Why Christianity won't go away

I wrote about this a few years ago, but think it bears repeating-

Around 2,000 years ago some guy from a poor family named Jesus preached a lot of things that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. He claimed to be the Son of God, he said those who accept him as their savior would dwell in the kingdom of heaven, he said blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. The Jews thought he was a heretic and wanted him dead, the occupying Romans thought was a nutcase disturbing the peace, so they didn't like him much either. Though Jesus had a following, he was generally not well liked. One day Jesus died, nailed to a cross. Thousands of people heard Jesus tell people on the 3rd day after his death he would rise again. The Jews or the Romans could have killed Christianity right then and there, all they had to do is wait until day 4 or 5 after the crucifiction, toss Jesus' body on a ox-cart, and parade it around the streets of Jerusalem, proving Jesus a fraud. End of story, right? Well, not so fast. Jesus's body went missing from the grave less than 3 days later, and please don't sell me the lie that a bunch of unarmed ragtag diciples overpowered the armed Roman guards at his tomb, and hid his body; that would have attracted a lot more attention, and a lot more armed Roman guards.

Jesus was gone -

That's right.

The resurrection was real, and man has lived forever in the shadow of this event.

@mchill said
Well, not so fast. Jesus's body went missing from the grave less than 3 days later

What evidence do have that this is what happened?

@philokalia said
The resurrection was real, and man has lived forever in the shadow of this event.

I disagree; I think the resurrection is mythology. But I agree that "man has lived forever in its shadow".

@mchill said

Why Christianity won't go away

It's just basically Golden Rule type stuff + <<you're already forgiven for your "sins" and your everlasting life is "assured">> [at least in the minds of hundreds of millions of Christians].

Let's face it, what do the details of the folklore really matter?

See Thread 182354

@mchill said
I wrote about this a few years ago, but think it bears repeating-

Why do you think your précis of the account of Jesus life and death is “bears repeating”?

@mchill

Alternatively, the entire account of the guard and the chief priests can be discounted as likely to be an ahistorical addition written by Matthew to make the stolen body hypothesis appear implausible. Among scholars, it "is widely regarded as an apologetic legend"; L. Michael White and Helmut Koester argue the story was probably added as an attempt to refute the Jewish claims that the disciples stole the body which were circulating at the time. Atheist and historian Richard Carrier writes:


'The authors create a rhetorical means of putting the theft story into question by inventing guards on the tomb ... it is most suspicious that the other gospel accounts omit any mention of a guard, even when Mary visits the tomb (compare Matthew 28:1-15 with Mark 16:1-8, Luke 24:1-12, and John 20:1-9), and also do not mention the theft story—this claim is not even reported in Acts, where a lot of hostile Jewish attacks on the church are recorded, yet somehow this one fails to be mentioned. Neither Peter nor Paul mention either fact, either, even though their letters predate the gospels by decades. Worse, Matthew's account involves reporting privileged conversations between priests and Pilate, and then secret ones between priests and guards that no Christian could have known about (27.62-65, 28.11-15). This is always a very suspicious sign of fiction... (Matthew) had the motive to make it up, to answer the objections of later skeptics (just like the Thomas story in John), and the story looks like an invention, because it narrates events that could not be known by the author.'


(Wiki)

@fmf said
What evidence do have that this is what happened?

lol, we have lost important treatises from Seneca, one of the most famous statesmen and advisers to Caesar after Christ's death.

What makes you think the Romans would have kept meticulous documents on this incident that would have survived..?

It's too lofty of a bar to be set considering the circumstances.

@fmf said
What evidence do have that this is what happened?

I recall someone asking a young rabbi the same question. He responded: "If you have to go searching for evidence to justify your faith, then how strong is your faith?"

@mchill said
I recall someone asking a young rabbi the same question. He responded: "If you have to go searching for evidence to justify your faith, then how strong is your faith?"

OK, so no evidence apart from some words written by people creating a new religion several decades after its central figure was executed, right?

@philokalia said
lol, we have lost important treatises from Seneca, one of the most famous statesmen and advisers to Caesar after Christ's death.

What makes you think the Romans would have kept meticulous documents on this incident that would have survived..?

It's too lofty of a bar to be set considering the circumstances.

So, "too lofty of a bar to be set" translates into 'no evidence of anyone rising from the dead' that you can present aside from Christian folklore itself ~ no other sources, right?

@ghost-of-a-duke said
@mchill

Alternatively, the entire account of the guard and the chief priests can be discounted as likely to be an ahistorical addition written by Matthew to make the stolen body hypothesis appear implausible. Among scholars, it "is widely regarded as an apologetic legend"; L. Michael White and Helmut Koester argue the story was probably added as an attempt to refut ...[text shortened]... s like an invention, because it narrates events that could not be known by the author.'


(Wiki)

Tradition ascribes the Gospel of Matthew as being the first that is written, and we believe that Matthew was first written in Hebrew [1].

Modern scholars tend to believe Mark was written first but this is largely based on the idea that Mark has little original material and is very much reproduced in Matthew & Luke. However, Mark is also the shortest Gospel, and Mark is written in Greek for a Greek audience.

If Matthew was written first, as tradition insists, it may have been viewed as a superfluous detail that is already available. If Mark was written first, Mark could have felt that it was not important enough to be recorded in his Greek version, while Matthew thought this was more relevant to the Jews, and was sure to include it.

Moreover, if the Gospel writers were vaguely aware of one another's intentions and one another's ministries, it is likely that this affected, to some degree, what one another writes.

I don't actually think you can jump to this conclusion so easily -- it involves a lot of assumptions of your own.

William Lane Craig wrote an essay on it, and it includes some interesting stuff like...

Rather the more serious difficulties with the story are two: (1) it is not related in the pre-Markan passion story nor in the other gospels, and (2) it presupposes not only that Jesus predicted his resurrection in three days, but also that the Jews understood this clearly while the disciples remained in ignorance. With regard to the first, it is exceedingly odd that the other gospels know nothing of so major an event as the placing of a guard around the tomb. This suggests that the account is a late legend reflecting years of Jewish/Christian polemic. The designation of Jesus as an impostor is in fact an earmark of Jewish polemic against Christianity (Justin Dialogue with Trypho 108; Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs (Levi) 16. 3). But perhaps this polemical interest supplies the very reason why this event, even if historical, was not included in the pre-Markan passion story. For the pre- Markan passion story arose in the life of the Urgemeinde before theAuseinandersetzung with Judaism and thus antedates the Jewish/ Christian polemics. Since the guard played virtually no role in the events of the discovery of the empty tomb -- indeed the Matthean account does not exclude that the guard had already left before the women arrived --, the pre-Markan passion story may simply omit them. If the slander that the disciples stole the body was restricted to certain quarters ('the story has been spread among Jews [para Ioudaiois] to this day'😉, then it cannot be ruled out that Luke or John might not have these traditions. And the evangelists often inexplicably omit what seem to be major incidents that must have been known to them (for example, Luke's great omission of Mk. 6. 45 - 8. 26) so that it is dangerous to use omission as a test for historicity. [4]

Anyhow, I do not think either of our positions would change, but this is interesting. Thanks for bringing it up!

[1] http://appleeye.org/2014/01/04/the-gospel-of-matthew-was-first-written-in-hebrew/
[2] (General reading on order) http://ichthus.info/CaseForChrist/01/intro.html
[3] (Mark written in Greek)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Mark#Authorship_and_genre
[4] Craig's essay: http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/guard.html

@fmf said
OK, so no evidence apart from some words written by people creating a new religion several decades after its central figure was executed, right?

Dear FMF - Faith is a gift. I hope you receive it one day.

Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." - John 20:29

Jesus speaking to Thomas after the crucifiction and resurrection -

@fmf said
OK, so no evidence apart from some words written by people creating a new religion several decades after its central figure was executed, right?

The involvement in the spreading of the religion was immediate.

In order to create this 'hoax' of a religion, as you believe, every single Apostle was martyred [1]. Hundreds (or thousands) of others were also martyred with them in the first century, and the number has steadily increased over time (though that isn't relevant).

While this doesn't prove that they are reliable, but how many people invent a religion they don't believe in in order to just be tortured & killed by Jewish & Roman authorities?

I've heard of inventing religions to get rich but taking a vow of poverty and celibacy, traveling the Mediterranean and Middle East to be reviled, attacked, and eventually killed doesn't sound exactly like the actions that a group of hoaxsters peddling a false story would take.

[1] https://credohouse.org/blog/what-happened-to-the-twelve-apostles-how-do-their-deaths-prove-easter

Ultimately, we all make an act of faith on this.

One says that they absolutely doubt that any of this could be true.

The other accepts it as truth.