Did Jesus Truly Rise from the Dead? III

(Cont'd)

Inherent Incredibility of the Resurrection Account

The biblical account relating to the death and resurrection of Jesus are full of episodes which are hard to believe and seem to go against common sense. e.g.
1.  Why would Nicodemus carry about a hundred pounds of mixture of myrrh and aloe to place on Jesus' body when he was buried (Jn 19:39).
2.  If John's gospel is right and Jesus was given a proper Jewish burial (Jn 19:40), why did the women come to finish the job only on Sunday morning (Mk. 16:1) since they had already watched the burial and the sealing off the gates to the tomb (Mk. 16:47).
3. Why did they come to anoint the body of Jesus only three days after his death and not on the day of and before Jesus' actual burial, knowing that the Palestinian climate is so warm.
4. If they knew that the tomb had been sealed, why they thought they could still somehow  gain access to it when they went there to anoint the Jesus' body again? Did they expect it would already be opened for them by the angels?
5. We also know from other historical evidence that it was not the custom of the Jews to use spices in caring for the dead.
6.  In addition, we learn that Jesus' disciples went back to their job as fishermen (Jn: 21)  even after seeing with their own eyes and believing in the resurrection of Jesus. Why didn't they immediately set about proclaiming that Jesus was the true messiah?
7. The story of chief priests and elders posting a guard at the entrance of Jesus'  tomb is most incredible. What prompted them to do so in the first place? Since the women did not tell the others what happened, how could the Jewish high priests etc. have known about the resurrection of Jesus and believed in it sufficiently to post a guard over Jesus' tomb (Mt. 27: 62-66) when not even the disciples believed or expected Jesus to rise again!
8. Even if the Jewish high priests and elders somehow believed in such a report , Matthew's report of their conversation is not credible (Mt.28: 11-15). Matthew claimed that the guards at the tomb saw an angel of the Lord roll back the stone and sat on it, the angel's appearance was like lightning and their clothes white as snow (Mt. 28: 2-4) and the guards were so afraid and "they shook and became like dead men". We're told that despite having witnessed such a miracle, they were paid off to deny it. Remember, the guards were not posted until the day AFTER Jesus' crucifixion. Why? Even disregarding this, if they could be bribed not to say anything about what they saw. ie. that Jesus actually resurrected and left of his own accord, is it not more likely that Jesus' body was removed by his own relatives by paying a bribe to the guards, assuming that for some reason, they had actually been posted over the entrance to Jesus' tomb as alleged? After all, they would be the ones most concerned about his fate.
9. And why should Joseph of Arimathea want to claim Jesus' body? Up to that point in the Bible, we did not know who he was and we do not know what his relation to Jesus was.
10. If the Roman soldiers should report the matter to anyone, they should have reported the matter to Pilate, not to the chief priests and elders (Mt. 28: 64).
11. And what was the lie that Matthew said they were to tell after receiving the relevant bribes? That they were asleep and that Jesus disciples stole his body! That would be an open admission of their dereliction of duty! Is that likely? And why should the chief priests want the soldiers to lie in the first place? In any event, it was a stupid lie. If they were asleep, how could they know exactly who it was who stole Jesus' corpse? Besides even on their own version, how could such a big and heavy stone over Jesus' tomb be removed without waking them up? If so, those who heard the lie would certainly draw the inference that they couldn't possibly know what actually happened and that would be quite sufficient to stop the lie spreading and hence Jesus' disciples could continue to claim that Jesus really did rise from the dead. The alleged lie was completely ineffective as a lie!
12. If it is claimed that the Jewish leaders did not deny that there was an empty tomb and was merely trying to explain it away as claimed by William Lane Craig.( "The Guard at the Tomb" New Testament Studies 30 1984 273-81), there is no independent Jewish sources that that was indeed what the Jewish leaders had in mind. If so, this means that the Jewish leaders were trying to deal with an early claim by Jesus' disciples that Jesus did rise from the dead. But according to Ralph Martin ( New Testament Foundations Vol 1 1975 243), Matthew was probably written some time in the 90's of CE. If so, Matthew would be responding to the claims of the Christian in his time and not at the earlier time shortly after the death of Jesus as claimed by Craig. To Loftus, Matthew's gospel is merely responding to the struggles of the church of his day when the Christians' Jewish opponents claimed that the disciples stole Jesus' body and then claimed Jesus rose from the dead. If so, then according to Stephen T Davis (Risen Indeed 1993 74) the empty tomb story was invented by Mark and written outside of Palestine during or after the Jewish war because only then would verification of this claim be difficult.
13. Paul claimed that Jesus rose according to the Scriptures (1 Cor 15: 3-4). But the Scriptures do not say anything of the kind. Some claim that the relevant cross reference was Hosea 6: 2 but actually Hosea 6: 2 says, "After two days, he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence." According to Loftus, Hosea 6: 2 was originally meant as "an exhortation to Israel to hope in a forgiving God after being punished by him. Others claim that Psalms 16: 9-10 quoted by Peter in Acts 2: 26-27 which says "you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see corruption." as referring to Jesus . But the original meaning of this passage was King David's prayer for recovery from sickness.
14. Some apologists claim that if the early Christians were prepared to die for their faith, then what they believed in must be true. But many people who are not Christians are prepared to die for what they believe in too e.g. Muslims, Mormons, followers of Jim Jones, kamikaze pilots etc. As Michael Martin says, "The fact that people are willing to to die for their beliefs can show...strength of character, extreme devotion and even fanaticism. But it is hard to see that it indicates that what is believed is true or even that the evidential bases of the belief should be taken seriously". He asks whether if we treat Paul's conversion as evidence of the truth of the resurrection, whether or not we should count Muhammad's conversion to Islam from polytheism as evidence for the claim that Jesus was not resurrected (because Muslim deny Jesus' resurrection)?

No independent Corroboration of the Resurrection of Jesus

According to Loftus, there is no confirmation by either Jewish or pagan sources that:

1. Jesus rose from the dead. The only evidence is a pseudonymous quote inside Josephus to that effect (Antiquities 18:3, 3) but even conservative Christian scholars agree that it was a later interposition placed there by Christian scribes. The only other evidence is the Turin Shroud, a strip of cloth believers say covered the body of Jesus as he rose from the dead that produced a stunning image of a man who fits the description of someone who had been crucified. It was first noticed around the year 1355 CE but recent carbon dating of the shroud showed that it was 99.9% certain that the shroud originated in the period 1000 to 1500 and 95% certain that the cloth dated from between 1260 and 1390. ( Joe Nickell Relics of the Christ 2007 111--179)
2.  The earth was covered by darkness for three hours (Mk 15: 33) or that the Temple curtain was miraculously torn in two (Mk. 15:38) or that there was an earthquake (Mt. 27:51) or that the tombs were opened and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised and that after they came out from the tombs, they entered the holy city and appeared to many (Mt. 27:52). Surely if such things really happened, it is most surprising that there is no mention of it by any other independent source like e.g. Josephus.
3. Paul claimed that 500 people saw the risen Christ at the same time (1 Cor. 15:6). If so, it seems most surprising that there was no mention of this anywhere else except in the Bible.

Gospels may not be intended by their authors to be  read as history but as midrash

It is obvious that we do not have any narrative told by neutral observers or by Jesus' opponents. Everything which came down to us were written by people with theological and evangelicalistic aims, like preacher's stories intended to win converts. Because of this, Michael Martin warns us that "we should be suspicious of their reliability".  What they wrote therefore contains a lot of midrash (an attempt by Jewish rabbis to penetrate into the spirit of the relevant sacred text, to examine the text from all sides, to derive interpretation not immediately obvious, to illuminate the future by appealing to the past). John Selby Spong argues that "the question to ask of this Midrash tradition is not "Did it really happened?". That is a Western question tied to a Western mindset...The proper question is: 'What was there about Jesus of Nazareth that required the meaning of his life to be interpreted through the stories of Abraham and Isaac, Moses and Passover, Exodus and wilderness, Sinai and Promised Land, Hannah and Samuel, David and Solomon, Elijah and Elisha, the Servant figure, the Son of Man, Pentecost and Tabernacle, and a thousand other choices that served to incorporate the life of Jesus into the meaning of God known in the history of the Jewish people?" ( Resurrection: Myth or Reality 50 53). As a result of being cut off from this midrash tradition, "it resulted in extravagant literal claims for the historicity of what were in fact Midrashic retellings of ancient themes in new moments of history". (Spong  Resurrection 11-17)

What was understood by "Resurrected Body"?

What did the early Christians understand by the  resurrection of Jesus? To them, the resurrected body could be touched (Lk 24:39; Jn 20:27), could engage in eating (Lk 24:42-43), its physical appearance not easily recognizable even by his disciples (Lk 24:16; Jn 20:14), could pass through walls (Jn 20:19) or appear out of thin air (Lk 24:36), disappear at will (Lk 24: 31, 51) and appear with clothes on (?) (my question is, if so, are his clothes material or physical too?). Actually, we don't know much about the qualities of Jesus'  resurrected body. The only description we have is one attributed to Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, dated around 55 CE: "There are heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies (v 40)...Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable(v 50)" and our new bodies will be different from our old as wheat plant from its seed (v 26-37). According to David Edwards,( Edwards & John Stott Evangelical Essentials 1988 207) "in the ancient world it was believed that a seed dies in the ground (cf. Jn 12:24).  The continuity pictured by Paul is continuity through death, which is why Paul dwells on the contrast". To Paul, Christ will "transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body" (Philippians 3: 20-21) and that "if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands (2 Cor. 5: 1-8). Jesus thought of the resurrected body in more or less the same way. To him, there will be no marriage in heaven because believers "will be like the angels in heaven" from which they "will shine like stars" (Mk. 12: 24-27; Mt. 13: 43)

What did Paul See?

Paul said that Jesus appeared 6 times to various people and that "last of all, he appeared to me" (1 Cor. 15: 8). We learn that Paul saw Jesus on the road to Damascus (Acts 9, 22, 26). He did not say that Jesus appeared to him in a way different from his appearance to the others. But he said he saw a bright light and heard a voice identifying himself as Jesus but we know that he never saw Jesus before he died. Did he see a physical body?There is no elaboration as to exactly what Paul saw or otherwise experienced. Was Paul suffering from an epileptic seizure like that of Dostoievsky in which he experienced God? A visual and auditory delusion?  To Willi Marxsen," what is being spoken of is a vision" ( Jesus and Easter: Did God Raise the Historical Jesus from the Dead 1990 69). Paul admitted as much (Acts 9:17; 26:19). If so, does that mean that Paul is saying that the others who claimed to have seen Jesus also had a vision?  The word used by Paul is "ophthe" (appeared), which is the same word used in the Greek Septuagint translations of the Hebrew Old Testament (LXX) to describe the "appearance" of God and angels (Gen 12:7; Exodus 3:2; 6:2-3) and the same word was used to describe Zechariah's vision of the angel Gabriel (Lk 1:22), of Abraham's vision of God (Acts 7:2) and the Epistles several times to describe Jesus' appearances ( 1 Cor 9:1) ( see  Richard Carrier "The Spiritual Body of Christ" in Price & Lowder The Empty Tomb 105-232). Perhaps it is for such reasons that Spong says, "There is no sense in Paul of a physical resurrection of Jesus back into the life of this world. God did not, for this apostle, raise Jesus from the grave to life on this earth. Rather, for Paul, God raised Jesus from death into God's presence: from the grave to God's right hand...The essential thing to note about Paul's understanding of the appearances to him is that it was identical with every other appearances on his list. That is, it was not a physical, historical encounter but a revelatory manifestation of the living Christ from heaven"( Spong op cit 50, 53) Richard Carrier argues that Paul's understanding of Jesus' resurrection does not require a resurrected body but that independent from Paul and later in time, the author Mark invented the story of the empty tomb and that "the empty stone tombs originated as a symbol, not a historical fact. It then became the subject of of legendary embellishment over the centuries, eventually becoming an essential element in the doctrine of a particular sect of Christian, who spurned Paul's original understandings, and insisted on a resurrection of the flesh instead."( op cit. 158-9).

Progressive "Creation" of the Resurrection Legend

If we were to read the various accounts of Jesus' resurrection by following the chronological order in which such accounts appear (Mark, Matthew, Luke and John in that order), we would have discovered a trend: the later the account, the more details of the resurrection are added! Mark's account ( the earliest) is the simplest. He merely says that the women found "a young man" sitting at Jesus tomb "But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you." So they went out and felt from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. (Mk 16: 7-8) By the time we get to Matthew, we have now got Joseph of Arimathea as " a disciple of Jesus" (Mt 27:57) who buried Jesus' body "in his own new tomb" (Mt.27: 60). The boy or young man in Mark has now become an angel (Mt. 28: 2-3, 5) and there was now " a massive earthquake" (Mt. 28:2) along with "a guard at the tomb" (Mt 28:4) and women who met Jesus (Mt. 28:9). As Carrier says, "There can be no doubt that we are looking at extensive legendary embellishment upon what began as a much more mundane story." ( op cit 165).

If we were to look at the accounts of Jesus' appearances in Luke and John, we would discover a similar trend toward more embellishment the later the account appeared. In Mark, there is no account of any appearance of the resurrected Jesus at all. In Matthew, we find people "clasping Jesus' feet" (Mt. 28:9). In Luke, we find descriptions of "eating" with Jesus and a description of Jesus' body (Lk 24: 37-43). In John, we find the doubting Thomas story where Jesus "proves" his bodily presence (Jn. 20: 24-29). The conclusion is obvious. As Peter Kirby says, "Since all accounts of the empty tomb are dependent on Mark, the story hangs by a slender thread."( "The Case Against the Empty Tomb" in Price& Lowder The Empty Tomb 2005 237).

This trend towards elaboration the later the account can similarly be discerned in the story relating to the birth of Jesus and also to the status of the Mary and the doctrine of Immaculate Conception . Mary in the later Pseudepigrapha was said to be a perpetual virgin even though Jesus had siblings (Mk. 3: 31-35)!

Why No Veneration of Jesus' Tomb by the early Christian Church?

If Jesus really rose from the dead and an empty tomb was left, then one can legitimately ask why it is that the earliest disciples of Jesus did not venerate the tomb of Jesus? According to James D G Dunn (The Evidence for Jesus 1985 67-68), "There is no evidence whatsoever for Christians regarding the place where Jesus had been buried as having any special significance" with pilgrimages and veneration. According to Eusebius (Via Constantini 3: 25-52), the alleged tomb of Jesus was not worshiped until the fourth century! Byron McCane  argues, based on the Jewish burial customs of the day, that Jesus was probably given a 'dishonourable burial and not an honourable burial as argued by William Craig (Paul Copan & Ronald T Tacelli (eds) Jesus' Resurrection: Fact or Figment: a Debate between William Lane Craig and Gerd Ludemann 2000 160-204). According to him, Jesus' body was dumped in disgrace in the Jewish graveyard of the condemned: " The shame of Jesus' burial is not only consistent with the best evidence, but can also help to account for an historical fact which has long been puzzling to historians of early Christianity: why did the primitive church not venerate the tomb of Jesus?" (Roll Back the Stone: Death and Burial in the World of Jesus 2003 89-108).

(To be cont'd)