking Paul at his word.

I keep feeling like I'm missing something here.  I'm sure you know what hearsay is, Heath, but it seems like you keep telling me that Paul saying what 500 people said they saw isn't hearsay.  What I'm asking for is an account by those some of those 500 people themselves, not an account about those 500 people.  I feel like the difference between the two should be pretty obvious, especially to someone in your field, but it doesn't seem like you consider the difference significant, which is confusing me.

I looked at chapter 6 of the article you linked to, but I'm not seeing any first hand accounts there.  Everything listed is either from the gospels, or from Paul's letters.  Also, his logic is faulty.  His argument, as he lays it out, is this:
1.  the resurrection has a nontrivial prior probability
2.  IF the resurrection is true, THEN the historical facts are true.
3.  The historical facts are true.
Now, I'm pretty sure you've studied logic at some point Heath, so I'm confident you can spot the logical flaw of going from these to "thus the resurrection is true."
He tries to cover himself by adding:
4.  All other hypothesis for which the historical facts are confirming have lower prior probability.
In other words, he thinks someone rising from the dead is more likely to happen then say, people lying, people being incorrect, etc.  Really, the entire argument comes down to his forth premise.  He simply takes it as an axiom, that his conclusion is more likely than any other conclusion.  Premise 4 essentially says "It's more likely that I'm right than anyone else is right."  Yes, if you accept that as a given, then any conclusion you reach will follow.  But I'm not exactly to except that at an axiomatic level. ;)

I think what Tycho is saying is that he wants some of the eyewitness testimonies of the 500 mentioned by Paul, or at least some non-Biblical testimony.  From what I can see, the articles only use Biblical sources.

Wow, okay I am going go in a different direction.

Other than the 500 witnesses, lets just focus on the 11 living apostles.  If for a fact that Jesus was taken from the tomb, do you know that 10 of them, plus the replacement for Judas, were brutally martyred?

If it was all a big hoax, then why one of them after a few minutes of finger nail pulling, the first nail being driven, etc say "Woah woah woah wait a minute, that hurts!  I tell you were he is and how we did it."  Pain is a great motivator, just ask any of our Vietnam vets.

http://www.christianitytoday.c...theexpert/sep23.html

The above link is to an article about that.

So would 12 witnesses be enough?  Legally you only need two.

Again, though, we don't have primary sources for this, just hearsay.  Did the apostles get martyred?  Well, the early church tells us they did, but that's all we have to go on.  Did those apostle actually claim to have seen a resurrected Jesus?  Again, the people trying to win converts to christianity tell us they did, but we can't confirm this independently.

Consider how much these stories increases your own faith about the resurrection.  Clearly, there would be a motive for those in the early church to propagate such stories.  It's easier to win converts with stories of brave martyrs, than it is with stories of people who mostly get ignored, and then die peacefully.  And if the people you're telling the story to aren't in a position to go check which really happened, all the better.

Basically, you and Heath seem to be taking the tack of "why would those people lie under torture?" or "how could 500 people be wrong."  But that's not the simplest explanation for those who doubt the story.  It's not an issue of why would the apostles keep lying while being tortured, but rather one of why would early church leaders lie/exaggerate/whatever about those apostles being tortured, or perhaps about what those apostles actually said to get tortured.  It's not an issue of thinking 500 people lied, but rather an issue of thinking that one person lied about there being 500 people.  You guys seem to be missing the point that what is actually in question is much of the whole story being presented, not just the resurrection itself.  You keep referring to things Paul, or other early church leaders said to back up their story, without realizing that those details are every bit as in question as the resurrection, because they come from the same source.

To be clear, I'm not claiming there's strong evidence it didn't happen.  That'd be nearly impossible to prove (just as it'd be nearly impossible for you to disprove my story, if I made up one about a resurrected friend).  But you guys seem to be saying it's obviously, beyond a doubt true, without realizing the case rests entirely on the word of people who have a motive for making people believe it's true (ie, their goal was to win converts).

Do you think that the story of Alexander the Great is a valid story?



You are right about the inpossiblity to diffinetively prove 100% that the resurection of Jesus is true, but let's consider the following:

You are the leader of a religious system that has made you rich and powerful.  Suddenly some peasant says that you are corrupt and foolish and that your religious system is a sham.  Then donations start to wane, you have to skip 5th breakfast and 2nd lunch because of this.  Wouldn't it be in your best interest to take out this dude and cover up/destroy everyone associated with him?  And remember that we are taking about a time before the knowledge of crime scene evidence.

This is what happened to the Jewish leaders and the Roman government.

Your arguement about wanting converts is interesting, but as Christians I don't want anyone to convert.  You can believe whatever you want to.  Jesus is still the savior and nothing we say can change this.  It's like soldier ants suddenly saying, "Hey I don't like the queen, so I don't believe she is the queen so instead I am going to beleive this rock statue is my queen."  This does nothing to change the fact that the queen ant is still the queen.

A study of the christian texts will show that we can't save ourselves.  This flys in the face of all religions that say the opposite.  Why is this?  Could it be truth unfiltered?

Tag :)

Yes.  But it's not claiming anyone raising from the dead.  ;)  If there were some supernatural claims in it, then I probably wouldn't believe it either.  It's an issue of how much evidence is needed for a given claim.  If you tell me you found a quarter on the ground today, I'm happy to take you at your word, without any further witnesses.  If you say you ran into a pride of lions on your way to work, and had to kill them all with your bare hands to save a bunch of school children, then I'm not going to just take your word on it.  If you say you rose someone from the dead on your way to work today, then I'm really not just going to take your word!


That's progress right there. :)


True, but this doesn't have any bearing on whether or not what that peasant said was true.  They could claim that the moon is made of green cheese, and all that matters is me missing my 5th breakfast.  The fact that the romans and/or pharisees might have had a motive to kill Jesus doesn't make it any more likely that Jesus rose from the dead.


So you don't believe Jesus has charged you with spreading his word, and telling people that he is the son of God?


Actually, though it says you can't save yourself, it tells you how to go about saving yourself: accept Jesus as your savior.  It's still an action on your part (ie, accepting Jesus) that is required for salvation.  The "you can't do it yourself" part isn't quite accurate.  It's more that you can't do it yourself by doing X, Y, or Z.  You have to ask Jesus to do the hard part, but you still have to do the asking.  There's still something that you need to do to get saved.  It sort of just changes the subject of the verb:  you can't do anything to save yourself, but you can/must do something in order to be saved.  That isn't to say that there's no difference, just that it's a somewhat subtle one.  More importantly, though, being unique doesn't make it any more likely that what you say is true.  All religions have something that makes them unique when compared to all others.

I'm not getting into the debate side of things here, but for those of you interested in a slightly different, yet still christian take on the resurrection and its importance, check out the book Surprised by Hope, by NT Wright.  fantastic book.

It's not a book that at its core is defending the resurrection as an historical thing that happened, though there is some of that in it.  It is more interested in how the 'fact' of the resurrection (those of you who disagree that it ever happened would most likely want to skip the book) changes everything.  Some of you might be interested in it, I know I found it an excellent read.

Imagine you had a machine, perhaps a time machine, perhaps something else. You used it to travel back in time and search for Jesus (for whatever reason). After all of your searching you determine, conclusively, that Jesus as a historical personage did not exist.

Supposing this hypothetical, how would Christianity change? Would it?

This thought has come up to me a few times, but today I realized that my own biases are probably keeping me from properly appreciating things, so I'm opening it up to the group. Instead of Jesus you could insert Mohammed or Abraham and Moses, or whichever character who founded a religion you prefer.

Read this book:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behold_the_Man (SPOILERS)

It is exactly about travelling back in time to meet Jesus and what happens when the main character comes into contact with the real Jesus.  This book is in my library.  I read it a long time ago and you reminded me of it.

paganism in the broad sense doesn't really have a founder. Modern wicca has Gerald Gardner, but his existance is pretty well documented, including film footage, and his actual person isn't critical to the belief system...

for a system where the person in question is critical the first issue (aside from the ussual time travel issues) in terms of effect on the larger faith is how credible the antiwitness would be considered, and whether people can dismiss the experience in terms of something along the lines of 'just because you couldn't find them doesn't mean they weren't there.'

Far more devestating, IMO would be to find the person who has been mytholigised and being able to document that they are far from the person you thought they were- for example finding Jesus training Jewish troops to overthrow the Roman occupation.

I had considered those. In the case of modern wicca, the damage wouldn't be from Gardner not existing, but from his not actually having access to the source of historical knowledge he claims. But even then, this is already well suspected even by Wiccans, and for the most part, they have been willing to move past Gardner and seek the meanings within his teachings, or find alternate sources of information.

The Christian Churches, however, are far more established and hierarchical, so I think the impact would be more profound.

For this hypothetical question, let's assume that it can be proven, beyond reasonable doubt, and repeated, that Jesus didn't exist. If it's deniable, it would be denied, and that's that.

I actually think the 'more devastating' situation you mention would in fact be less devastating. If Jesus didn't exist, the stories about him can be accepted still on spiritual and religious basis as being from God, but at the same time, the whole basis of so much of the literal and fundamentalist aspects of the Christian beliefs are brought into question. It would be turmoil, because now EVERYTHING is brought into question. It's like the lie which is almost all truth - the whole package is so believable you have to struggle with it and come to a new understanding. if you just deny it, it will nag you forever.

Contrast that with the second option - Jesus was the hunchbacked retarded man from Behold the Man. In this case, the answer doesn't beg questions, it begs insult. It turns the question from 'our understanding is based on Truth, but was not accurate - what does it mean?' to 'these people are claiming it is based on falsehood, that it is all incorrect'. The attack is too drastic, too fast. Speaking as a pretty liberal-minded Christian, even I would, at worst, disregard the data (even if it's proven) and act like we're seeing Creationists now, or at best, decide the Bible is true, but the source clearly wasn't Jesus like we're seeing, but another source (which brings is back to the original question). I assume that for most other Christians, they'd go with the first option. Showing Jesus to be, well, the AntiChrist would do more damage for Christianity's PR with non-Christians than it would within the organization itself, I think, and result in more iconoclasm, and more of a sense of xenophobia. But I don't think it would be destructive much at all to the Christian political organizations - it would serve to strengthen them.

Part of the reason I think the second option is more devestating is because 1) it is easier to prove. a negative can be very difficult to establish. Also however in the second case a radical change in voice can do far worse that simply say 'this is all based on nothing'. If you discover that Jesus was a fictional character created by the disciples and paul fell for it hook line and sinker, for example, you still have an orrigin which is close to the understanding you have today, simply missing a core element. If on the other hand you discover that Jesus was militantly for Jewish superiority, and for example his 'Give unto Ceaser' speach really did refer to getting rid of Roman coins, kicking the Roman's out of Gods land and re-establishing the Jewish currency that radically alters the understanding of the text which has been developed over nearly 2 millenia.
If, for example, you were to discover and document that Jesus and Peter were having a physically intimate relationship then you could pretty much bury Phelps and McCain on their respective arguments on how a 'Christian' nation should deal with homosexuality. If Jesus were militantly in favor of Jewish Supremism, then the 'lets convert the Jews' movements within modern Christianity would have  alot of egg on their face.
If it turns out Jesus was marrie to Mary Magdellain, had a girlfreind and 12 disciples on teh side, and Mary worked as a prostitute then that pretty much burries any concept of 'God loves abstinance'. And so on and so forth.

But I think that that radical change in voice would be too radical. If it were more moderate, Christians might listen and wonder. If it's so extreme, I think the only people who would be listening are those who already weren't Christians and, for the most part, Christians were already 'at war with', or at least ignoring.

There's been research done that shows that when people are shown evidence of their beliefs being wrong, then tend to push their beliefs on others even harder than before.  There's a natural instinct for people to "fight back" against evidence like that.  Presumably there's some level or degree of evidence that tips one over the ledge, and changes their mind, but for some (many?) that level is well beyond what most people would consider to be "proof."

In light of that, I think you'd have some people who'd quit the religion, and some who'd deny the evidence up and down and push christianity on others with renewed vigor.  What fraction of christians would end up in each camp, I really have no idea.

Personally I think that you would have the same case either way- if people were given evidence that tehre was no Jesus versus given evidence that there was a war-mongering whore mongering Jesus, either way the tendancy of a lot of christians will be towards denial. If we are going to posit 'undeniable proof' for non existance (how do you prove non existance?) then it would seem to me that existance with a different nature should be easier to have evidence/proof for... those who will deny the undeniable will do so regardless of which version they are faced with.

The point of the hypothetical is that his lack of existence is proven :P

I frankly don't find the second question so interesting (personally) because I think it's just too confrontational - they'd turn off and that's that. However, with the first issue it isn't confrontational necessarily, but it perhaps begs for change.

Really? You don't think most Christians would find the idea that there is no historical Jesus confrontational?
It seems to me what it would be a call for is an abandonment of teh faith- 'hey this is all founded on a lie' whereas a radically different historical figure means teh core message (he lived and died, purportedly for your sins) remains but with a radically different meaning which requires revision and adressing the actual beliefs.

Now hypothetically if somehow you could convince everyone with 100% certainty that jesus did not exist...
 many would die. Suicide, either quickly or by starvation as they were not able to eat from the sheer shock.
many more would go out and get debauched. No sin, no consequences 9in their revised understanding) means they should embrace hedonism and enjoy life... and tehre would to some degree be a crossover here with the first group (are you really enjoying life or comitting suicide by party) There would of course be a resultant baby boom from this...
some would simply shrug their shoulders and keep going to church, leaving it to their pastors & priests to figure out what it means (and that is a job I would not envy).
Othrs would begin looking into very other form of spirituality arround and look for new answers. Cults would spring up arround anyone who claimed to have a new understanding or truth to pull people out of darkness and despair. Some of these would be based on old religions, others would be entirely new whole cloth created religions.
Finally there would be a moderate uptick in the number of atheists- probably on the order of a 3-10 percent gain as a percentage of the population.
In two generations Christianity would be essentially gone.

Not as much so, no. Fundamentalists would. But I wonder how many would accept that the message is still from God and move on to the next step. Basically, while Jesus not existing does shake your beliefs, it doesn't contradict the message, and it doesn't insult those beliefs.

But I guess that's what my question is. Am I wrong?


I don't feel like Christianity would be gone, though. I've spoken with enough people who have faith in God and who understand that the important part of Jesus is the message, not the history, that I feel it would still hang around. And the more liberal the Church, the less it suffers - Unitarianism might not even notice. However, fundamentalism would suffer a very major shock. The LDS faith might even suffer a major shock, because it relies so heavily on the history of Jesus's physical actions to justify its existence (compared to the RCC, which relies on the actions of the early apostles to justify its existence as an organization).

Actually I suspect the LDS would put more emphasis on Joseph smith and less on maintaining their identity of Christians. The New Revelation would gain prominance and t would evolve rapidly into an entirely new religion.
As to people staying christian without Jesus, I did say some would more or less shrug and keep going to church. There is also the whole issue of the 10% 'christian atheists' in the 2000 religion census- in 1990 5% of the population was considered atheist- in 2000 this jumped to 15%, the majority of which was largely attributed to a rephrasing of the question to a broader definition of atheist (essentially that they do not believe that there is a deity instead of maintaining a belief that there is no deity), and it is estimated that the majority of those people would have otherwise been identified as Christian.