AND FOR A LOT OF PEOPLE (ACC 2 THE BIBLE) MANY BELIEVED HAVING SEEN THE RISEN CHRIST (MEN ON ROAD TO EMAUS YADA YADA..) AND MANY BELIEVED HAVING SEEN THE 'WITNESS OF THE RESURRECTION- ALSO CALLED THE TOKEN PROOF WHICH ARE THE MANIFESTATIONS OF HS- AND ONE OF THOSE IS HEALING/ JEEEEZUS!! GIVE ME A BREAK MAN! DO U BELIEVE IN "DON'T DO TO OTHERS WHAT U DO NOT WANT THEM TO DO 2 U???" ( A MORAL CREDO ACCEPTED BY MOST RELIGIONS WORLD WIDE???) IF SO---////JUST THINK--- WHAT IF U JOINED THIS FORUM AND SOMEONE CRAWLED UP YOUR PROVERBIAL PUTUTIE??
THE OTHER OPTION IS MORAL ANARCHY AND LIVING IN KUBRICK MOVIE---
"ANDFOR A LOT OF PEOPLE (ACC 2 THE BIBLE) MANY BELIEVED HAVING SEEN THE RISEN CHRIST (MEN ON ROAD TO EMAUS YADA YADA..)"
There is a difference between evidence and a claim. The Bible is not evidence. It is a claim. Who were the two men on the road to Emmaus? We're never told. Why not? How is ANYONE supposed to check out their story decades after it took place when we're not even graced with the names of these two people? This is not history. It's a myth.
"AND MANY BELIEVED HAVING SEEN THE 'WITNESS OF THE RESURRECTION -- ALSO CALLED THE TOKEN PROOF WHICH ARE THE MANIFESTATIONS OF HS"
You have not once in your life manifested holy spirit. Not a single time. You can SAY that you have, but that is not evidence. It is a claim. And since you've been so deLIGHTful on this thread, allow me to return the courtesy: You faked it. You're kidding yourself into believing some magic force is flowing through you when all that is happening is you're babbling, you're spouting platitudes off the top of your head, and you're convincing yourself miracles are taking place when nothing of the kind is taking place.
"- AND ONE OF THOSEIS HEALING/ JEEEEZUS!! GIVE ME A BREAK MAN!"
You haven't healed anyone, ever, and you've never seen a miraculous healing. Not once. Why should I believe you have? Because you SAY you have? So what? That's not proof of anything other than your gullibility.
"DO U BELIEVE IN "DON'T DO TO OTHERS WHAT U DO NOT WANT THEM TO DO 2 U???" ( A MORAL CREDOACCEPTEDBY MOST RELIGIONS WORLD WIDE???) IF SO---////JUST THINK--- WHAT IF U JOINED THIS FORUM AND SOMEONE CRAWLED UP YOUR PROVERBIAL PUTUTIE??"
Don't post stupid things and no one will treat the things you say as stupid.
"THE OTHER OPTION IS MORAL ANARCHY AND LIVINGIN KUBRICKMOVIE---"
No, the other option is, be able to back up what you say, shut up, or just don't be surprised when people call your bluff.
The post is so that people can at least read some of it that relates to Jesus Christ and the resurrection from the dead. People should simply have the option of reading some of it or not reading it.
It doesn't "add" anything because it's simply restating what the Bible says about itself. If you brought something from an outside source, and then showed how it was corroborated by the scripture you posted, that would be adding.
can anyone on this forum read? u r bunch of--rude-- snobbish fops-/ i came here to see if anyone was grieving my friend steve budlongs life- /
I see you have already visited and posted on the Memorium thread. I am glad you found it.
Now-
Hold on, Kata. Your posts are hard to read with the texting shorthand , odd grammar and then the all-caps shouting in your later posts. (Please stop that last one, it isn’t liked on any Internet forum I know of.)
Now then, this is a discussion forum. When someone posts a position others respond, and they may or may not agree with you. This particular forum is specifically named “Questioning Faith”. The response you got towards your claims might be expected especially in this sub forum. Certainly people of faith, or no faith, are welcome to post their views here just as in our other forums. However, you do not get to fly off the handle when they don’t agree or when they point out what they believe to be erroneous about your position. That holds true here and on our other forums.
I will leave this one at least for now, but future out of line responses like it will be deleted once brought to the moderator’s attention.
Make your point, try and defend your position when others disagree, but don’t call others rude snobbish fops (is anyone here dressing with extreme fashion?) when they don’t buy whatever you are presenting.
It doesn't "add" anything because it's simply restating what the Bible says about itself. If you brought something from an outside source, and then showed how it was corroborated by the scripture you posted, that would be adding.
If i said Jack climbed a beanstalk, and then cited "Mickey and the Beanstalk" for your consideration, it would not add to the conversation.
Citing scripture as proof of scripture is circular reasoning. Citing it as if we are unaware of it is condescending and patronizing.
The post is so that people can at least read some of it that relates to Jesus Christ and the resurrection from the dead. People should simply have the option of reading some of it or not reading it.
Your post did not add to the conversation because there is not a person on this thread who is unaware of what the Bible teaches concerning resurrection.
If you have something to contribute to this conversation, by all means, do so.
Simply reminding people that it teaches the resurrection is not contributing to this conversation. It's patronizing, condescending and insulting to those of us who actually have read a scripture or two before you came along.
The Bible is not proof of itself. We all know the Bible teaches Jesus rose from the dead. We all know about various theories concerning future resurrections. The question on this thread is, did Jesus really rise from the dead?
Quoting the Bible to day he did is like quoting Superman to prove intelligent extraterrestrial life exists.
Or like quoting the Quran to prove that Mohammed flew to heaven on a winged horse.
Or quoting the Book of Mormon to prove Jesus visited the Americas.
These are CLAIMS, and claims don't prove themselves.
Several posts have been edited or deleted to remove personal arguments against other poster’s rather than the topic or the points being made by users.
you guys are bigger than this. Stick to the discussion. I will not edit future posts- I will simply delete them and references to them or remove the thread completely.
and to think a thread on resurrection, started by a user who has not been here in two years, got resurrected 3 years later. Remarkable
There are so many geniuses running around these daze! It’s like a bunch of Nietzsche’s ubermenchen are raising themselves from the dead and the chemtrails, and are once again co-habitating with us poor limited-to-the-five-senses natural man human beings! Oh happy daze are here again!!
Took a deep breath after Sunday morning's insomnia and decided to take a fresh look at this thread.
I still believe it's not adding to the conversation to say "look, scriptures" when we're talking about whether something actually took place in history.
That said, the scriptures Mark cited do address why this is an interesting topic.
Quote
I Corinthians 15
12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead,how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead,then not even Christ has been raised.14 And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God thathe raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile andyou are still in your sins.18 Then those also whohave fallen asleep in Christ have perished.19 If in Christ we have hope[b]in this life only,we are of all people most to be pitied.
Personally I think Paul is being a little hard on himself here. You are not "most to be pitied" if Jesus was not resurrected. Rather, you're in the same boat as everyone else. That's nothing to be ashamed of or pitied over.
Now, none of this addresses the question of the thread: Did the resurrection happen?
Paul says Jesus rose again "according to the scriptures," which is an odd thing to say considering (a) he supposedly had this on good personal authority and (b) he didn't have the gospels, so to what scripture is he referring? There are no predictions of the Messiah's resurrection in the Old Testament. There are some verses that can be hijacked so we can claim they are about his resurrection (some so-called "types" that have nothing to do with Jesus but are retconned by Christians to be prophecies), But no scripture says the Messiah will be raised three days after he is killed.
Remember how Matthew says "Out of Egypt have I called my son" was fulfilled when Christ came back from Egypt to settle in Nazareth? Except that verse in the Old Testament has nothing whatsoever to do with the Messiah; just got retconned into a Messianic prophecy. Just like "A virgin shall be with child" was actually not a Messianic prophecy (and did not refer to a virgin in the modern sense of the word).
So what scriptures?
Also, why highlight the scriptures when you can highlight the eyewitnesses? Cephas! Cephas saw him! And the 12! So Paul goes on to mention them: He's seen of Cephas, then of the 12 (which is where the whole "when did Judas die" debate comes into play. My take: The story of Judas' betrayal and suicide had not been invented yet. Paul was unaware that he was setting up an "apparent contradiction" here by saying "the Twelve". Another argument for another time).
Then 500 people see him at once.
At ONCE!
And NONE of the gospel writers found this event worth mentioning!
And some of them are still alive as Paul writes, which is why he names them and cites their testimony with specifics and... what? He doesn't name them? Then how is anyone supposed to check on the story? This is supposedly a piece of evidence used by apologists like William Lane Craig to prove the resurrection happened. 500 eye witnesses would have called Paul out as a liar!
WOULD THEY?
Here's why they wouldn't: He tells the story decades later in another city and provides no names for anyone to follow up on. Et voila! Instant validation. Who's going to challenge Paul about something that happened 20-30 years ago a thousand miles away? Please.
So after the 500, he appears to James. Ah, a name we can check out -- assuming he's not talking about the James who died in Acts but the other one, the Lord's brother. And then the apostles (wait, aren't the apostles and the twelve the same people? Maybe he's talking about an expanded group: like, all the 12 are apostles, but not all apostles are the 12).
So in terms of things we can check out, we have:
Cephas
"The 12" (minus whoever was dead at that point)
James
Other apostles.
The 500 are of no value as evidence because they are not named and there's a good case to be made this never happened. None of the gospel writers found this earth shattering event worth mentioning. It would be like, like... it would be like if Jesus raised his friend from the dead after he was dead four days, and only ONE of the gospel writers found it worth mentioning... 50 years later. No way.
Notice Paul doesn't mention the women. That story hadn't been invented yet.
The men on the road to Emmaus? We don't get the courtesy of their names from Luke. No way to check them out.
Apologists tend to treat every CLAIM as truthful testimony, and draw conclusions on that basis. It is something they would NEVER, EVER in a MILLION YEARS accept from the devotees of any other holy book. Joseph Smith had three witnesses who said an angel showed them the golden plates from which Smith translated the Book of Mormon. You don't believe that story for a second. But you believe 500 unnamed people saw the resurrected Jesus because Paul said so.
So I Corinthians 15 gives us claims, at best. It gives us a handful of people you can ask, some of whom are dead and most of whom are very far away. But they are all reliable believers.
Now here's the tricky part: We don't really know what ANY of them would have said. The gospels had not yet been written (you can tell because of how little Paul speaks of Christ's ministry on earth). The post-resurrection stories were not finalized (woman or not, would Paul really have left out Mary Magdalene?)
When you think about when I Corinthians was written and when Mark (the first written gospel) was written, something stands out: I Corinthians 15 is actually the FIRST account of the resurrection. And to say its details are sparse is an understatement.
Then Mark fills in... not much. An empty tomb, and that's it.
It's not until Matthew and Luke come along that the story starts to take shape -- with mutually exclusive details. The women didn't tell anyone. The women told everyone. There was one man at the tomb. No there were two men. And they were angels! The stone was rolled away before anyone got there. No, someone saw it happen. Big earthquake.
Looking at it from the perspective of a historian, the Bible presents us with few witnesses, no unbiased witnesses, all second and third hand from accounts that disagree with each other in ways that are both trivial and significant. The best you can say is that some people in the early church believed it. But that it actually happened? Probably not.
Paul says Jesus rose again "according to the scriptures," which is an odd thing to say considering (a) he supposedly had this on good personal authority and (b) he didn't have the gospels, so to what scripture is he referring? There are no predictions of the Messiah's resurrection in the Old Testament.
If you were as well versed in scripture as you seemingly suppose yourself to be (a rather ubiquitous attribute here at GSC), I'm curious as to why you would so glibly fail to mention or otherwise account for Luke 18:31-34 or John 20:9.
However, that said, maybe the most sensible reason is like the plain and obvious reason they (all) missed it back then. It was hid from them.
Yep. Like it or not, God is sovereign, and can (and does) do things like that....
p.s. Perhaps you already have an argument prepared against the meaning (and clarity) of Dan.9:26. Wouldn't really surprise me any at this point, given your stated position on the matter.
Several posts have been edited or deleted to remove personal arguments against other posters rather than the topic or the points being made by users.
you guys are bigger than this. Stick to the discussion.
1. TLC: We were specifically warned to keep posts about the topic and not about each other. You could not go a single sentence without violating that reasonable instruction. Not one sentence.
2. Neither of the verses you refer to are in the Old Testament.
3. The notion that there are hidden meanings in Old Testament passages that secretly refer to the Messiah is laughable. "Out of Egypt I have called my son" is not a Messianic prophecy. "A virgin shall be with child" is not a Messianic prophecy. "You will not leave my soul in hell or allow your holy one to see corruption" is not a Messianic prophecy.
Having a "sovereign" God who can "do things like that" makes any statement mean anything, simultaneously making it absolutely pointless to present scriptural evidence to people who can change scripture to mean whatever they want it to mean.
There's a reason, as a whole, that Jews who know their scriptures best have not converted to Christianity: they know when their own scriptures are being distorted to prove things they do not prove.
Related: If you read the Old Testament without Jesus-colored glasses, it would be next to impossible to conclude many of the verses that are declared to be "fulfilled" in the New Testament were ever referring to the Messiah in the first place. Isaiah 53? DEFinitely not about the Messiah. Don't believe me? Read chapter 52, 53 and 54, remembering that the chapter and verse divisions were added. Read straight through. It's not talking about the Messiah. The servant is Israel. I've linked an article written by an unbiased Jewish scholar of the Bible who wrote the book (in two volumes) on why Jews don't become Christian. It's got a lot of pages, chapters and footnotes. His name is Tovia Singer.
p.s. Perhaps you already have an argument prepared against the meaning (and clarity) of Dan.9:26. Wouldn't really surprise me any at this point, given your stated position on the matter.
What is there to answer? Nothing described in that verse happened.
In addition it really should be noted that "Messiah" in that verse is a convenient translation of "anointed one." There were LOTS of anointed ones in the Bible. Kings were anointed. While it's true that The Messiah or The Christ is, like, THE Anointed One, there's no indication that this verse is talking about the Christ.
Again, ask a Jew who knows his scripture. He'll tell you that it's actually talking about two different anointed ones: one after seven weeks and the other 62 weeks after that.
But don't take my word for it. Ask a Jew who knows his own holy book.
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waysider
If you are asking this question in earnest, you might want to consider exploring the works of Joseph Campbell.... The Power of Myth/The Hero's Journey/ etc. etc. etc. The Hero With A Thous
Raf
Tell me there's another way to read this (and by all means, go to the original post. I'm truly not doing the "evidence" part justice). Why would God deliberately make it harder for smart people t
Raf
Ok, TLC. Look, if you want to make this thread about your stamp of approval on our questions and answers, you go ahead and do that. I am deeply sorry that you do not have the patience or con
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Raf
Maybe find a better argument for your position.
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Raf
"AND FOR A LOT OF PEOPLE (ACC 2 THE BIBLE) MANY BELIEVED HAVING SEEN THE RISEN CHRIST (MEN ON ROAD TO EMAUS YADA YADA..)"
There is a difference between evidence and a claim. The Bible is not evidence. It is a claim. Who were the two men on the road to Emmaus? We're never told. Why not? How is ANYONE supposed to check out their story decades after it took place when we're not even graced with the names of these two people? This is not history. It's a myth.
"AND MANY BELIEVED HAVING SEEN THE 'WITNESS OF THE RESURRECTION -- ALSO CALLED THE TOKEN PROOF WHICH ARE THE MANIFESTATIONS OF HS"
You have not once in your life manifested holy spirit. Not a single time. You can SAY that you have, but that is not evidence. It is a claim. And since you've been so deLIGHTful on this thread, allow me to return the courtesy: You faked it. You're kidding yourself into believing some magic force is flowing through you when all that is happening is you're babbling, you're spouting platitudes off the top of your head, and you're convincing yourself miracles are taking place when nothing of the kind is taking place.
"- AND ONE OF THOSE IS HEALING/ JEEEEZUS!! GIVE ME A BREAK MAN!"
You haven't healed anyone, ever, and you've never seen a miraculous healing. Not once. Why should I believe you have? Because you SAY you have? So what? That's not proof of anything other than your gullibility.
"DO U BELIEVE IN "DON'T DO TO OTHERS WHAT U DO NOT WANT THEM TO DO 2 U???" ( A MORAL CREDO ACCEPTED BY MOST RELIGIONS WORLD WIDE???) IF SO---////JUST THINK--- WHAT IF U JOINED THIS FORUM AND SOMEONE CRAWLED UP YOUR PROVERBIAL PUTUTIE??"
Don't post stupid things and no one will treat the things you say as stupid.
" THE OTHER OPTION IS MORAL ANARCHY AND LIVING IN KUBRICK MOVIE---"
No, the other option is, be able to back up what you say, shut up, or just don't be surprised when people call your bluff.
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Raf
Bullinger believed in a flat earth. Do you think his proof was qualitative or quantitative?
Just curious.
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Mark Sanguinetti
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+15%3A12-28&version=NIV
The bible chapter on the resurrection of the dead,
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Rocky
Yelling doesn't make it so. But thanks anyway.
Define quantitative and qualitative evidence
Quantitative: Numerical or statistical information (data), which often comes from surveys, surveillance or from administration records.
Qualitative:Descriptive information, which often comes from interviews, focus groups or artistic depictions such as photographs.
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Rocky
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Raf
This literally adds nothing to our conversation.
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Mark Sanguinetti
The post is so that people can at least read some of it that relates to Jesus Christ and the resurrection from the dead. People should simply have the option of reading some of it or not reading it.
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waysider
It doesn't "add" anything because it's simply restating what the Bible says about itself. If you brought something from an outside source, and then showed how it was corroborated by the scripture you posted, that would be adding.
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Mark Sanguinetti
Here it is again for people to at least consider.
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waysider
We're all aware of this section of scripture, Mark. I think you may be missing the point.
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Modgellan
I see you have already visited and posted on the Memorium thread. I am glad you found it.
Now-
Hold on, Kata. Your posts are hard to read with the texting shorthand , odd grammar and then the all-caps shouting in your later posts. (Please stop that last one, it isn’t liked on any Internet forum I know of.)
Now then, this is a discussion forum. When someone posts a position others respond, and they may or may not agree with you. This particular forum is specifically named “Questioning Faith”. The response you got towards your claims might be expected especially in this sub forum. Certainly people of faith, or no faith, are welcome to post their views here just as in our other forums. However, you do not get to fly off the handle when they don’t agree or when they point out what they believe to be erroneous about your position. That holds true here and on our other forums.
I will leave this one at least for now, but future out of line responses like it will be deleted once brought to the moderator’s attention.
Make your point, try and defend your position when others disagree, but don’t call others rude snobbish fops (is anyone here dressing with extreme fashion?) when they don’t buy whatever you are presenting.
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Raf
If i said Jack climbed a beanstalk, and then cited "Mickey and the Beanstalk" for your consideration, it would not add to the conversation.
Citing scripture as proof of scripture is circular reasoning. Citing it as if we are unaware of it is condescending and patronizing.
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Raf
Your post did not add to the conversation because there is not a person on this thread who is unaware of what the Bible teaches concerning resurrection.
Including me.
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Raf
Completely unnecessary. Your audience isn't stupid, Mark.
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Raf
If you have something to contribute to this conversation, by all means, do so.
Simply reminding people that it teaches the resurrection is not contributing to this conversation. It's patronizing, condescending and insulting to those of us who actually have read a scripture or two before you came along.
The Bible is not proof of itself. We all know the Bible teaches Jesus rose from the dead. We all know about various theories concerning future resurrections. The question on this thread is, did Jesus really rise from the dead?
Quoting the Bible to day he did is like quoting Superman to prove intelligent extraterrestrial life exists.
Or like quoting the Quran to prove that Mohammed flew to heaven on a winged horse.
Or quoting the Book of Mormon to prove Jesus visited the Americas.
These are CLAIMS, and claims don't prove themselves.
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Modgellan
Several posts have been edited or deleted to remove personal arguments against other poster’s rather than the topic or the points being made by users.
you guys are bigger than this. Stick to the discussion. I will not edit future posts- I will simply delete them and references to them or remove the thread completely.
and to think a thread on resurrection, started by a user who has not been here in two years, got resurrected 3 years later. Remarkable
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DontWorryBeHappy
She’s a very stable genius!
There are so many geniuses running around these daze! It’s like a bunch of Nietzsche’s ubermenchen are raising themselves from the dead and the chemtrails, and are once again co-habitating with us poor limited-to-the-five-senses natural man human beings! Oh happy daze are here again!!
Edited by ModgellanRemoved political video
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Raf
Took a deep breath after Sunday morning's insomnia and decided to take a fresh look at this thread.
I still believe it's not adding to the conversation to say "look, scriptures" when we're talking about whether something actually took place in history.
That said, the scriptures Mark cited do address why this is an interesting topic.
Personally I think Paul is being a little hard on himself here. You are not "most to be pitied" if Jesus was not resurrected. Rather, you're in the same boat as everyone else. That's nothing to be ashamed of or pitied over.
Now, none of this addresses the question of the thread: Did the resurrection happen?
Paul says Jesus rose again "according to the scriptures," which is an odd thing to say considering (a) he supposedly had this on good personal authority and (b) he didn't have the gospels, so to what scripture is he referring? There are no predictions of the Messiah's resurrection in the Old Testament. There are some verses that can be hijacked so we can claim they are about his resurrection (some so-called "types" that have nothing to do with Jesus but are retconned by Christians to be prophecies), But no scripture says the Messiah will be raised three days after he is killed.
Remember how Matthew says "Out of Egypt have I called my son" was fulfilled when Christ came back from Egypt to settle in Nazareth? Except that verse in the Old Testament has nothing whatsoever to do with the Messiah; just got retconned into a Messianic prophecy. Just like "A virgin shall be with child" was actually not a Messianic prophecy (and did not refer to a virgin in the modern sense of the word).
So what scriptures?
Also, why highlight the scriptures when you can highlight the eyewitnesses? Cephas! Cephas saw him! And the 12! So Paul goes on to mention them: He's seen of Cephas, then of the 12 (which is where the whole "when did Judas die" debate comes into play. My take: The story of Judas' betrayal and suicide had not been invented yet. Paul was unaware that he was setting up an "apparent contradiction" here by saying "the Twelve". Another argument for another time).
Then 500 people see him at once.
At ONCE!
And NONE of the gospel writers found this event worth mentioning!
And some of them are still alive as Paul writes, which is why he names them and cites their testimony with specifics and... what? He doesn't name them? Then how is anyone supposed to check on the story? This is supposedly a piece of evidence used by apologists like William Lane Craig to prove the resurrection happened. 500 eye witnesses would have called Paul out as a liar!
WOULD THEY?
Here's why they wouldn't: He tells the story decades later in another city and provides no names for anyone to follow up on. Et voila! Instant validation. Who's going to challenge Paul about something that happened 20-30 years ago a thousand miles away? Please.
So after the 500, he appears to James. Ah, a name we can check out -- assuming he's not talking about the James who died in Acts but the other one, the Lord's brother. And then the apostles (wait, aren't the apostles and the twelve the same people? Maybe he's talking about an expanded group: like, all the 12 are apostles, but not all apostles are the 12).
So in terms of things we can check out, we have:
Cephas
"The 12" (minus whoever was dead at that point)
James
Other apostles.
The 500 are of no value as evidence because they are not named and there's a good case to be made this never happened. None of the gospel writers found this earth shattering event worth mentioning. It would be like, like... it would be like if Jesus raised his friend from the dead after he was dead four days, and only ONE of the gospel writers found it worth mentioning... 50 years later. No way.
Notice Paul doesn't mention the women. That story hadn't been invented yet.
The men on the road to Emmaus? We don't get the courtesy of their names from Luke. No way to check them out.
Apologists tend to treat every CLAIM as truthful testimony, and draw conclusions on that basis. It is something they would NEVER, EVER in a MILLION YEARS accept from the devotees of any other holy book. Joseph Smith had three witnesses who said an angel showed them the golden plates from which Smith translated the Book of Mormon. You don't believe that story for a second. But you believe 500 unnamed people saw the resurrected Jesus because Paul said so.
So I Corinthians 15 gives us claims, at best. It gives us a handful of people you can ask, some of whom are dead and most of whom are very far away. But they are all reliable believers.
Now here's the tricky part: We don't really know what ANY of them would have said. The gospels had not yet been written (you can tell because of how little Paul speaks of Christ's ministry on earth). The post-resurrection stories were not finalized (woman or not, would Paul really have left out Mary Magdalene?)
When you think about when I Corinthians was written and when Mark (the first written gospel) was written, something stands out: I Corinthians 15 is actually the FIRST account of the resurrection. And to say its details are sparse is an understatement.
Then Mark fills in... not much. An empty tomb, and that's it.
It's not until Matthew and Luke come along that the story starts to take shape -- with mutually exclusive details. The women didn't tell anyone. The women told everyone. There was one man at the tomb. No there were two men. And they were angels! The stone was rolled away before anyone got there. No, someone saw it happen. Big earthquake.
This is how legends develop.
It's not history.
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Raf
Short version of the above post:
Looking at it from the perspective of a historian, the Bible presents us with few witnesses, no unbiased witnesses, all second and third hand from accounts that disagree with each other in ways that are both trivial and significant. The best you can say is that some people in the early church believed it. But that it actually happened? Probably not.
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TLC
If you were as well versed in scripture as you seemingly suppose yourself to be (a rather ubiquitous attribute here at GSC), I'm curious as to why you would so glibly fail to mention or otherwise account for Luke 18:31-34 or John 20:9.
However, that said, maybe the most sensible reason is like the plain and obvious reason they (all) missed it back then. It was hid from them.
Yep. Like it or not, God is sovereign, and can (and does) do things like that....
p.s. Perhaps you already have an argument prepared against the meaning (and clarity) of Dan.9:26. Wouldn't really surprise me any at this point, given your stated position on the matter.
Edited by TLCp.s.
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Raf
1. TLC: We were specifically warned to keep posts about the topic and not about each other. You could not go a single sentence without violating that reasonable instruction. Not one sentence.
2. Neither of the verses you refer to are in the Old Testament.
3. The notion that there are hidden meanings in Old Testament passages that secretly refer to the Messiah is laughable. "Out of Egypt I have called my son" is not a Messianic prophecy. "A virgin shall be with child" is not a Messianic prophecy. "You will not leave my soul in hell or allow your holy one to see corruption" is not a Messianic prophecy.
Having a "sovereign" God who can "do things like that" makes any statement mean anything, simultaneously making it absolutely pointless to present scriptural evidence to people who can change scripture to mean whatever they want it to mean.
There's a reason, as a whole, that Jews who know their scriptures best have not converted to Christianity: they know when their own scriptures are being distorted to prove things they do not prove.
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Raf
Related: If you read the Old Testament without Jesus-colored glasses, it would be next to impossible to conclude many of the verses that are declared to be "fulfilled" in the New Testament were ever referring to the Messiah in the first place. Isaiah 53? DEFinitely not about the Messiah. Don't believe me? Read chapter 52, 53 and 54, remembering that the chapter and verse divisions were added. Read straight through. It's not talking about the Messiah. The servant is Israel. I've linked an article written by an unbiased Jewish scholar of the Bible who wrote the book (in two volumes) on why Jews don't become Christian. It's got a lot of pages, chapters and footnotes. His name is Tovia Singer.
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Raf
What is there to answer? Nothing described in that verse happened.
In addition it really should be noted that "Messiah" in that verse is a convenient translation of "anointed one." There were LOTS of anointed ones in the Bible. Kings were anointed. While it's true that The Messiah or The Christ is, like, THE Anointed One, there's no indication that this verse is talking about the Christ.
Again, ask a Jew who knows his scripture. He'll tell you that it's actually talking about two different anointed ones: one after seven weeks and the other 62 weeks after that.
But don't take my word for it. Ask a Jew who knows his own holy book.
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