Burden of Proof is on Atheists

joelr · Apr 18, 2022

leroy said:
And the evidence has been provided. =

The Women
Even the names of the women in Mark’s empty tomb tale are likely symbolic. Salome is the feminine of Solomon, an obvious symbol of supreme wisdom and kingship. Wisdom was often portrayed as a feminine being (Sophia), so to have her represented here behind a symbolic name rich with the same meaning is not unusual. Mariam (the name we now translate as Mary) was famously the sister of Moses and Aaron, who played several key roles in the legendary escape from Egypt, including her connection with that famous well of salvation that acquired her name, and being the one who led the Hebrew women in song after their deliverance from Egypt—and Egypt was frequently used in ancient Jewish literature as a symbol of the Land of the Dead, just as crossing the wilderness into Palestine symbolized the process of salvation, escaping from death into Paradise.

But Mark gives us two Mary’s, representing two aspects of this legendary role. “Magdalene” is a variant Hellenization of the Hebrew for “tower,” the same exact word transcribed as Magdôlon in the Septuagint—in other words the biblical Migdol, representing the borders of Egypt, and hence of Death. In Exodus 13, the Hebrews camped near Migdol to lure the Pharaoh’s army to their doom, after which “they passed through the midst of the sea into the wilderness three days” (Numbers 33:7-8), just as Jesus had done, on their way to the “twelve springs and seventy palm trees” of Elim (33:9), just as we know the gospel would be spread by twelve disciples and—according to Luke 10:1-17—seventy missionaries. Meanwhile, “Mary the mother of Jacob” (many don’t know it, but “James” is simply Jacob in the original languages, not a different name) is an obvious reference to the Jacob, of Jacob’s well, whose connection we already see Mark intended. This Jacob is of course better known as Israel himself.

So these two Marys in Mark represent Egypt and Israel, one literally the Mother of Israel; the other, the harbinger of escape from the land of the dead. Thus they represent (on the one side) the borders of the Promised Land and the miraculous defeat of death needed to get across, and (on the other side) the founding of a new nation, a New Israel—both linked to each other, through the sister of the first savior, Moses, and Aaron (the first High Priest), and mediated by Wisdom (Salome).

Another clue that these women are symbolic is the fact that they don’t exist in Mark’s story at all except on three symbolically connected occasions: they attend the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus—the very events Mark adapts from that sequence of three Psalms (though Salome is omitted from the burial: Mark 15:40, 15:47, 16:1). In Mark’s Gospel we never hear of any of these women until then, not once in the entire ministry of Jesus. Nor are any of them explained (who are they? why are they there?). They simply appear, serve their mythical function, and vanish (none exist in Acts, either, after Acts 1 when the public history of the church begins in Acts 2; they do not appear to have ever been historical).

All this seems a highly improbable coincidence, there being exactly three women, with exactly these names, appearing exactly three times (that Mark’s fabrications tended to love the deployment of patterns of three I demonstrate in Chapter 10.4 of Historicity), which evoke exactly those scriptures, and triangulate in exactly this way, serving no other purpose and given no other explanation, all simply to convey an incredibly convenient message about the Gospel and the status of Christ as Messiah and miraculous victor over the Land of the Dead. What are the odds?

Maybe you’re not as impressed by all these coincidences as I am. But you don’t have to agree with my analysis of the evident symbolism of these women. The only thing that matters is that this interpretation cannot be ruled out—there’s no evidence against it, and some evidence for it. Mark even tells us he expressly approves of concealing symbolic meanings behind seemingly mundane narratives (see Mark 4:11-12, 33-34), and the names and events of this narrative fit the deeper meaning of the Gospel with surprising convenience.

These details therefore provide an available motive to invent a visit to the tomb by women, especially these particular women, which means we cannot assume the Christians would instead have invented a visit by men first. We cannot demonstrate that they would. For inventing a visit by women carried even more meaningful symbolism, and was even more in accordance with the Gospel message itself. It therefore cannot be said Mark had “no reason” to contrive these women as the finders of the tomb. We have no evidence these women ever existed before his invention of them. And we have no evidence he names them for any other reason than their symbolic role in the text.

joelr · Apr 18, 2022

leroy said:
And the evidence has been provided.

The Orphic Background
We have ample evidence that the Jewish theologian Philo and, according to Josephus, the Essenes in general, saw even the body of a living person as a corpse and a tomb—a tomb for the soul. This concept appears to have originated within pagan Orphic theology (I cite the scholarship in The Empty Tomb). Plato puts the Orphic view like this: “In reality we are just as if we were dead. In fact I once heard the wise men say we are now dead, and the body is our tomb” (Georgias 493a; cf. Cratylus 400). Accordingly, a tomb would be a recognizable symbol for the body, especially in the context of a salvation cult. And an empty tomb would therefore symbolize an empty body, representing the fact that the soul has risen—into a new body. It would thus leave a mere ‘shell’ behind, which was its ‘tomb’ in life. To understand the resurrection then requires one to understand that the body is not where the person lies: for they have gone elsewhere, just as Mark has the mysterious man in white say (Mark 16:6-7).

In Orphic theology, this meant a bodiless soul had ascended to heaven. In Pauline theology, however, influenced by Judaism, it would mean the person had been re-clothed in a new body and ascended to heaven. This is exactly what Paul calls a “mystery,” and like all mysteries, it would not be written down in the cult’s sacred story, but explained through an oral exegesis, and only to initiates, while the outward appearance of the story would serve to conceal this mystery from the uninitiated. This could well be just what Mark was doing. Paul hedges around it, but is nevertheless pretty clear in saying the body that dies is not the one that rises, that the new body will be made of new material (1 Corinthians 15:37-55), in fact it’s a body God has already built for us and has waiting for us in heaven (2 Corinthians 5).

Orphic mysteries, such as the mysteries of Bacchus, were one of the most popular categories of salvation cult in the ancient world, widely known to everyone. A common motif was that initiates would be taught the secret of eternal life, which often included instructions to follow after they died. Several metal plates preserving these secret instructions have been recovered from the graves of initiates. The best example, from around 400 B.C. (and thus contemporary with Plato) is the Gold Leaf of Hipponion. Though this preserves the instructions in a significantly older form, and in a different dialect, than what would be known to Mark, the links remain startling, and informative.

According to the plate, when an initiate enters the land of the dead, they will find “a white cypress” on “the right-hand side” (leuka and dexia). In Mark 16:5, when the women enter the tomb (the land of the dead), they find a “boy in white” on “the right-hand side” (leukên and dexiois). The Bacchic initiate is told to go beyond the white cypress, where guardians of the sacred waters will ask them “What are you looking for in the land of the dead?” In Mark, too, the women are searching for something in the land of the dead: Jesus, the water of life. Yet they, too, are supposed to go further (physically, to Galilee; but psychologically, to a recognition of the truth), for they are told that though they are “looking for Jesus,” he is not there (Mark 16:6). The initiate is supposed to ask for a drink from the sacred waters, because they are “perishing” (apollumi, hence “being destroyed, dying”), and the guardians will give it to them, and they shall thereby secure themselves eternal life in a paradise of the hereafter. Likewise, for the women (and the reader), through Mark’s invocation of Jacob’s well, the tomb represents the well of eternal life, from whose waters the sheep must drink to be saved. Just as the initiate must drink of the waters of “memory” (mnêmosunê) to be saved, so do the women enter the tomb, a “memorial” (mnêmeion), where they are told to remember something Jesus said (Mark 16:7).

Thus, Mark’s empty tomb story mimics the secret salvation narratives of the Orphic mysteries, substituting Jewish-Messianic eschatology for the pagan elements. Only in an understanding that Christ is not here (meaning: the land of the dead; but also, the corpse) will the water of life be given. This is the fundamental underlying message of Mark’s empty tomb narrative. The tomb, and its emptiness, symbolizes the land of the dead, or even the dead flesh of Jesus, and the details (the boy in white on the right, the water of life being sought, the need to go further, the role of memory) evoke the symbols of Orphic mystery cult, thus becoming a narrative symbolic of the path to salvation: one must ‘see’ the truth, and become ‘one’ with the new body of Jesus in heaven, in order to be saved. This is the message Mark wrote his myth to convey, albeit only to the insightful, those initiated into the mysteries of the Christian faith.

This is clearly myth, not history.

joelr · Apr 18, 2022

leroy said:
And the evidence has been provided.earsay...... , o wait no, i forgot, you dont like to carry the burden proof. It easier to make rabdom and unsupported claims, and then find pathetic excuses to avoid supporting that claim.

Reversal of Expectation
Finally, an empty tomb serves Mark’s thematic agenda of ‘reversal of expectation’, which structures much of his Gospel. Indeed Mark clearly sought to “reverse” the reader’s expectations throughout his narrative. As just a few examples: James and John, who ask to sit at the right and left of Jesus in his glory (10:35-40), are replaced by two criminals at his crucifixion (15:27); Simon Peter, Christ’s right-hand man who was told he had to “deny himself and take up his cross and follow” (8:34), is replaced by Simon of Cyrene (a foreigner, from the opposite side of Egypt, that symbol of death again) when it comes time to truly bear that cross (15:21); instead of his family as would be expected, his enemies come to bury him (15:43); Pilate’s expectation that Jesus should still be alive is confounded (15:44); contrary to all expectation, Christ’s own people, the Jews, mock their own savior (15:29-32), while it is a Gentile officer of Rome who recognizes his divinity (15:39); likewise, the very disciples are the ones who abandon Christ (14:50 and 66-72 vs. 14:31), while it is mere lowly women who attend his death and burial, who truly ‘followed him’, and continue to seek him thereafter (15:40-41, 15:47, 16:1), fulfilling Christ’s word (the very theme of reversal itself) that ‘the least shall be first’ (9:35, 10:31); and, the mother of all reversals, Mark ends his Gospel with the women fleeing in fear and silence, and not delivering the good news (16:8), the exact opposite of the “good news” of the “voice crying out” of the “messenger who will prepare our way” with which Mark began his Gospel (1:1-3). I present other examples in my section on Markan mythology in Historicity.

The parables of Jesus are also full of the reversal of expectation theme (Mark 4:30-32, 7:15, 8:35, 10:29-30, 10:44, 12:1-11), and as I already noted, Mark explicitly agrees with the program of concealing the truth behind parables (Mark 4:11-12, 33-34). And so, the empty tomb story is probably itself a parable (just as John Dominic Crossan argues Mark’s entire Gospel is in The Power of Parable), which accordingly employs reversal of expectation as its theme. The tomb has to be empty, in order to confound the expectations of the reader, just as a foreign Simon must carry the cross, a Sanhedrist must bury the body, and women (not men) must be the first to hear the Good News.

This is also why, contrary to all expectation, Jesus is anointed for burial before he dies (14:3), which is meant to summon our attention when the women go to anoint him after his death (16:1), not understanding it’s already happened, and only to find their (and our) expectations reversed by finding his body missing, and a young man in his place—and this with an explicit verbal link to the exchange of one thing for another in Ecclesiastes 4:15—for both Mark and Ecclesiastes speak of walking under the sun and seeing the youth who “stands in place” of the king, just as this youth does in Mark—and just as Mark’s tomb door is explicitly linked with another reversal-of-expectation narrative in Genesis, regarding the fate of Jacob at the well. The expectation is even raised that the tomb will be closed (Mark 16:3), which is yet another deliberate introduction of an expectation that Mark will then foil.

Just as reversal of expectation lies at the heart of the teachings of Jesus—indeed, of the very gospel itself—so it is quite natural for Mark to structure his narrative around such a theme, too. This program leads him to ‘create’ thematic events that thwart the reader’s expectation, and an empty tomb is exactly the sort of thing an author would invent to serve that aim. After all, it begs credulity to suppose that so many convenient reversals of expectation actually happened. It’s more credible to suppose that at least some of them are narrative inventions; and probably, all of them. One such invention could easily be the empty tomb. And as we saw above, an empty tomb would have made a tremendously powerful parabolic symbol, rich with meaning. And all the evidence lines up with Mark having constructed it for exactly such a purpose. None stands against.

Conclusion
We therefore have no difficulty explaining why Mark would make this up. He made it up for the same reason he made up a story about Jesus magically drowning thousands of pigs (to relate a message about the doom attending militarism) and withering a fig tree for no reason (to relate a message about why God allowed his temple to be destroyed by heathens), both of which I discuss in Chapter 10.4 of Historicity. These things never happened. No one witnessed them. They were not stories people passed on orally about Jesus. Mark made all these things up. Just as he did the empty tomb.

Mark made all these things up to tell a story, the meaning of which lies in the interpretation, not the literal truth. Anyone who takes him literally, really isn’t getting it. They are, as Jesus says, the outsiders who hear but don’t understand, and who are therefore doomed; these are the people Mark has Jesus mock and condemn, so that:

They may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!

MARK 4:12
Such is the Christian who takes Mark to have meant his empty tomb story literally, as history, rather than as a symbol for his message, his message about the gospel, in other words, as a mythic stand in for the truth: that the least shall be first, and only those who give up on the body shall be saved.

joelr · Apr 18, 2022

Sheldon said:
I'm not, you just don't understand what an independent source is, and are being deliberately dishonest in ignoring the fact that there is no scholarly consensus on this and other claims you have made.

There is a scholarly consensus on only two of your claims, for an historical Jesus, and for the crucifixion, part of the reason for this is that there are independent sources outside of the influence of religion and the bible that corroborate these. However even these two are not "known to a high degree of certainty" as you risibly claimed.

I agree this "scholarly consensus" is complete dishonesty.

There is now another peer-reviewed work on Jesus mythicism besides Richard Carrier -
Books | Raphael Lataster

Questioning the Historicity of Jesus: Why a Philosophical Analysis Elucidates the Historical Discourse (2019)
Raphael Lataster holds a PhD (Studies in Religion) from the University of Sydney, and lectures there and at other institutions. His main academic research interests include Philosophy of Religion, Christian origins, and alternative god-concepts such as pantheism and pandeism.

There is a good blog post by Carrier on Goodacre and his ideas on the execution. But it illustrates how weak the evidence is.

Mark Goodacre on the Historicity of Jesus’s Execution
BY RICHARD CARRIER ON JULY 1, 2021 9 COMMENTS

In the chapter “Prophecy Historicized or Tradition Scripturalized? Reflections on the Origin of the Passion Narratives” in New Testament and the Church (T&T Clark 2015), Mark Goodacre examines the question still debated in mainstream New Testament studies: whether the Gospels compose their stories by converting prophecy (essentially a pesher of prophecy) into history (thus creating historical fiction that “reifies” prophetic claims about the messiah, as a technique to teach how the imagined character of Jesus embodies and communicates the ideals of the movement), or by taking an oral tradition (which often supposedly at least goes back to some original eyewitness report) and “dressing it up” (exaggerating and embellishing and reframing it) with those same prophetic scriptures. His paper outlines and critiques the two sides of that debate, using the Passion Narrative as his working example; and it is another example of his well-informed and balanced treatment of issues in Jesus studies generally. I won’t summarize it here. It’s well worth reading on its own.

Questioning Axiomatic Assumptions
My interest today is in the question of historicity generally, given my publication of On the Historicity of Jesus a year before (Goodacre may have completed this chapter around the same time). In other words, I am not here interested in whether the Gospel stories contain anything historical; but whether even the “Savior of God” (as Jesus literally means) starring in them was ever historical. Like most scholars, Goodacre simply assumes the latter, and then proceeds to ask—if we interpret all the evidence we have on that assumption—how much history might there still be in these stories (and I must reiterate that the answer could be none and still there be a historical Jesus, so Goodacre is not entertaining a circular argument). Overall, Goodacre sides with the growing majority of scholars who side with “scepticism of the historicity of the bulk of the Passion Narrative” (p. 49) but concludes it’s on balance more probable that there is at least something of history in it (hence admitting that “the bulk” of it is scripture-based fan-fiction does not require going all the way to saying all of it is). Goodacre does not propose to reconstruct what in the story is historical; and he could easily allow that to be impossible. It is no contradiction to say “something historical is likely in here, but we don’t know precisely what” (in OHJ, p. 34, I allow minimal historicity to maintain even as little as that “someone” even just eventually called Jesus was executed by someone, it need not even be the Romans, who was then believed by his followers to have been subsequently raised by God).

Goodacre rests this conclusion of allowing some history yet within the Passion Narrative on two premises: the assumption (which he does not here defend) that, regardless of how much of anything about him is true in the Gospels, there must have been a historical Jesus; and his conclusion (p. 50) that Paul refers to oral tradition in the Epistles. Paul does not do that, however. In fact, he repeatedly denies it. We can doubt Paul’s honesty on that point (OHJ, pp. 536, 587-90), but we ought not mistake what he is nevertheless claiming: that he had nothing from oral tradition, but all from scripture and revelation. I’ve debated Goodacre on this point before. He seems to think Paul somewhere in the Epistles refers to receiving oral traditions from the Apostles (who were presumably “Disciples,” even though Paul never says so). But Paul adamantly denies he did (even swearing to that). Every time he refers to received tradition, he means by revelation from the Lord. All he did with former Apostles is confirm his revelation matched theirs (at least well enough for them to diplomatically accept his mission in conjunction with theirs; and cash payoffs raked off his various churches might have played a part in that: see J.D.M Derrett, “Financial Aspects of the Resurrection,” in The Empty Tomb). We therefore have no evidence in the Epistles of any historical tradition about Jesus—the only traditions there were (such as Paul, for example, was handing down to his congregations) were revelatory traditions, and new inspired readings of scripture.

rest at :

Mark Goodacre on the Historicity of Jesus's Execution • Richard Carrier

joelr · Apr 18, 2022

leroy said:
When 2 or more independent sources afirm that that an event took place , historians typically consider it a historical fact .... so why are you making an arbitrary exception with the empty tomb? ....

Yes, historians, with a historical event. Not with myth. Not with resurrecting deities. Apologetic theologians are not mainstream scholars.
All mainstream scholars consider the Gospel stories to be myth.

2:58 clear proof from a Dr in the field. "Mainstream scholars agree these are myths about Jesus" (the Gospels)

SkepticThinker · Apr 18, 2022

leroy said:
Why is that important? Any document falls or stands by its own merits, being inside or outside the Bible is irrelevant

Because that's how historicity works. You know the books of the Bible were all cherrypicked by a particular group of people with an agenda, right? Well, historians realize that too.

All the Harry Potter stories confirm other Harry Potter stories. But if we want to confirm the existence of witches and wizards, we need an outside source to turn to.

leroy · Apr 18, 2022

l

eroy said: ↑
Independent means that the authors didn't copied from each other (nor for a common source)

Sheldon said:
Er no it doesn't. this is another word you may want to learn the definition of, before making sweeping claims using it.

,. However you need to demonstrate a source outside of religion or the bible, before you can claim it to be independent. They are all based on hearsay.

No in the context of history (and research in general) independent means what I said it means……..and even more important, I am making the argument, therefore I am the one who decides which meaning do words have,

You don't even know who 4 of the gospels were written by.......

They're not independent sources, they are hearsay accounts, many of which are of unknown authorship,.

If one author copied form the other, then they are not independent (regardless if you know the names of the authors or not)

If none of them copied from each other (nor form a common source) then they are independent (regardless if you know the names of the authors or not)

Knowing the names of the authors is irrelevant to weather if the sources are independent or not.

and 3 of them heavily plagiarise parts of the other

Granted, for example the parts where Luke copied from Mark cannot be said to be independent. (for example we don’t have independent sources for say the existence of Barrabas)........ , if you what to argue that all the 6 sources copied form each other please be my guest and elaborate your argument-.

leroy · Apr 18, 2022

Sheldon said:
One would have to be an idiot to believe any text from unknown authors, can be asserted as independent. Is it possible unknown is another word you don't understand?

Really? Do you realize that you are an anonymous guy writing on this forum (nobody seems to know your name)

Does this means that:

1 everything you say is hearsay by default?

2 we can’t tell if there are other members in the forum with different views? (whose comments are independent of yours)?

The fact that we don’t know the names of the authors of the gospels is not a big deal, arguments and claims stand of fall by their own merits regardless if we know their names or not,

leroy · Apr 18, 2022

Sheldon said:
When was the source, written or unwritten, produced (date)?

Where was it produced (localization)?

By whom was it produced (authorship)?

From what pre-existing material was it produced (analysis)?

In what original form was it produced (integrity)?

What is the evidential value of its contents (credibility)?

Anything leaping out at you?

Lets see

1 within 1 generation after the event, Paul was written 25 years after the crucifixion, the gospel of John was written within 70 years after the crusifixtion, all the other sources somewhere in between. …. The relevant thing is that we are talking about 1 generation.

2 in Jerusalem in the areas around

3 Paul´s letter where written by Paul who knew Peter James and many other first generation Christians the gospels where written by well-informed people who knew the stuff happening in that time/place

4 Oral traditions and Creeds mainly.

5 current copies are surprisingly similar to the original manuscripts

6 it´s good enough (credible enough) at least when it comes to the empty tomb and the other 4 facts for the reasons exposed earlier.

leroy · Apr 18, 2022

Sheldon said:
I did justify it, with a rational argument, that unsurprisingly you have omitted here, and to make sure you have omitted the link. I do wonder if you think you can provoke me into an inappropriate response, if you employ relentless dishonesty like this?

If you do then allow me to assure you, it will not. Now if you want me to respond to a quote from one of my posts, reciprocate the courtesy I show you, and include a link to it, it's easy enough, since the quote function includes it automatically.

The fact that you what to earache in childish discussions strongly suggest that you are cornered and you don’t know how to get out.

If you reject the resurrection (or the empty tomb ) just provide an alternative hypothesis that you think is better….. if you’ll had that hypothesis you would have share it like 4 months ago

leroy · Apr 18, 2022

Sheldon said:
Thehistorians set a very different standard.

Ok and what are those standards? Or is it another case where you will not answer the question?........

Which is no doubt, why there is no scholarly consensus for an empty tomb, let alone your ludicrous hyperbole that is "is known to high degree of certainty."

ignoring the fact that there is no scholarly consensus on this and other claims you have made.

I told you, 75% of scholars accept the empty tomb, so it´s not consensus but it is a strong majority.

I'm not, you just don't understand what an independent source is, and are being deliberately dishonest in
s outside of the influence of religion and the bible that .

Quite frankly you sound like a conspiracy theorist “there is no evidence outside the influence of NASA and Government to support that astronauts ever went in to the moon”

Again the fact that we have multiple independent sources refute any hypothesis that the authors where lying or quoting from rumors because it is unlikely for multiple authors to invent the exact same lie.

Even if we grant that the authors where willingly to lie, (or easy to full) it would have been very importable for them to invent the exact same lie,

Sheldon · Apr 18, 2022

leroy said:
No in the context of history (and research in general) independent means what I said it means

No it doesn't. I linked 6 common criteria historians use to critically examine sources, you have simply and dishonestly ignored this.

leroy said:
more important, I am making the argument, therefore I am the one who decides which meaning do words have,

Try stamping your foot, see if that helps.

You can claim the earth is filled with cream cheese champ, but there is scholarly consensus for an historical Jesus, and the crucifixion, and not for the other claims you made. This is because there are sources independent of the bible and Christianity to corroborate those claims. The rest, like the alleged empty tomb for example, are hearsay.

leroy said:
If one author copied form the other, then they are not independent (regardless if you know the names of the authors or not)

I can see this is another word definition you're going to ignore.
Independent
adjective

free from outside control; not subject to another's authority.

Source criticism (or information evaluation) is the process of evaluating the qualities of an information source, such as its validity, reliability, and relevance to the subject under investigation.

When was the source, written or unwritten, produced (date)?
Where was it produced (localization)?
By whom was it produced (authorship)?
From what pre-existing material was it produced (analysis)?
In what original form was it produced (integrity)?
What is the evidential value of its contents (credibility)?

leroy said:
If none of them copied from each other (nor form a common source) then they are independent (regardless if you know the names of the authors or not)

Nope, you're still wrong, even as a simple word definition this is wrong, in terms of source criticism by historians, woefully so.

leroy said:
Knowing the names of the authors is irrelevant to weather if the sources are independent or not.

What has weather to do with it?

Whether

you understand or accept it, or whether you don't, there are strict criteria for evaluating historical sources, here are some common ones again then, since you seem to want to ignore them:

When was the source, written or unwritten, produced (date)?
Where was it produced (localization)?
By whom was it produced (authorship)?
From what pre-existing material was it produced (analysis)?
In what original form was it produced (integrity)?
What is the evidential value of its contents (credibility)?

Sheldon · Apr 18, 2022

leroy said:
Really? Do you realize that you are an anonymous guy writing on this forum (nobody seems to know your name)

So what?

leroy said:
Does this means that:

1 everything you say is hearsay by default?

That would depend if it can be substantiated or not, as the definition demonstrates. How can you still not understand a simple word definition? Also I am not being cited as an historical source.

leroy said:
The fact that we don’t know the names of the authors of the gospels is not a big deal,

it is a vital aspect of how historian evaluate source material, no matter how many times you ignore it.

Source criticism (or information evaluation) is the process of evaluating the qualities of an information source, such as its validity, reliability, and relevance to the subject under investigation.

When was the source, written or unwritten, produced (date)?
Where was it produced (localization)?
By whom was it produced (authorship)?
From what pre-existing material was it produced (analysis)?
In what original form was it produced (integrity)?
What is the evidential value of its contents (credibility)?

Sheldon · Apr 18, 2022

leroy said:
after the event, Paul was written 25 years after the crucifixion,

So second hand hearsay long after the event.

leroy said:
the gospel of John was written within 70 years after the crusifixtion,

So second hand hearsay two generations after the event.

leroy said:
all the other sources somewhere in between. ….

You don't know who the other sources were, and the earliest texts are in Greek.

leroy said:
The relevant thing is that we are talking about 1 generation.

No we're not, and this still wouldn't alter the fact it is hearsay, as it is unsubstantiated, as you've been told.

leroy said:
2 in Jerusalem in the areas around

Nonsense, you just admitted that 4 of the gospels authorship are entirely unknown, and the earliest texts are written in Greek. Again even were your claim true, it would remain hearsay.

leroy said:
6 it´s good enough (credible enough) at least when it comes to the empty tomb and the other 4 facts for the reasons exposed earlier.

Not using historical validation, which is why there is only a scholarly consensus for an historical Jesus and the crucifixion, your other claims are hearsay, second or third hand at best, and long after the alleged events.

Sheldon · Apr 18, 2022

leroy said:
If you reject the resurrection (or the empty tomb ) just provide an alternative hypothesis that you think is better….. if you’ll had that hypothesis you would have share it like 4 months ago

Argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy again, no one need disprove your claims, you need to properly demonstrate sufficient objective evidence to support them.

I also offered 4 hypothetical alternatives to a supernatural event, more than once, none of which require inexplicable magic or appeals to mystery, so I can only assume you're trolling again?

Sheldon · Apr 18, 2022

leroy said:
Ok and what are those standards? Or is it another case where you will not answer the question?........

I already posted 6 common criteria for source criticism that historians use, why don't you educate yourself for a change, but FYI historians generally don't claim second or third hand hearsay, from unknown sources are "known to be true to a high degree of certainty" as you claimed.

leroy said:
I told you, 75% of scholars accept the empty tomb, so it´s not consensus but it is a strong majority.

There is no scholarly consensus on the claim for an empty tomb. The article you linked referred to authors including historians and theologians. You may want to look consensus up as well, as I don't think it means what you think it means.

leroy said:
Quite frankly you sound like a conspiracy theorist

Ad hominem.

leroy said:
“there is no evidence outside the influence of NASA and Government to support that astronauts ever went in to the moon”

Straw man since I never claimed otherwise, but yes there absolutely is objective evidence they landed on the moon, if that's "in to" means. They left man made artefacts on the moon's surface, that can be detected for a start. It was also filmed live and shown around the world, did you not know this?

leroy said:
Again the fact that we have multiple independent sources

We don't have any sources independent of Christianity and the bible to support the claim for an empty tomb.

joelr · Apr 19, 2022

leroy said:
The Historicity of the Empty Tomb of Jesus | Reasonable Faith

(Reed point 8)

One further problem on your source. Considering your posts often contain somewhat inductive statements (since x is true wouldn't it be reasonable to say...) things on those lines.
William Lane Craig is is Professor of Philosophy at Houston Baptist University. A University that forces faculty to sign doctrinal statements that swear they will never go against the doctrines of scripture.

"Position Statement
The University was founded by the Union Baptist Association of Houston and is affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas (Convention). This Convention is a Baptist general body whose constituency is the cooperating Baptist churches of Texas. It is an “association of churches” in the terminology of the Internal Revenue Code. According to the University’s bylaws, a supermajority of the members of the University’s trustees must be active members of a Baptist church. Furthermore, all of the trustees must be professing Christians who adhere to the University’s preamble.

Preamble
The Preamble to the University By-Laws as stated below describes the distinctive nature of the institution......it is resolved that all those who become associated with Houston Baptist University as a trustee, officer, member of the faculty or of the staff, and who perform work connected with the educational activities of the University, must believe in the divine inspiration of the Bible, both the Old Testament and New Testament, that man was directly created by God, the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, as the Son of God, that He died for the sins of all men and thereafter arose from the grave, that by repentance and the acceptance of and belief in Him, by the grace of God, the individual is saved from eternal damnation and receives eternal life in the presence of God; and it is further resolved that the ultimate teachings in this University shall never be inconsistent with the above principles."

It's also known that they cannot endorse teachings that conflict this anywhere, not just on university.
Apologist scholar Mike Licona expressed a belief that the Saints coming up out of their graves and roaming the streets was just dramatic flare and not historical. He expressed it at a debate off campus. He was fired.

So no historical scholars believe the empty tomb definitely happened. Some may say it's a possibility. Some say it's definitely made up. All historians consider the Gospel narratives to be mythical. Your source is 100% bias and bound by his University position to say it's true.

joelr · Apr 19, 2022

leroy said:
Even if we grant that the authors where willingly to lie, (or easy to full) it would have been very importable for them to invent the exact same lie,

Ample evidence has been shown Mark invented the empty tomb. Matthew, Luke copied it. The 3rd redaction of John would be LATER and updated. Dr Carrier also believes John is a redaction of Mark. This accounts for all the sources. If there were oral tradition, this is another way John would have heard it. There are 2 ways John heard the story.

leroy said:
I told you, 75% of scholars accept the empty tomb, so it´s not consensus but it is a strong majority.

Now you are lying. We have an expert analysis on this Habernas paper. It is faulty. Your willingness to ignore related information shows no interest in finding truth. Only confirming beliefs.

This article explains the 75% paper is crank.

Habermas and the Devious Trick of Excluding the Middle

’ll ease you into my point by picking a “ra ra” example that atheists easily get behind and usually already are suspicious of: Gary Habermas’s frequent use of “statistics” to make an argument for the resurrection of Jesus from expert consensus, an argument that is then borrowed and regurgitated by mathematically gullible Christian apologists everywhere (up to and including William Lane Craig, when he isn’t lying about whose argument he is using). Atheists are usually already deeply suspicious here, but not usually for the most mathematical reason. So it’s a good, “safe” example.

Habermas claims to have cataloged thousands of articles on the resurrection of Jesus (the number of thousands always changes, presumably because he keeps expanding his database) and found that (roughly; the exact number varies depending on which article you read) 25% of “writers” on the subject of the resurrection of Jesus sided against an empty tomb and 75% “for.” In debates this gets translated into “75% of experts agree there was an empty tomb.” Which is false. And it’s false because of a mathematical mistake in the translation from what he actually said to what gets claimed publicly…a mistake, to my knowledge, Habermas makes no effort to correct, and which I suspect he is happy to encourage (and that’s if we charitably assume he is numerate enough to know it’s a mistake).

The latest article on this that I’ve read (I don’t know if he has published anything more recently on it) is Gary Habermas, “Experiences of the Risen Jesus: The Foundational Historical Issue in the Early Proclamation of the Resurrection,” in Dialog: A Journal of Theology 45.3 (Fall 2006): 288-97. Notably in that article he no longer says 75%, but from his sample of “2200” articles (which has increased since the 1400 he claimed in an earlier article) he now waffles by saying “70-75%.” But he doesn’t tell us how he calculated that—he doesn’t give any numbers, or name or date any of the items in his sample that are being set in ratio to each other.

Which is usually where atheist critics pounce: Habermas doesn’t release his data (still to this day; even after repeated requests, as some of those requesting it have told me), so his result can’t be evaluated. That makes his claim uncheckable. Which is a perversion of the peer review process. That basically makes this bogus number propaganda, not the outcome of any genuine research methodology. The closest I have ever seen him come to exposing how he gets this result was in his article “Resurrection Research from 1975 to the Present: What Are the Critical Scholars Saying?” in the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus (June 2005): 135-53.

There it is revealed that it is not 75% “of scholars,” but 75% of writers (regardless of qualifications) who have published articles arguing specifically for or against the empty tomb (he never gives an actual count that I know of). But those who publish on a specific issue do not represent a random sample, but could very well represent a biased sample (the more so when you include authors with no relevant qualifications), and so there is no way to assess the actual percentage of relevant scholars in the field who share those published conclusions. You would need a scientifically controlled randomized poll of verified experts. He hasn’t done that. And he shows no interest in ever doing it (despite having plenty of well-funded Christian institutes and universities he could appeal to for financing such a relatively simple project).
But my interest here is to get you to think of this mathematically. So even for that common rebuttal, look at it as a mathematician.

Suppose 75% of qualified experts in relevant fields (e.g. biblical studies, ancient history) actually reject the historicity of the empty tomb, and then those eager to oppose what was actually a general consensus against an empty tomb feel more motivated to submit those defenses for publication—especially given the readiness with which such defenses would be accepted by the plethora of religious journals. The result would be Habermas’s observed ratio of 75% in favor, yet it would be exactly the opposite of the actual consensus on the issue (which would be 75% against).

Compare someone who wanted to defend the existence of Atlantis: they would have a much harder time finding a kind reception—there are not dozens of pro-Atlantean journals out there, much less hundreds of Atlantis believers in the ranks of the academic elite—and yet even then I would not be surprised to find there were more articles in print defending Atlantis than attacking it, simply because those who don’t believe in it don’t think it worth their time to debunk, or regard one or two good debunking articles as sufficient to close the case. Only ardently denialist believers see the continual writing of such papers as worthwhile, precisely because the majority remains set against them no matter how many papers keep getting written, so they keep writing them—in frustration.

That’s just one way the sample could be biased. There are many others.

Therefore, even just on this fact alone, Habermas’s 75% statistic is completely useless. It tells us nothing about what a polled consensus of qualified experts actually is on the historicity of the empty tomb. Nothing. The rule to take away here is to always ask what is actually being counted in any statistic.

It’s only worse that Habermas counted even non-experts in his paper survey. Some of the names he does reveal in the JSHJ article as among those he counted are not qualified to derive reliable independent conclusions on a question of ancient history, like Richard Swinburne (who has zero qualifications in the study of ancient history and is only trained in modern philosophy and theology, and even then only fifty years ago). Hence Habermas’s “study” did not distinguish, say, professors of ancient history from professors of philosophy who can’t even read Greek—or even, so far as we know, distinguishing them from entirely unaccredited Christian apologists (since Habermas does not release his data, it cannot be ascertained how many of the thousands of articles he is including were written by completely unqualified Christian missionaries and the like). In short, he used no evident standard of qualification: every author was counted as equal to every other. That obviously biases the sample heavily toward Christian believers, and not objective, well-trained experts.

Another common objection atheists will raise is that even his own numbers destroy Habermas’s argument. If we granted him the benefit of the doubt (even though we now know we shouldn’t) and assume he is only counting qualified experts, his own math tells us that 25-30% of qualified experts reject the historicity of the empty tomb. That is by definition the absence of a consensus. That shows quite clearly a huge divide in the expert community, one that is suspiciously close to the ratio between professed Christians and non-Christians in that same community (a big red flag for ideological bias). So we cannot say the expert consensus supports the “fact” of an empty tomb. Even using Habermas’s own math.

This is an important point, because this is another common mathematical error: ignoring the outliers. Jumping from “70-75%” to “most” is a trick designed to make you think that “most” means 95% or something, when really a huge number (from a quarter to almost a third) disagree. We want to know why. And thinking about the math compels you to ask why. And how many. Hence always ask about the outliers in any statistic: how many people are not in agreement with what is being claimed to be the “majority” or the “norm,” and why.

A third point, one a bit rarer to hear because atheists debating this point often don’t check, is to look at not just what and who is being counted, but its relative value. Some random Christian hack arguing for the empty tomb with arguments even Habermas agrees are bogus, should not be allowed to count at all. Yet Habermas makes no distinction for quality or merit of argumentation. Which destroys the whole point of trying to ascertain (much less argue from) an expert consensus. If the consensus you are polling is based on obviously false claims and invalid methodologies, then that consensus is not worth anything. At all. (I show this is pretty much the case for the historicity of Jesus in chapter one of Proving History.)

So it is very telling that Habermas says (in his article for JSHJ) that “most” of the scholars he counted on the pro side of the empty tomb debate “hold that the Gospels probably would not have dubbed [women] as the chief witnesses unless they actually did attest to this event,” which apart from being incorrect (not a single Gospel identifies any woman as its source, much less “chief” source—we merely “presume” this because the story puts them there, but that becomes a circular argument, as all the Gospels after Mark have men verify the fact, while Mark says no one even reported the fact, not even the women!), is also based on incorrect claims about the ancient world (women’s testimony was fully trusted—as even Habermas admits in the very same paragraph! See my complete discussion of this point in chapter eleven of Not the Impossible Faith). If even Habermas admits “most” of his 75% are relying on an invalid argument, then even if the count really were 75%, it’s still wholly invalid, because “most” of those scholars are thereby in fact wrong—by Habermas’s own inadvertent admission, no less. Thus he shouldn’t be counting them in defense of the fact. Yet he does! And every other Christian apologist aping him just does the same, not even realizing what a total cock-up this is.

And yet none of that is even the most damning.

Here is where my point about numeracy really kicks in. More egregious than all those other faults I’ve already mentioned, Habermas’s study only counted people who specifically wrote articles on the empty tomb pro or con. You might not immediately see what’s mathematically wrong with that. But when you start seeing everything mathematically, you will see the mistake right away. It sticks out like a sore thumb.

joelr · Apr 19, 2022

leroy said:
I told you, 75% of scholars accept the empty tomb, so it´s not consensus but it is a strong majority.

,

Habermas cheats, p2:

In any poll counting opinions or conclusions, those who say yay and those who say nay almost never constitute the entire sample polled. In fact, quite frequently, the majority—sometimes even the vast majority—say neither. That’s right. Habermas’s “study” did not count agnostics, people who believe the evidence currently leaves the question undecided, or who haven’t exhaustively checked both sides of the debate and thus personally admit they don’t know, or those who even claim it can’t be known on present evidence whether there really was an empty tomb. And yet in my personal experience these three categories actually define most scholars with Ph.D.’s in relevant fields. For every article “against” an empty-tomb counted in Habermas’s study I’m certain we can find at least two agnostics (and probably more), so even from Habermas’s own math I can be confident at least 50% of qualified experts do not believe there was an empty tomb—because they either believe there wasn’t one or do not believe it to be known one way or the other.

Just do the math. If Habermas counts 3 writers pro and 1 writer con (for 75% against 25%, his most favorable statistic, which he waffled on later), and if for every writer con we can find at least 2 qualified experts who have never and would never publish on the matter because they deem it an unknowable question, then the ratio will be 3 pro and 3 non-pro (1 + 2 = 3). Notice how non-pro is a very different thing than counting just those arguing con. Yet the law of excluded middle requires us to count all the people in that middle category (the “I don’t knows”). Habermas tries to hide them by only counting the tail ends of the spectrum (the ones arguing pro and the ones arguing con, hoping you don’t notice the huge number of experts he just excluded by that false dichotomy). But when we bring them back in, we start to see the expert community might actually be at least evenly divided on the question (because with agnostics estimated in, it’s more likely going to be closer to 50/50), and given the previous problems already noted (which entail his 75% is probably already hugely inflated), it starts to look like the majority consensus of experts is not in favor of the historicity of the empty tomb.

Just do the math again: if really the expert community has as many experts in each category as in every other (as many who argue pro as who argue con, and just as many who conclude it can’t be known either way on present evidence), then only 33% of the expert community believes the empty tomb is a fact (1:1:1 = 33% pro : 33% con : 33% agnostic). And I’ll bet the number is even lower than that. Because I’m personally fairly certain the agnostics are a far larger proportion of the expert community than either the pros or the cons (certainly when we limit our polling only to experts with relevant qualifications, as we should). Given that I am certain we can find at least two agnostics for every expert who argues con, I expect it’s really closer to 1:1:2, which is 25% pro : 25% con : 50% agnostic. Which would mean 75% don’t conclude there was an empty tomb, the exact opposite of Habermas’s claim. And this, even from his own numbers, and obvious facts he omits, and despite the fact that even experts in this area are majority Christian!

But it gets worse. Because Habermas admits “most” of the arguers pro rely on what even he agrees is an invalid argument, that means more than 50% of those counted in the pro column (“most”) should be eliminated from it (because “most” entails “more than half”). So if we had 3 pro and 3 con and 3 agnostic, now we have to subtract 1.5 from the pro count. Possibly we’d have to reduce the other columns, but we can’t know from anything Habermas has said, and he hasn’t released his data, so all we know for certain is that more than half of those arguing pro must be discounted, by his own inadvertent admission. And that leaves us with 1.5:3:3, which is the same proportion as 3:6:6, which divides the total community into fifteen portions (3 + 6 + 6 = 15), of which less than 20% is occupied by experts who believe there was an empty tomb (1/15 = 0.0667; 0.0667 x 3 = 0.20). Or if we use that more realistic proportion of 1:1:2 I just showed is not unlikely (twice as many agnostics as argue either pro or con), and then cut the first in half, we get 0.5:1:2, which is the same as 2:4:8, which divides the sample into fourteen (2 + 4 + 8 = 14), of which less than 15% is occupied by experts who believe there was an empty tomb (1/14 = 0.0714; 0.0714 x 2 = 0.143). And that’s still before we remove non-expert opinions from his totals, which very likely will drop that percentage even further. But even without that, already a mere 15% approval of the empty tomb’s historicity is getting suspiciously near the proportion of hard-core Biblical inerrantists in the expert community. Now we’re staring at a huge red flag for bias. In any event, a definite minority; because by these estimates, four times more experts do not believe the empty tomb is an established fact as do…or even six times more (if the pros make up 15% instead of 20%).

It’s not looking good for the empty tomb. And all because we can do a little math.

And that’s using nothing more than Habermas’s own numbers, which are already inflated and bogus, plus just a few undeniable likelihoods he tries to conceal from his own arithmetic.

So really, even based on the bogus data Habermas himself presents in defense of the claim that “most experts believe there was an empty tomb,” we can conclude it’s far more probable that most experts do not believe there was an empty tomb—either being certain there wasn’t, or admitting they don’t know.dropped this claim about the empty tomb. It’s no longer something he insists most scholars believe. So much for that.

joelr · Apr 19, 2022

leroy said:
Lets see

1 within 1 generation after the event, Paul was written 25 years after the crucifixion, the gospel of John was written within 70 years after the crusifixtion, all the other sources somewhere in between. …. The relevant thing is that we are talking about 1 generation.

Average human lifetime was 38 years. Was not 1 generation. The consensus opinions on dating - The four canonical gospels were probably written between AD 66 and 110.

leroy said:
2 in Jerusalem in the areas around

In a foreign language.

leroy said:
3 Paul´s letter where written by Paul who knew Peter James and many other first generation Christians the gospels where written by well-informed people who knew the stuff happening in that time/place

Paul also claimed to get messages from a demigod in Heaven. Not a good source.

Nowhere in the Gospels do they ever name their sources of information, nor do they read as eye witness testimonies (nor do they identify themselves as such), nor is it mentioned why any sources used would be accurate to rely upon. The authors never discuss any historical method used, nor do they acknowledge how some contents may be less accurate than others, nor do they mention alternate possibilities of the events given the limited information they had from their sources. The Greeks were commonly using this fictional biographical technique as a popular rhetorical device where they were taught to invent narratives about famous and legendary people, as well as to build a symbolic or moral message within it, and where they were taught to make changes to traditional stories in order to make whatever point they desired within their own stories.
There is no Roman documentation or archeological artifact to support the Barabbas story but it does obviously emulates the Jewish Yom Kippur ritual about atonement. The point of the story.
Barabbas means ‘Son of the Father’ in Aramaic, coincidence? In the story Barabbas is the militant messiah and Jesus is the suffering servant messiah. Multiple allegorical layers weaved into one.
In Mark we also have narratives from Jesus ben Ananias (verbatim), Kings, Psalms, the wilderness narrative of Moses, elements of Isaiah 53, Zechariah 9-14, and Wisdom 2 as sources for his narratives, makes a version of Elisha in 2 Kings 4.17-37 and clearly reworks many of the stories from Paul or uses him verbatim. There are at least 6 peer-reviewed papers on this alone.
This isn't all of the sources but it does leave very little room for any oral tradition.
From these sources Mark is making this up.
Before you say this is considered a historical biography, Plutarch’s Life of Romulus is also written as a historical biography.

leroy said:
4 Oral traditions and Creeds mainly.

As we have seen the oral tradition is largely ruled out.

leroy said:
5 current copies are surprisingly similar to the original manuscripts

There were 40 gospels. The first canon was the Marcionite Canon. Completely unknown to us now. 2nd century was 50% Gnostic. For about One Hundred and Fifty Years different Gnostic Christians argued with Marcionite and other sects. All wildly different. The modern canon was decided in 367 AD. Because those 4 random documents match some early documents that doesn't mean much.
But the first 200 years being complete confusion really demonstrates there ARE NO FACTS here. Just competing legends.

leroy said:
6 it´s good enough (credible enough) at least when it comes to the empty tomb and the other 4 facts for the reasons exposed earlier.

As we have seen there is excellent evidence all 4 Gospels sourced Mark.
The consensus among mainstream scholars is the Gospel narratives are myth, loosely based on a person.
Habernas paper is bias and uses faulty methods.
Any events in a myth may be and are likely fiction.
If you believe apologists are only interested in telling things that are true rather than bending the truth in various ways to get results they set out to achieve you will always be wrong.

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