The resurrection part deux.

Posted on by Ark

In my ongoing discussion about the evidence or lack thereof for the physical resurrection of the character Jesus of Nazareth the topic of historical reliability of the Gospels and Acts is a major part of our online chat.

The Pastor maintains it is the historical reliability of the Gospels and Acts that helps to firmly maintain his unwavering belief the physical resurrection of the character Jesus of Nazareth is an historical fact.

I posed this question: If the claims of the Gospels/ Acts were shown to be without question historically unreliable would you reconsider your stance on the resurrection?

To my surprise he answered, yes.

I immediately replied how many examples of historical unreliability would he need before reconsidering the resurrection to be fact, 1, 10, 50?

I am awaiting his reply which he assures me will be forthcoming shortly.

In the meantime, I am throwing the question open to you clever lot.

How many Gospel / Acts examples of unequivocal historical unreliability are you aware of, and can list?

Ark.

60 thoughts on “The resurrection part deux.”

  1. To me your Pastor has painted himself into a corner. Anything written is unreliable because it’s subjective, peppered with assumption, bias etc. And then copies are made. Whereas for me God alone is reliable, as is Jesus Christ (tho I think he made honest mistakes); God is reliable and life isn’t and so goes the mystery of flesh and blood and spirit.

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          1. Cute! CGI maybe? I do think God has a sense of humor.
            But yes, life is neverending everyday miracles. I think Jesus’s were way less spectacular than reported.

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    3. Arnold, how do you know of Jesus Christ except for the witness of others? The New Testament Gospel is the personal, subjective witness of people with bias. One day you will question your faith, find it pitifully lacking and then like so many others before you, you will become an atheist.

      What do you know of God other than what was brainwashed into to you?

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      1. I constantly question my faith, it is lacking. Yet I never seem to question God-with-us. Because I trust HIS witness in me more than people’s. I love the Bible stories but c’mon, I’m a Bible story too; the kingdom of God is here and now so I live it. I may be way wrong but it’s how I want to live.

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        1. Arnold, You are making witness to Jesus Christ in a written comment, the same way as written about in the Bible.

          “Anything written is unreliable because it’s subjective,” you wrote.

          Therefore, by your own words, you are unreliable.

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          1. Exactly! It’s my opinion. I’ve studied and lived the Bible for years and I’m at this point. We’re all different.

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          4. I’m good with that because rather than a True Christian I lean towards ‘becoming as a child’ in need of an ongoing guiding relationship with my Father.

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  3. What created God? If God exists, where does God exist? My question to the faithful is, “Where is heaven?” I asked a devout Mormon (a distant cousin of mine) that question and he just put me off by saying, “That isn’t the sort of question that people ask about religion.” I say it is a delusion perpetrated by the deluded faithful and children get the idea of imaginary immaterial entities existing somewhere outside of their imagination, when really the only place these entities can exist is in the human minds the created them. All religions depend on this belief in the supernatural. GROG

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    1. My standard reply to such a question is (always in good faith, mind; I’m nothing if not sincere) “Where did ol’ God come from?” (The God in question being the Creator of Hev’n and Earth, the stars and the planets; the universal whole shebang entire in fact.)
      And then the standard answer is “Nobody created God, He eternally was!”—
      —but it seems a wee bit unfair that some folks (them) are allowed their uncreated eternal and others (us) aren’t allowed our uncreated eternal.
      The obvious compromise here is that the Universe itself is God. (Yes, no, maybe?)
      Then, as part of the divine, we should be worshipping each other.
      So, as a mean and vindictive OT God I feel like being worshipped right now … get on with it, or you’ll cop a plague of frogs. (I mean it, chop-chop!)

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  4. Ark…At this point in time I think we are all waiting for Truth to come out into the open. The problem is with all of the false information floating around…will we know when the truth finely arrives? God may have to step out of the clouds and with all of this AI crap even then …will we know.?

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  5. The people responsible for the Jesus Seminar didn’t stop there. They continued on to do an “Acts Seminar.” They published a book on their findings which I read at one point. From memory I thought they thought Acts was largely ahistorical, with the historical bits that were verifiable being fairly trivial. So, larding a work with historical facts doesn’t make it historical in nature. Spiderman did live in New York, don’t you know.

    Here is one commenters summary of what they found:

    In sum:

    The Acts narrative is worthless as history of first century Christianity, but quite informative as history of second century Christianity;

    it provides us no reason to believe that Christianity began in Jerusalem — the Jerusalem centre of the faith was a myth created for second century ideological reasons;

    some of its characters are fictional and their names symbolic;

    Acts was created as a type of Christian “epic” (coherent and literary throughout, not a patchwork quilt of diverse sources) and as such, we have reasons to believe, is no more historical than Homer’s or Virgil’s epics;

    the author did, indeed, know of the letters of Paul;

    and finally, one of its main reasons for being written was to counter Marcion’s “heresy”.

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  7. How do we define ‘unreliable’~?
    Be careful here because faith in the unprovable indemonstrable improbable unlikely is actually considered reliable enough by many. (Might replicability be helpful?)

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    1. Well, this is the point of the question, is it not? We try to weed out the faithy bits and establish the real life evidence based historical bits.
      Not allow any bias to creep in and work within agreed and known parameters.
      Then it eventually comes to the point where we ask: How much leeway do we allow, if any at all?

      If we accept that something like the sermon on the mount could not possibly be a verbatim recorded speech, why do believers accept the resurrection story as fact?

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      1. They HAVE TO! Otherwise their faith is of no avail.

        And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. (1 Corinthians 15:14 NIV)

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        1. Goodness! In New Zealand in the 1960s, a 2-day heresy trial was broadcast live on national television when Dr Lloyd Geering, then Dean of the Knox Theological College, was charged with teaching a false doctrine that there was no Resurrection, no Ascension, and man has no Immortal Soul. The conclusion that there was no case to answer more or less settled the matter here. In subsequent decades he went on to expand his secular version of Christianity for which he was Knighted, and later awarded the Order of New Zealand – our highest award, military or civilian, which can be held by no more than 20 living persons (currently 15) – for services to religion no less. My question is why does the American form of evangelicalism seem to be the default understanding of Christianity by so many non-Christians, even here in Aotearoa?

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          2. As a New Zealander I didn’t know about that heresy trial, something like that would be unthinkable today! I’m glad NZ has become a much more secular country now.

            In an attempt to answer your question, my guess would be that the evangelicals (especially the fundies) tend to make the most noise, especially as they feel more threatened now. Other brands of Christianity tend to care much less about how others live (or what you do in your bedroom). So non-Christians therefore associate Christians with the more extreme fundy types.

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          3. NZ wasn’t that religious even back then. The charge of teaching false doctrine was brought to the Presbyterian synod by a single lay member of the church. A single ordained minister had more sense than claim doctrinal error so he charged Geering with disturbing the peace of the church. The thing was, that for a while matters of Christian faith became matters of conversation and discussion everywhere – even in pubs, sports clubs, at the beach, etc. as well as within church settings.

            But I think you are wrong about another heresy trial being unthinkable today. Back then fundamentalism was a new American import just becoming to make its presence felt, and some established denominations were beginning to become aware that there were elements within their own ranks wanting to go in a more conservative/fundamentalist direction. Those elements are now stronger within the established churches and have also formed fundamentalist/evangelical churches of their own. I’m sure “Bishop” Brian Tamaki would be only too happy charge high ranking members of his Destiny Church with heresy if any of them were brave enough to step out of line with his version of Christianity.

            I think you partially hit the nail on the head with why non-Christians perceive the evangelical fundamentalists as the Christian norm. They are certainly the most strident, the loudest. I do think the more liberal churches do speak out about their perspective and values just as often, but because those values mostly align with the general public, they are not controversial enough to be news worthy, seldom reported, hence go unnoticed.

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          4. If you compare the NZ Census data between a few decades ago and today, there is a huge difference between the proportion of people claiming to believe in Christianity – and there was a lot more back then compared to now. But yes, New Zealand was probably never on the same level as the US, or what several European countries were/are.

            For the heresy trial bit, I doubt it would happen in NZ. Yes we do have our crazies, but for “heresy” to be in common law, it would have to have some level of mainstream support. America on the other hand? They’re certainly going backwards it seems.

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      2. They accept it because it’s in the Good Book … ergo it is The Bible Truth.

        (Sheesh … and they call us dogs dum …)

        As for your statement above, if an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite pile of sharpened quills and an infinite supply of ink and infinitely sufficient paper sat on an infinite pile of cushions and were given long enough … they’d eventually come up with the Holey Bible, word perfect.

        Does this fact assist or detract from the Bible truth?

        Well then, what’s so special about the Mounted Sermon? Any buncha monks could do it too … eventually.

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        1. my own take on it is, these were tales (much like Chaucer’s gifts) told around the fires at night, to entertain, to instruct, to pass the time. Some of them were saved and written down when somebody learned how to write. 

          Not unlike our modern day fairy tales, these were often cautionary tales about giants and ghosts and Scary Monsters that over time became folklore and when no one said, ‘yes, but…” they became real. Goliath. Ten Commandments to keep people from destroying themselves. People turned into pillars of salt as punishment. The tower of Babel. After a few hundred centuries they had moved away from fairy tales and turned into reality that no one could disprove.

          When I was in highschool the parish priest warned us not to watch magic acts or magicians. He never gave us a reason, and he would have been wiser not to mention it. Suddenly I remembered the magic trick where the magician converts the water into milk, and then back again. Not unlike ‘water into wine…” And once you see that, you start seeing the other ones, including mass hypnosis…

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      3. As for leeway … I generally allow an idiot all the rope he/she needs to hang itself. Sometimes I’ll even put my paw on the knot to anchor it whilst they tighten (us dogs are subtle like that) their noose.

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  8. At the risk of repeating myself ad nauseum to many here about the UNreliability of the entire Greek New Testament and Hebrew Old Testament, I beg you all’s forgiveness for my sinful, heathen nature again. 😈😁

    Ark, here is a diagram/inter-active project of what many historical and biblical scholars—including secular Jews today—have revealed as implausible, wholly false, or blatant ridiculousness and absurdity in the Greco-Roman Bible:

    https://philb61.github.io/index.html

    Sorry, it is wonderfully extensive in its coverage and thus will take some time to fully examine then share with your Pastorized friend, as Argus appropriately labelled. 😉

    I know of a warehouse full of Gospel/Acts contradictions, historical inaccuracies, and down right blatant fabrication by the Early Church Fathers of the eventual Roman Catholic Church. For example, from BartEhrman.com and the historical reliability of Acts, these eight images following… below in comment-replies…

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    3. But because historical & biblical scholars are very afraid to make a hardfast stance on biblical UNreliability, they make diluted, safe, generic comments like up above. Grrrrr, pfffft! 😠🤦‍♂️

      I mean, how is easy is it for story-tellers of fiction to throw in well-known popular historical events to garner a form of truth and non-fiction? I could name over 100 popular docufilms or docudramas that use this SAME license and technique to generate more revenues/profits for the story and or “historical” article/essay.

      Bottom-line? The Greco-Roman New Testament, especially Acts & the Synoptic Gospels, are cinematic license in order to attract 1st thru 3rd-century Gentiles familiar with long established traditions of Greco-Roman Apotheosis and apostolic doings. Period.

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      1. I concur. A few years back I watched a travel documentary where an American TV crew travelled from Auckland to Wellington supposedly on SH1, and although not stated specifically, the implication that it was a linear journey from north to south. So either the order of travel did not match the sequence as presented in the documentary or they back tracked so often that the journey would have been up to an order of magnitude longer than necessary. Anyone not familiar with NZ would assume that Rotorua is south of Lake Taupo, that there’s a major wine growing region somewhere in Taranaki, and that the Southern Alps parallel part of the journey from Auckland to Wellington. And of course it’s even worse in docudramas and films based on real events or people. Such discrepancies irritate me, but it seems very few others.

        So if such inaccuracies are permitted to occur in the 20th and 21st centuries without too much criticism all in the name of engaging storytelling, then there is absolutely no grounds for insisting accuracy in the gospels.

        The doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy is a peculiarly American doctrine which American missionaries have “successfully exported” to other parts of the world. The doctrine plays virtually no role in the British evangelical movement. Some of the discussion here seems to assume that inerrancy has had a long history within Christianity, But it was a response to emerging liberal or non-literal interpretations of the Bible in the 19th century, that evangelical leaders felt the need to articulate a clear stance on the “accuracy and authority” of the Bible.

        That culminated in the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, which states that the Bible is without error or fault in all its teaching. Evangelical churches embraced this statement as a cornerstone belief, affirming the absolute accuracy of the Bible. What surprises me is how many people think this has always been the default Christian position. It isn’t.

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        1. That culminated in the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, which states that the Bible is without error or fault in all its teaching. Evangelical churches embraced this statement as a cornerstone belief, affirming the absolute accuracy of the Bible. What surprises me is how many people think this has always been the default Christian position. It isn’t.

          Yes, very much agreed Barry! There are not enough days in the year, including Leap Year 😉, to tell you how many times here in the Deep South and fringe Texas of that former Confederacy, I heard that audacious lie. Heard it multiple times from my former in-laws as well as a few of my maternal cousins who had gone into the pastoral ministry. They were all, and still are, those exact same Evangy-Fundamentalists of biblical infallibility. Astonishingly sad really. 😔

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      2. Ark, I have completed Part I of “Paul, Acts, Forgeries & Marcion.” It will publish at 3am CST here.

        Arnold and Silence of His Own Mind should also read the entire series along with all the citations in the series. There banter cracked me up because that is the vast majority of Christendom and their blind Faith-followers, bickering amongst themselves since 30-33 CE. 😄

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        1. Read it. Good job.
          I am keen to read your take on the Saul/Marcion conundrum.

          4-2 on penalties. Phew! That was very fortunate for your lot.
          Congrats all the same.
          Or to quote Life of Brian:. “You lucky bastard(s)”

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          1. “Lucky bastard(s)” indeed. That was a nail-biter for me, but very fortunate Raya made some outstanding PK saves! 😁 Ugh, but still nerve racking. 😬

            I’ll be getting back over to my new blog-post later this morning to answer comments, but have a couple of vehicular errands that must be run and probably some phone calls too to dayum businesses/corporations here that are monthly pains in the ass. 😡 Too dayum big for their knickers/britches!

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  9. The thing is … no matter how much “proof” is offered –AND validated– the True Believers™ refuse to accept anything outside of what they have been taught in Sunday School or from the pulpit.

    The pastors of most evangelical churches have simply been “called” to preach and have no training or education outside of what they themselves have learned from sitting in the congregation each Sunday.

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    1. To once more adapt and misuse a statement from a successful general of the US civil war—

      “… battles are won by whoever gets there firstest with the mostest”

      —I find little fault with the theory and I love the succinctness of his wording. Relevance? Ask yourself, why is a Christian country Christian, why are Islamic countries Islamic, etc?

      In the past some have described religions as battles for Man’s soul. I describe them as warfare for Man’s mind …

      …and behind it all; for man’s pelf.

      Think about it: if folks stopped funding their religions, how long would any religion last?

      If the “holy” men (women, and undecideds) had to grow their own carrots, weave their own sackcloth, burn their own ashes (meaning literally, to fund themselves from their own resources, dammit~!) … then what?

      Then the bright ones among them would invent new religions that the glib ones would deliver convincingly; that’s what. Yes? No? Maybe?

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    2. The Pastor I am in dialogue with seems to fit this profile.

      He is adament about the historical reliability of the Gospels and Acts and therefore has no reason to doubt the claims of the resurrection.

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  11. To cut to the chase (again)—

    God is omniscient. (Ergo He knows what YOU are going to do, before you know yourself. (Yes, no, maybe?)

    So if He knows your choice, then you can only choose as He knows. (Yes, no, maybe?)

    So I say that you don’t have any choice. All you have is the self-delusion of choice; your freedom to choose … simply isn’t.

    Looking at the larger picture, then—

    —before you were born (hundreds, thousands, millions of years/aeons before you were born) … God, being omniscient knew which way your every choice would go. (Yes, no, maybe?)

    Do YOU have Free Will?

    I say not. Any foreknowledge of the future blows ‘Free Will’ right out of the water. (Yes, no, maybe?)

    Be advised, I raise this point anywhere and everywhere; but wait, it gets better … nobody has yet refuted it. (Actually, nobody has been silly enough to even try.)

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  13. Chapter deux, eh?

    Can’t wait for the next episode of this pine tingling saga.

    What shall we name it?

    – Lie Hard 3:Lie Hard With a Vengeance?
    – The Pastor Strikes Back?
    – The Search for Ad Hock?
    – The Jesus Ultimatum?
    The Dark Knight Rises?

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