Originally posted by EMINEM
Now to my response. Jesus’ historical resurrection from the dead constitutes the factual foundation upon which the Christian hope is based. If it is not founded on historical or archaeological data, as you claim (wrongly), there’s no point in me writing anything further.
Am I wrong about that? I'd like to see the archaeological and scientific evidence of Jesus' resurrection. I never knew it was out there.
As it is, there are three main proofs of Jesus’s body resurrection, which I’ll sum up briefly:
1. The resurrection appearances. On separate occasions different individuals and groups saw appearances of Jesus alive after his death. These appearances were witnessed not only by believers, but also by unbelievers, skeptics, and even enemies.
According to the gospel accounts. Where else is it recorded that these witnesses observed the physically risen Jesus? I mean, apart from apocryphal texts and the writings of Josephus, which are biased and highly questionable.
So far, there's still no archaeological proof. There's no incontrovertible historical data, either. For this reason, the gospel accounts can be argued against. What was it exactly that these people saw? Did they in fact see anything at all?
Only in Matthew's account is it recorded that Jesus' "enemies," the Roman guard, witnessed his resurrection.
2. The empty tomb. On the Sunday following his crucifixion, Jesus' tomb was found empty by a group of his women followers. According to Jacob Kremer, an Austrian scholar who has specialized in the study of the resurrection, "By far most scholars hold firmly to the reliability of the biblical statements about the empty tomb." According to D. H. Van Daalen, “It is extremely difficult to object to the empty tomb on historical grounds; those who deny it do so on the basis of theological or philosophical assumptions.” But these, of course, cannot change historical fact.
Okay, the tomb was empty. The
why of it
can not be proven. Was the body stolen? Did something else happen? Unless it's proven beyond doubt that there is no other explanation, we cannot jump to the assumption that the resurrection theory is the only explanation for the empty tomb.
As a matter of historical fact, it is more substantiated that the bodies of crucifixion victims were left to the dogs. They didn't get the dignity of burial. And that is an irrefutable historical fact, which some scholars do maintain happened to the body of Jesus. I'm not saying this really was the case. Jesus had friends and relatives who could have seen to the proper burial of his remains. All I'm saying is, the empty tomb is certainly debated. Why? Again --
there's no solid archaeological evidence to prove it. There's no tomb with "Yeshua bar Yousef" carved into it.
There's still no irrefutable historical fact supporting the resurrection here.
3. The very origin of Christianity itself. The Christian faith implies the reality of the resurrection. We all know that Christianity sprang into being in the middle of the first century. But where did it come from? If you deny that Jesus really did rise from the dead, then you've got to explain the origin of the disciples' belief in terms of either Christian influences' or Jewish influences. Now obviously it couldn't have come from Christian influences for the simple reason that there wasn't any Christianity yet. But neither can it be explained by Jewish influences. For the Jewish concept of resurrection was radically different than Jesus' resurrection. Nowhere does one find in the literature of ancient Judaism anything comparable to the resurrection of Jesus. Jews had no belief in a dying, much less rising, Messiah. Nevertheless, the original disciples came to believe so strongly that God had raised Jesus from the dead that they were willing to die for the truth of that belief. A powerful, transformative experience was required to generate the sort of movement earliest Christianity was, and the only plausible answer is Jesus’ bodily resurrection from the dead.
And that's called...
FAITH. You have just proven my own point. You said it yourself -- "the Christian FAITH
implies the reality of the resurrection."
You don't have to explain the disciples' belief in terms of any kind of influence at all. Maybe they simply decided to carry on Jesus' mission and give hope to the world. "But they died for it," you say. People have died for an ideal alone, without any kind of grand theophany or mystical experience to inspire them to give their lives for their cause. Two prime examples that come to my mind are Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. The freedom movement in India and the civil rights movement in the United States needed no blast from the cosmos. The only powerful, transformative experience required was a burning desire to make the world a better place. This could also have been true of the disciples. We simply don't know because
not a shred of it can be proven.
If there was no precedent for the Messiah rising from the dead, why do the Gospels go on and on about the Messiah being required to suffer, die, and rise again
according to the scriptures -- i.e., according to the Old Testament. The NT repeatedly states that the suffering, dying, and rising Messiah had been "typed", as it were, in the OT. They saw in Jesus the fulfillment of all the OT promises. According to the Gospels, this includes a suffering, dying, and rising Messiah.
I think you misunderstand what it is I'm trying to do here. I am not trying to prove that Jesus did not physically rise from the dead. It might surprise you to know that I myself am a Christian and do believe that Jesus rose from the dead. All I'm saying is that that belief cannot be proven by historical, archaeological, or scientific evidence, because no such evidence exists. Nor can it be proven by the same means that Jesus did
not rise from the dead. You can't prove it either way. At the same time, lack of evidence is not evidence.
Indeed, St. Paul says "if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith" (1 Cor 15:14). He does not, however, say "If it can't be proven that Christ was raised, your faith is useless." Also, St. Paul says we stand by
faith, not by
proof (Rom 11:20; 2 Cor 5:7). We are justified by
faith, not by proof. "So that your faith might not rest on man's wisdom, but on God's power" (1 Cor 2:5).
I'm sure you're going to tell me that Paul was one of those enemies of Jesus who witnessed the resurrection
That too was a matter of faith on Paul's part. Obviously Paul himself thought so, or he would be saying things like "Jesus rose and I have PROOF, so you have to believe!!" But no, he said everything was a matter of FAITH. Faith is the substance of things hoped for -- not the substance of archaeology.
Modern scholarship recognizes no plausible explanatory alternative to the resurrection of Jesus. Those who refuse to accept the resurrection as a fact of history are simply self-confessedly left without an explanation.
As I said before -- simply because another explanation is not readily offered or proven, does not automatically mean that there is or can be only one explanation. And we certainly should not, from a scholarly standpoint, jump to the conclusion that there is only one possibility, in the absence of proof to the contrary.
It’s clear to me, therefore, that the Christian is amply justified in believing that Jesus rose from the dead and was who he claimed to be.
Aside from the fact that scholars heavily debate what Jesus actually claimed for himself...
Do you want or need historical/archaeological/etc. proof to justify your faith? Faith is its own justification. I think you spend too much time trying to prove your faith logically. It can't be done. That's what faith is all about. That's why it's called faith.
(Friendly smilie
)
