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Notes -
Yeah, I've heard the suggestion at some point that it's referring to Israel. Penal substitution seems clear enough to me in the passage that I can't see how that would make sense. Keep in mind I don't know Hebrew. And the identity might change within Isaiah, from passage to passage—I think one section probably referred to Cyrus, if I remember correctly.
This is a good point. My impression, though, is that while a suffering and resurrecting Messiah is latent in the Jewish scriptures, it wasn't something that they were particularly aware of. Like, I don't think modern Jews really talk about that, even though it seems like it's in there, though of course some of that could be out of opposition to and distinguishing themselves from Christianity. They of course could have discovered it, but if it's not really in use, I think that objection loses most of its teeth.
Of course. It seems likely to me that there'd be others though, in the actual history. If Paul isn't lying, then there are at least a bunch of claims that the resurrected Christ was witnessed at least somewhat publically (see 1 Corinthians 15), as well as a bunch of other apostles who were with Jesus. Since Paul actually was in Jerusalem sometimes, interacting with the apostles, even if only briefly, it seems unlikely to me that they would have deceived him only in this point—you'd have to assume an earlier conspiracy.
This was roughly what I was trying to use the 500 to support—that Paul thinks it was public. Presumably many of these people would still be alive and Christian, so there should be people he could actually point to, if he's not lying. And I see no reason why he'd lie—he seems sincere in his valuing Christ's resurrection as central, and I don't know especially why he'd feel the need to make up lies to defend that—he could just go along with those who say the resurrection in itself isn't too important if he's insincere. Others lying to him is more plausible.
Well, of course. There is hostile testimony that the body's gone, though.
The main option in competition, to me, would seem to be the one arguing that the disciples stole the body. This doesn't make too much sense to me. Why would they all lie and do this, right after Jesus just died for his religious teaching? And then live out the rest of their lives based on this moment, preaching lies? They'd be desecrating a grave of one of their companions to die the same death, except this time knowingly based on lies. While also being theologically innovative, since it's not at all clear why stealing the body would be so important.
It also seems relatively unlikely that the gospel accounts would have women be the ones to have the lack body discovered first, if they were made up.
Yeah, this last bit is the only part that could get you out of Pascal's wager, I think. But you have to do better than "I'm not sure it really increases your chances all that much." It should have to be exactly 0 or negative, or the size of the reward or penalty will be enough to overcome any finite benefit or penalty. So you'd have to be committed to thinking that you'll be better off between all these worlds following none of them than any pro-Christianity course of action in any one of them. Given what the actual new testament seems to say (that no one can be saved except through Christ), I think that's less likely. Further, if anyone thinks non-believers don't necessarily go to hell, that's usually because they either think that those who didn't have a chance go to heaven (guess what, you've read this, you have a chance), or they think that good works, are sufficient, which would encourage pretty heavily some action on your part. At least, that's how that method to escape the wager seems to work to me.
Could you expand on your four main points?
*Summary put there for organizational purposes, not direct quotes
I've never really thought Isaiah 53 was especially evocative of crucifixion to begin with. It talks about someone being "crushed" and "pierced," but that right there encompasses just about all of the ways you could be violently killed in the ancient world. I think the passages could just as easily apply to anyone who has ever been unjustly murdered.
There are some early Jewish non-Christian messianic interpretations of the servant songs, so it wasn't entirely novel. To make this argument you'd have to thread the needle between "it's clear enough that we should be amazed at the prophetic powers of Isaiah" and "the prophecy is vague enough that someone like Peter or John couldn't have applied it to Jesus." I think it's extremely plausible that members of a small Jewish sect whose teacher has just been brutally executed would "search the scriptures" (the NT explicitly says they did this) and find this passage in Isaiah that talks about a righteous servant of God being unjustly killed, and decide it applies to their teacher.
I don't think there was ever a conspiracy. I think Jesus was crucified, and some of his hardcore followers had visions of him after his death (hardly uncommon). Because Jesus had primed them to expect the general resurrection and the kingdom of God any day now, they interpreted these visions according to that framework, as proof that Jesus had been raised. This allowed them to maintain their belief that Jesus was the messiah (despite this having been apparently, and brutally, disconfirmed by his execution), and the kingdom and the resurrection were still coming. In fact, Jesus' resurrection was proof of the imminent general resurrection (that's why Paul calls him "first fruits"). Thus the movement's greatest failure was transmogrified into its greatest victory.
I don't think the story of Joseph of Arimathea's empty tomb is necessarily historical. Even in the gospels themselves you can see the story of the burial growing in the telling. In Mark the women get to the tomb and find the stone has already been rolled back, and an angel tells them Jesus has gone ahead to Galilee. In Matthew, they get there in time to see the action for themselves, the earthquake and the angel coming down from heaven and the terror of the guards (there are no guards in Mark). There's no reason to think the process of legendary accretion was not already going on prior to Mark's gospel. Most people who died--particularly criminals--were buried in ordinary graves in the earth, and IMO that's probably what happened to Jesus.
I think it's clear this breaks down somewhere. Guess what: God has decreed that if you don't paint your car pink, right now, you're going to Hell. I'm guessing you're not going to paint your car pink, probably because you know I just made it up for the sake of the argument, and you have absolutely no reason to believe it's true. Sure, it could be true. You can't 100% for sure prove it's not true. But clearly there is some minimum standard of evidence a threat of infinite torture has to meet before it is going to motivate us. So the question is whether Christianity (or Islam, or anything else) meets that standard.
I gave one example here of how I think the New Testament assumes a false cosmology. I also think fundamentalists are quite right that the Bible teaches humans and all animal life were created in their present-day forms a couple thousand years ago. This was the nearly-unanimous opinion of all interpreters up until the modern period. To be a bit glib, I think theistic evolutionists and old-earth creationists are coping. IMO you can accept the Biblical account, or the theory of evolution and the old age of the universe, but not both.
With regards to inconsistencies in the scriptures, there's petty gotcha stuff like "aha! Matthew says Judas hanged himself, but Luke says he burst open and his guts spilled out!" but one thing that was really jarring to me was how vastly different the worldviews of the old and new testaments are. The New Testament is entirely concerned with resurrection and everlasting life. That's the whole point of the NT. The OT not only is not concerned with these things, it doesn't even have the concepts. With the exception of a single verse in Daniel (the latest book in the OT), there is no resurrection or afterlife in the Hebrew Bible. When you're dead, you're dead. There is no everlasting life, no hellfire, no heavenly bliss. Yahweh blesses and curses in this life. Your reward, if you're faithful, will be earthly prosperity and children to carry on your name. On the Christian view the resurrection and eternal life are the entire point of God's plan of history, but you'd never know that from the OT. There was some 19th century theologian who admitted that, going off of all the minutiae on ritual purity in the OT and the complete lack of information about the afterlife, one was forced to conclude that "Jehovah was more concerned with the hind parts of the Jews than with their souls." There is also, in the OT, no hint that God has some kind of cosmic enemy who is ultimately responsible for all the evil in the world. Satan does not exist for the authors of the OT (neither the serpent in Genesis nor 'the Satan' in Job are equivalent to the evil adversary from the NT). In the OT, Yahweh is generally responsible for everything, good and evil. There aren't any demons in the OT. The few times that 'evil spirits' appear, they are servants of Yahweh, not his enemies. In fact in literature from the intertestamental period you can chart the slow development of most of these doctrines, which IMO is much more consistent with an entirely human set of ideas slowly evolving and changing in response to shifting cultural conditions than it is with divine revelation.
IMO the two most egregious examples are Jesus' and the early Christians expectation that the end was imminent, within a few decades at most, something that was clearly falsified by the end of the first century, and the similar prophecies of Daniel, a few centuries earlier, who very clearly predicted that God would supernaturally destroy Antiochus Epiphanes, and this would be immediately followed by the general resurrection and the end of the age, which also obviously didn't happen.
I'm running out of characters but basically, Yahweh is a thoroughly typical god of the ancient Levant, often practically indistinguishable from Ba'al or El or Chemosh. He seems to have begun as a type of the Syrian storm god, same as Ba'al Hadad, though admittedly that far back sources get sparse. Later philosophers and theologians would impose Greek philosophical concepts like aseity, immutability, immateriality, and so on on the Biblical deity, but very little of that is actually there unless you read it in. Yahweh is a thoroughly human god, with thoroughly human passions and appetites. Like the other gods, he even eats sacrifices as his "food" (see Leviticus 21:6). If we say that Ba'al and Chemosh aren't real, it seems like special pleading to say that Yahweh is real and is also the God of the whole universe, despite the fact that he looks just like all the other gods people were worshipping in that time and place.
One last thing that doesn't neatly fit into these categories but was perhaps my single most shocking discovery when I first started looking into this stuff: so much of modern Christian theology is premised on a particular reading of Genesis 2-3, but when you actually read those chapters with fresh eyes and set aside several millennia's worth of Christian and Jewish interpretation, the classic Sunday school story of "the fall" simply isn't there. In brief; there is no indication Adam and Eve were ever created immortal, the serpent is not a fallen angel but simply an ordinary, if particularly crafty, "beast of the field" (the story doubles as an etiology for why snakes have no legs), there is no hint of anything like "original sin" (nor is there anywhere else in the OT), and most strikingly to me at least, the plain reading of the story is that the serpent tells the truth about the Tree of Knowledge.
Sure, you're correct that a crucifixion isn't obviously what's depicted here. I see the similarity more in a propitiatory and substitutionary sacrifice of a messiah. But yes, that does lower the closeness of the match compared to if the text were more explicit. Your point that it could just be an after-the-fact connection is stronger. I think that's less likely of the resurrection since it's unlikely that they'd just claim that, and the scriptural evidence is less manifest.
What would be uncommon, I would certainly assume, would be a group hallucination. Paul, the synoptics, John, all testify that he appeared to the twelve (well, to the eleven). Do you think that didn't happen, and they misremembered or misconveyed?
It's supported, though, by hostile testimony—the claim in response was that the body was stolen, not that he was never buried there. The simpler option for them to say, if he was never buried there, is just that he was never buried there. (Also, I'm not sure what mechanism would cause that to originate, if you both think that early Christians, including the twelve, were sincere, and the gospels are old.)
I think that's a misreading of Matthew, for the simple reason of it doesn't explain how the body vanished. Rather I read it as that they came, then Matthew realized, Oh, wait, I wanted to talk about the guards and the tomb rolled away, he describes it from the perspective of the guards, and then resumes with the women—else it doesn't give Jesus an opportunity to walk out the tomb.
I think some of the reason is just that there are other infinites in play, and so you have to worry about them—it's not improbable that there are better ways to spend your time in pursuit of the ones you think relatively more worth concerning yourself about.
Accomodation seems adequate for the other one. Yeah, old earth creationism of some form seems scientifically necessary but also isn't the easiest textually—the broad semantic meaning of day helps somewhat.
There's a little more than nothing, for eternal life or a resurrection. Job 19:26, Isaiah 25:8, 26:19, Psalm 49:15, Hosea 13:14.
These are all earlier than Daniel. Admittedly they aren't much, and a few are arguable. If Sheol's considered a place, there's a lot more. But you're right that it's undeniable that that's not where the emphasis is put.
For demons, I'm inclined to think that the development is because of an increase in demonic activity at the time—it's unsurprising that this would lead to them playing a greater role. Yahweh's also responsible for everything in the new testament.
Not especially familiar with Daniel. As to the new testament, well, it explicitly says a thousand years is like a day, so it internally moderates.
Yahweh, at the very least, is different in the claim to be God over everything. Monotheism is different. I am who am seems to be hinting at something like aseity, even if not put exactly after that manner.
Sorry, the end especially was rushed.
I don’t think there were ever any group hallucinations. I think initially probably one or two or three people had (individual) visions of the risen Jesus, and the more spectacular stories in the gospels are the result of legendary accretion and invention years later. I have a sort of pet theory about what might have happened on/after Good Friday that I can share if you want (I started to write it out here but it got too long), though of course it is just speculation.
But for now, to see how an initially not-particularly-remarkable experience can snowball in memory (even something that took place before dozens of witnesses, even in the memories of those witnesses themselves), consider the ‘transfiguration of Brigham Young.’ To be very brief, this was an event in which Brigham Young supposedly demonstrated his right to succeed Joseph Smith as LDS prophet by giving a speech before the ‘saints’ at a camp meeting. While speaking before them, he was supernaturally transfigured so that he was identical to Joseph in speech and appearance.
The problem is that the earliest accounts, from weeks or months after the event, don’t mention this wonder. They talk about Young's speech, but with regards to the supposed miracle, they at most talk about “the mantle of the prophet” falling upon Young, or say that he appeared to take on Joseph’s mannerisms.
But within a few years/decades, dozens of people claimed to have witnessed firsthand the marvelous transformation. Some claimed only that the voice of Joseph came out of Brigham’s mouth, but many claimed that he literally took on the features of Joseph, a few even that a glowing light shone out from his face.
I don’t think any of these people were lying; I think over the years, they genuinely came to believe they had seen this miracle.
Well, that’s what Matthew says the claim was. Was that what people in Jerusalem the morning after Easter Sunday were actually saying? Did anyone in the early months even care enough to dispute Christian claims? Maybe. Or maybe not. There’s no actual Jewish or pagan polemic against Christianity until Census 200 years later.
Depends on what you mean by “old.” I think they were written after AD 60. Thirty years, even twenty or ten, is more than enough time for stories and rumors to circulate and grow. “Jesus was buried” (Paul) easily becomes, “Jesus was buried in a fancy rock-cut tomb,” (Mark) easily becomes, “Jesus was buried in a fancy rock-cut tomb and the governor even set a watch on it!” (Matthew)
You’re assuming he has to. Elsewhere in the gospels the risen Jesus can teleport and walk through walls. Matthew may have even believed Jesus was assumed directly from the tomb up to Heaven. The rock seems to have been rolled away as much for the benefit of the witnesses as anything (“come and see the place where he was laid”).
I disagree. You can accommodate anything, but the more accommodations you have to swallow the less convincing the whole thing becomes. After I certain point for me, it becomes easier to just say the authors were wrong about things.
There are a few verses here and there that look maybe-sort of resurrection-like if you squint, but I maintain the single verse in Daniel is the only clear articulation of this doctrine in the whole OT, which I think is surprising.
Yes but also no. From the NT down to the present day there is a tension between affirming that Yahweh is sovereign over everything but that also somehow, the evil spirits are genuinely his enemies and fighting against him in some real sense. The tension doesn’t exist in the OT. See the “lying spirit” Yahweh uses to deceive Ahab in 1 Kings 22 or the “evil spirit” he sends to torment Saul in 1 Samuel 16. These spirits aren't rebellious or anything like that, they’re just members of Yahweh’s heavenly court that do his “dirty work.” In the OT (with the exception of a few vague references to the defeat of the chaos monsters in primordial history, Yahweh’s enemies are always human).
The problem is mainly with the prophecy of the “King of the North” in Daniel 11. I didn’t want this post to be too long, but I can go into detail if you want.
Jesus’ claims that “the generation” of his disciples would not pass away before the fulfillment of all things (Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21). He says some of his disciples will not “taste death” before the Son of Man comes (Matthew 16, Mark 9). In the olivet discourse he explicitly places the final judgment following the destruction of Jerusalem. Paul says that the time is so short that those who are married should live as unmarried, those who are mourning as if they were not, etc. (1 Corinthians 7). He also refers to himself and his generation as those “upon whom the ends of the ages have come” (1 Corinthians 10). The entire Book of Revelation is a promise that God is going to destroy the Roman Empire. Once you see the imminent apocalypticism in the NT IMO it’s hard to unsee it. It’s everywhere. John saying that “already the axe is at the root of the tree,” the epistles referring to their time as “the last days,” the periodic admonitions in Revelation that these are things “which must soon come to pass.”
Yes, there are apologetic answers to all of these problems, but I don’t find any of them particularly convincing, and again IMO the simplest answer with the greatest explanatory power is that Jesus and the early church expected the speedy wrap-up of history, and they were wrong. I actually think the famous “one day as a thousand years” line in 2 Peter, represents a very early example of apologetics on this precise issue. The author says that people have been mocking Christians, asking them, “where is the promise of his coming?” This of course would not have happened unless Christians were preaching the parousia as something in the imminent future, and now the author has to explain why that has not come about, hence the “thousand years” apologetic.
IMO this makes the constant promises of “soon” and “very near” and “at the door” throughout the NT meaningless. Okay, well that’s not human time, it’s God’s time. So why say it? Why this sense of urgency? Might as well have said “not very soon,” “pretty far away” and “it’s gonna be a while.” This would have been significantly less misleading to 1st century Christians, who presumably thought “soon” meant “soon.”
More and more I think “monotheism” and “polytheism” are not especially useful categories.
In Assyria, Assur was called “God beyond gods,” “the lord of all lands” who “fashioned the vault of heaven and earth.” Enlil in Sumeria is called “the god of all the foreign lands” who “alone is exalted.” In Egypt Amun is “lord of the thrones of the earth, the oldest existence, ancient of heaven” and “the one, maker of all that is.” Even Zeus, who is often thought of as being simply a guy on a mountaintop with superpowers, was often viewed in a much more exalted way. See Cleanthes’ hymn to Zeus written 300 years before Christ, which calls him “ever omnipotent,” and says that “the whole universe” obeys him and “all the works of nature” happen by the power of his thunderbolt. “Not a single thing that is done on earth happens” without him and it is even said that man “bears his likeness.” Yet the religions of the Greeks, the Sumerians, the Assyrians, and the Egyptians, are never considered “monotheistic,” while Israelite religion is, although this is the exact same sort of language that is regularly applied to Yahweh in the Old Testament. It’s not supposed to be rigorous theology, it’s just “praise language,” a way to say “my god is great.”
“I am that I am” is a strange passage. It might be more like “I will be who I will be,” not a philosophical statement of divine self-sufficiency but a deflection; “none of your business what my name is.”
I'd love to hear it.
Yeah, this is a good point. I'd have to look into the claims, but it does sound like eyewitness testimony is less reliable—I don't know that a large delay between Christ's death and the birth of Christianity is reasonable, though, so they at least had enough to act on.
The portion of 1 Corinthians is usually considered to antedate the writing of the epistle by a good measure, so that limits the measure of corruption.
I seem to have been wrong, I thought it was attested by non-Christians, but it looks like the earliest other attestation is Justin Martyr, who could well have gotten it from Matthew.
In any case, it seems less likely that he would put in such a thing when there were no people saying as much—why even bring it up, then?
I'm inclined to push it earlier, since Acts ends abruptly, but I get that that's not the scholarly consensus.
This is definitely true, I'm just not sure that these are especially substantial accomodations—Jesus ascending up (keep in mind elevating has other effects as well—it fits much better with Jesus reigning, etc. than the opposite), and a reference to a "third heaven" don't seem too significant to me, and to have much less weight than some of the other things you've said.
Yeah, this is a good point, and agree that it does seem like they were only told obscurely that a final resurrection would be a thing. I think this is seen to some extent in the gospels themselves—the surrounding people are expecting one type of messiah and get another.
Well, there's an exception in Daniel, but you've established that Daniel doesn't hold much weight in your eyes. What do you think of Genesis 3, or maybe Job 1-2? I know you think those aren't quite the same as the new testament accounts.
The Matthew 16 and Mark 8 is immediately followed by the transfiguration. This is very straightforward.
The others are more difficult—fair point about 2 Peter possibly being a 2nd century polemic on precisely this point. 2 Thessalonians also claims that it's not yet, but it's less strong about it compared to 2 Peter.
Here's one take (well, more like three compatible takes) I found—I think the main points are that in Christian history, we're basically in the end phase, and we should expect the end whenever, even if we don't know the day or hour.
I'll take a second to point out that the canonicity and inerrancy of any part of scripture is a different question from whether Jesus rose from the dead.
I wasn't aware of the expansive language referred to the other various gods.
Jesus is crucified. Later, he is taken down and buried in an ordinary grave in a potter’s field. Because he was executed as a criminal, his grave is not marked, making later identification nearly impossible.
Most of his followers scatter. The disciples, Jesus ‘inner circle,’ return to Galilee (it appears that the earliest tradition is that Jesus first appeared to his disciples in Galilee).
A few days later, Mary Magdalene, a woman subject to visionary experiences (she was once possessed by demons), goes to the market. Moving through the crowd, she is sure she sees Jesus’ face among the multitude. She calls out to him, but he is gone.
She goes to her friends, and tell them what she has seen. They don’t really believe her. “Sure, Mary. Go home and get some rest.” But it plants a seed of doubt in some. She’s obviously seeing this—but what if she isn’t?
A few days after this, Peter has his own experience. It’s late at night, and he is grieving the death of his master, wondering if he really threw his life away, if everything Jesus said about the resurrection and the kingdom was false, and if there’s any hope at all. Then, in a flash, there’s Jesus, alive and well, standing a few feet away. Peter knows sometimes shades walk the earth, but this can’t be that, because it’s just so real. He feels like he can reach out and touch him. It’s so vivid. And he remembers what Mary said. In a moment he knows in his heart that Jesus is really here, alive again, standing before him, and he will never doubt it for the rest of his life. Jesus says his name, and tells him not to fear. Peter calls out, “lord, lord!” but Jesus is gone.
He rushes to his friends and tells them what he has seen. They desperately want it to be true. If Jesus is really raised, then he can still be the messiah. And if he’s still the messiah, then the kingdom is still coming, and there’s still hope. And why not? If God can raise all the dead, why can’t he raise his chosen one a little ahead of schedule?
Some can’t bring themselves to believe. They say, “sorry, Peter, you’ve lost it. Jesus is dead. It’s over. We’re going home.” These people disappear from history. But those who remain search the scriptures. And they find it right there in Isaiah, the servant who was crushed for our iniquities, and yet whose day will be prolonged, who will receive a portion with the great. They find it in the psalms; “you will not allow your holy one to see corruption.” It is true! The lord has truly risen and appeared to Simon. Hallelujah!
So those who believe Peter (who is not lying, or deceiving anyone, but himself believes with all his heart) become the first Christians.
And the rest is history.
The primary objection is that the disciples just wouldn’t be that gullible, wouldn’t believe on such flimsy evidence, like a single, fleeting vision of a single man. This is also an objection that has been made by Christian apologists such as NT Wright and Mike Licona. On that I simply disagree. I don't think we can know the minds and psychologies of the disciples well enough to say what would or would not have been convincing to them. These men were not necessarily hard-nosed rationalist skeptics, they were men who had followed a charismatic prophet hoping he truly heralded the kingdom of God, and whose hopes had just been brutally dashed, and who may very well have been desperate for any slender reason to believe that they hadn’t followed Jesus for years in vain (think the Millerites on the morrow of the Great Disappointment).
So where do the elaborate stories in the gospels come from?
Imagine this:
A third generation Christian (someone who was converted by someone who was converted by the apostles) is preaching. He says, “and Jesus was raised from the dead by God, and he appeared to his disciples.”
One of his listeners asks, “wow, he appeared to all of them?”
“Uh…yeah!”
“At the same time?”
“Sure!”
Ten, twenty, thirty years later, after these stories have circulated and grown, ‘Matthew’ sits down with a copy of the gospel of Mark in front of him, intending to write his own, better gospel. He goes line by line, changing or tweaking things he doesn’t like. Then he gets to the end. Mark has no resurrection appearances, and this is entirely unsatisfying to ‘Matthew.’ He has to write some. He knows Jesus appeared to the disciples in Galilee, but he’s unsure of the details. So he puts pen to paper and exercises his imagination…
You can say, “this is all speculation,” which is fair, but two points:
First, the only alternative to some speculation is simply to take the gospels entirely at face value (something that should not be done with any historical document). But if we are trying to prove or disprove the resurrection, than we cannot assume what we’re trying to prove, that the gospels are reliable historical accounts.
Second, I think there is some evidence that the accounts in the gospels are not faithful recollections of the original appearances. There are little inconsistencies like the number of women at the tomb, at what time they went, if there were guards, but most importantly, the gospels can't even agree where the appearances took place.
According to Luke, Jesus first appears to the disciples in Jerusalem, where he comes among them and lets them touch him to see he is not a ghost. He eventually takes them out to Bethany, from where he ascends to Heaven. There are no appearances in Galilee. In fact, Luke rules out appearances in Galilee, because Jesus explicitly tells the disciples to stay in Jerusalem until they are “clothed with power” (Pentecost).
Matthew has the women go to the tomb, where Jesus and an angel tell them to tell the disciples to go to Galilee, where they will see Jesus. They do, and they see him on a mountain there, and he delivers the great commission. No appearances in Jerusalem.
John is almost identical to Luke, except he doesn’t include the ascension, and adds an appearance in Galilee, at the sea of Tiberias.
Now yes, they can be reconciled if you try hard enough. You can say that Matthew and Luke have simply cut out the appearances in Jerusalem and Galilee, respectively.
But it’s a convoluted reading, IMO. The apologetic would have it that the women were told to tell the disciples to go to Galilee, and then Jesus appeared to the disciples in Jerusalem, and then they went to Galilee and saw him on the mountain, and then they went back to fishing for a little while, and then they went back to Jerusalem, and then finally Jesus ascended to Heaven.
And it raises some questions:
Why even tell the women to tell the disciples to go to Galilee if you're just going to appear to them here in Jerusalem first? Why not tell them yourself? Why would Matthew and Luke almost surgically cut out the Jerusalem and Galilee appearances, respectively? What's the point of that? When the disciples go to the mountain in Galilee and see Jesus, "some doubt." This makes sense if this is his first appearance, but if he appeared to them earlier in Jerusalem? What are they doubting? They just had lunch with him a few days ago. While Matthew doesn’t explicitly state that Jesus left the disciples immediately after the Galilee mountain appearance, it’s strongly implied, since this is where Jesus gives the Great Commission, and finishes with the assurance that he is “with them always, even to the end of the age.” It comes across as a strangely final thing to say if Jesus then went back to Jerusalem and hung out with them for a few more weeks. Furthermore, the Sea of Tiberias appearance in John is identified as the third time Jesus has appeared to the disciples, so it has to be after the Great Commission, if the Jerusalem appearances took place first, and then the mountain appearance in Galilee. So Peter and friends have already been told to go and “make disciples of all nations.” What the hell are you doing fishing?
IMO Occam’s razor cuts in favor of the explanation that these accounts are so different because Matthew, Luke, and John knew the tradition that Jesus appeared to the disciples, but either did not know the specifics, or decided the specifics weren’t exciting enough, and spiced them up. Either way, the gospel stories of Jesus eating fish and letting the disciples touch his wounds may not be accurate depictions of the Christophanies that sparked the movement.
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It predates Paul's letter, of course, but by how much is pretty hard to say. I'd guess it probably wasn't composed a week before, and probably more than a year, but beyond that, who knows? Sometimes you'll see people confidently say things like "the creed dates to within six months of the crucifixion" which is just bizarre; there's no way anybody could possibly know that. Not to mention, Paul is clearly adding to the creed, since obviously when it was handed down to Paul it didn't include the appearance to Paul. So what else has he added to it? And who else added to it before him?
Well, precisely to preempt that objection. It wouldn't take much for the author of the gospel to think, 'huh, what if people say the body was stolen?'
It's possible. I tend to think both 'liberal' and 'conservative' scholars have a bad tendency to overstate the weight and quality of the evidence on dating one way or the other. IMO getting more specific than "after the crucifixion, before AD 100" is pretty tenuous. Nevertheless, even if you wanted to posit some super early date like AD 40 (earlier than even the most conservative critics are generally willing to go), I think ten years is more than enough time for legend to grow up.
I guess Genesis 3 is an exception now that I think about it insofar as it includes a non-human enemy of God, but the serpent is not a fallen angel or a god, he is...a snake. He loses his legs for telling the woman about the fruit. 'The Satan' (here it is a title, not a name) in Job is not God's enemy; he's a member of the Heavenly court who comes among the other "sons of God" to present himself before Yahweh. His job (ha) appears to be to test the faith of human beings, but he is not presented as an evil figure. The story of Lucifer the rebel angel doesn't really appear anywhere in the 66 books of the Bible.
Ehhhh, I'm familiar with this argument but I think it's weak. In both gospels Jesus clarifies what he means by the coming of the kingdom--"the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done" This clearly was not fulfilled during the transfiguration. Not to mention saying, "some here will not taste death" is a weird thing to say about something that's going to happen next week. Nobody tasted death by next week.
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