Did Jesus rise from the dead? (Kabane52 vs. tehknologik?)

[Kelp]

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This debate thread is open to debate the following issue:

The historical evidence merits the conclusion that Jesus rose from the dead
Kabane52 will be defending the positive and tehknologik will be defending the affirmative. This debate will begin as soon as Kabane makes his first post. The debate will last 5 rounds.


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[Kabane52]

This is my fourth debate on this issue and I’d like to thank theologyweb for hosting the debate and tehknologik for debating. Let’s get started.

The Crucifixion

The crucifixion is an extremely well attested fact. It is confirmed both in biblical and extrabiblical sources. It is confirmed by Paul

(1 Corinthians 1:23) but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles

Mark‘s Passion Narrative

(Mark 15:23-24) And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. And they crucified him and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take.

On the Existence of a Markan Passion Narrative

The majority of scholars regard it probable that Mark draws from a passion source that dates from 37 CE or earlier. One of the principle reasons for this judgement is that “the high priest” is not named, which would seem to imply that he is still the high priest. Caiaphas was high priest until 37, so the latest date for the passion source is 37.

Another consideration favoring the existence of a pre Markan passion narrative is the fact that before the passion, Mark’s account is like beads on a string, detached anecdotes. Such was the nature of most ancient biography, it would be silly to regard this as an anomaly like John Armstrong does. However, when we reach the passion narrative, it is one continuous, flowing narrative, which would indicate that sources have switched.

Matthew

(Matthew 27:31) And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him and led him away to crucify him. .

Luke

(Luke 23:33) And when they came to the place that is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on his right and one on his left.

John

(John 19:18) There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them.

And for extrabiblical attestation we have:

Flavius Josephus

(Antiquities 18.3.3) And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross

Cornelius Tacitus

(Annals 15.44) Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus.

The evidence for the crucifixion of Jesus is overwhelming. So overwhelming, in fact, that AE Harvey states that "It would be no exaggeration to say that this event is better attested, and supported by a more impressive array of evidence, than any other event of comparable importance of which we have knowledge from the ancient world."

The Empty Tomb

Now, I will establish that the tomb of Jesus was in fact empty. This enjoys explicit attestation from the four Christian gospels as well as implicit attestation in the First Corinthians 15 creed that I will discuss later.

Mark‘s Passion Narrative

(Mark 16:2-6) And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. And they were saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?" And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back--it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. And he said to them, "Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him.

Matthew

(Matthew 28:1-7) Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him. See, I have told you."

Luke

(Luke 24:1-3) But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.

John

(John 20:1-7) Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him." So Peter went out with the other disciple, and they were going toward the tomb. Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. And stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself.

The 1 Corinthians 15 Creed

Now, let me explain how the empty tomb is implicitly attested by the 1 Corinthians 15 creed (hereafter 1C15C)

The 1 Corinthians 15 Creed is Non Pauline

As Kirk MacGregor notes in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 and the Bodily Resurrection of Jesus, this creed contains several non Pauline phrases such as, ("for our sins"), ... ("according to the Scriptures"), ... ("he has been raised"), ... ("on the third day"), ... ("he was seen"), and ... ("by the Twelve")

He also notes how delivered and received are technical rabbinical terms used for passing on a tradition. These terms are used by Paul introducing the creed. Combined, these two factors are weighty evidence for a non Pauline origin of 1 Corinthians 15:3-7. But it is necessary to clarify the one part where Paul seems to have edited the creed. As Peter Stuhlmacher has demonstrated, the phrase most of whom are still living, but some have fallen asleep is Pauline.

This addition makes sense. Considering the early date of the creed, when it was first formulated, almost all of the 500 were still alive. As Paul passed this tradition on years later, it required him to clarify that some had died.

The Date of the Creed
Most scholars hold that Paul received this creed in his visit to Peter and James described in Galatians 1:18 three years after his conversion.. The Greek literally means “to visit and get information”. Logically, we conclude that the creed was part of this information he received.

Jesus was crucified in 30 CE. Paul then converted in 32 CE. He states that he visited Peter in 35 CE, which would mean that this creed dates to 35 at the very latest. Most scholars date it even earlier, considering that this creed was definitely formulated before Paul’s visit. Even the Jesus Seminar dates it to 33 CE.

So we can conclude that this creed was formulated within 1-5 years of the crucifixion of Jesus and was passed on by eyewitnesses. Considering this, we may regard the material therein to be quite reliable.

The Creed on the Empty Tomb

The part relevant to the empty tomb reads like this:

(1 Corinthians 15:3-4) For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures

Christ died, was buried, and rose. If Christ died, was buried, and physically rose, then it follows that the grave was empty, since one cannot physically rise and at the same time leave your body behind. Our next section will provide a refutation of the spiritual resurrection hypothesis

A Spiritual Resurrection

Certain Skeptics like to say that since Paul believed only in a spiritual resurrection, the creed does not at all imply an empty tomb.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:3 that Jesus was “resurrected”. The Greek used here is anistemi. Such a word in the context of resurrection can only mean physical, bodily resurrection.

Richard Carrier objects to this restricted meaning of anastasis, citing Plotinus’ use of it in Enneads:

Sense-perception belongs to the sleeping soul, the part of the soul immersed in body; and the true awakening is a rising up, not with the body, but from the body. . . To rise up to very truth is altogether to depart from bodies. Corporeality is contrary to soul and essentially opposed to soul.

But as Henri Marrou notes,

It is quite remarkable that even though the word anastasis occurs once in Plotinus' writings (of course in the literal sense of a "spiritual raising up" and not of "resurrection"), it does so in a passage directed against those who are overly concerned with the body. The barb is aimed at the Stoics. They are said to be like dreamers, who mistake for reality what they have seen in sleep, saying that everything which has to do with the body must be considered unreal; that in order not to be led astray by false appearances one must effect a raisin up through separation from the body (anas tasis apo tou somatos); that merely passing from one body to another would amount to about the same as having an invalid change beds.

In other words, this is poking fun at the Stoics. Plotinus still knows that anastasis means physical, he is simply saying that the Stoics confuse the physical with the unreal. In fact, Plotinus’ argument would make no sense unless anastasis was only physical!

So now that we have established that this creed has a physical resurrection in mind, what are we to conclude but an empty tomb?

Let’s summarize the evidence. Within five years of the crucifixion, we have implicit attestation that the tomb was empty. This attestation had been endorsed by Peter and James, both eyewitnesses. Within seven years, we have explicit attestation that the tomb was empty.

We then have attestation from both Matthew and John that the tomb was empty. On top of this, we have the circumstantial fact that Christianity was able to survive in the same city where Jesus was buried. Cumulatively, this evidence is extraordinarily strong, and this represents only some of the reasons why the majority of scholars, both Christian, such as Daniel Wallace, and non Christian, such as Michael Grant regard the empty tomb as historical fact.


The Theft Theory

Now I will demonstrate the improbability of theft by eliminating first the disciples of Jesus, next by eliminating the Jews and finally by eliminating occultists

The Disciples of Jesus

It is occasionally argued that the disciples of Jesus stole the body. However, if they had stolen the body, they would have known Christianity was a lie and preached such a lie until their deaths. They went knowingly and willingly to their graves (except John, who died a natural death), which demonstrates that they did not steal the body of Christ.

The Jews

This is almost never argued, but nevertheless has appeared from time to time. If the Jews stole the body, they could have easily accessed it and shown it publicly when the apostles began to preach the resurrection of Jesus. Them showing this would not be a story that would die out for a few days. It would be the ultimate refutation of Christianity, and the Jews would have appealed to it for a long, long time. Instead, we have them blaming the empty tomb on the theft of the disciples, an option we have already refuted.

Occultists

If the negative wishes to take this option to promote the stolen body theory, he must provide evidence for the existence of such a group in or near Jerusalem at the time period of the crucifixion of Jesus. He must also demonstrate that such occultists were in the practice of making off with entire bodies instead of just cutting off pieces of bodies, which is what necromancers of that time period (who did NOT exist in Jerusalem) would do.

We have established that Jesus was died and that his tomb was found empty. We have established that the body of Jesus was not stolen. We now continue to the appearances.

The Appearances of the Risen Christ

After his death, Jesus appeared to both his followers and to Skeptics. We will begin with the central attestation of the appearances, found in the 1C15C:

(1 Corinthians 15:3-7) For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.

Paul adds a personal appendix at the end of the creed:

(1 Corinthians 15:8) Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.

So we have an appearance to Peter (called Cephas), The Disciples, 500, James (a former skeptic of Jesus), and Paul (another former skeptic of Jesus)

The Hallucination Theory

The most popular theory to explain the resurrection appearances today is probably the hallucination theory. We will see that this theory holds no water.

Our first consideration deals with the fact that these were group appearances. In the 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 creed, it states that Jesus appeared to the twelve. This is a group appearance. Though this consideration alone does not rule out a group appearance, it does make three criteria necessary. Let me quote Anomalous Psychology by Zuzne and Jones, page 135.

It is expectation that plays the coordinating role in collective hallucination. Although the subject matter of individual hallucinations has virtually no limits, the topics of collective hallucinations are limited to certain categories. ?These categories are determined, first, by the kinds of ideas that a group of people may get excited about as a group, for emotional excitement is a prerequisite of collective hallucinations…Second, the categories are limited by the fact that all participants in the hallucination must be informed beforehand, at least concerning the broad outlines of the phenomenon that will constitute the collective hallucination.

So we have three criteria. Expectation, excitement, and being informed beforehand. We will see if the resurrection fulfills these criteria by looking at the accounts we have of the event.

Expectation.
We can clearly see that the disciples were unsure of what Jesus meant when he said he would rise from the dead.

(Mark 9:9-10) And as they were coming down the mountain, he charged them to tell no one what they had seen, until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead might mean.

(Mark 9:31-32) for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, "The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise." But they did not understand the saying, and were afraid to ask him

(Luke 18:33-34) And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise." But they understood none of these things. This saying was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said.

(John 20:9) for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.

Even when looking in the tomb, they didn’t believe it! How can we possibly derive “expectation” from data like this?

We can see that from the data that is in our hands, no evidence of expectation exists, and plenty of contrary evidence exists. Criterion one is not fulfilled. Already the hallucination theory has failed. Let us continue on to criterion two.

Excitement

There is absolutely no evidence that after the crucifixion of Christ, that the disciples were excited. But let’s take a look at when the women inform the disciples of the resurrection.

(Luke 24:10-11) Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles, but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.

Idle tale? The one place prior to the appearances where we expect the apostles to be most excited, they aren’t excited at all! They don’t even consider the testimony of the women! We’ll discuss the possibility that the women were the trigger for hallucinations in more detail later.

With that, we can move onto our third and final criterion.

Being informed beforehand.

Is this fulfilled? Absolutely not! When they had the appearances, they still doubted!

(Matthew 28:16-17) Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted.

They didn’t even recognize him when they saw him!

(John 21:4) Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the shore; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.

(Luke 24:15-16) While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him.

So criterion three fails as well. All three criteria fail here.

The Women as a Trigger for Hallucinations

It is often said by Skeptics and atheists , that the appearances to the apostles were sparked by the women telling them of the angels. Now we have already seen that the disciples didn’t believe the women, but for the sake of argument, let’s say they accepted the testimony of the women without question. Then we have to answer the obvious question.

How the heck did the women see the angels? They went to the tomb to spice Jesus’ body, not to hear of resurrection. That was probably what they least expected! Applying the three criteria here, we find that we have another solid appearance, though here by angels rather than Jesus. So trying to explain the appearances to the apostles with the women creates an even bigger problem.

Paul and James

Both of these appearances are appearances to Skeptics, which knocks out grief hallucinations as a possibility. Let’s look at some of the explanations of the appearances to Paul and James

Argument #1: Paul Was Guilty

This is absolute nonsense. There is no evidence that Paul felt bad about persecuting Christians. Further, we note that shame rather than guilt existed back then. Guilt is by and large a product of modern individualism and was not prominent, if it existed at all, in the first century.

By this reasoning, anyone who kills Christians is so guilty that they may experience a vision of Jesus. By this logic, Osama Bin Laden is a very guilty man!

Argument #2: Paul Was Epileptic

There are four typical reasons cited why Paul is epileptic. They are:

Hyperreligiosity

In reply: Paul had a very valid reason to be hyper religious! He had seen the risen Jesus! If anyone had seen the risen Jesus, they would be expected to be ferverous about it. Saying that it is an indication of epilepsy assumes that he didn’t see the risen Jesus.

The Tendency to Write A Lot

This is circular again, as it assumes that Paul had no reason to write a lot. Further, if this indicated epilepsy, Livy is also epileptic, considering his massive 142 volume history.

Diminished Sexual Drive

This is derived from Paul being a bachelor. This, however, is not an indication of epilepsy. There are plenty of people who are married who are definitely not epileptic, it means nothing with regard to Paul.

Epileptic Seizures

This is derived from the appearance of Jesus to Paul. This is circular, because it assumes that this was in fact a subjective vision, rather than an appearance of the Risen Jesus.

Argument #3: James Was Persuaded by the Apostles
Essentially, this is the argument:

You have never believed your brother was the messiah, and then suddenly after he is crucified, further backing up James' belief, he hallucinates the risen Jesus because people who he didn't regard as credible in the first place urged him to.

I think we can all see why this argument is bankrupt. We have seen that the appearances to James and Paul are credible appearances with no viable alternative explanation.

The Deathblow: The Apostles Would NEVER Hallucinate Jesus’ Resurrection
I now want to move in for my final argument against group hallucinations. In the first century, the Jews were the only people who believed resurrection was possible. But they did not believe that anyone would rise from the dead before a general resurrection at the end of time. However, they did believe that someone’s body could be taken up into heaven, an assumption into heaven. Remember that the disciples were Jews.

So they would have believed that no resurrection would happen before then. So after the crucifixion, they are grieving horribly. Their alleged messiah was just shamed terribly, eliminating any honor he had during his ministry. Their brain has a hallucination. What is the content of this hallucination? They see Jesus up in heaven. He had been assumed into heaven, but would not walk the Earth again until the general resurrection. IF they had hallucinated, that is what they would have seen, but most definitely not resurrection.

An interesting note comes from the Gospel of John.

(John 20:6-9) Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.

So Simon and John go into the tomb. Simon doesn’t believe, but John does believe. But neither of them understands that Jesus rose from the dead. Huh? What kind of sense does that make? It means that when John saw the empty tomb, he concluded that Jesus had been assumed into heaven. He DID NOT think of resurrection, as the concept of resurrection before the general resurrection was unthinkable. This destroys the hallucination theory, as it clearly shows that a hallucination of resurrection makes absolutely no senses in the context of first century Judaism.

What I’ve shown is that first, the apostles could not have experienced a group hallucination of Jesus. Second, I’ve shown that Paul and James could not have experienced a hallucination of Jesus. Third, I’ve shown that if a hallucination had taken place, it would have been a hallucination of Jesus’ assumption into heaven rather than of his bodily resurrection from the dead. The hallucination theory of the resurrection is utterly bankrupt.

[tehknologik]

The Plausibility of Theft

It wouldn't have been necessary for the twelve disciples to have stolen the body as a group. A disciple and/or any other follower or admirer may have stolen the body without the knowledge of the others. The point of such a trick would be to inspire faith in the good teachings of Jesus and to restore his good name: for despite being crucified like a common criminal, if God took him up to heaven, as an empty tomb would help "prove," this would completely vindicate Jesus as a holy man of God, and his teachings as divine and worthy.

The success of such pious deceit may have sparked the alleged appearances of Jesus in others (which were likely hallucinations, as I'll discuss later on). And so we can imagine that if a disciple stole the body, he heard of these appearances and attempted to verify them by looking for the body, but was mistaken in remembering where he had hid it. The disciple thereby became convinced that Jesus did in fact rise, despite his efforts only to make it appear that way. This would explain the persecution he'd be willing to endure to preach that Jesus had risen.

Of course, it may have been John who stole the body, either alone or with the help of some of Jesus' admirers, who died a natural death - and so he couldn't have taken the lie of Christianity knowingly and willingly to his grave.

It may also have been a mere follower who stole the body. Apologists have claimed that no one but Joseph, those with him, and the women initially knew where the empty tomb was. But of course, the thief could have been someone in Joseph's party, and we really don't know who was with Joseph or who else may have surreptitiously followed the party, or who may have found out its location by asking someone in the party (by casual inquiry or bribery), so this would be a fairly hollow objection: thieves with a design to steal the body of a holy man would surely keep an eye on their prize, and there is no reason to expect they would be mentioned in any accounts. Moreover, Matthew assumes the location was well known enough that a guard could be placed there. Also, grave robbers looking for bodies may have simply stumbled on a new fresh grave - they could even have cased graveyards to spy new arrivals.

This leads us to the possibility of occultists getting away with the body.

The famous Nazareth inscription seems to imply that tomb robbery was a widespread problem in first-century Palestine. It could be that some unknown person or persons broke into the tomb and absconded with the body - William Lane Craig "The Empty Tomb of Jesus," in Defense of Miracles

Against this, he says there "is no positive evidence for this hypothesis, so to that extent it is a mere assertion," although it is not a mere assertion if tomb robbing was, as he admits, a real possibility in that very time and place, and since many causes in history have no evidence for them but their effects, it follows that a hypothesis that explains a fact cannot be rejected out of hand. This is especially the case when we have no reason to expect positive evidence to survive, and certainly an anonymous secret crime would be very unlikely to produce any evidence at all.

As long as this possibility cannot be positively ruled out by apologists, it stands as a severe detriment to any confidence one can have in the empty tomb as supportive of a resurrection.

Apologists will often point out that guards were placed at the tomb, and so his body could not have been stolen. Of course, one should note right away that the very thought that a guard was needed would entail that theft of the body was a real possibility and thus not implausible. It also entails accepting, as the story explicitly states and also requires to make sense, that Jesus really did predict his resurrection, thus priming his disciples to expect it. But more importantly, the fact that the guard was not even placed until sometime Saturday means the whole night and part of the morning would still have been available for the unguarded body to be stolen. Furthermore, in the account given, the Jews were evidently satisfied by the fact the stone appeared unmoved, and no one is said to have checked to see if the tomb was already empty. So even if the story of the guards is true it does little to argue against the possibility of theft.


The Plausibility of Hallucination

Recall Anomalistic Psychology, which states that "participants... must be informed beforehand, at least concerning the broad outlines of the phenomenon," which Jesus supplied by repeatedly telling the apostles that he would be killed and on the third day raised to life.

But what about the apostles' reactions?

But they did not understand what he meant and were afraid to ask him about it. - Mark 9:32

Did Jesus really entrust the furtherance of his important cause to a bunch of dimwits who couldn't understand plain language? Considering the general acceptance of the phenomenon of resurrection in those times, what exactly was there to misunderstand when a man said he would "rise from the dead" anyway? Observe how generally accepted it was...

They [the twelve] drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them. King Herod heard about this, for Jesus' name had become well known. Some were saying, "John the Baptist has been raised from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him." Others said, "He is Elijah." And still others claimed, "He is a prophet, like one of the prophets of long ago." But when Herod heard this, he said, "John, the man I beheaded, has been raised from the dead!" - Mark 6:13-16

Luke's parallel account sheds even more light on what people were saying:

Now Herod the ruler heard about all that had taken place, and he was perplexed, because it was said by some that John had been raised from the dead, by some that Elijah had appeared, and by others that one of the ancient prophets had arisen. - Luke 9:7-8

Even the enemies of Jesus understood that he had predicted his resurrection! After Jesus had been put into the tomb, they came to Pilate to ask that precautions be taken to prevent a staged fulfillment of the prediction:

The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate and said, "Sir, we remember what that impostor said while he was still alive, 'After three days I will rise again.' Therefore command the tomb to be made secure until the third day; otherwise his disciples may go and steal him away, and tell the people, 'He has been raised from the dead,' and the last deception would be worse than the first - Matt. 28:62-64

And so the idea that the apostles were confused falls apart upon examining the world in which they found themselves. It disintegrates yet even further in view of other things Jesus said and did - in the light of which, the post-crucifixion conduct of the apostles is virtually impossible to understand. On the way to Jerusalem, Jesus took them aside, told them that he would be delivered up to the chief priests and scribes, condemned to death, delivered to the Gentiles to be mocked, scoured, crucified, and would be raised from the dead on the third day. Yet somehow, after personally witnessing the first five specific fulfillments of Jesus' statement, they only considered the women's testimony to be "idle talk."

Why?

This should be especially baffling to anyone who believes that the apostles also directly witnessed Jesus suspend the laws of physics before their very eyes on several occasions, such as walking on water and commanding a fig tree to wither up.

So we're left in a deeper hole trying to understand the nature of this alleged confusion; the substance that we can derive from it is nil. Clearly the gospels are of no assistance in making sense of these verses, so let us see if we can make sense of them by looking elsewhere...

We can find several examples of skepticism in miracle stories that no one would deny are legendary. At the ancient healing shrine of Epidauros, there survive numerous testimonial inscriptions, either actually left there by "satisfied customers" or composed by the priests for advertisement purposes. One tells of a man whose fingers were crippled. He came to the healing temple, but "he disbelieved in the healings and he sneered at the inscriptions." Yet in his mercy, the healing god Ascepios restored his hand, despite the man's unbelief. Similarly, the one-eyed Ambrosia of Athens came to the shrine with doubts in her mind: "as she walked around the temple of healings, she mocked some things as incredible and impossible, that the lame and blind could be healed at only seeing a dream." Yet Asclepios takes pity and heals her anyway. Another suppliant who actually has an empty eye-socket goes to the shrine for help. This time it is the bystanders who mock-- surely this is too great a task even for Asclepios. Nonetheless the man is given a completely new eye.

In Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana, the hero pinpoints the cause of a plague in Ephesus as a demon. We are told that Apollonius points out an old blind beggar and directs the crowd to stone him to death. Understandably, the crowd is skeptical. But Apollonius knows best. He prevails, and the old man is revealed as a "devil in disguise"; beneath the heap of stones no human is found, but rather that of a huge dog.

Even accounts of skepticism in intentional works of fiction are revealing. Take for example, the scene in Shakespeare's Hamlet, where Marcellus, Horatio, and Bernardo are standing guard. Recalling the rumor that a ghost once appeared there, Marcellus suggests that it might return, and Horatio responds "Tush, tush, 'twill not appear." But it does.

In all these stories, the skepticism of the characters functions as a literary device to magnify the miracle worked by the hero. He was able to "pull it off" despite the doubts of everyone.

Now that I've demonstrated the contextual absurdity of confusion, we can now see that the apostles' skepticism is best accounted for as a literary embellishment, and their bewilderment naturally had to accompany it for it to make sense.

Nevertheless, it isn't necessary to explain every account of skepticism in the gospels in this way, since skepticism isn't completely injurious to the hallucination theory.

Zuzne and Jones tell us that in most cases, collective hallucinations are led by only one or several people at first, through which others join through the power of suggestive influence, and finally their stories are unified through false memory creation and comformism.

there will always be some who will not see the hallucination. It is uncommon for them to speak out and deny it. They usually keep quiet, doubtful perhaps of their worthiness to have been granted the vision for which so many of their followers around them are fervently giving thanks. Later on, they may even begin to believe that they saw the vision too. - Anomolistic Psychology

In Luke 24:13-32, Jesus is mistaken for a stranger even by those who knew him, until they are placed in a psychological state receptive to "recognizing" the stranger as Jesus, and then they hype up the others into a state of expectation that only then leads to a sudden "appearance."

In Jhon 21:4-12, no one recognizes Jesus at all except one or two disciples, and the others simply "go along" with it, simply following the lead of an authority figure - a clear demonstration of suggestive influence!

Matthew 28:16-17 says that some doubted.

Echoes of these factors remain in other verses: in the ending added to Mark, Jesus is said to have appeared "in a different form" (16:12). In John, Mary doesn't recognize Jesus, she even mistakes him for a gardener, and has a conversation with him without suspecting a thing, until he says her name, and then suddenly she "perceives" this stranger as Jesus (20:14-16). That this thread would remain in common across all four gospels suggests the truth began with something more illusory than mystical.

Finally, the appearances to Paul and to James were likely hallucinations too. Their skepticism is of no relevance. Zuzne and Jones tell us exactly that when they say "the subject matter of individual hallucinations has virtually no limits."

Apologists often tout that the explanation with the most explanatory power is the resurrection. However, greater explanatory scope is not sufficient for one theory to be more credible than another. For example, the theory that alien visitors are responsible, in whole or in part, for all monumental and other unusual ancient architecture, has far more explanatory scope than any natural theories, which are by contrast highly varied and complex, yet no rational person would argue that we should believe aliens are the cause. There are in fact at least SIX criteria must be met to establish historicity, of which explanatory scope is but one, and at least a majority of these criteria must be met overwhelmingly against competitors in order to justify steady confidence in the conclusion.

It stands that there is hardly sufficient evidence to warrant belief in Jesus' resurrection.

[Kabane52]

Thanks to tehknologik for the quick and indeed, very detailed reply to me. We are dealing with a skeptic of a higher class than say, Sea of red or robtul12. Let’s get started.

It wouldn't have been necessary for the twelve disciples to have stolen the body as a group. A disciple and/or any other follower or admirer may have stolen the body without the knowledge of the others. The point of such a trick would be to inspire faith in the good teachings of Jesus and to restore his good name

The key problem here is that they would not want to restore Jesus’ good name, primarily because it would no longer be good. The nature of crucifixion is destroys any honor that was held by him prior to this event. Furthermore, we must ask the question, “What teachings?” The central teachings were not the moral teachings which were primarily a retelling of teachings already in circulation, but rather, the teachings about himself. This was that he was Messiah. And not only that he was Messiah, but God incarnate. After a crucifixion, where they know those teachings would not be true, it would be absolutely blasphemous to attempt to vindicate them. The key question we must ask is, “Why did the disciples of Jesus view him differently after his death than the disciples of Simon bar Kokhba and Simon bar Giora viewed them after their deaths? They were both abandoned. As NT Wright says, when your messiah died, you either abandoned any messianic aspirations or you got yourself a new messiah.

for despite being crucified like a common criminal

As a minor note, common criminals were not crucified. It was primarily the insurrectionists and rebels who were crucified.

if God took him up to heaven, as an empty tomb would help "prove,"

Really? There exists no evidence of anyone in pre-Christian times coming to belief in a resurrection based on an empty tomb. As it stands, a Christian thief had little rationale for stealing the body.

this would completely vindicate Jesus as a holy man of God, and his teachings as divine and worthy.

This is utterly self-refuting. Why would they knowingly blaspheme? As Wright notes, he was not a street preacher giving out ethical truths, he was trying to usher in the kingdom of God.

The success of such pious deceit may have sparked the alleged appearances of Jesus in others

As I said, no evidence exists that an empty tomb would spark belief in the resurrection. Indeed, we have definite evidence that this did not happen (even if we do discount the skepticism accounts, which I do not), as will be discussed later.

And so we can imagine that if a disciple stole the body, he heard of these appearances and attempted to verify them by looking for the body, but was mistaken in remembering where he had hid it.

As if they would forget such a significant event! This is pure and baseless speculation that is frankly implausible.

Of course, it may have been John who stole the body, either alone or with the help of some of Jesus' admirers, who died a natural death - and so he couldn't have taken the lie of Christianity knowingly and willingly to his grave.

The consequences of being a Christian were not only martyrdom. It included being a social outcast, being shamed publicly, which could be considered nearly as awful as martyrdom, especially for a lie. Furthermore, a motive still has not been produced. We may consider such a hypothesis ad hoc speculation.

It may also have been a mere follower who stole the body.

The points about shame still apply here, as do the points about knowingly blaspheming God.

This leads us to the possibility of occultists getting away with the body.

I provided a rebuttal to the occultist hypothesis in my opening post. See:

Occultists

If the negative wishes to take this option to promote the stolen body theory, he must provide evidence for the existence of such a group in or near Jerusalem at the time period of the crucifixion of Jesus. He must also demonstrate that such occultists were in the practice of making off with entire bodies instead of just cutting off pieces of bodies, which is what necromancers of that time period (who did NOT exist in Jerusalem) would do.

My requests for evidence here have not been met, and tehknologik’s hypothesis as it stands may be discarded. Tehknologik misreads Bill Craig. Yes, indeed, tomb robberies were common! However, robbing the entire body was NOT. See my section on occultists. Dr. Craig’s point about mere speculation is also valid. Tehknologik replies to this point:

As long as this possibility cannot be positively ruled out by apologists, it stands as a severe detriment to any confidence one can have in the empty tomb as supportive of a resurrection.

This is a rather silly line of logic. I could just as easily say “As long as the possibility of aliens ruling the Earth cannot be positively ruled out, it stands as a severe detriment to any confidence one can have that democracy is operating in the United States.

Apologists will often point out that guards were placed at the tomb, and so his body could not have been stolen.

This was not one of my arguments. My arguments do not depend on the historicity of the guards.

We next move to the crux of tehknologik’s argument, which is the plausibility of hallucinations.

which Jesus supplied by repeatedly telling the apostles that he would be killed and on the third day raised to life.

Did they understand it this way, however? We will see that they did not.

Observe how generally accepted it was...

They [the twelve] drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them. King Herod heard about this, for Jesus' name had become well known. Some were saying, "John the Baptist has been raised from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him." Others said, "He is Elijah." And still others claimed, "He is a prophet, like one of the prophets of long ago." But when Herod heard this, he said, "John, the man I beheaded, has been raised from the dead!" - Mark 6:13-16

NT Wright in his book The Resurrection of the Son of God, says in reply:

Working back from the evangelists and their sources to the situation in Jesus' lifetime, it is interesting that the theory about Jesus being a dead prophet raised to life is advanced in Matthew and Mark to explain why he possessed such remarkable powers. This makes obvious sense if Jesus was seen as Elijah redivivus, since Elijah had done extraordinary things as well (memories of Elijah's raise of a dead child have just been awakened, not long before in Mark, by the raising of Jairus' daughter). But John the Baptist, unlike Elijah, did not perform healings or other "mighty works". To suggest that Jesus was raised-to-life John was not, then, a away of explaining his remarkable powers by saying he had been them before in a previous life, but rather an indication that being raised from the dead might be supposed to give someone not just a new lease of life, but unusual, perhaps superhuman, abilities. There is no other evidence for this belief. No doubt the evangelists might have seen it as a distant and shadowy pointer to their own belief, that when Jesus himself was raised from the dead all sorts of new powers were indeed unleashed into the world further below. We should not, I think, regard Herod and his court as the most accurate indicators of mainstream second-Temple Jewish belief; even if it is true that the Pharisees and Herodians made common cause on a couple of occasions, we may assume that they did not sit down and discuss the finer points of proto-rabbinic theology. However, there are a couple points worthy of note. First, this is hardly evidence of a belief in "reincarnation' or 'transmigration, the embodiment of a dead soul either immediately upon death or at some time thereafter. that would normally require the soul to pass into a newborn, or newly conceived child, whereas Jesus was a fully grown man, of about the same age as John. Second, it is of course clear that Jesus was an embodied human being, walking around and saying and doing things. At this point Herod is on target. ‘Resurrection‘ language was not about ghosts, spirits or phantoms; there was plenty of other language for that. It was about bodies. We do not find here any suggestion, apart from new powers such a being might have, that the body itself had been in any way transformed- or, presumably, that it would not or could not die again. Perhaps the simplest explanation for why Herod did what he did - or why someone said that he said it - is the general idea, current at least since the Maccabees and Daniel, that Israel‘s god would vindicate a righteous sufferer, and that Herod might well think of John in that way.

Apologies for the long quote, but Wright explains it best. In other words, Herod is not referring to the resurrection in the sense that the apostles said Christ was resurrected, but in the sense that Lazarus was resurrected.

Even the enemies of Jesus understood that he had predicted his resurrection! After Jesus had been put into the tomb, they came to Pilate to ask that precautions be taken to prevent a staged fulfillment of the prediction:

Are you granting the historicity of the guards, tehk? Just wondering. If no, then this point is invalid anyway. But let’s presume yes. An empty tomb could also indicate a staged assumption into heaven, fully consistent with Second Temple Judaism, and most likely what the Jews were referring to here.

And so the idea that the apostles were confused falls apart upon examining the world in which they found themselves.

As has been demonstrated, far from it. The eyewitness authorship of the gospels also speaks against their skepticism here being completely fabricated. If tehknologik challenges their authorship, this will be addressed.

It disintegrates yet even further in view of other things Jesus said and did - in the light of which, the post-crucifixion conduct of the apostles is virtually impossible to understand. On the way to Jerusalem, Jesus took them aside, told them that he would be delivered up to the chief priests and scribes, condemned to death, delivered to the Gentiles to be mocked, scoured, crucified, and would be raised from the dead on the third day.

This requires some analysis of what these predictions would mean in that day. Bear with me here. Let’s look at what most Jews would understand these to be alluding to:

(Hosea 6:2) After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him.

As you read the entire chapter, you will see the key argument. Resurrection language, aside from maybe Daniel 12, always meant a return from exile, a vindication of Israel
If you want to argue that Jesus’ predictions of resurrection would have been heard as a prediction of a literal pre-eschatological resurrection, you must demonstrate that it strongly parallels Daniel 12 rather than Hosea 6, Isaiah 26, and Ezekiel 37. To sum up here, we may be baffled by the skepticism the apostles exhibited in our own modern culture. However, when examined in the context of Second Temple Judaism, their skepticism is easily explained.

Tehknologik next examines several examples of skepticism in legendary accounts. These are rendered irrelevant by our analysis of resurrection in the context of Second Temple Judaism. Also in favor of historicity is the authorship of the gospel texts. These are of a fundamentally different genre than the examples tehknologik cites.

John 20 is also helpful when seeing what the apostles expected. Recall our discussion from my opening post:

An interesting note comes from the Gospel of John.

(John 20:6-9) Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.

So Simon and John go into the tomb. Simon doesn’t believe, but John does believe. But neither of them understands that Jesus rose from the dead. Huh? What kind of sense does that make? It means that when John saw the empty tomb, he concluded that Jesus had been assumed into heaven. He DID NOT think of resurrection

This is not an account of skepticism, so tehknologik’s point on that does not apply here. This is a clear demonstration that the apostles would think not of resurrection when seeing the tomb, but assumption (if they believed at all, and John was unique in that regard)

Next, tehknologik attempts to show that the gospels themselves give clues of hallucinations.

In Luke 24:13-32, Jesus is mistaken for a stranger even by those who knew him, until they are placed in a psychological state receptive to "recognizing" the stranger as Jesus, and then they hype up the others into a state of expectation that only then leads to a sudden "appearance."

In Jhon [sic] 21:4-12, no one recognizes Jesus at all except one or two disciples, and the others simply "go along" with it, simply following the lead of an authority figure - a clear demonstration of suggestive influence!

This portrayal of the passages is highly misleading. Here is what the passages actually say:
(Luke 24:15-16) While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him…
(Luke 24:31) And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight.
(John 21:4) Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the shore; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.
(John 21:7) That disciple whom Jesus loved therefore said to Peter, "It is the Lord!

What is the difference here? There was a man there, whom everyone saw. It is not as if there was no man there, and then he was pointed out and some hallucinated. There was a man there. They simply did not recognize him as Jesus. This brings us to a critical point. If these were mere hallucinations projected by the mind, we surely would expect the disciples to instantly recognize Jesus Rather than buttressing the hallucination theory, this absolutely crushes it.

Matthew 28:16-17 says that some doubted.

This does not support what tehknologik is saying. I in fact used this passage to refute the criterion of being informed beforehand. Far from aiding the hallucination theory, it refutes it.

Tehknologik gives a brief and inadequate explanation of the appearances to Paul and James.

Finally, the appearances to Paul and to James were likely hallucinations too. Their skepticism is of no relevance. Zuzne and Jones tell us exactly that when they say "the subject matter of individual hallucinations has virtually no limits."

Yet, they still need a trigger, do they not? The point of their skepticism is to eliminate the oft-suggested trigger of grief. As it stands, tehknologik has provided no such trigger, and these are two solid appearances that have not been explained.

To sum up, we have little evidence for the theft theory and plenty of data to contradict it. In context of Second Temple Judaism, the apostles would not have understood Jesus to be predicting his resurrection, and would have hallucinated his assumption into heaven had they needed him vindicated. Considering this, we find that the criteria of expectation and being informed beforehand are not fulfilled. Furthermore, tehknologik hasn’t even addressed the criterion of excitement. Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

[tehknologik]

Thanks to tehknologik for the quick and indeed, very detailed reply to me. We are dealing with a skeptic of a higher class than say, Sea of red or robtul12.

Thank you. I'm happy to debate a Christian of your caliber. :)

The key problem here is that they would not want to restore Jesus’ good name, primarily because it would no longer be good. The nature of crucifixion is destroys any honor that was held by him prior to this event.

Kabane is certainly correct that the point of crucifixion was extreme humiliation (as well as terror), and it was certainly a commonplace view held by the elite, especially the more snobbish, that to die in such a way was the ultimate disgrace and embarrassment. However, just because many people find some idea repugnant does not mean everyone does, nor does this mean it was regarded as repugnant by those who converted. Ancient literature is full of disgust towards the humiliating professions of prostitute or slave, and yet there were still people willing to choose the life of a hooker or slave. Likewise, to be a gladiator was a shameful embarrassment among the rich, and yet gladiators could become famous and revered among the poor.

Therefore, it does no good to point out people who find something repugnant or embarrassing--especially from the literate elite. Christianity won very few of the elite over until it had positions of power and authority to offer them within a wealth-generating Church hierarchy.

The early Christians were in a significantly different social position than those who most looked down on the form of Christ's death, and we know they had credible reasons not to share the elite view when it came to Jesus. When reading the early teachings in Paul and Acts, the early Christians appear to have come from a disgruntled poor and middle class who had grown disgusted with the fundamental injustices in their society and government, especially social and economic inequities, but also the execution of righteous men. The fate of John the Baptist is a case in point: executed by the state, yet still held in high esteem by a great many Jews. If John could be revered despite the embarrassment of execution, so could Jesus. This would have been no less likely had John been crucified--to the contrary, the outrage at this insult to his honor would be all the greater, and popular reverence for his unjust suffering all the greater for it. So long as someone believed Jesus had been a righteous man crucified unjustly, his crucifixion would have been no stumbling block at all. To the contrary, it would be testimony to his greatness. It would make him even more a hero than any other death could have.

After a crucifixion, where they know those teachings would not be true...

Among some Jews there was a certain expectation that the Messiah had to be humiliated as part of God's plan to secure his triumph, and these Jews would not find a crucified messiah disaffirming--to the contrary, it would be exactly what they were looking for. Jewish scripture declared that "The Redeemer of Israel" or "The Holy One of God" shall be "despised" by men, and nations will be "disgusted" with him, yet he shall triumph; the people will "bury him with the wicked" even though he was innocent, and he shall be "numbered with the transgressors" just as the Gospel of Mark says. The idea that a Chosen One of God must suffer total humiliation and execution at the hands of the wicked is a major theme in Isaiah (Isaiah 50:4-9, 52:7-53:12). Even David, a common prototype of the Messiah, sings in Psalm 22, "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" for "I am a worm" and "a reproach to men, despised by the people" and "all that see me laugh and scorn." This song set up a Jewish model for a crucified Davidic savior.

The pre-Christian text of the Wisdom of Solomon also declares that the wicked will "condemn to a shameful death" the holiest man of God, because they are "blinded by their wickedness" and "do not know the secret purposes of God" and it is said this righteous man, "a son of god," who is given a shameful execution will be raised and exalted by God to avenge his own death. This was a lesson that would automatically apply to the Messiah, who would be, by definition, a blameless and righteous man. And we have evidence it probably was understood by some in just this way, for the preeminent prophecy of the coming Messiah declares this very fate:

The anointed one shall be utterly destroyed yet there is no judgment upon him, then the city and the sanctuary will be torn down by the ruler who shall come. They will be knocked down in a cataclysm, until the end, when after war wreaks havoc there will be a systematic extermination. (Daniel 9:26)

The key question we must ask is, “Why did the disciples of Jesus view him differently after his death than the disciples of Simon bar Kokhba and Simon bar Giora viewed them after their deaths?

As I've already shown, the soil was prepared for exactly what the Christians came to preach--in fact, this preparation no doubt contributed significantly to why the first Christians came to believe this amazing claim about Jesus in the first place. The scriptures predicted that around that very time an innocent man would be humiliated with execution and scorn and this man, scripture plainly said, would be the Messiah. Jesus was an innocent man humiliated with execution and scorn. That made him a good candidate. Scriptural demonstrations were one of the main modes of successful argument employed by the Christians. Even to the extent that the Christians developed novel interpretations, the fact that they found such meaning in these revered oracles often carried tremendous weight. The fact that a humiliated, crucified man becoming a god was predicted by ancient sacred texts would be a powerful argument in favor of belief. It is no accident that the Christians relied on that very argument.

The central teachings were not the moral teachings which were primarily a retelling of teachings already in circulation, but rather, the teachings about himself.

While it's certainly true that Jesus said that he didn't intend to abolish the old Jewish religious laws, such as the Ten Commandments and other various regulations, he often did re-interpret these laws, or add to them, sometimes in very radical ways. As a result, some of his teachings were very controversial. According to Luke 4:28-30, some people in his hometown of Nazareth became so angry at him that they tried to throw him off a cliff.

In fact, many of his teachings take the form of "you have heard that it was said... but I say to you..." which shows that his teachings were not "primarily a retelling of teachings already in circulation."

it would be absolutely blasphemous to attempt to vindicate them
...
The consequences of being a Christian were not only martyrdom. It included being a social outcast, being shamed publicly, which could be considered nearly as awful as martyrdom, especially for a lie.

Sociologists have found that people often support religious leaders and movements because they approve of their moral mission to reform society, and that those who believe that such a mission will produce a better society are often willing to die fighting to promote it, and will consider any threat to its success as a threat to society as a whole. Someone in this mindset might not consider it wrong to steal a body in order to convince society that the moral mission of Jesus was approved by God, for they could easily persuade themselves it was the right thing to do precisely because they believe the moral mission of Jesus was approved by God, and therefore society ought to be persuaded of this, too. I have personally encountered numerous creationists and antiabortionists who have no qualms about deliberately fabricating and misrepresenting information in support of their cause, precisely because they believe this is what God wants.

Really? There exists no evidence of anyone in pre-Christian times coming to belief in a resurrection based on an empty tomb. As it stands, a Christian thief had little rationale for stealing the body.

Kabane shoots himself in the foot on this one. If an empty tomb is not a persuasive component for belief in the resurrection then what exactly is he trying to accomplish in this debate? The simple fact is that Kabane has come to his belief based (at least in part) on the empty tomb. Why would people in the past be any different? It stands that a thief had plenty rationale for stealing the body: because it had rhetorical significance for what he/she wanted to "prove" - unless Kabane would be willing to renounce it and watch his own argument implode as a result.

And so we can imagine that if a disciple stole the body, he heard of these appearances and attempted to verify them by looking for the body, but was mistaken in remembering where he had hid it.

As if they would forget such a significant event! This is pure and baseless speculation that is frankly implausible.

But the expletive "as if they would forget such a significant event" is equally speculative. Let me remind my readers that my only aim is to establish the plausibility of theft, not certainty. And that is exactly what is wrong with arguments for a "miraculous" resurrection: possibility, even plausibility, is simply insufficient to warrant belief.

The bottom line is that I do not claim to know that the body of Jesus was stolen, or even whether it is probable. All I claim to know is that it cannot be ruled out--in other words, its probability may be low, but it is still a lot higher than I can honestly assign to "God healed Jesus," because the evidence supporting theft, both direct and indirect, specific and general, establishes reasonable doubt, and though the evidence "for" theft is not strong enough to warrant the conviction that the body was stolen, the evidence "against" theft is substantially weaker in comparison. We are thus left with ignorance: we simply do not know for sure what happened, and anyone who claims to know for sure is stepping beyond the bounds of evidence and logic.

We may consider such a hypothesis ad hoc speculation.

Speculation is integral to the evaluation of truth. As long as it cannot be positively ruled out by apologists, it will always stand as a severe detriment to any confidence one can have in miracle claims, as long as such speculations are well within the realm of possibility. Kabane understands this (at least on some level), which is precisely why he has undertaken the due burden of positively ruling out naturalistic possibilities. As he's now beginning to find, history is far from exhaustive enough in its methods and abilities to do so. He is thereby forced to underhandedly play the "lack of evidence is evidence of lack" card. That's downright goofy for someone attempting to overturn the results of 300 years of empirical science establishing the uniformity of the laws of physics.

I could just as easily say “As long as the possibility of aliens ruling the Earth cannot be positively ruled out, it stands as a severe detriment to any confidence one can have that democracy is operating in the United States.

But given what we know, "aliens ruling the Earth," is not plausible - "democracy operating" IS. He's not paying attention to the nature of these claims. He would parallel my reasoning somewhat if he would reverse these propositions, and instead say "as long as the possibility of democracy operating in the United States cannot be positively ruled out, it stands as a severe detriment to any confidence one can have in aliens ruling the Earth." This would be especially true if democracy were clearly seen to be operating everywhere else on Earth, and no evidence of alien life were attainable.

Dr. Craig’s point about mere speculation is valid.

But it isn't, and Kabane's attempt to show that it is via his "democracy vs. aliens" analogy fails (see above).

On the matter of Occultists, Kabane says:

My requests for evidence here have not been met

But in fact, his requests for positive evidence are what have not been met. But as I've already explained, this is not required to establish reasonable doubt. There is no reason to believe that occultists didn't exist in Judea during the first century. The evidence for sorcery is all over the Mediterranean in that time, especially Egypt, whose sands have preserved for us copious amounts of spells, and the Bible itself attests to people from Egypt sojourning in Jerusalem at that very time (Acts 2:10; and from practically everywhere else: Acts 2:6-12), including Alexandrians (Acts 6:9). Simon of Cyrene was said to come from a province on the other side of Egypt (Mark 15:21; Luke 23:26; Matthew 27:32), and of course "the magi" who came to Herod, and to worship Jesus, were, by that very name, sorcerers (Matthew 2:1, 2:7, 2:16).

From the Old Testament it is clear, as the Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land (2001) concludes, that "sorcerers, magicians and necromancers abounded in Israelite and Judahite society" (p. 308; e.g. Jer. 27:9; Mal. 3:5-8), and there is no reason to think this changed under centuries of pagan rule. And that the Jews had laws against sorcery, and even thought it plausible to accuse Jesus of being a sorcerer, implies that people were engaging in the practice. After all, it would be contrary to human nature to suppose that Judea was somehow "free" of just this one kind of criminal activity which is attested everywhere else.

Yes, indeed, tomb robberies were common! However, robbing the entire body was NOT.

True, dismemberment may have been common, but there's no reason to think this would have necessarily applied in Jesus' case. In addition to hands and feet, blood and heart are also key ingredients attested in the papyri, and there were many other body parts that had valuable uses. So it would still be safer and more efficient to make off with the whole body, and dissect it at leisure later, to maximize the booty. This would especially be the case for acquiring the heart, and it would be essential for anyone who wanted to acquire as much blood as could be extracted from a corpse, since an ingredient used in some magical inks was "blood from someone who has died by violence." (Papyri Graecae Magicae IV.2208-09 = The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, p. 77).

Wright explains it best. In other words, Herod is not referring to the resurrection in the sense that the apostles said Christ was resurrected, but in the sense that Lazarus was resurrected.
...
An empty tomb could also indicate a staged assumption into heaven, fully consistent with Second Temple Judaism, and most likely what the Jews were referring to here.

Clearly, the world in which the apostles found themselves abounded with meaning behind the phrase "rise from the dead." Is Kabane trying to say that Jesus' statement didn't go straight over the apostles' heads (as he initially seemed to imply), but that it could have meant a number of things, and that's why they were confused? Let's assess this...

Kabane tells us that:

Resurrection language, aside from maybe Daniel 12, always meant a return from exile, a vindication of Israel.

But if that's true, then why didn't the Jews understand Jesus as saying this? If the Jews didn't, why would we expect the apostles to? Supposing this meaning actually did compete with risings like that of Lazarus or an assumption into heaven as they discussed "what 'rising from the dead' meant," (Mark 9:10) there's little reason to think they would have settled on this one. Keep in mind that we're talking about a group of people who allegedly witnessed Jesus suspend the laws of physics before their very eyes on several occasions. One would think that they would find a resurrection tantalizing enough of a possibility. And so we would think that the apostles would have been on the scene themselves that third-day morning at least waiting to see if Jesus would come forth. But they weren't there according to the story - they had to be sought out and told. This makes no sense, and their skepticism upon confirmation by the women's testimony is unsolved without the argument for literary embellishment.

John 20 is also helpful when seeing what the apostles expected. This is a clear demonstration that the apostles would think not of resurrection when seeing the tomb, but assumption.

We know that Jesus expounded upon Jewish teachings, especially moral ones - and there's no reason to think he didn't do so in regard to "rising from the dead."

He clearly espoused a different notion when he said:

But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee. (Matthew 26:32)

There was a man there, whom everyone saw. It is not as if there was no man there, and then he was pointed out and some hallucinated. There was a man there. They simply did not recognize him as Jesus. This brings us to a critical point. If these were mere hallucinations projected by the mind, we surely would expect the disciples to instantly recognize Jesus.

There's no reason to think that the literary appeal to the skeptic that I've already discussed at length did not extend itself to the recounting of these visions, to some extent. Being caught off guard by Jesus certainly has dramatic effect and does more to magnify the feat than by plainly stating that his arrival had been expected (which we have plenty of reason to think it in fact was).

Matthew 28:16-17 says that some doubted. I in fact used this passage to refute the criterion of being informed beforehand. Far from aiding the hallucination theory, it refutes it.

But it doesn't. It's precisely what we would expect, according to Zuzne and Jones:

there will always be some who will not see the hallucination. It is uncommon for them to speak out and deny it. They usually keep quiet, doubtful perhaps of their worthiness to have been granted the vision for which so many of their followers around them are fervently giving thanks. Later on, they may even begin to believe that they saw the vision too. - Anomolistic Psychology

Kabane somehow thinks he can use this verse in his favor when it only begs the question: why skepticism? What was there to doubt, unless they had no such perception but it was clear to them that the others did?

Yet, they still need a trigger, do they not? The point of their skepticism is to eliminate the oft-suggested trigger of grief.

The wasn't the point of their skepticism in your previous debates. Nevertheless, I'm sorry I was under that impression.

Peter Slade and Richard Bentall, in Sensory Deception: A Scientific Analysis of Hallucination (1988), surveyed the evidence for hallucination and found it to be rather commonplace (pp. 69-71)--between 7% and 14% of those surveyed who did not exhibit any mental illness reported having experienced hallucinations, and this sample naturally did not record those who had hallucinations but did not know it. Of these identified experiences, over 8% were multi-sensory hallucinations, and 5% involved entire conversations. Surveying this and much more evidence, the authors conclude that "many more people at least have the capability to hallucinate than a strictly medical model implies should be the case" (p. 76).

Moreover, social and cultural factors can increase the frequency and acceptance of hallucinations. Of 488 societies surveyed, 62% accepted some form of hallucinated experiences as real (such as being visited by the dead, or talking to animals or trees), and the majority of these accepted experiences were not induced by drugs (p. 77). In a particularly interesting case, one study found that 40% of Hawaiian natives have reported veridical encounters and conversations with dead people, usually after violation of a tribal taboo (p. 78). This study was inspired by a few clinical cases of such hauntings, which the therapists could not cure, and in seeking a cure they investigated the cultural influences behind the experiences. After their findings, they resolved to "cure" the problem by leading the victims to engage in culturally-established atonements, which were "expected" to end the visits, and they did. Kabane would have this stand as proof that the Hawaiian native religion was genuine, but clearly he cannot have that--for if Christianity is true, then violating Hawaiian tribal taboos could hardly cause the dead to rise and chastise people. After all, why would God arrange or allow for such a vindication of their non-Christian beliefs?

The survey demonstrated another important point: visual hallucinations are rare in Western cultures, but not in many others (especially developing countries). Moreover, "the folk theory of visions and voices adopted by a culture may be important in determining whether a hallucination is viewed as veridical or as evidence of insanity" (p. 80). Thus, Kabane, as a Westerner with little acquaintance with ancient culture, finds hallucinations hard to swallow--but this is only his own cultural bias leading him to the wrong conclusion.

The only better circumstances for hallucination than these are drugs, hypnosis, fatigue, hypnagogia, or sensory deprivation.

There is also the consideration of benevolent mental disorders. Claridge McCreery, in "A Study of Hallucination in Normal Subjects" (Personality and Individual Differences 2.5; November, 1996: pp. 739-747) found that there is a kind of 'happy schizotype' who is "a relatively well-adjusted person who is functional despite, and in some cases even because of, his or her anomalous perceptual experiences." This brings together the concepts of hallucination as an anxiety-reducing benefit and of the socio-cultural acceptance and guidance of hallucination, and explains two other features of antiquity: why there were almost no reported cases of psychosis in antiquity (and why hallucination was not regarded as an index of insanity), and why miracles were so frequently reported in that period (not just Christian, but pagan as well). It is entirely possible that cultural support lead schizophrenics into comfortable situations where their visions were channeled into "appropriate" religious contexts.

Thus, psychotics could live entirely normal lives, even benefit from their condition by the relief of anxiety, and by social acceptance, all the while experiencing amazing things on a frequent basis. These people could then be principally responsible for the origin of miracle reports, which are then believed out of credulity, or in reaction to the sincerity of the witnesses, who would not doubt the reality of their visions, by the general populace. We would expect these "happy schizotypes" to find their most accepted place in religious spheres, and they would naturally gravitate into the entourage of miracle-workers. This would in turn explain why so many disciples have hallucinatory experiences, since there would be a higher-than-normal proportion of schizoid personalities in any wonder-working religious group. Evidence of possible past mental aberration, such as in the case of Mary who was previously possessed by demons, only confirms this further--although possession does not correspond to psychosis, Mary also is reported to have seen angels and other odd things.


It stands that there is hardly sufficient evidence to warrant belief in Jesus' resurrection.

[Kabane52]

Thanks to tehknologik for the reply. Let’s get started.

Kabane is certainly correct that the point of crucifixion was extreme humiliation (as well as terror), and it was certainly a commonplace view held by the elite, especially the more snobbish, that to die in such a way was the ultimate disgrace and embarrassment. However, just because many people find some idea repugnant does not mean everyone does, nor does this mean it was regarded as repugnant by those who converted.

Straight from the mouth of Carrier. The point of crucifixion was to make a public display of shame. The elite were hardly at risk of crucifixion, an opinion exclusive to the snobbish elite was useless. There’s no indication whatsoever in any text that the poor regarded crucifixion as any less shameful than the rich. This has special significance for a Jew, because:

(Deuteronomy 21:23) his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.

Paul (citing the standard application) applies this to crucifixion:

(Galatians 3:13) Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us--for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree"--

It is clear that tehknologik is grasping at straws here. There is no evidence that the poor regarded crucifixion any differently than the elite, and good evidence against that view.

early Christians appear to have come from a disgruntled poor and middle class who had grown disgusted with the fundamental injustices in their society and government, especially social and economic inequities, but also the execution of righteous men.

Where do you get this idea? Paul himself was most definitely not a member of the poor, he was an elite, an enemy of Christ.

The fate of John the Baptist is a case in point: executed by the state, yet still held in high esteem by a great many Jews. If John could be revered despite the embarrassment of execution, so could Jesus.

Execution in and of itself was not shameful. John’s death was akin to a death in battle - an honorable death.

This would have been no less likely had John been crucified--to the contrary, the outrage at this insult to his honor would be all the greater, and popular reverence for his unjust suffering all the greater for it

An unsupported assertion. The situation would be quite different had John been crucified.

Among some Jews there was a certain expectation that the Messiah had to be humiliated as part of God's plan to secure his triumph, and these Jews would not find a crucified messiah disaffirming--to the contrary, it would be exactly what they were looking for. Jewish scripture declared that "The Redeemer of Israel" or "The Holy One of God" shall be "despised" by men, and nations will be "disgusted" with him, yet he shall triumph; the people will "bury him with the wicked" even though he was innocent, and he shall be "numbered with the transgressors" just as the Gospel of Mark says. The idea that a Chosen One of God must suffer total humiliation and execution at the hands of the wicked is a major theme in Isaiah (Isaiah 50:4-9, 52:7-53:12). Even David, a common prototype of the Messiah, sings in Psalm 22, "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" for "I am a worm" and "a reproach to men, despised by the people" and "all that see me laugh and scorn." This song set up a Jewish model for a crucified Davidic savior.

As much as I agree with the interpretation of Isaiah and its application to Jesus, that was not the interpretation held by the Jews of that time. Psalm 22 was not taken as messianic, David described God rescuing him from the hands of wicked men. Crucifixion was not even considered an interpretation here. If tehk wants to argue that this was taken as messianic, he must provide some pre Christian Jewish writing which interpreted it this way.

On Isaiah 53, note that the messiah was not the one being identified as suffering, even when the servant was identified as messiah. Wright notes:

…this does not mean that pre-Christian Judaism as a whole, or in any major part, embraced a doctrine of a suffering Messiah, still less a dying one. The Isaiah Targum demonstrates this strikingly: having identified the servant as the Messiah, the subsequent passages about suffering are referred to the sanctuary which was polluted because of Israel’s sins (53.5) or to the suffering which the Messiah would inflict upon Israel’s enemies…

As we can see, the Second Temple Jews did not take Isaiah 53 to refer to a suffering messiah.

The pre-Christian text of the Wisdom of Solomon also declares that the wicked will "condemn to a shameful death" the holiest man of God, because they are "blinded by their wickedness" and "do not know the secret purposes of God" and it is said this righteous man, "a son of god," who is given a shameful execution will be raised and exalted by God to avenge his own death. This was a lesson that would automatically apply to the Messiah, who would be, by definition, a blameless and righteous man

Yet again, NT Wright puts this passage from Wisdom 2 in proper context:

In particular, the challenge they offer to the 'righteous man' is that they will put to the test his claim to be god's child. This forms an important sub-theme of the entire book, and eventually emerges as the point of the Exodus, in which the creator god reveals before the pagan Egyptians that Israel really is his firstborn son

In other words, this is merely referring to the suffering and vindication of Israel.

And we have evidence it probably was understood by some in just this way, for the preeminent prophecy of the coming Messiah declares this very fate: The anointed one shall be utterly destroyed yet there is no judgment upon him, then the city and the sanctuary will be torn down by the ruler who shall come. They will be knocked down in a cataclysm, until the end, when after war wreaks havoc there will be a systematic extermination. (Daniel 9:26)

Again, some wisdom from Wright is useful:

In so far as it is possible for us to reconstruct the way in which a first century sectarian Jew would have read this passage, it seems likely that it would be taken as a prophecy of the destruction of the Temple, accompanied by the setting up of pagan symbols, and perhaps pagan worship, in its place.

Yet again, tehk fails to read passages like a Second Temple Jew would, but rather reads it as a 21st century American who is fully familiar with Christianity.

As I've already shown, the soil was prepared for exactly what the Christians came to preach--in fact, this preparation no doubt contributed significantly to why the first Christians came to believe this amazing claim about Jesus in the first place. The scriptures predicted that around that very time an innocent man would be humiliated with execution and scorn and this man, scripture plainly said, would be the Messiah.

Plainly?! Perhaps according to the Christianized 21st century mind, but to a Second Temple Jew, it was far from plain! Furthermore, I asked about Simon bar kokhba and Simon bar Giora. There are plenty of other messiahs. Each and every one of them were abandoned as messiahs after their deaths. Every. Single. One. Had the passages you cite been read in the way you imply, they should have been “vindicated” in some way in the hearts of their followers. Yet, this does not happen. Why was Jesus treated differently after his shameful death than the others after theirs?

Jesus was an innocent man humiliated with execution and scorn. That made him a good candidate.

So were the other twelve messiahs, according to your criteria for a “good candidate”.

Scriptural demonstrations were one of the main modes of successful argument employed by the Christians. Even to the extent that the Christians developed novel interpretations, the fact that they found such meaning in these revered oracles often carried tremendous weight. The fact that a humiliated, crucified man becoming a god was predicted by ancient sacred texts would be a powerful argument in favor of belief. It is no accident that the Christians relied on that very argument.

Yes! They were powerful! But all of these interpretations of messianic prophecies referring to a suffering messiah were novel, thus none of them could be used as a basis for the apostles to believe Jesus was messiah.

While it's certainly true that Jesus said that he didn't intend to abolish the old Jewish religious laws, such as the Ten Commandments and other various regulations, he often did re-interpret these laws, or add to them, sometimes in very radical ways. As a result, some of his teachings were very controversial. According to Luke 4:28-30, some people in his hometown of Nazareth became so angry at him that they tried to throw him off a cliff.

In fact, many of his teachings take the form of "you have heard that it was said... but I say to you..." which shows that his teachings were not "primarily a retelling of teachings already in circulation."

I said primarily, not totally. Secondly, were these the center of his ministry? No. As has already been said, the focus of his ministry was that he was going to usher in the Kingdom of God.

Sociologists have found that people often support religious leaders and movements because they approve of their moral mission to reform society…

Argument rendered irrelevant due to the fact that Jesus’ mission was to usher in the kingdom of God, not to utter moral sayings, which was secondary. Had the apostles known they were lying, they would have known that he would not usher in the kingdom of God, and thus had no reason to spread Christianity falsely.

Kabane shoots himself in the foot on this one. If an empty tomb is not a persuasive component for belief in the resurrection then what exactly is he trying to accomplish in this debate?

Not persuasive to those in the first century, no. I believe that upon serious investigation, the empty tomb may cautiously be used as evidence for the resurrection, however, I would never use it alone. It should be used in conjunction with the appearances.

But the expletive "as if they would forget such a significant event" is equally speculative.

Not at all. It is simple common-sense. One does not forget a massive and difficult theft.

That's downright goofy for someone attempting to overturn the results of 300 years of empirical science establishing the uniformity of the laws of physics.

We hear a hint of a Humean argument here. Uniformity is overturned by one example to the contrary, and the resurrection is said example. It is totally circular to rule out the resurrection based on uniformity.

But given what we know, "aliens ruling the Earth," is not plausible - "democracy operating" IS.

I would say likewise, that given what we know, theft is not probable.

There is no reason to believe that occultists didn't exist in Judea during the first century.

Mere occultists are not what I am asking for. Furthermore, not Judea, specifically PALESTINE. I am asking for a very specific type of occultist- necromancers. All his evidence is for general occultists, except for:

From the Old Testament it is clear, as the Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land (2001) concludes, that "sorcerers, magicians and necromancers abounded in Israelite and Judahite society" (p. 308; e.g. Jer. 27:9; Mal. 3:5-8), and there is no reason to think this changed under centuries of pagan rule.

Yes, actually there is. The effects that Hellenism had on making Jews more cloistered and defensive against pagan influence. Did you notice that Jesus didn't have to rebuke people for worshipping Zeus?

True, dismemberment may have been common, but there's no reason to think this would have necessarily applied in Jesus' case. In addition to hands and feet, blood and heart are also key ingredients attested in the papyri, and there were many other body parts that had valuable uses. So it would still be safer and more efficient to make off with the whole body, and dissect it at leisure later, to maximize the booty.

Unfortunately tehknologik, although you may think that is the most convenient way, there is no evidence that they did it that way. They took the parts of the body they needed there. It wasn’t exactly unnoticeable when you walked along with a huge bag with a stinking body inside of it.

Is Kabane trying to say that Jesus' statement didn't go straight over the apostles' heads (as he initially seemed to imply), but that it could have meant a number of things, and that's why they were confused?

I intended the meaning that they were confused from the beginning, apologies if you misunderstood.

But if that's true, then why didn't the Jews understand Jesus as saying this?

First, the apostles didn’t understand how exactly the exile passages applied to Jesus, so I suspect there was much speculation. The Jews speculate that he meant assumption, but as has been mentioned, it would have been unclear.

Keep in mind that we're talking about a group of people who allegedly witnessed Jesus suspend the laws of physics before their very eyes on several occasions. One would think that they would find a resurrection tantalizing enough of a possibility.

No, not really. Jesus wouldn’t have been understood to predict a physical resurrection before the general resurrection. Further, as we’ve gone over, there really was no basis for a resurrection like Jesus’ in Second Temple Judaism; it wouldn’t have crossed their mind.

We know that Jesus expounded upon Jewish teachings, especially moral ones - and there's no reason to think he didn't do so in regard to "rising from the dead."

Um. Yes there is. The fact that John himself seems to presume that Jesus has been assumed into heaven (which you did not address) argues very strongly against the idea that it was clear what was going to happen.

But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee. (Matthew 26:32)

This says nothing about the disciples understanding of it. This would have further confused them, considering their knowledge of Second Temple Judaism.

There's no reason to think that the literary appeal to the skeptic that I've already discussed at length did not extend itself to the recounting of these visions, to some extent. Being caught off guard by Jesus certainly has dramatic effect and does more to magnify the feat than by plainly stating that his arrival had been expected (which we have plenty of reason to think it in fact was).

This is perhaps the most illuminating thing tehknologik has said with regard to his methodology. Note that in his first post, these passages were fully historical, and they supported the hallucination theory. I showed how in fact they contradicted strongly the hallucination theory, and now tehknologik no longer regards them as historical. We can see clearly his thought process. A passage is only historical if it supports him. If it refutes him, it is ahistorical. Nevertheless, the authorship of these books and the multiple, independent attestation of this phenomenon strongly argues for historicity.

Kabane somehow thinks he can use this verse in his favor when it only begs the question: why skepticism? What was there to doubt, unless they had no such perception but it was clear to them that the others did?

Michael Wikins in his commentary on Matthew states,

The eleven, who had received at least two or three appearances from the risen Jesus prior to this in Jerusalem, are prepared to worship him. However, those disciples in Galilee who have not yet seen the risen Jesus (cf. “brothers” in 28:10), much like Thomas prior to his experience with the risen Jesus, doubt until Jesus appears to them bodily

Gary Habermas draws a connection with this appearance and the appearance to the 500. In other words, they were doubting before they saw the risen Jesus (yes, my original interpretation was incorrect, I acknowledge this, I should have consulted my commentaries)

Peter Slade and Richard Bentall, in Sensory Deception: A Scientific Analysis of Hallucination (1988), surveyed the evidence for hallucination and found it to be rather commonplace (pp. 69-71)--between 7% and 14% of those surveyed who did not exhibit any mental illness reported having experienced hallucinations, and this sample naturally did not record those who had hallucinations but did not know it. Of these identified experiences, over 8% were multi-sensory hallucinations, and 5% involved entire conversations. Surveying this and much more evidence, the authors conclude that "many more people at least have the capability to hallucinate than a strictly medical model implies should be the case" (p. 76).

This says nothing about triggers to the hallucinations, rather it implies that the trigger is cultural, as does the rest of your evidence. A cultural trigger is not applicable to the apostles, considering that a pre-eschatological resurrection was virtually unknown in Second Temple Judaism.

The empty tomb and appearances still stand, and the theft-hallucination hypothesis still fails miserably. Thus, it stands that there is more than sufficient evidence to accept Jesus’ resurrection as historical fact.

[tehknologik]

Thanks to Kabane for the reply. Due to length considerations, I am forced to omit the subject of occultists. I will revive this part of my argument if required in later rounds.

The point of crucifixion was to make a public display of shame. The elite were hardly at risk of crucifixion, an opinion exclusive to the snobbish elite was useless. There’s no indication whatsoever in any text that the poor regarded crucifixion as any less shameful than the rich.

I do not intend to claim that the difference between class views was general but rather that certain members of ancient society would not regard the humiliation of an innocent man as shaming him, but as an insult to his honor. I am not arguing that the ancient everyday man would not have held the same disdain for a shamed person, rather I limit my point twice: first, to a very particular cross-section of people, and second, to the attitudes of the treatment of righteous men - and not to just any shamed person.

early Christians appear to have come from a disgruntled poor and middle class who had grown disgusted with the fundamental injustices in their society and government, especially social and economic inequities, but also the execution of righteous men

Where do you get this idea? Paul himself was most definitely not a member of the poor, he was an elite, an enemy of Christ. There is no evidence that the poor regarded crucifixion any differently than the elite

In the part of the sentence that you cut off, I told you that I got it from Acts. When we look at the early success of Christianity it was nowhere so successful as among the poor, the disillusioned, the disenfranchised, and Jews and their sympathizers. This is evident in Acts, where successes are achieved primarily within Jewish communities and synagogues, and elsewhere most often by recruiting slaves and women.

Roman citizens or anyone of wealth or power (who were not already Jews or sympathizers) were rare among converts. In other words, Christianity was most successful among those very people who would have empathized most with the story of Jesus and could admire his unjust manner of death. And for at least a century it had no known success with the very kinds of people who did scorn Christ’s manner of death: wealthy, politically-connected scholars (whose writings are the only ones we have that scorn the manner of Christ’s death).

The fact that the early Christian movement began among those outside the elite social structure, and only later worked its way up the social ladder in later centuries, is the consensus view among qualified experts, and is almost too obvious to need proving. And these groups had already expected good men to be humiliated and murdered by the corrupt elites they despised. Disgust at the murder of righteous men by those in power is voiced by early Christians: e.g. Luke 11:42-50, Acts 7:52; 1 Thessalonians 2:15, Romans 11:3, drawing on 1 Kings 19:10.

On the matter of John the Baptist, Kabane says:

Execution in and of itself was not shameful. John’s death was akin to a death in battle - an honorable death.

Execution is not in and of itself shameful, but beheadings were a form of capital punishment among all Roman citizens, and while its explicit purpose may not have been shaming (as crucifixtion was), it still was a point of disrepute on one's record because it signaled extreme wrong-doing. John's death was "akin to a death in battle" in the eyes of the Jews because of his condemnation of Herod's marriage that eventually led to his imprisonment. This ties back into what I've been saying about Jesus: as long as someone believed he had been a righteous man crucified unjustly, his crucifixion would have been no stumbling block at all.

This would have been no less likely had John been crucified--to the contrary, the outrage at this insult to his honor would be all the greater, and popular reverence for his unjust suffering all the greater for it

An unsupported assertion. The situation would be quite different had John been crucified.

Support for my assertion can be found in Josephus, who offers an example of the crucified still being regarded as the “best and noblest” of men (which is one example of how Jews and their sympathizers already had a tradition of revering humilated martyrs): he says many Jews cravenly gave in and abandoned God’s laws when Antiochus crucified the Maccabean supporters, but “the most excellent men, and those with noble souls, didn’t care about this, but held more thought for the customs of the fatherland than for the punishment he inflicted” upon them. Thus, exactly as predicted, Josephus held crucified men in high esteem—so long as they died righteously, like Jesus.

As much as I agree with the interpretation of Isaiah and its application to Jesus, that was not the interpretation held by the Jews of that time.

…this does not mean that pre-Christian Judaism as a whole, or in any major part, embraced a doctrine of a suffering Messiah, still less a dying one. The Isaiah Targum demonstrates this strikingly: having identified the servant as the Messiah, the subsequent passages about suffering are referred to the sanctuary which was polluted because of Israel’s sins (53.5) or to the suffering which the Messiah would inflict upon Israel’s enemies…

Kabane doesn't actually have evidence that it was never interpreted this way. He can't prove his case by adducing evidence that some Jews saw things differently, since I only propose that some (not all) Jews held this conception, and we know there were many diverse Jewish sects and views that do not survive in the record. Thirty-two sects are known by name, and at least four more by description. At the most conservative, we can identify no less than ten clearly distinct sects, some of which we know almost nothing about, and we can never know how many more there might have been whose names were not preserved. This is probably why Wright qualifies his limitation with: "not... as a whole, or in any major part" - well, of course not!

All of the passages and texts that I cite predate Christianity, and at least one clearly and unambiguously refers to the messiah, while the others clearly support the same general picture. It’s unreasonable to believe that no Jews understood these texts to refer to such a man. But even if this is too speculative for Kabane, Isaiah 52-53 still clearly preaches that a man like Jesus should be revered, and that even a man despised, shamed, and buried a criminal could and should be praised and exalted—so long as he was wise and innocent, as Jesus was. And this is enough to destroy Kabane’s premise that no Jew would see Jesus as worthy of reverence because of his ignoble fate.

As I've already shown, the soil was prepared for exactly what the Christians came to preach--in fact, this preparation no doubt contributed significantly to why the first Christians came to believe this amazing claim about Jesus in the first place. The scriptures predicted that around that very time an innocent man would be humiliated with execution and scorn and this man, scripture plainly said, would be the Messiah.

Plainly?! Perhaps according to the Christianized 21st century mind, but to a Second Temple Jew, it was far from plain! Furthermore, I asked about Simon bar kokhba and Simon bar Giora. There are plenty of other messiahs. Each and every one of them were abandoned as messiahs after their deaths. Every. Single. One. Had the passages you cite been read in the way you imply, they should have been “vindicated” in some way in the hearts of their followers. Yet, this does not happen. Why was Jesus treated differently after his shameful death than the others after theirs?

Yes, plainly. Kabane has proven nothing by showing us what "Second Temple Jews" believed. We cannot claim that their texts represented the opinion of all Jews before the Jewish War, after which a branch of the Pharisees rose to sole dominance over most of Palestine and the Diaspora. Indeed, the Pharisees were the one sect against which the Christian sect was most opposed, and least like. It was in the early first century that Judaism was at its most diverse, with numerous sects, many with a wildly different theology, proving the Jews were quite capable and completely willing to invent or introduce all kinds of novel ideas. There was even diversity and debate within each sect.

Thus, asserting this exclusive understanding of Isaiah under the illusion of a single Jewish mindset is flawed from the onset, and the straightforward understanding of Isaiah (that I propose was held by some Jews) pales in comparison to the departures of other sects that went so far as rejecting the Torah, crediting an angel with the creation, worshiping Moses as Christ, permitting obeisance to idols, practicing astrology, accepting baptism as atonement for sins, rejecting a literal interpretation of the scriptures, scorning the Jerusalem temple, believing Herod was the messiah, denying the existence of souls or angels or spirits of any kind, and denying the resurrection altogether. The Jews of that era were ready and willing to believe a great many things seemingly contrary to what we think of Judaism today - things diametrically opposed to what the Pharisees held to be essential.

It's therefore ridiculous to assert that what happened to Jesus necessarily should have happened to these "other" messiahs because I do not argue that the passages I cite had been "interpreted" in this way by all Jews.

While it's certainly true that Jesus said that he didn't intend to abolish the old Jewish religious laws... which shows that his teachings were not "primarily a retelling of teachings already in circulation."

were these the center of his ministry? No. As has already been said, the focus of his ministry was that he was going to usher in the Kingdom of God.

These were not the "center" of his ministry, but were certainly an inextricable part of the establishment of his new covenant, which Jesus said “must first be preached to all nations" (Mark 13:10). It stands that the gospels may have seen themselves as carrying out a moral mission first, one that necessarily underlies a greater overarching mission of “ushering in the Kingdom of God.”

Kabane shoots himself in the foot on this one. If an empty tomb is not a persuasive component for belief in the resurrection then what exactly is he trying to accomplish in this debate?

Not persuasive to those in the first century, no. I believe that upon serious investigation, the empty tomb may cautiously be used as evidence for the resurrection, however, I would never use it alone. It should be used in conjunction with the appearances.

The appearances are a completely separate element in his argument, and in no way reinforce the rhetorical significance of the empty tomb. Why then should the empty tomb be viewed "cautiously" without them? He implies interdependent rhetoric, but they're only complimentary.

The motive for theft stands as plausible.

But if that's true, then why didn't the Jews understand Jesus as saying this?

First, the apostles didn’t understand how exactly the exile passages applied to Jesus, so I suspect there was much speculation. The Jews speculate that he meant assumption, but as has been mentioned, it would have been unclear.

Nothing was unclear to the Pharisees according to the story, who were so resolute in their understanding to have insisted that a guard be placed at the tomb. And this is precisely what is injurious to his citing of these "exile passages": if resurrection language always referred to a vindication of Israel (with Daniel as a very special exception), then the Pharisees could have no room for speculation. But they did.

The difficulty with Kabane's "confusion" theory is compounded, as I've mentioned previously, by other things that Jesus said. On the way to Jerusalem, Jesus took them aside, told them that he would be delivered up to the chief priests and scribes, condemned to death, delivered to the Gentiles to be mocked, scoured, crucified, and would be raised from the dead on the third day. The idea that "raised from the dead" can possibly refer to something as disconnected as a "vindication of Israel" when the phrase is preceded and causally linked to the events leading up to, and including Christ's death is utterly ridiculous, and Kabane only immerses himself deeper into the fake environment of his imagination.

Keep in mind that we're talking about a group of people who allegedly witnessed Jesus suspend the laws of physics before their very eyes on several occasions. One would think that they would find a resurrection tantalizing enough of a possibility.

No, not really. Jesus wouldn’t have been understood to predict a physical resurrection before the general resurrection. Further, as we’ve gone over, there really was no basis for a resurrection like Jesus’ in Second Temple Judaism; it wouldn’t have crossed their mind.

Yes, really. Jesus himself was alleged to have raised Lazarus from the dead, despite Second Temple Judaism, and other people even found it concievable that he was Elijah or John the Baptist raised from the dead, walking among them performing miracles, also despite Second Temple Judaism. Insisting on this futile point will get Kabane no where.

In light of this, I pointed Kabane to Matthew 26:32, where Jesus says: "But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee." But he says:

This says nothing about the disciples understanding of it. This would have further confused them, considering their knowledge of Second Temple Judaism.

But I've already shown how reasoning from "Second Temple Judaism" as if it were a single Jewish mindset is fallacious, and offered direct evidence of ideas being espoused that directly opposed it. That the apostles were farmiliar with these ideas is undeniable since Jesus himself is the one alleged to have raised Lazarus, and so they could have no excuse for not understanding (or at the very least not suspecting) the true meaning of what Jesus had told them.

We know that Jesus expounded upon Jewish teachings, especially moral ones - and there's no reason to think he didn't do so in regard to "rising from the dead."

Um. Yes there is. The fact that John himself seems to presume that Jesus has been assumed into heaven (which you did not address) argues very strongly against the idea that it was clear what was going to happen.

I didn't address this because my argument for literary embellishment showed that we cannot trust the details of these narratives because of how likely they are to contain elements of drama, and this stems from the degree to which the apostles' bewilderment and subsequent skepticism strains credulity.

On this matter, Kabane says:

Note that in his first post, these passages were fully historical, and they supported the hallucination theory. I showed how in fact they contradicted strongly the hallucination theory, and now tehknologik no longer regards them as historical. We can see clearly his thought process. A passage is only historical if it supports him. If it refutes him, it is ahistorical.

I must insist that I never regarded these as ahistorical, only that their details could not be trusted without reservation. Kabane was correct when he said that I "attempt to show that the gospels themselves give clues of hallucinations." And that was really all, clues - which are better understood as a small thorn in a greater argument, which I should have included in my first post but placed in my second. I do not intend to argue that the clues in and of themselves establish the plausibility of hallucination.

Nevertheless, the authorship of these books and the multiple, independent attestation of this phenomenon strongly argues for historicity.

They are significant historically, which is why I think the apostles really did believe that they had seen the risen Christ, but I do not trust them in recounting the details. This is because a defining feature of collective hallucinations is the unification of independent experiences through false memory creation and conformism, and the fact that they're always led by only one or several people at first through which the "doubtful" join through the power of suggestive influence leaves open the possibility of said elements of doubt evolving into dramatic elements as their stories converge over time amongst one another. And so the fact that these are "independently attested" does nothing to increase my confidence in their reliability in terms of specifics.

On the actual evidence I presented for hallucination, Kabane says:

This says nothing about triggers to the hallucinations, rather it implies that the trigger is cultural, as does the rest of your evidence. A cultural trigger is not applicable to the apostles, considering that a pre-eschatological resurrection was virtually unknown in Second Temple Judaism.

Kabane asserts that a "pre-eschatological resurrection was virtually unknown" but he has no way of knowing this. Judaism was too varied early in the first century to know for sure, and several sects that we're aware of attest to wild differences in their theologies (as I've already mentioned).

Nevertheless, Kabane misunderstands the cultural component of my argument, which is not intended to reference any of a culture's specific beliefs, but merely to its view of hallucinatory experiences as veridical or as evidence of insanity. This is significant in explaining why visual hallucinations are rare in Western cultures but not in many others, and shows how hallucinations are plausible. And it’s easy to determine which kind of culture the apostles found themselves, considering the fact that there are "almost no reported cases of psychosis in antiquity” and this is why miracles were so frequently reported in that period (not just Christian, but pagan as well).

While cultural factors can increase not only the acceptance of, but frequency of hallucinations, asking for a “trigger” is not always appropriate. Psychologists and neurologists to this day struggle to understand the "triggers" for the hallucinations in many of their psychotic patients, which are sometimes discovered to be wildly unrelated. The mind, especially the subconscious mind is very fickle indeed. And so it's absurd to expect someone to pin-point what the “trigger” was for each member within a group living millenia ago. Furthermore, those whose brains are ravaged by schizophrenic diseases seem to hallucinate just about anything at any time. Clearly in these cases, a "trigger" is less appropriate, since their symptoms stem primarily from physical abnormalities within, and not from ideological forces outside. Having said that, my consideration of benevolent mental disorders still stands, since these constitute “shizoid” diseases of the happy type (that is, individuals who hallucinate frequently, but otherwise behave and act normally and sanely like everyone else). We would expect these "happy schizotypes" to find their most accepted place in religious spheres, and they would naturally gravitate into the entourage of miracle-workers. This would in turn explain why so many disciples have hallucinatory experiences, since there would be a higher-than-normal proportion of schizoid personalities in any wonder-working religious group.

[Kabane52]

Thanks to Kabane for the reply. Due to length considerations, I am forced to omit the subject of occultists. I will revive this part of my argument if required in later rounds.

Then occultists are eliminated for purposes of this debate. Thank you.

I do not intend to claim that the difference between class views was general but rather that certain members of ancient society would not regard the humiliation of an innocent man as shaming him, but as an insult to his honor.

This is an outlandish assertion, one that contradicts the evidence of the ancient world, and we need some evidence for it.

I am not arguing that the ancient everyday man would not have held the same disdain for a shamed person, rather I limit my point twice: first, to a very particular cross-section of people, and second, to the attitudes of the treatment of righteous men - and not to just any shamed person.

Again, you have no evidence for this sect of Judaism. The crucifixion would have precluded him being a righteous messiah to Second Temple Jews, that’s the point that Paul is making.

In the part of the sentence that you cut off, I told you that I got it from Acts. When we look at the early success of Christianity it was nowhere so successful as among the poor, the disillusioned, the disenfranchised, and Jews and their sympathizers. This is evident in Acts, where successes are achieved primarily within Jewish communities and synagogues, and elsewhere most often by recruiting slaves and women.

I submit this is due to the fact that the poor were a group orders of magnitude larger than the rich.

Roman citizens or anyone of wealth or power (who were not already Jews or sympathizers) were rare among converts.

Wealthy people were relatively rare in general.

In other words, Christianity was most successful among those very people who would have empathized most with the story of Jesus and could admire his unjust manner of death.

Admire it?! The entire point was that crucifixion was shameful before the general population. It would have served no purpose if the lower classes admired the crucified.

And for at least a century it had no known success with the very kinds of people who did scorn Christ’s manner of death: wealthy, politically-connected scholars (whose writings are the only ones we have that scorn the manner of Christ’s death).

Scholars like Paul?

And these groups had already expected good men to be humiliated and murdered by the corrupt elites they despised. Disgust at the murder of righteous men by those in power is voiced by early Christians: e.g. Luke 11:42-50, Acts 7:52; 1 Thessalonians 2:15, Romans 11:3, drawing on 1 Kings 19:10.

Tehknologik seems to be ignoring the Deuteronomy passage that Paul cited…it was taken by Jews of that day to refer to crucifixion.

Execution is not in and of itself shameful, but beheadings were a form of capital punishment among all Roman citizens, and while its explicit purpose may not have been shaming (as crucifixtion was), it still was a point of disrepute on one's record because it signaled extreme wrong-doing.

Um, what? Tehknologik totally glosses over the critical passage in Deuteronomy that makes all the difference here.

John's death was "akin to a death in battle" in the eyes of the Jews because of his condemnation of Herod's marriage that eventually led to his imprisonment.

Also, it wasn’t a crucifixion.

This ties back into what I've been saying about Jesus: as long as someone believed he had been a righteous man crucified unjustly, his crucifixion would have been no stumbling block at all.

And this ties back into what I’m saying. The only way that people would believe it was unjust is if he rose from the dead. Otherwise, he would have been a blasphemer and justly executed. If the apostles knew they were fabricating information, they would have known he did not rise from the dead. And because he did not rise from the dead, he would have been viewed by them as a blasphemer. He would have been just like the other twelve messiahs whose movements dissipated after their death

Kabane doesn't actually have evidence that it was never interpreted this way.

Yes, I do. Wright cited you the Isaiah Targum, which identifies the servant as messiah, but views the concept of a suffering messiah so offensive that it twists the text so that the suffering does not happen to the servant.

He can't prove his case by adducing evidence that some Jews saw things differently, since I only propose that some (not all) Jews held this conception, and we know there were many diverse Jewish sects and views that do not survive in the record.

Sure, but you need to provide some evidence that there was a sect that interpreted messiah as suffering. You’re making the claim here, it’s your burden.

Thirty-two sects are known by name, and at least four more by description. At the most conservative, we can identify no less than ten clearly distinct sects, some of which we know almost nothing about, and we can never know how many more there might have been whose names were not preserved.

The issue is that we know which sect Paul was in. Paul was a Pharisaic Jew. They did not embrace any of this suffering messiah stuff. There is no reference to a sect of Judaism which embraces it. Your argument is a massive ad hoc fallacy.

This is probably why Wright qualifies his limitation with: "not... as a whole, or in any major part" - well, of course not!

So it was a tiny, obscure sect of Judaism which Christianity grew out of? And nobody, even after the advent of Christianity makes reference to this sect? All twelve apostles came from this sect, and Paul somehow as a Pharisaic Jew came from this sect as well?

All of the passages and texts that I cite predate Christianity, and at least one clearly and unambiguously refers to the messiah

I already cited Wright in reply to the Daniel passage you cited.

It’s unreasonable to believe that no Jews understood these texts to refer to such a man.

Um, no, it’s what all the intertestamental literature indicates.

But even if this is too speculative for Kabane, Isaiah 52-53 still clearly preaches that a man like Jesus should be revered, and that even a man despised, shamed, and buried a criminal could and should be praised and exalted—so long as he was wise and innocent, as Jesus was.

We’ve already been over this. They didn’t see the suffering servant as a man. They saw him as symbolic of the nation of Israel.

Yes, plainly. Kabane has proven nothing by showing us what "Second Temple Jews" believed. We cannot claim that their texts represented the opinion of all Jews before the Jewish War

Er…that’s what Second Temple Judaism is…all Jews during the time of the Second Temple.

after which a branch of the Pharisees rose to sole dominance over most of Palestine and the Diaspora. Indeed, the Pharisees were the one sect against which the Christian sect was most opposed, and least like.

No…Christianity was most like Pharisaic Judaism. Some have proposed that Jesus himself was a Pharisee. The Pharisees that Jesus rebuked were a specific kind that was legalistic.

It was in the early first century that Judaism was at its most diverse, with numerous sects, many with a wildly different theology, proving the Jews were quite capable and completely willing to invent or introduce all kinds of novel ideas. There was even diversity and debate within each sect.

Interestingly, in the midst of all this wild debate, nobody proposed that the messiah would suffer and die.

Thus, asserting this exclusive understanding of Isaiah under the illusion of a single Jewish mindset is flawed from the onset, and the straightforward understanding of Isaiah (that I propose was held by some Jews)

An assertion that you make without a shred of evidence.

It's therefore ridiculous to assert that what happened to Jesus necessarily should have happened to these "other" messiahs because I do not argue that the passages I cite had been "interpreted" in this way by all Jews.

But somehow, Jesus just happened to pick all twelve of his very different apostles from this obscure sect of Judaism? Please.

These were not the "center" of his ministry, but were certainly an inextricable part of the establishment of his new covenant, which Jesus said “must first be preached to all nations" (Mark 13:10). It stands that the gospels may have seen themselves as carrying out a moral mission first, one that necessarily underlies a greater overarching mission of “ushering in the Kingdom of God.”

(Mark 13:10) And the gospel must first be proclaimed to all nations.

What is the gospel? The death and resurrection of Christ…in order to usher in the Kingdom of God. Tehknologik is grasping at straws.

The appearances are a completely separate element in his argument, and in no way reinforce the rhetorical significance of the empty tomb. Why then should the empty tomb be viewed "cautiously" without them?

Because it only supplements the appearances.

Nothing was unclear to the Pharisees according to the story, who were so resolute in their understanding to have insisted that a guard be placed at the tomb.

Or they were just being cautious.

And this is precisely what is injurious to his citing of these "exile passages": if resurrection language always referred to a vindication of Israel (with Daniel as a very special exception), then the Pharisees could have no room for speculation. But they did.

Answered in prior posts. They weren’t sure how Jesus was applying vindication to himself.

The difficulty with Kabane's "confusion" theory is compounded, as I've mentioned previously, by other things that Jesus said. On the way to Jerusalem, Jesus took them aside, told them that he would be delivered up to the chief priests and scribes, condemned to death, delivered to the Gentiles to be mocked, scoured, crucified, and would be raised from the dead on the third day. The idea that "raised from the dead" can possibly refer to something as disconnected as a "vindication of Israel" when the phrase is preceded and causally linked to the events leading up to, and including Christ's death is utterly ridiculous, and Kabane only immerses himself deeper into the fake environment of his imagination.

Already answered, dude. You don’t need to repeat yourself. It’s clear to you, as an American who has been around Christianity your whole life. But to them, such an idea that one would rise before the general eschatological resurrection was utterly ridiculous. I’m immersing myself in the intertestamental literature, which nicely proves my case, and refutes yours.

Yes, really. Jesus himself was alleged to have raised Lazarus from the dead, despite Second Temple Judaism

Oh dear…Lazarus’ resurrection was totally conceptually different than Jesus’ resurrection. This is basic stuff. When all rise from the dead at the end of time, the idea is that their bodies are transformed and that they cannot die again. Lazarus’ “resurrection” is akin more to a resuscitation. His body is not transformed and he can die again. Paul specifically links Jesus’ resurrection with the general resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15. Lazarus’ resurrection contradicts nothing in Second Temple Judaism

and other people even found it concievable that he was Elijah or John the Baptist raised from the dead, walking among them performing miracles, also despite Second Temple Judaism. Insisting on this futile point will get Kabane no where.

No, sir. I already answered John the Baptist. Same deal with Elijah.

In light of this, I pointed Kabane to Matthew 26:32, where Jesus says: "But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee."…But I've already shown how reasoning from "Second Temple Judaism" as if it were a single Jewish mindset is fallacious, and offered direct evidence of ideas being espoused that directly opposed it. That the apostles were farmiliar with these ideas is undeniable since Jesus himself is the one alleged to have raised Lazarus, and so they could have no excuse for not understanding (or at the very least not suspecting) the true meaning of what Jesus had told them.

Second Temple Judaism had several key tenets. The general resurrection was one of them. There was no trace of any other pre-eschatological resurrection. Your identification of Lazarus’ resurrection with Jesus’ resurrection is frankly appalling.

I didn't address this because my argument for literary embellishment showed that we cannot trust the details of these narratives because of how likely they are to contain elements of drama, and this stems from the degree to which the apostles' bewilderment and subsequent skepticism strains credulity.

I pre-empted this one. John 20 doesn’t give an account on skepticism on the part of John, rather it gives an account of immediate belief. However, he believes in the assumption, not the resurrection. So your argument for that doesn’t work. Furthermore, you haven’t even given an argument for literary embellishment! You just mentioned the possibility without actually proving embellishment.

I must insist that I never regarded these as ahistorical, only that their details could not be trusted without reservation.

You cited specifically the core theme of them not recognizing Jesus as a clue for hallucinations. I cited that very same core theme back at you as a refutation of hallucinations. Do you accept that core theme or not? If so, how do they conform to the hallucination hypothesis? If no, what changed your mind?

They are significant historically, which is why I think the apostles really did believe that they had seen the risen Christ, but I do not trust them in recounting the details.

Your personal incredulity towards their recounting is not an argument against the historicity of the text.

This is because a defining feature of collective hallucinations is the unification of independent experiences through false memory creation and conformism,

Except that these were multiple group appearances, not just one. Furthermore, I’ve already noted how the theme of not recognizing Jesus knocks out the hallucination hypothesis.

Kabane asserts that a "pre-eschatological resurrection was virtually unknown" but he has no way of knowing this. Judaism was too varied early in the first century to know for sure, and several sects that we're aware of attest to wild differences in their theologies (as I've already mentioned).

Tehk, we’ve been over this. I’ve cited you numerous texts that demonstrate my arguments. You have created a Jewish sect to fit your theory ad hoc, without a shred of evidence. Evidence beats no evidence. Tehk’s entire cultural argument rests on his false premise that pre-eschatological resurrections were accepted in Second Temple Judaism. He then moves to “psychotics”. Are you arguing, tehk, that all eleven remaining apostles were psychotic? How about Paul? James? Were all five hundred psychotic? Your hypothesis stretches and twists evidence.

Jesus is risen.

[tehknologik]

A Note on Standards

It has become apparent to me that Kabane doesn't understand what I'm arguing. I have said before that "I do not claim to know that the body of Jesus was stolen, or even whether it is probable... all I claim to know is that it cannot be ruled out" and the same goes for hallucination. This is why I entitled the two sections in my original post "The Plausibility of Theft" and "The Plausibility of Hallucination," and even emphasized this in later rounds. I limit myself to establishing only these because, as I've said, "possibility, even plausibility, is simply insufficient to warrant belief."

To understand this, imagine that a magician shows you a coin in his hand, closes his fist, opens it, and the coin is no longer there. Do you believe that the coin went out of existence? Of course not! The rational person begins by speculating (as I've said before, "speculation is integral to the evaluation of truth"). He does this because it violates the inductive conclusions that he has come to about the universe thus far. He goes on to say "it is possible that the coin went up your sleeve. Perform the feat sleeveless so that I may be further inclined to believe." But the magician replies "do you have any positive evidence that it went up my sleeve?" He replies, "No." The magician concludes, "I rest my case."

Surely we cannot be expected to be persuaded by something like this, and yet this is precisely what Kabane is doing. He presents his case for the resurrection and assumes that I'm obligated to prove naturalistic alternatives that account for his facts, when in fact I'm only obligated to point out that they're possible and above all plausible. Kabane is obligated to rule these out, much like we should expect the magician to perform the feat sleeveless. The magician's refusal to do so is not a testament to the strength of his argument, but to its extreme weakness. Likewise, Kabane's dismissal of some of the possibilities that I present on the basis of them being "ad hoc" (according to him) is just as weak. There is much that is lost to the past, and so I maintain that as long as apologists cannot positively rule out what I have to say, my points will always stand in the way of a rational belief in Jesus' resurrection. With this clear, let's move on to Kabane's post.

Then occultists are eliminated.

Consider it revived.

Apostles / Admirers

Again, you have no evidence for this sect of Judaism. The crucifixion would have precluded him being a righteous messiah to Second Temple Jews, that’s the point that Paul is making.

I have already cited the numerous other sects and views that do not survive in the record, so no argument from silence can establish the blanket negative that Kabane's argument requires.

Furthermore, Paul's point was not about hindrances to his belief, but about how we are redeemed, and the fact that he cites a Jewish law that states that "a hanged man is cursed by God," to this end, and is a Christian despite it, flies in the face of Kabane who seems to think that religious texts are perfect indicators of a person's thoughts or actions. Not so, apparently. Paul's hallucinatory experience trumped these verses, and likewise the conversions of others rested on extraneous influences, which I'll discuss next.

Christianity was nowhere as successful as among the poor, the disillusioned, the disenfranchised, and Jews and their sympathizers.

I submit this is due to the fact that the poor were a group orders of magnitude larger than the rich.

To say that Christianity appealed to the disgruntled lower classes, and not the elite, must not be mistaken for claiming that Christianity was only successful among the poor, or that no rich people were attracted to it. A significant number of the middle class would be among the same groups sympathetic to the Christian message, including educated men, who could easily become disillusioned with a system that wasn't working for them.

The Roman Empire was tailor-made to breed deprivation and resentment. Middle and lower classes were often completely disenfranchised, abused, exploited, callously ignored, and all too often denied justice or even the means to live. And under the imperial system, having wealth and status became no guarantee of real influence or control, much less safety or justice. So as long as they were in a position to feel powerless within an unjust social system, despising and unable to enter or overcome the power and influence of those higher up the ladder, they would sympathize with the idea of an unjustly crucified hero, among many other elements of the Christian message.

A crucified hero would be even more of a hero precisely because crucifixion was intended by the despised elite to be the ultimate humiliation. To deify such a man could easily be sold as an attractive "f-you" to the corrupt powers of Judea and Rome: for then the good man triumphs despite their greatest efforts to destroy him in the most degrading way possible. Indeed, these very efforts at degrading honorable men were exactly the kind of thing the disillusioned despised about those in power. I've already pointed out how disgust at the murder of righteous men by those in power is voiced by early Christians (e.g. Luke 11:42-50, Acts 7:52; 1 Thessalonians 2:15, Romans 11:3, drawing on 1 Kings 19:10), which Kabane completely ignored. And their sympathy would be even greater if they already shared the point of view of those Jews who accepted an ideology of martyrdom and expecting a suffering savior.

And so my point about general class views stands, and is hardly, as Kabane is so foolhardy do declare, "Outlandish," and hardly "contradicts the evidence of the ancient world."

Admire it?! The entire point was that crucifixion was shameful before the general population. It would have served no purpose if the lower classes admired the crucified.

For a crucified man to be victorious stands as a testimony to the impotence of the corrupt leaders, and that was the very thing the oppressed wanted most to believe: that there is a greater power the wicked elite cannot defeat no matter how hard they try. For the Jews and their sympathizers and other social underdogs, the only heroes left were martyrs.

Paul's use of Deuteronomy to illustrate how we are redeemed shows how, from the very beginning, the gospel preached a god crucified and raised to glory. No one converted thinking they were worshipping a defeated, disgraced god. To the contrary, Christ's crucifixion was a temporary feat. The god actually worshipped was not defeated at all - he lived, and sat on the ultimate heavenly throne, his power attested on earth in the charisma, conviction, and "miracles" that belief in him inspired.

Furthermore, I have said that I do not intend to claim that the difference between class views was general but rather that certain members of ancient society would not regard the humiliation of an innocent man as shaming him, but as an insult to his honor.

Josephus offers an example of the crucified still being regarded as the “best and noblest” of men (which is one example of how Jews and their sympathizers already had a tradition of revering humiliated martyrs): he says many Jews cravenly gave in and abandoned God’s laws when Antiochus crucified the Maccabean supporters, but “the most excellent men, and those with noble souls, didn’t care about this, but held more thought for the customs of the fatherland than for the punishment he inflicted” upon them. Thus, exactly as predicted, Josephus held crucified men in high esteem—so long as they died righteously.

And so my point about John the Baptist also stands.

Scholars like Paul?

Paul never scorned the manner of Christ's death, but in any case I said that "Roman citizens or anyone of wealth or power (who were not already Jews or sympathizers) were rare among converts." This is primarily because scriptural demonstrations were one of the most successful modes of argument employed by the Christians, which would resonate among Jews in particular, as well as their sympathizers who were already acquainted with and impressed by their scriptures. I've already shown how this is evident in Acts, where successes are achieved primarily within Jewish communities and synagogues, and also among the very people who could have empathized with the story of Jesus, and come to admire his unjust manner of death.

Paul is unique in that he had a vision (which was probably a hallucination), and these are well known for their power in effecting change of character. So Paul is merely exceptional, not representative.

Kabane doesn't actually have evidence that it was never interpreted this way.

Yes, I do. Wright cited you the Isaiah Targum, which identifies the servant as messiah, but views the concept of a suffering messiah so offensive that it twists the text so that the suffering does not happen to the servant.

The Isaiah Targum is a paraphrase commentary-translation which was not considered to be authoritative, but simply an attempt to pass along rabbinical interpretations.

While the idea of a suffering Messiah was not easy for the Rabbis to accept, it is plainly evident in the Targum that they saw the Messiah in this verse, as well as the rest of the chapter, as an individual person who is the Coming One. Kabane himself recognizes the fact that the text had to be "twisted" in order for the suffering to refer to something else. Indeed this is precisely why I said that "it's unreasonable to believe that no Jews understood these texts in this way" - because it is after all, exactly what the text says.

The point that Wright is making is that the idea of a suffering Messiah was not generally embraced, not that it was unheard of.

you need to provide some evidence that there was a sect that interpreted messiah as suffering

No I don't. I only need to establish that it's plausible, which I already have. If Kabane wishes to continue to assert that I need to prove it, then he must address the standard that I established at the beginning of this post.

The issue is that we know which sect Paul was in. Paul was a Pharisaic Jew. They did not embrace any of this suffering messiah stuff. There is no reference to a sect of Judaism which embraces it. Your argument is a massive ad hoc fallacy.

We also know that Paul is unique in that he had a vision (which was probably a hallucination), and these are well known for their power in effecting change of character. So Paul is merely exceptional, not representative.

My argument is not an ad hoc fallacy because I've made clear from the beginning that I'm arguing for the plausibility of alternatives, not their factuality - something Kabane seems to continue to have difficulty grasping. It would be ad hoc to assert that the coin went up the magician's sleeve. It would not be ad hoc to assert that this is plausible, and that therefore a rational belief in magic cannot be had.

So it was a tiny, obscure sect of Judaism which Christianity grew out of?

Not necessarily. My citation of other sects, as well as their wildly divergent views served to establish the plausibility of a belief in (or at the very least, an inclination to expect) a suffering Messiah - whether or not it belonged to a small sect or was a sentiment held among scattered members of various sects.

An assertion that you make without a shred of evidence.

A plausible possibility that Kabane naturally cannot rule out.

Interestingly, in the midst of all this wild debate, nobody proposed that the messiah would suffer and die.

But I already cited distinct sects that we know almost nothing about, and we can never know how many more there might have been whose names and writings were not preserved. So Kabane's argument from silence is an invalid one.

But somehow, Jesus just happened to pick all twelve of his very different apostles from this obscure sect of Judaism?

Perhaps Jesus actually faced a great deal of rejection until he finally amassed twelve. Those instances would not be notable, and so they wouldn't be mentioned in the gospels.

What is the gospel? The death and resurrection of Christ…in order to usher in the Kingdom of God. Tehknologik is grasping at straws.

Will Kabane really have us believe that Jesus was an antinomianist? That repentance and proper living were merely superfluous? We cannot know whether or not one or more of the apostles became so enamored with Jesus' moral teachings that they would have been driven to convince society of them.

But if that's too speculative for Kabane, consider Matthew 16, where Peter rebukes Jesus, saying "Never, Lord.. This shall never happen to you!" This parallels what I said about early Christians' disgust at the murder of righteous men by those in power. It may very well be that one or more of the apostles were driven to steal the body in order to "get back" at those in power by staging a demonstration of their impotence. And I've already explained how they still could have come to believe that Jesus was raised despite their efforts only to make it appear that way, but Kabane says:

As if they would forget such a significant event!

Fine - then a wild animal dragged his body away for lunch. Kabane's lack of imagination won't stand.

Furthermore, I didn't limit my list of potential thieves to the apostles, but included any of Jesus' other admirers (which Kabane never addresses), who may have wanted to steal the body for similar reasons. To be honest, I think the latter would be more likely, and I'd be far more interested in seeing Kabane rule it out.

Occultists

Mere occultists are not what I am asking for. Furthermore, not Judea, specifically PALESTINE. I am asking for a very specific type of occultist- necromancers.

Judea was part of Palestine. Furthermore, necromancers are a type of occultists, and since I've already established the existence of occultists in Judea, no argument from silence can establish the blanket negative that Kabane's argument requires, especially considering Craig's statement about how "the famous Nazareth inscription seems to imply that tomb robbery was a widespread problem in first-century Palestine."

Kabane has not ruled out this possibility (certainly not by pointing out that it's not proven - that's why it's called a possibility, and not a fact), and we are thus left with ignorance: we simply do not know for sure what happened, and anyone who claims to know for sure is stepping beyond the bounds of evidence and logic.

There is no reason to think this changed under centuries of pagan rule.

Yes, actually there is. The effects that Hellenism had on making Jews more cloistered and defensive against pagan influence. Did you notice that Jesus didn't have to rebuke people for worshipping Zeus?

There was no single 'Jewish' mindset, but rather a colorful continuum of ideologies, some more receptive of Hellenic and Persian influences than others. Acts 2:5-11 shows that people and ideas from every conceivable culture entered Jerusalem in the first century. Furthermore, Morton Smith says that:

"Palestine in the first century was profoundly Hellenized..." … "Hellenization extended even to the basic structure of much Rabbinic thought."
- Morton Smith, "Palestinian Judaism in the First Century"

Unfortunately tehknologik, although you may think that is the most convenient way, there is no evidence that they did it that way. They took the parts of the body they needed there. It wasn’t exactly unnoticeable when you walked along with a huge bag with a stinking body inside of it.

Unfortunately Kabane, while there is no evidence that they did it that way, this does not necessarily mean that they didn't do it that way. I only said "dismemberment may have been common," because you've yet to provide evidence for this assertion.

In contrast, I referenced the parts needed that would have been much more time consuming to extricate, such as the heart, which is protected by a sturdy rib cage. Furthermore, Pagan-dominated centers within Judea (such as at Tiberius, Tyre, and Gaza) provided a haven and a market for pagan magic. Suppliers who intended to carve up and sell such necromantic booty to sorcerers on the black market had an incentive to remove the whole body in order to maximize their profits.

Since the body would have likely been stolen during the night and the part of the morning that the tomb was unguarded, we cannot know for sure whether or not decomposition had progressed to the point that smell would have been an issue. Also, fewer people are active during the night anyway, and even if someone did see them there's not much to make of someone carrying a bag (or for all we know, it may have been horse drawn and covered up with decoy paraphernalia). We can't be certain about any of these circumstances.

Hallucination

Nothing was unclear to the Pharisees according to the story, who were so resolute in their understanding to have insisted that a guard be placed at the tomb.

Or they were just being cautious.

This is a rather pointless qualification, as I'll explain next...

And this is precisely what is injurious to his citing of these "exile passages": if resurrection language always referred to a vindication of Israel (with Daniel as a very special exception), then the Pharisees could have no room for speculation. But they did.

Answered in prior posts. They weren’t sure how Jesus was applying vindication to himself.

According to Kabane, the Pharisees "speculated that he meant assumption." But "caution" signifies suspicion, not just speculation. So if the Pharisees suspected that Jesus meant assumption, why wouldn't the apostles? Kabane asserts that the "vindication of Israel" nonsense would have hindered them - but this just amounts to special pleading, since it didn't hinder the Pharisees from coming to such a suspicion.

Furthermore, we can't even be certain that the Pharisees suspected assumption. Nothing in the text indicates this - Kabane just makes it up. They just as well could have suspected a rising like that of Lazarus, considering the fact that their own scriptures abound with such "resuscitations" as Kabane calls them (i.e. Hebrews 11:35).

But to them, such an idea that one would rise before the general eschatological resurrection was utterly ridiculous.

But we know that there were many Jews, even within the rabbinic tradition, who expected the resurrection to take place in stages, not all at once. There were many different opinions as to how many stages and in what order they would rise. In one scheme there would be four stages: first Adam, then Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, then those buried in Palestine, then everyone else. The idea of a multi-staged resurrection may have even survived to become the basis for Paul's apologetic for why Jesus rose before everyone else: "in Christ all will be made alive, but each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then those who belong to Christ, at his coming, then the end comes." That Paul regarded Christ as the "firstfruits" entails he believed the resurrection of Jesus was the first stage of the general resurrection.

We cannot know for certain whether or not the apostles adopted such a view.

Lazarus’ resurrection was totally conceptually different than Jesus’ resurrection.

Perhaps so, but that doesn't mean it had no significance. Kabane will have us believe that the phrase "rise from the dead" went straight over the apostles' heads - but I maintain that there was plenty of meaning to have been gleaned from it, as evident both by the popularity of resuscitations, and the Pharisees' suspicions - not to mention the plain language of the statement. That there were different conceptions doesn't really matter, since anyone who would readily believe in the resuscitation of a corpse could easily believe in the subsequent improvement of that body rendering it immortal. The Zoroastrians believed this explicitly, and many of the Greeks and Romans did, too, in their conception of the divine body of gods and immortal heroes.

And so Kabane has no basis by which to maintain that the apostles would have been as confounded as they were according to the story.

John 20 doesn’t give an account on skepticism on the part of John, rather it gives an account of immediate belief. However, he believes in the assumption, not the resurrection. So your argument for that doesn’t work.

That's quite a stretch. John 20:2 describes Mary Magdalene running from the tomb to tell them "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!" So when they entered the tomb and observed, that's what they believed, that Jesus simply was not there.

This is because a defining feature of collective hallucinations is the unification of independent experiences through false memory creation and conformism

Except that these were multiple group appearances, not just one.

Who cares? How does that preclude the same forces from being at play? I've already cited the science that backs it up.

He then moves to “psychotics”. Are you arguing, tehk, that all eleven remaining apostles were psychotic? How about Paul? James? Were all five hundred psychotic? Your hypothesis stretches and twists evidence.

All that I argued was that “there would be a higher-than-normal proportion of schizoid personalities in any wonder-working religious group.” This does not entail that all of these individuals were. They wouldn't have to be; Zuzne and Jones tell us that those who do not see it “may come to believe that they saw the vision too,” referring to the well known effect of false memory creation as a function of conformism.

Paul and James may or may not have been, since we cannot know whether or not drugs, hypnosis, fatigue, hypnagogia, or sleep deprivation played a role in their experiences.

Tehk’s entire cultural argument rests on his false premise that pre-eschatological resurrections were accepted in Second Temple Judaism.

Kabane continues to misunderstand the cultural component, which is not intended to reference any of a culture's specific beliefs, but merely to its view of hallucinatory experiences as veridical or as evidence of insanity. This difference explains why visual hallucinations are rare in Western cultures but not in many others, and why "many more people at least have the capability to hallucinate than a strictly medical model implies should be the case.” This is why I went on to say that Kabane, as a Westerner, finds hallucinations hard to swallow - but this is only his own cultural bias leading him to the wrong conclusion. Thus, his allegation that my argument “stretches” and “twists” evidence is only a reflection of his own naivety.

There is hardly sufficient evidence to warrant belief in Jesus' resurrection.

[Kabane52]

Due to length considerations, I have to cut some of tehk’s quotes down. So I’m going to list the beginning and end of the quote with a … in the middle.
A Note on Standards

It has become apparent…same goes for hallucination.

Technically tehk may claim to be arguing this, but he does not live as if this is the case. Historically, we must establish which explanation is the best. I argue that the resurrection is the best. He argues (necessarily) that theft-hallucination is the best. He says that he is 99% certain that Christianity is untrue. 99%. (this was said to me in a private AIM conversation, he can confirm this in the next post)He claims to know near 100% that the resurrection is not true, but has a better explanation, which he has identified as theft-hallucination. He is trying to dance around providing evidence by saying that he is not arguing for historical probability.

To understand this, imagine that a magician…universe thus far.

This is false. The contextual evidence indicates that it is not a miracle because:
A.It is consistently observed that magicians do tricks like these.
B.The nature of the magician’s craft is tricks, he has a history of tricks. (this would also apply to people like Sai Baba, who have a history of exposed tricks, that gives sufficient ground to doubt the others.)
And most importantly:
C.There are good alternative explanations for what happened

He goes on to say "it is…The magician concludes, "I rest my case."

The identification of true miracles increases when they are identified within a significant religio-historical context. Here, the magician is in no such context. Rather, by the nature of his craft, he is in a context which argues against the identification of a miracle. He is trained to do tricks.

Surely we cannot be expected…all plausible.

But you haven’t shown that. You have to arbitrarily add several other factors (such as a Jewish sect that believed in pre-eschatological resurrection, occultists) to make it probable. There you are not arguing for the explanation itself, but for the existence of these persons based on zero evidence. Historically, there is ample evidence to believe the contrary. Then, having dismissed those as historically unwarranted, we then tehknologik’s theft-hallucination hypothesis. It’s two steps. Tehk is conflating them into one.

I have…requires.

It wasn’t a mere argument from silence. I cited the disdain that Second Temple Jews would have towards such a belief, citing evidence. NT Wright provides an exhaustive survey of all the surviving texts regarding resurrection that we have in his book, the Resurrection of the Son of God. None of them indicate a pre-eschatological single resurrection. None. Though, according to tehknologik, this view was widespread enough that Jesus could select at least eleven apostles who believed in it. Tehk would deny that Jesus had prophetic ability, so Jesus wouldn’t know that they would have to be a member of such a sect. Let’s assume that the probability of a random Jew being a member of the sect that tehk has created is 75 percent. The chance of Jesus selecting all eleven apostles from this sect is .04 percent. Less than half of one percent. Extraordinarily improbable. Now, considering that this sect was so tiny that no one mentions it, let’s say the probability is 25 percent. The chance here is .0000002 percent. It’s harder than tehk implies to gather a group of disciples who were all from this obscure sect of Judaism. Of course, that’s only if we granted the argument that such a sect existed. Our abundance of intertestamental literature, there is no scarcity there as tehk implies there is, indicates that no such sect existed. In that case of course, the probability is zero percent. So the probability of tehk’s hypothesis is zero to one half of one percent.

Furthermore, Paul's point…man is cursed by God,"

The point of the crucifixion being ridiculous was made not only by Paul, but by Celsus and various other early critics. It was apparently a powerful argument being used against Christianity.

to this end…trumped these verses,

Of course, this begs the question that it was a hallucinatory experience. You assume what you are trying to prove to prove it.

To say that Christianity…wasn't working for them.

Unfortunately for tehk, the honor/shame system of that culture was universal. Yes, I mean everyone. That wasn’t imposed by the Roman empire, it was integral to their culture, and indeed, in many cultures today.

The Roman Empire…Christian message.

They would be more attracted to the military messiahs of that day who planned to overthrow Rome. And again, I must ask tehk, if the ground was so fertile for shamefully killed messiahs, what happened to those twelve other messianic movements?

A crucified hero…possible.

There is absolutely no indication that anyone would have interpreted it this way. All the writings of the pagans suggest that the crucifixion was a powerful argument against Christianity, for everyone.

Indeed, these very…completely ignored.

Tehk ignores the simple fact that if messiah had been crucified, he wouldn’t be viewed as righteous. That’s the point.

And their sympathy…suffering savior.

As I’ve already said, there is no scarcity of intertestamental literature. We have loads of it. Christianity did not grow out of an obscure sect of Judaism, it grew out of Pharisaic Judaism (yes, really. Jesus was against some Pharisees, not all). Tehk builds his case on a foundation of literally nothing.

And so my…the ancient world."

It does contradict the evidence of the ancient world. Tehk continues to assert that some would have been sympathetic with a crucified messiah, that some would have felt some deep sympathy for him. I’ve noticed the peculiar lack of any quote from any ancient text. He cited biblical passages, all from New Testament Christians (of course they felt that way. They already converted) The only OT passage he cited was 1 Kings, which, incidentally, does not deal with crucifixion, rendering it irrelevant to our discussion, which centers very specifically on the meaning of crucifixion.

For a crucified…were martyrs.

Totally false. That cultural climate produced a very specific type of Jewish hero. Military messiahs. Twelve of them! For tehknologik to assert that the cultural climate was very fertile for crucified messiahs without providing an example of one other example is sloppy and demonstrates the bankruptcy of his thesis.

Paul's use…disgraced god.

Thus, the point. If anyone was to take Christianity seriously, the resurrection must have had good substantiation. By the way, because the Jews took yearly pilgrimages to Jerusalem, they could indeed confirm the story.

Further, have we missed the original thrust of my argument? It was that the apostles would not believe Jesus to be victorious after his crucifixion and would therefore not hallucinate his resurrection. It isn’t about the spread of Christianity after the resurrection was already being preached!

Furthermore, I have said that I do not…honor.

Um, tehk. Insult to honor=shaming.

Josephus offers…died righteously.

Josephus first buttresses my point when he records that most Jews abandoned them when they were crucified, and that only a few stuck with him. All of Jesus’ eleven followers stuck with him. Furthermore, those Maccabean supporters were not claiming deity! Why was Jesus crucified? Blasphemy. With the successful punishment, the disciples would have been reeling from the clear testament (in their own mind) that Jesus was not in fact God and thus was rightly killed for blasphemy.

Paul never…death

He noted that it was a stumbling block. He also murdered Christians for three years.

but in any…converts."

You stated

And for at least a century it had no known success

Emphasis added. You said zero, zip, nada.

Paul is…representative.

Again, we find the begged question that it was a hallucination.

The Isaiah…rabbinical interpretations.

Fully granted! In fact, most Jews disagreed with the identification of the servant with messiah, they regarded it as symbolic of the nation of Israel. The point being made was that your statement that some Jews would have believed in a suffering messiah because of Isaiah 53 is preposterous. Even when it is identified as messiah, the commentators found it so offensive that messiah would suffer, that they twisted the passage so that the suffering doesn’t apply to messiah. The closest text we have to your viewpoint (identifying the servant as messiah) still fails to make your point. That was my argument.

While the idea…exactly what the text says.

No tehk. The Isaiah Targum’s view that Isaiah 53 was referring to messiah was in and of itself a fringe opinion within the Jews of that day. Do you or do you not have any texts indicating that some Jews believed in a suffering messiah?

The point…unheard of.

Have you read NT Wright? His exhaustive treatment of Second Temple Judaism would indicate that it is unheard of.

No I don't…already have.

You have not. The fact that pagan and Jewish critics were using the crucifixion to refute Christianity argues against the existence of such a sect. The wealth of intertestamental literature argues against such a sect. You need to provide some text alluding or referring to such a sect.

If Kabane wishes to continue to assert that I need to prove it, then he must address the standard that I established at the beginning of this post.

Done.

We also know…not representative.

There goes that begged question again.

My argument…grasping.

As I’ve already noted, you are near 100% sure of Christianity‘s falsehood, therefore you may say you only need their plausibility. But you do believe by corollary of your position that the Resurrection of Jesus did not occur, and there is another explanation which explains the facts better. Presumably this is the explanation. Furthermore, if we are weighing explanations, which we are, any explanation which is ad hoc fails on a criterion of historicity, as being non ad-hoc is a criterion for historicity in Justifying Historical Descriptions. Tehk cannot escape this by saying he is merely arguing for “plausibility”, because he clearly thinks that this is more plausible than the resurrection hypothesis, so we see which passes historical criteria better.

It would…sleeve.

No it wouldn’t. We know from the nature of their craft that they do tricks. We know the alternative explanation explains the facts better. If tehk could give us an analogous set of data for the resurrection, that would be helpful. For example, if he could show us several resurrections of the crucified that were explained by theft-hallucination. If this was a common phenomenon, he might have a point. But it’s not, so he doesn’t.

Not necessarily…various sects.

As I’ve noted, the probabilities of all eleven of Jesus’ disciples having these views is less than one quarter of a percent, even while being extremely generous and giving 25% chance of one of them having these views. And as I’ve already noted, contra tehk, we do in fact have an abundance of intertestamental literature which reviews the beliefs of tons of different sects. There is no scarcity.

But I already…invalid one.

You merely said that such sects existed. You didn’t actually go over any.

Perhaps Jesus…mentioned in the gospels.

But Jesus had given no indication that he would be crucified yet. So are you saying that by some strange process, those who believed in a suffering messiah (which he had not identified himself as yet) were more inclined to follow him?

Will…superfluous?

Of course not. Such things were founded upon his ushering in of the Kingdom of God.

We cannot…of them.

The unique moral teachings of Christ were all based upon his divine authority and his ushering in of the Kingdom of God. It would have been blasphemous for them to preach the deity of Christ while at the same time not believing it. No one would do that.

But if that's too…by those in power.

Rather, it shows Peter’s disbelief that an honorable messiah would die such a shameful death.

Fine - then a…won't stand.

So you’re granting that the apostles didn’t steal the body? By the way, wild animals are incapable of rolling away large, heavy stones.

Furthermore, I didn't limit…Kabane rule it out.

Already done in my first reply to you. The consequences of being a Christian were not only martyrdom. It included being a social outcast, being shamed publicly, which could be considered nearly as awful as martyrdom, especially for a lie.

necromancers…requires,

Widespread necromancy in Judea tends to produce some sort of positive evidence. We would undoubtedly expect it mentioned somewhere. But we don’t. We know that necromancy existed in Egypt through positive evidence. So then why don’t we find identical evidence in Judea, in light of your thesis that it was the same Egyptian necromancers practicing the same type of necromancy in a different place?

especially…in first-century Palestine."

I disagree with Craig here. Carrier himself says,

Richard Carrier

the inscription's origin is not clearly known. It was found in the collection of a man named Fröhner when it was donated to the Paris National Library in 1925. His notes on the item state nothing more than "Dalle de marbre envoyée de Nazareth en 1878." That's it. This translates as "Slab of marble sent from Nazareth in 1878." Zulueta observes that this does not say "found" in Nazareth (découverte à), but sent from there, and it has been shown that Fröhner's "notes on the provenance of his treasures are very exact," thus he can be counted on to have chosen his words carefully....In the late 19th century there were only two major market centers for all antiquities recovered in Palestine: Jerusalem and Nazareth. Thus, Zulueta makes the plausible conjecture that the slab was recovered either in Samaria or Decapolis and either purchased in or shipped out of the nearest possible place, which would be Nazareth. Indeed, Zulueta also observes that the text uses the plural form "gods" which would have been offensive to Jews, making the most likely origin the Hellenized district of Decapolis.).

© source where applicable

So the inscription means nothing as to this debate.

Kabane…not a fact)

It’s rendered highly improbable by the silence on necromancers. As already discussed, tehk doesn’t act agnostic as to the explanation for the resurrection. He’s a strong atheist. He says it’s only a possibility in order to provide an escape route. He lives as if it is a fact.

There was no single…the first century.

It says nothing about Hellenistic influences on Jews. All it says is that there were people who spoke numerous languages.

Furthermore…that

A full discussion of Hellenistic influence upon Judaism is found in The Jesus Legend, but here’s a summary statement in response:

Paul Eddy and Greg Boyd, The Jesus Legend, p. 132

…all the evidence suggests that, while Jews in Palestine and elsewhere were Hellenized in certain largely superficial ways…(emphasis added)

© source where applicable

Basically, what we see is that though they painted synagogues with Hellenistic art, the Hellenism did not at all affect their beliefs. To the contrary, in places like Sepphoris, we still see that the Jews rigorously observed the Torah - no pork bones for example. This argues very strongly against the idea of Jews so Hellenized that they practiced necromancy.

Unfortunately Kabane… for this assertion.

As stated before, you are not an agnostic to the resurrection, you are nearly 100% sure it is not true. You definitively believe the resurrection has not happened and have presumably identified your best shot at explaining the evidence. However, your argument is based on a myriad of unsupported assumptions that are ad hoc which fails it on the criteria for historicity.

And sorry, it’s derived ultimately from Greek and Roman Necromancy by Daniel Ogden.

In contrast… rib cage.

To quote Ali G, you say that, but there’s evidence backstage to the contrary. All the evidence we have demonstrates that necromancers do not do this. If tehk wishes to suggest to them a new strategy, then that’s great, but they quite clearly did not employ this strategy.

Furthermore… magic.

Here we have the common tactic of vaguely referencing “pagan magic” and assuming that equals necromancy. It does not. We have clear evidence of necromancy in areas like Egypt. You mention that Egyptians sometimes traveled to Judea. This is true. But if these same necromancers were practicing the same type of necromancy in Judea, then why don’t we find the same type of evidence? I’ll give him the point about smell.

Also, fewer people…circumstances.

Yes, less people were active during the night. However, we should not take this to mean none or even few. We have to remember that this is the time when Jerusalem would have been totally packed. It is directly after Passover. Therefore, we should reasonably think that even though there were less people active outside, there were still quite a few.

Hallucination

According…speculation.

How does that follow? Suspicion conveys lack of certainty, which is what speculation conveys as well.

So if the…apostles?

As we’ve discussed, the beloved disciple apparently did interpret it that way. We’ll get to your response to this passage.

Kabane asserts that the "vindication of Israel”…a suspicion.

Tehk apparently misunderstood my point there. My point was not that they definitely believed it meant vindication of Israel. My point is that it was very unclear what Jesus meant to their ears. How does one apply the vindication of Israel to an individual like Jesus? That’s the question.

Furthermore, we can't even be certain that the Pharisees suspected
assumption.

It’s a general inference from the fact that all the intertestamental literature shows no knowledge of a pre-eschatological resurrection, in particular Pharisees!

Nothing in the text indicates this

Tehk is correct. It is the cultural context that indicates it.

They just as.. Kabane calls them (i.e. Hebrews 11:35).

If they did suspect something like that, which is unlikely from the nature of Jesus’ predictions, then it does nothing to refute my case! That is not what the disciples saw. The disciples experienced appearances of a Jesus who had risen in the sense that he had gained an immortal body. So if the expectation was that he would resuscitate, tehk fails at explaining the appearances, which were not of that nature. Note the ability to walk through walls for example, and to materialize at specific points. These are characteristics not of a resuscitated mortal body, but a resurrection body.

But we know…the general resurrection.

This is meaningless, because such Jews only believed that the resurrection happened in stages at the eschaton, the end. It is evident from reading Paul’s epistles (and the epistles of the others) that the eschaton was still to come.

Perhaps so, but that doesn't mean it had no significance.

It certainly means that it didn’t mean to them what you need it to mean. Tehk is required to accept that the apostles heard Jesus’ words that he would rise from the dead. Then he has to reject the very next line in the pericope, without any justification, except that his views require it.

That's quite a stretch. John 20:2 describes Mary Magdalene running from the tomb to tell them "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!" So when they entered the tomb and observed, that's what they believed, that Jesus simply was not there.

Simon Peter is described right beforehand as seeing the same thing, and there is no mention of him “believing”. Believe here carries a certain connotation. If they saw that the tomb was empty, of course they believed it. The reason “and believed” is added to John’s testimony is because he believed that something supernatural had taken place.

Who cares? How does that preclude the same forces from being at play? I've already cited the science that backs it up.

It matters because then you’d have to suppose that it happened in each instance, making it extraordinarily more probable. This would include touch hallucinations, multiplying improbability by improbability. The Emmaus appearances, the upper room, the Petrine appearance, Thomas’ appearance, the appearance to all the 500, the appearance to all the apostles, the appearance to the women on the road, the fishing trip, etc. etc.

All that I argued was that “there would be a higher-than-normal proportion of schizoid personalities in any wonder-working religious group.” This does not entail that all of these individuals were. They wouldn't have to be; Zuzne and Jones tell us that those who do not see it “may come to believe that they saw the vision too,” referring to the well known effect of false memory creation as a function of conformism.

See above in that case.

Paul and James may or may not have been, since we cannot know whether or not drugs, hypnosis, fatigue, hypnagogia, or sleep deprivation played a role in their experiences.

If you play that game, then you’ve made it so that I cannot prove anything, unless we have evidence against each of those four options.

Kabane continues to misunderstand the cultural component, which is not intended to reference any of a culture's specific beliefs, but merely to its view of hallucinatory experiences as veridical or as evidence of insanity. This difference explains why visual hallucinations are rare in Western cultures but not in many others, and why "many more people at least have the capability to hallucinate than a strictly medical model implies should be the case.” This is why I went on to say that Kabane, as a Westerner, finds hallucinations hard to swallow - but this is only his own cultural bias leading him to the wrong conclusion. Thus, his allegation that my argument “stretches” and “twists” evidence is only a reflection of his own naivety.

The difference and issue here is that the science of hallucinations preclude them from happening in this specific case. They don’t fit the three criteria, and I’ve debated that and backed that up above.

There is sufficient evidence to warrant belief in Jesus' resurrection.

[tehknologik]

Standards

Kabane says that I claim to know with near 100% certainty that Christianity is untrue in a private IM, but this is irrelevant to our debate since I deliberately chose not to defend this position. My positive belief that Christianity is untrue does not rest on historical evidence at all, so I don't see how Kabane can expect me to defend this if I'm limited only to an objective analysis of history.

It doesn't settle well with him that I put on a show of evidence while not making any particular historical case, and this is despite my demonstration (via the example of the magician) that my epistemological obligation is not the same as his. I'm not obligated to show what most likely happened, only what could have, and if Kabane cannot positively rule out these possibilities then we're not justified in believing that a miracle happened, even if we think one could have. And so whenever Kabane alleges to have ruled out theft or hallucination, I will proceed to show how he is over-reaching by none other than evidence.

In the magician example, I said that the observer suspends belief because "it violates the inductive conclusions that he has come to about the universe thus far." Kabane only supports my point by listing his own inductive premises: his observed history of magicians, of their nature, and of the mechanisms behind illusions - which he deems sufficient grounds for "good alternatives." But note how he was not required to prove them in this particular case - their mere possibility sufficed for reasonable doubt and so disbelief was justified, despite the magician's stubborn refusal to provide him with an exhaustive view of reality.

The identification of true miracles increases when they are identified within a significant religio-historical context.

Actually, the opposite is true. With the advent of logical thought, empirical science, and information technology, the strength of miracle claims have diminished and only grown more evasive, and this fact is less surprising if naturalism is true than if supernaturalism is true. It would be proper to say that the identification of true miracles increases when they are identified in an empirical context, and decreases in historical contexts since as we stretch further back in time miracle claims grow more frequent and varied. Indeed, the ancient world is teeming with accounts of not only Christian miracles, but pagan ones as well.

The fact remains that history, by its nature, is unable to provide us with an exhaustive view of the ancient past. Much goes lost and unsaid beneath the comparatively few events that we can be reasonably certain of. And so religio-historical context or not - as long as naturalistic possibilities linger, we're not justified in believing that a miracle occurred.

You have to arbitrarily add several other factors (such as a Jewish sect that believed in pre-eschatological resurrection, occultists) to make it probable. There you are not arguing for the explanation itself, but for the existence of these persons based on zero evidence.

I'm not arguing for the existence of these persons. What I'm arguing is that we cannot rule out the possibility that they did, because the evidence that they didn't is no stronger than the evidence that they did. We are therefore left with ignorance. The evidence I do provide is intended to show that the existence of these persons is plausible; that is to say, the possibility compliments what we know about the ancient world, and is quite differentiated from those that don't or are wild like "Jesus was beamed up by aliens."

Apostles / Admirers

This has become too complex to defend and do justice within length requirements, so I will only be defending the possibility of occultists and of hallucinations.

Occultist

Widespread necromancy in Judea tends to produce some sort of positive evidence. We would undoubtedly expect it mentioned somewhere. But we don’t. We know that necromancy existed in Egypt through positive evidence. So then why don’t we find identical evidence in Judea, in light of your thesis that it was the same Egyptian necromancers practicing the same type of necromancy in a different place?

Suppose we grant Kabane his idea that "clear evidence of necromancy" exists "in areas like Egypt" (and not Judea) and suppose he isn't conflating different conceptions of it. All that would mean is that necromancers from Egypt were not sojourning to Judea in numbers significant enough to produce it.

The kind of necromancy relevant to our debate is that which would incentivize theft of bodies. Kabane says that "we know that necromancy existed in Egypt through positive evidence" but here he's conflating necromancy in general with the kind of necromancy relevant to our debate. If we're talking about necromancy in general, the fact is the evidence equally attests to its existence in the Graeco-Roman world as in Egypt (see Ogden for a treatment on Graeco-Roman traditions).

Our knowledge of highly criminal spins is rooted more strongly in the effects of their activities than in their amulets or magical texts - neither of which appear stronger in Egypt. Both Egyptian and Greek papyri attest to the value of the skulls of persons worth questioning. One Greek text even attests to the use of "blood from someone who has died by violence" as an ingredient in some magical inks (The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, pg. 77). Hands, feet, and the heart are also key ingredients attested in the papyri, as well as many other body parts that had valuable uses. Knowledge of their activity is rooted in accounts like those of Tacitus, who describes how "the remains of human bodies" were found along with curse paraphernalia in the quarters of Germanicus.

Richard Carrier tells us of the The Nazareth Inscription:

Decrees like this were issued even by emperors as late as Severus (early 3rd century A.D.), thus the inscription bears on an old and never-ending problem, and repeats an old and traditional solution.

Later he tells us:

That Severus would have to reinforce the law about bodies by decree shows that emperors more than once had occasion to issue such decrees. It also shows that no matter how severe the laws, people still broke them, and regularly got away with it, so much so that frustrated emperors had to keep issuing decrees--considering the near total lack of a system of criminal detectives in the ancient world, and the complete absence of forensic techniques, laws were notoriously difficult to enforce.

In Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Ancient Greece and Rome (1999), Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark tell us that fragments of necromantic magic grounded in late-Egyptian temple-magic writings have been found "both in Egypt and in caches at diverse sites in the Roman Empire, though it has proved possible to read very few: the best examples are those from Amathous in Cyprus, from a Roman well in Athenian Agora, from Carthage and Hadrumetum in Africa, from Fiq near Lake Tiberius in Palestine, and from Porta S. Sebastiano at Rome."

If Egyptian necromancy could have stretched so far, then so could the criminal activities - and we can see via the laws set in place against it that they in fact did. So Kabane's argument from silence (that since no trace has been found in Judea in particular, then we can reasonably conclude that Judea is special and body-snatchers didn't exist there) is fallacious because the indirect evidence is strong, and we have no reason to expect direct evidence to survive. It would be contrary to human nature to suppose that Judea was somehow free of just this one kind of criminal activity which is attested everywhere else.

So the inscription means nothing as to this debate.

Well... not so fast. While Carrier tells us that the exact origin of the inscription is not clearly known, we do have a good general idea of where it probably came from. He tells us that Zulueta rightly observed that the text uses the plural form "gods" which would have been offensive to Jews, making the most likely origin the Hellenized district Decapolis. Decapolis was a group of ten cities on the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire in Jordan, Syria, and Palestine. And so if tomb-robbing cannot be said to have been a widespread problem smack-dab in the middle of first-century Palestine, at the very least it was probably a widespread problem pretty darn close to it - enough to seep into it.

And if Egyptian necromancy could be so far-reaching all over the Roman Empire (recall the bible itself attests to necromancers sojourning to Judea from Egypt), then surely the widespread problem of tomb-robbing so close to (and possibly even encompassing a minute part of the edge of Palestine) had an equal if not better shot at penetrating Palestine as far down as Jerusalem.

This is especially tantalizing when we take into account the particular value for necromancers of body materials from holy men, which would suggest attention was paid to their centers of activity, where their bodies would be more likely to end up, and Jerusalem was the ultimate magnet for holy men. We also know that Jesus' ministry is said to have stretched far and wide, not only among a great multitude of followers but by the great priests, the Roman governor Pilate, and Herod who claims that he heard "of the fame of Jesus" (Matt 14:1). One need only read Matt: 4:25 where it claims that "there followed him [Jesus] great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judea, and from beyond Jordon." And so Jesus' movement would have been virtually a call for attention from these groups.

I had chastised Kabane for not providing me any reasons for thinking that necromancers would never take a whole body, and in reply he said:

It’s derived ultimately from Greek and Roman Necromancy by Daniel Ogden.

He didn't even quote from it or provide the page numbers containing the relevant information. This is because the possibility of a necromancer snatching a whole body is not something that can be ruled out. They speak virtually nothing about the methods by which such ingredients were attained (although we know they did attain them somehow). And even IF we had some scant account of one hacking up a body, it wouldn't mean all other necromancers carried out their theft in the same way. There is no necromantic code or universal superstition that would compel them to do it one way over another. Kabane has reached a dead end - and has now resorted to banging his head on a wall of assertions.

Case in point:

there’s evidence backstage to the contrary. All the evidence we have demonstrates that necromancers do not do this. If tehk wishes to suggest to them a new strategy, then that’s great, but they quite clearly did not employ this strategy.

Beg the question much? I provided plenty of good reasons to think that necromancers, somewhere, would want to make off with the entire body, but Kabane has dealt with none of it - instead he appeals to this mysterious "background evidence."

Here we have the common tactic of vaguely referencing “pagan magic” and assuming that equals necromancy. It does not.

No, but necromancy could be part of it. Kabane hasn't ruled it out. Wherever there's magic, there's potential for necromancy, and wherever there's necromancy (especially where illegal) there will be money to be made and underground demand for these supplies.

We have to remember that this is the time when Jerusalem would have been totally packed.

Any attempt to rule out theft at this point is too speculative to establish any grounds for certainty. Just because Jerusalem may have been packed doesn't mean graveyards were, and since we don't know exactly where Jesus was entombed, we can't know whether or not the thieves were able to avoid a crowd by heading in one direction as opposed to another. Or perhaps such a crowd made it perfect to remain anonymous and disappear into crowded cosmopolitan streets. It could have been much like Los Angeles - things are happening all around you that you don't take much notice of. A criminal in a truck could be hauling thousands of dollars worth of weapons right by you and you wouldn't even know it. Why should we think that members of this crowd would take particular notice of a horse-drawn wagon in decoy paraphernalia? This kind of speculation can establish nothing, and hardly proves a miracle was required.

Hallucination

Tehk apparently misunderstood my point there. My point was not that they definitely believed it meant vindication of Israel. My point is that it was very unclear what Jesus meant to their ears. How does one apply the vindication of Israel to an individual like Jesus? That’s the question.

Kabane apparently misunderstood mine. It is special pleading to assert that the Pharisees would have been led to speculate 'assumption' but that the disciples would have been held back by some nuanced "vindication of Israel." As I've said before, this pleading is compounded by the gospel accounts: we're talking about a group of disciples who are alleged to have observed a man perform amazing miracles, such as feeding multitudes with just a few scraps of food, restoring sight to the blind, healing the lame, walking on water, quelling storms, casting out devils, zapping fig trees, being "transfigured" with Moses and Elijah, and raising the dead. So if they had witnessed such phenomenal acts from a man who had told them several times that he would be killed and then rise from the dead the third day, why wouldn't they have been at the tomb on that third day eagerly waiting for him to come forth? But they weren't there, and when they saw signs that he had risen, they didn't "understand" them. Then when they were told by witnesses that he had been resurrected, they dismissed the testimony as "idle talk." If Kabane can't see a problem here, he needs more help than I can give him.

The plain language of the statement compounds it further. Kabane's assertion that "rise from the dead" was thought by the apostles to have been some kind of an allusion to a "vindication of Israel" is completely unfounded. He can't make his case by claiming that the same phrase was used to mean something else somewhere else, because context is what makes the meaning clear. Jesus told his disciples that he would be tortured, killed, and would rise from the dead on the third day. Only someone desperate to find a solution to this problem would resort to such nonsense.

Kabane can't have his cake and eat it too - if he wants to assert that the gospels were confused about what Jesus said, then he seriously impugns the gospel miracles as historical. But clearly he can't have this, because he believes Jesus was the Messiah and the gospels reliable. If he wants to assert that Jesus really did perform those miracles, then he seriously impugns the apostles' confusion as historical. It's a catch-22.

Clearly, something is wrong with the story. My argument is that the disciples really did understand what Jesus said, but that the story had become embellished with elements of confusion and surprise in order to create dramatic effect. If Kabane can't rule out this possibility, why should we accept his spin on things, which make even less sense?

Simon Peter is described right beforehand as seeing the same thing, and there is no mention of him “believing”. Believe here carries a certain connotation. If they saw that the tomb was empty, of course they believed it. The reason “and believed” is added to John’s testimony is because he believed that something supernatural had taken place.

Suppose that's true... that the apostles weren't skeptical here - they believed that Jesus rose. How does this salvage Kabane's case? Once they had come to believe this, then after heading back home they could have realized, given time to contemplate, what Jesus meant when he told them that he would "rise from the dead," and especially significant would have been Jesus' words: "But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee" (Matthew 26:32). Pair this sudden realization with the bereavement they were undoubtedly experiencing, and you've got sufficient grounds for group hallucination. In Sensory Deception: A Scientific Analysis of Hallucination (1988), Peter Slade and Richard Bentall found that "hallucinations involving bereavement" are common (pg.86-8). They found evidence that hallucination plays a role in reducing anxiety, and this anxiety-relieving property in turn has a reinforcing effect on the believability and frequency of hallucination (p. 108).

It’s a general inference from the fact that all the intertestamental literature shows no knowledge of a pre-eschatological resurrection, in particular Pharisees!

That doesn't mean that there wasn't one, or that one or more of the apostles didn't hold to some conception of it. I've repeatedly said that Judaism was too diverse, and too many views have been lost to history for Kabane to be able to say for sure. Just because the Pharisees wouldn't have held to it, doesn't mean they were wholly unaware of any such notion existing. It's impossible for Kabane to rule this out.

Kabane says that "such Jews only believed that the resurrection happened in stages at the eschaton," but it appears Paul believed precisely that, or else something a bit different. He says that "in Christ all will be made alive, but each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then those who belong to Christ, at his coming, then the end comes." It goes hand-in-hand with Paul's belief that he was living in the last days. In Philippians 4:5, Paul says "The Lord is near." In Hebrews 1:2 he says "but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things." In Hebrews 10:37 he says "for in just a very little while, He who is coming will come and will not delay." It is difficult to deny that Paul was certain that the end of the world was coming in the lifetime of his contemporaries.

And so if Paul could have held to such a conception of Jesus rising before everyone else in a staged resurrection in this way, so could the apostles.

It matters because then you’d have to suppose that it happened in each instance, making it extraordinarily more probable. This would include touch hallucinations, multiplying improbability by improbability. The Emmaus appearances, the upper room, the Petrine appearance, Thomas’ appearance, the appearance to all the 500, the appearance to all the apostles, the appearance to the women on the road, the fishing trip, etc. etc.

If a random sample of the population from this time period produced the same results then we might have something worthwhile. Yet what we have instead are appearances to particular groups of people in particular regions in a particular time, which is precisely what we would expect if these were hallucinations brought about by socio-cultural influence. We have what appears to be weighty evidence to the naive eye because birds of a feather flock together. Consider what I said earlier: "there would be a higher-than-normal proportion of schizoid personalities in any wonder-working religious group." Pair this with the soci-cultural bent towards hallucinatory experiences as veridical (and the scientifically demonstrated effect this has on the increased frequency and believability of hallucinations) and suddenly none of this looks surprising at all.

The ancient world is teeming with accounts of not just Christian miracles, but pagan ones as well. Are we to accept Kabane's reasoning that this is somehow a significant sign that they're real? Get a grip.

If you play that game, then you’ve made it so that I cannot prove anything, unless we have evidence against each of those four options.

I play the game of objectivity. If you cannot rule out these possibilities, then you cannot say that they did not hallucinate, and thus you cannot say that a miracle is required to explain it.

The difference and issue here is that the science of hallucinations preclude them from happening in this specific case.

I have shown that they could have come to expect it (which you yourself lend support to in John 20:2, but which I support via my argument for literary embellishment), and in so doing could have become excited about it (considering their bereavement), and could have seen Jesus appear before them (considering his statement that "I will go ahead of you into Galilee after I have risen").

So who are you kidding?

There is hardly sufficient evidence to warrant belief in Jesus' resurrection.

[Kelp]

Moderated By: Kelp

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