Well, it’s that time of year again. Regular church attendees are going to have to share their pews with people who have finally decided to make it out for their second service of the year. Their belief that Jesus bled and died so they can gain eternal salvation might be unshakable, but it apparently isn’t all that motivating, considering how little these believers seem to do in response. Nevertheless, they can at least be counted on to show up for a retelling of Jesus’s miraculous birth.
But what version will they hear? More than likely, they’ll hear a “Hollywood” version of the tale that incorporates the most exciting elements of the two versions that we read about in Matthew and Luke. A quick Google search turned up this one, which illustrates my point perfectly. But what if someone tried to tell the full version? A version that included every detail that both Matthew and Luke provide?
Honestly, it just can’t be done. I had wanted to attempt it here, but there’s just no practical way to do it. For example, the version I linked to above goes like this:
The Standard Tale
- Mary’s visited by an angel who tells her about the pregnancy (Luke)
- She and Joseph live in Nazareth of Galilee, but are forced to travel to Bethlehem in Judea for a census commanded by the Roman authorities (Luke)
- They’re unable to find normal accommodations and are forced to room in an area intended for livestock. Mary gives birth there and is visited by local shepherds (Luke)
- Wise men far to the east see a star that somehow signifies the birth of the Jewish Messiah (Matthew)
- They travel for an unspecified period until they reach Jerusalem, where they inquire about the child (Matthew)
- These inquiries reach Herod, the ruler of the region, and he asks the wise men to send back word to him once they find the child, so Herod himself can also pay his respects (Matthew)
- The wise men make their way to Bethlehem, find the family, bestow their gifts, and return home via a different route (Matthew)
- An angel tells Joseph to hightail it out of Bethlehem, because Herod’s sending a posse to wipe out all the children 2 years old and under in an effort to stamp out Jesus (Matthew)
- Joseph and his family flee to Egypt and remain there until an angel tells him it’s safe to return, because Herod has died (Matthew)
- Joseph intends to go back toward Bethlehem, but after finding out that Herod’s son is in charge, he takes the family to Nazareth in Galilee (Matthew)
So what’s wrong with this story? I mean, it’s very cohesive, and it makes for a compelling tale. What’s not to like? Its only real problem is that the very books of the Bible that provide its details, contradict its overall narrative.
Two Very Different Stories
Let’s go back to Luke’s version. After Jesus’s birth and the visit from the shepherds, we don’t read about wise men or Herod’s animosity. Instead, Luke 2:22 says that after the days of Mary’s purification were over, the family went to Jerusalem. The “days of purification” are referring to Leviticus 12:1-4, where the Law of Moses stated that a woman was to be considered “unclean” for 40 days after giving birth to a male child. So when Jesus was about 40 days old, Luke claims that they all traveled to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices as thanks for his birth. While there, two elderly people see Jesus and begin proclaiming praise and prophecies concerning Jesus. And there’s no indication that an effort was made to keep any of this quiet, which is very different in tone to what we read in Matthew. Finally, in Luke 2:39, we read “And when they had performed everything according to the Law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth.” We’ll come back to this point in a moment.
The synopsis we looked at earlier incorporated most of Matthew’s version of the story. As we just read, his story ends very differently from Luke’s. However, it’s also significant to note that Matthew gives no indication that Joseph and Mary are from Nazareth. Matt 1:18 through the end of the chapter talks about Mary’s pregnancy, even though she and Joseph had never slept together, but it never specifies where they’re living. Chapter 2 begins with the sentence “Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, ‘Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?'” Of course, it’s possible that Matthew still knew they were originally from Nazareth and just doesn’t bother to tell us that or divulge how they got to Bethlehem in the first place. But there are three context clues that point against such a possibility. First of all, regardless of how far the wise men had to journey, it likely took them quite a while to make the trip. When Matthew says “the east” he certainly doesn’t mean “east Jersualem,” and travel being what it was back then, any journey would have taken considerable time. The second clue is that Herod supposedly kills all the male children of Bethlehem who are 2 and under. So it’s unlikely that we’re supposed to still be thinking of Jesus as a newborn. Finally, Matthew says that when the family was able to leave Egypt, Joseph wanted to go back to Judea (where Bethlehem is). But after finding out Herod’s son was ruling, he became afraid and “went and lived in a city called Nazareth” (Matt 2:23). This is a very strange way to refer to Nazareth, if it’s where Joseph and Mary were already living.
So Matthew gives no indication that Joseph and Mary were just visiting Bethlehem. He never mentions a manger; instead, he references a house that they were staying in. He never talks about the shepherds from the fields, but has wise men who visit the child. He includes a story about Herod slaughtering a town’s children, though no other historical or biblical source ever mentions this. He claims that the family flees to Egypt until Herod’s death, that they want to return to Bethlehem, but finally settle in “a city called Nazareth.”
Luke, on the other hand, says that Nazareth is their home town, and they’re only visiting Bethlehem. He has no story about wise men, but does talk about shepherds from the fields that visit the newborn Jesus. Instead of Herod attempting to hunt them down and a subsequent flight to Egypt, the family travels straight to Jerusalem, where Herod lives. And there’s no effort to keep Jesus’s identity secret while they’re there, as two elderly prophets begin proclaiming who he is. And after making their sacrifices, the family simply goes back home to Nazareth, far from Herod’s reach (not that Luke indicates Herod’s even interested).
Can These Stories Be Put Together?
The main sticking points between the stories are the flight to Egypt and the trip to Jerusalem. On the one hand, Luke is very clear about his timeline: Jesus was only about 40 days old when they went to Jerusalem and then went home to Nazareth. Matthew doesn’t give specifics on how old Jesus was when the family was forced to flee to Egypt, except that it must have occurred before he was 2 years old.
Could the trip to Egypt have happened before the trip to Jerusalem?
No. First of all, considering all the details Luke provides, why would he have left out such an important event? Secondly, this means Herod would have needed to die within the 40 day purification period, but Matthew tells us that this still wouldn’t have been good enough, because Joseph was determined to avoid all of Judea while Herod’s son was reigning. There’s simply no way he would have felt safe enough to travel directly into Jerusalem. That just makes no sense.
Could the trip to Egypt have happened after the trip to Jerusalem?
No. Luke 2:39 is clear that the family went straight back to Nazareth after their trip to Jerusalem. And considering Luke claimed that Nazareth was already their home, why would they have needed to go back to Bethlehem anyway?
In fact, Luke’s claim that the family was from Nazareth creates a lot of problems for Matthew’s account. Nazareth was far outside of Herod’s reach. So if Herod really had hunted Jesus in Bethlehem, the family could have simply gone back to Nazareth rather than flee to Egypt. But this isn’t a consideration in Matthew’s account, because for him, the family has never been to Nazareth until they simply can’t go back to Bethlehem anymore, even after Herod’s death (Matt 2:23).
Additional Problems
I don’t want to spend too much time here, but for completeness sake, I need to mention a couple of historical issues. Both Matthew and Luke say that Jesus is born during the reign of Herod the Great. Historians usually place his death in 4 BCE, which means Jesus would have been born sometime before that. However, Luke says that Mary and Joseph had traveled to Bethlehem, because Quirinius, the governor of Syria, had commanded a census. However, Quirinius didn’t become governor of Syria until 6 CE — 10 years after Herod’s death. You can find additional resources about these two issues here.
Finally, Luke’s claim is that this census required Joseph to travel back to his ancestral home of Bethlehem, since he was of King David’s lineage. But David would have lived some 1000 years before Joseph. It’s ludicrous to think that the Romans would have cared about such a thing, or that they would have wanted their empire to be so disrupted by having people move around like that for a census. It would have been an impossible feat and would have made for a highly inaccurate, and therefore useless, census.
What Do We Make of All This?
The easiest way to understand why these accounts have such major differences in detail is to understand why either writer bothered with a story about Jesus’s birth at all. You have to remember that the writers of Matthew and Luke didn’t know one another and didn’t know that they were both working on the same material. They certainly didn’t know that their books would one day show up in the same collection. Both of them were working with two basic facts: Micah 5:2 seemed to prophesy that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem; Jesus came from Nazareth (John 1:45-46).
Since those two facts were at odds with one another, it’s easy to see how both writers would have been compelled to explain how Jesus could be from Nazareth but still be from Bethlehem. Unfortunately for them, close comparison shows that both versions simply can’t be true.
How would people react if they showed up for church this weekend and were presented with the full details from both of these stories? I like to think it would spur many of them into deeper study. That it would possibly make them question some of the things they’ve been taking for granted. But 2016 has been pretty demoralizing when it comes to the number of people who seem concerned about what’s true, and I’m not sure how many of them would see this information as a call to action. I know there are people who can be changed by facts. Perhaps there aren’t as many of them as I once thought, but I know they’re out there. And with the way information spreads these days, I’m sure they’ll eventually find the facts they’re looking for.
Finding Truth 
Although not contemporary, Josephus mentions a few, I’m pretty sure. Even a couple of relatively obscure ones. But no Jesus of Nazareth.
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Well Jesus is mentioned in Josephus’s writings, like you said, even if those aren’t forgeries or additions, Josephus wasn’t a contemporary of Jesus. How many other 1st century cult leaders/preachers did Josephus write about? Did he write about them all?
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Like Ark, I grew up in a very religious household and it never crossed my mind that the Bible might not be accurate history. Even after I deconverted, I was sometimes surprised to learn that things like the Exodus were entirely mythical. I mean, I knew it wasn’t historically accurate, but I figured it probably had some basis in history. But no, it was pure political propaganda.
But that lack of faith made the Bible, Christianity and biblical scholarship so much more interesting, because I could learn about them without all the constraints of faith. I could learn about how and why the various books of the Bible were written, all the different theologies and purposes by different authors, and what really happened instead of what I was theologically obligated to believe happened.
I like to learn (and argue!) about this stuff today because I think it is interesting and because I think it is critically important to understand it properly….for both atheists and Christians. Poor understanding of the Bible, and of biblical scholarship, is a huge problem among Christians. It is dumbfounding how many of them believe the Bible is the literal Word of God, and yet don’t actually know what the Bible says or what the historical, archaeological and textual experts can tell us about the Bible. They know what they learned in Sunday School and that’s about as far as they ever got, or ever will get. Whether or not Christians ultimately agree on theological issues, I think we would be better off if they learned more about real biblical scholarship and learn to understand the Bible in an accurate historical and textual context rather than the harmonized inerrantist version.
But I also think atheists do our side a disservice when they take rejection of Christianity too far and begin trying to undermine every claim Christians make. Sure, Jesus was not “God”, the gospels were not written by eyewitnesses, the resurrection is not a “historical fact”, there are serious contradictions in the texts and we don’t have reliable evidence of apostolic martyrdom. But that doesn’t mean everything is untrue, any more than the Book of Mormon being untrue means Joseph Smith did not exist. I argue against mythicism and various other atheist arguments for the same reason I argue against Christian arguments. Because I think the truth, scholarship and accuracy are important. And because arguing about stuff is how I learn.
We may disagree about a lot, but at the end of the day, I think we can all agree that Nate is a patient and kind fellow. If he actually exists.
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If you follow the Carrier link you will see how the TF is well and truly kicked into touch.
I have read a bit of Josephus. Had all his works downloaded on my last laptop before the screen gave up. Reminds me; I should download them again sometime.
I have no way on knowing if he wrote about them all but he did mention a few Jesuses and various other apparently insignificant people, devoting a fair amount of space to a few of them as well.
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Because he wrote that the datings were “obtained without any evidence by experts with faith”, as if the dates (or date ranges) are not also supported by non-Christian scholars and in some cases even by evidence from manuscripts (I believe the earliest mss we have is a fragment of gJohn that dates to about 125 CE) and from external references (quoted or referenced in the writings of early Christian fathers). If he thinks the dates are established without evidence, then he’s oblivious to how they arrived at the dates.
I think the dates for Paul’s authentic letters range from the mid/late 40’s to the late 50’s or early 60’s. gMark is usually dated to around 70 CE, perhaps a little earlier or a little later, though some people will argue for a substantially earlier date. Apologists usually want to try to make it as early as possible, but James Crossley (an atheist scholar) has also argued for an earlier date for the composition of gMark. gMatthew and gLuke are usually placed around 80-90 (give or take) and gJohn is usually dated to around 90-110 (give or take).
I don’t know where NT Wright stands on dating the texts, but the date for gMark is absolutely not assigned purely on the basis of the destruction of the Temple. That is a significant indicator, but not the only one. The Academic Biblical subreddit (a terrific read) has dealt with this a number of times in the past. A lot of the reasons for the dating are collected in this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/3mircp/what_are_the_best_arguments_for_a_post_70_date_of/
The authors of the Gospels may well have been aware of Paul. He just wasn’t relevant to the Gospel stories. I cannot see anywhere in the Gospels where Paul would have been relevant to the stories. Everything Paul did was almost certainly after Jesus was dead and gone.
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If he existed, of course everything he did was after JC had died.
Yet everything he did, including his travels, would have preceded the writing of the first gospel, and he claimed as much authority as the disciples.
Maybe the writer of Mark forgot?
But as the writer of Matthew pretty much copied Mark verbatim, adding his own made-up bits to flesh out his gospel, mentioning Paul might have added a little more credence, don’t you think?
Paul is also claimed to have performed miracles and established churches, and even died, all prior to a single word of Mark or Matthew being penned.These seem like pretty good reasons to mention him.
However, if we are talking about completely fictionalized gospels then this could be a reason for why he doesn’t get a mention.
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If they’re writing about Jesus, why would they also write about Paul? And this overlooks the admission that the guy made (and that Jon pointed out), that the writer of Luke did write about Paul…
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@Jon
Interesting link.
I especially enjoyed the Josephus link in the piece concerning the possibility of the source of Mark’s Jesus.
I had read this before of course, as I am sure most people interested in this stuff will have done, and I mentioned Josephus’s Jesus to William, but I had forgotten where in Josephus I had read it.
And this time I read it on reddit.
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Hi Nate, Jon and everyone else,
I have been following this discussion with great interest, happy to leave you all to work through your ideas without some pesky christian bothering you. But now you all seem to be reaching some finality, I thought I’d comment.
The authenticity of ancient historical accounts, and the historical existence of the characters they describe, is an interesting question. We don’t have the original documents and we have lost many documents entirely, we cannot test for fingerprints or DNA, so how can we ever authenticate anything? It is the same question for classical history as it is for New Testament history.
So drawing reasonable conclusions requires judgment and that requires expertise because we don’t know the ancient languages (I have actually studied and passed exams in Latin and NT Greek, but that was a long time ago!), we generally haven’t visited the archaeological sites, we don’t have access to the academic libraries, we don’t rub shoulders with other experts in the field. So we must rely on the experts for our facts, and also for perspective – e.g. we might think that Jesus “ought” to be mentioned in contemporary writing, but it requires the judgment of long experience to know how likely that actually would have been.
Historians use many methods to try to make judgments about historicity. The quality and quantity of the textual evidence, the number of independent sources, historical plausibility (how well the writer knows the language, geography and culture, how well the events fit into known history, etc), whether there were motivations to distort or “massage” truth, etc.
The gospels score very well on all these criteria. The textual evidence is many, many times better than almost any other ancient document. Ehrman has identified about 10 different sources. One of the major developments in NT history over the last half century has been the conclusion by historians that the gospels fit well into first century Jewish culture and history. So EP Sanders can conclude:
”Historical reconstruction is never absolutely certain, and in the case of Jesus it is sometimes highly uncertain. Despite this, we have a good idea of the main lines of his ministry and his message. We know who he was, what he did, what he taught, and why he died. ….. the dominant view [among scholars] today seems to be that we can know pretty well what Jesus was out to accomplish, that we can know a lot about what he said, and that those two things make sense within the world of first-century Judaism.”
To ignore the almost unanimous scholarly consensus as mythicists do, seems to me to be akin to believing Ken Ham against the conclusions of the vast consensus of evolutionary biologists. Of course when we move from that broad consensus to details, we find a wide range of opinion, but the starting point must be the consensus.
Scholarly conclusions on the historicity of Acts have gone through a similar change to that on the gospels. A century ago, strong doubts were expressed about both, but in the last half century, opinions on Luke’s historiography have also become more positive and Acts is seen to meet many of the criteria of historicity. It seems to have begin with AN Sherwin-White’s Roman Law and Roman Society in the New Testament (1963), which argued for Acts as a valuable historical source, a view endorsed by many classical historians of the time (I have references). In more recent times:
Earl Richards in New Views on Luke and Acts (1990) says “The inclusion of certain data, sometimes items that Luke simply assumes and sometimes facts that he seems to know, gives the story a ring of authenticity and sets the story in the context of the first-century.”
Robin Lane Fox in The Unauthorised Version (1991) treats Acts as useful history, and says of Luke: ”I regard it as certain, therefore, that he knew Paul and followed parts of his journey.”
Daniel Margerat’s The First Christian Historian (2004): discusses how there are scholars on either side of the question of Luke’s historicity (i.e. the matter is far from decided), but says: ”the information given by Acts is indispensable for anyone desiring to reconstruct the period of the first Christian generation”
Clare Rothschild, in Luke-Acts and the Rhetoric of History (2004) says Luke is ”a historian negotiating divided loyalties between his sources and his duty to elicit meaning from them.”
Finally, Maurice Casey in Jesus of Nazareth (2010) says of Luke (writing about his gospel): ”he was an outstanding historian by ancient standards”.
This is not to suggest that Luke got everything right. Many things he wrote have been questioned, although the major questions seem not to be matters of facts, but that he smooths over differences between Paul and others and thus doesn’t fully represent the different theological opinions.
It is only when we get the experts’ summaries of the facts in their historical context that we can start to discuss our own opinions. I am interested to see that on most factual matters, I am in broad agreement with Jon, even though we are in strong disagreement once we move from the facts to our beliefs.
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Although I strongly support Ark’s right to hold his mythicist positions, I do believe that mythicism seriously damages the credibility of ALL non-theists in the eyes of conservative Christians, the very people whom I hope to persuade, by the use of reason and evidence, to abandon their superstition-based belief system.
If our ultimate goal is to defeat the superstitions of conservative/orthodox/traditional Christianity, I believe that using EVIDENCE and REASON are superior methods of engagement than simply shouting someone down. And our arguments will earn more respect (and ultimately win more “deconverts”) if we demonstrate respect for evidence. If we are unreasonable in regards to evidence which appears to support the Christian position, and reasonable only when the evidence appears to support our position (as we frequently allege Christians are guilty of), the other side will see us as biased. If, however, we use the same standard for all evidence, regardless of whom that evidence might benefit, we earn the respect of our opponents, and possibly even their conversion (or deconversion, in this case).
So for instance, we accept the existence of Philo, even though there may be no contemporaneous confirmation of his existence, other than literary works which bear his name and references about him in the works of later writers. So to, we accept the existence of Paul for the very same reasons.
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Did he?
The writer of Luke is claimed to have written Acts.
I wonder how much influence Marcion had on this composition?
Bearing in mind it was apparently largely because of his stripped down version of Luke that prompted the church to get its arse into gear regarding putting out an official version, and wh knows what they added?
And scholars generally agree a later date is more likely now that they agree this ”Luke” is not Paul’s supposed companion; so I read, but I’m no bible scholar.
And isn’t Josephus claimed to be the source material for some of what we see in the gospels?
And of course, it was supposedly claimed to have been Marcion who was the one who discovered the epistles.
A mystery wrapped in an enigma.
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@Unklee
Yes , quite, and if you follow the link I provided further up the thread regarding the debunking of the TF in its entirety, which the most recent, peer reviewed scholarship has done, including the ”other version” of the TF, the Arabic version, you will see precisely why, in some cases, such sacred-cow consensus needs to be seriously re-looked at.
And while you may wish to hang on to certain outdated perspectives on biblical scholarship because they are so often bolster your faith, it would be preposterous for you or any christian to expect everyone else to lay down Willy-Nilly and say, ”Yeah sure, Unklee, it’s a ‘Done Deal.’ ”
That, I’m afraid, is never going to happen, sport.
Furthermore, as your belief in the character, Jesus of Nazareth demands that you confess to being an unworthy sinner, are saved by Grace Alone and eventually admitted beyond the Pearly Gates solely on Faith , then with all due respects, what the flipping heck are you remotely bothered about evidence for?
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If our ultimate goal is to defeat the superstitions of conservative/orthodox/traditional Christianity, I believe that using EVIDENCE and REASON are superior methods of engagement ….
Really? Look at unklee ….
I thought belief in Jesus / Christianity was supposed to be based, first and foremost, on faith?
Reason and Evidence has already demonstrated how the Pentateuch is nothing but Historical Fiction, how the biblical Exodus is nonsense and yet Unklee has claimed it has no real bearing on his belief in Jesus being his god!
And you can bet the farm this applies to the vast majority of believers as well.
It has to be dismantled piece by piece.
You would be met with absolute incredulity to suggest Zeus or Quetzacoatl were real
yet appear to bend over backwards to demonstrate the historicity of the likes of Jesus of Nazareth and some bloke called Paul.
Believers are grinning from ear to ear, you can bet on that!
Look at the way they cite Ehrman as the perfect example, and pretty soon they’ve thrown in Wallace, and then before you know it, it’s Strobel, Flew, Collins and Barnes, and a whole landslide of cherry-picked garbage, and we are back trying to wheedle out the Divine from the Secular, arguing origins, morality and all the other crap!
I reiterate, while non-believers continually cling to the belief that these characters have any vestige of genuine historicity we are merely handing the believers another length of rope to turn around and beat their accusers with.
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No, I think it’s the exact opposite.
We should demonstrate a concern with facts and truth. I agree with you that the current assumptions of scholarship should always be questioned and investigated. But we need to be careful about grabbing onto a fringe position too quickly, especially if it’s what we want to hear. We have to constantly guard against confirmation bias.
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Which is exactly why the claimed historicity needs to be exposed for the fraud it is.
Look at the way someone like Unklee manipulates every critical post you put up –
have ever put up!
Look at the nonsense put forward for the reconciliation for the Nativity Narratives. And the Empty Tomb … What damn tomb? Where? …. ”’scholars say…”
For years, the ”fringe ” position regarding the Josephus TF , for example, has been ridiculed.
Like the bleating for the Shroud of Turin for chrissakes.
However, now it seems that this position on the TF has been reversed and it will have to be re-examined all over again by this so-called scholarly consensus,who included people like Vermes etc and of course unklee blew this trumpet long and hard…. and it seems, all out of tune after all.
But this will take a considerable time before it gets reviewed and circulated etc etc.
But I doubt unk will openly acknowledge this work because … well you know Carrier isn’t a real scholar/historian so chances are those he cites aren’t worth 2 cents either….
Even if they are emeritus profs.
We’ll see …
re: Paul and his Epistles.
Its claimed it was Marcion who gathered them all together.
Have a look at this from Robert Price
https://depts.drew.edu/jhc/RPcanon.htmland
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Nate: I have an off topic question for you: Have you ever seen a good post regarding the issue of why it is or is not probable that the disciples had visions of a dead Jesus instead of seeing a literal resurrected body of Jesus? My former pastor swears that first century Jews would not have confused a vision/vivid dream with seeing a real, resurrected body.
Thanks.
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In this article a scholar addresses the ‘discrepancy’ between Luke describing Mary and Joseph as being engaged whereas Matthew described them as married. His conclusion:
This seems a bit forced to me. The article can be found here for those who might be interested:
http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/bible-interpretation/were-mary-and-joseph-married-or-engaged-at-jesus-birth/
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No, I’m afraid I don’t. I’ve never liked the kinds of argument that your former pastor is using. Is he really suggesting that there was something peculiar about Jews from that time that made them immune to halucinations? That it was impossible for them to think they had seen something that wasn’t actually there? Or to possibly mistake one person for another? He’s saying it’s more likely that a man literally came back from the dead (a miracle), than for his distraught followers to mistakenly think such a thing (a known human tendency).
What kind of evidence could one use to back up such a claim?
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For the first time since my deconversion in 2014, I sat down with my former LCMS pastor yesterday and discussed why I deconverted. It was a very frustrating experience. He is a moderate, so pointing out discrepancies (errors) in the Bible are swatted away like flies. Discrepancies in the four Resurrection accounts? “This was typical of the style of biography used in that era. To demand uniformity in the four stories is imposing a 21st century worldview on a 1st worldview.” I then pointed out that if that is true, that the authors were free to “ad lib” to the story, isn’t it possible that Joseph of Arimathea’s rock tomb was a non-historical addition to the story? At first he was adamant that that was false, but he then agreed that the omission of this detail wouldn’t really change any article of doctrine, so it is possible, but unlikely.
However, when I then suggested the possibility that the original Resurrection belief was based on some of the disciples having visions or vivid dreams of Jesus not on an empty tomb (Jesus had probably been buried by the Romans in an unknown location in a mass criminal grave), he said that this would have been impossible. “The Jews of the first century were a ‘tactile people’ ” or something to that effect. “They would not have confused a vision/dream for reality”.
My former pastor is not just some hick from the sticks. He has a doctorate in theology and teaches theology at a local prestigious Roman Catholic university. So to contradict him on this point, I would need to do some research. However, I think you are right. Why do Christians so often hold first century Jews up to be these super humans, so different from people today?
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Someone on another blog recommended: “Resurrection Reconsidered” by Gregory Riley. Has anyone read it or heard of it?
Supposedly it discusses the differing views of Resurrection in the Greco-Roman, Jewish, and Christian cultures of the first century.
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@nate
Just an observation. After looking at your title and the subsequent comments, this is really the most boring of reads. Why?
The efforts people take to un-justify a history and narrative of scripture which is clear as day, only to be muddied by people who have no use for it. If it wasn’t a serious topic, it would be truly laughable. As it is, it is only to be pitied.
The hands of they who trifle with scripture as atheists and unbelievers appear rather bloodied; it’s a sad sight to try to dismiss that which is perfect. What is worse, is to walk around with blood dripping and then say: what blood???????????
The ruling on the field stands: the Word of God is good!
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Now you are trolling, CS. Say something constructive or leave. You are a black eye to the many polite, respectful Christians who do comment here.
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That’s nice Gary. Good for you.
I’m pretty sure I was talking to nate, so who is trolling………………?
Respectful though? Ha!
Coming from people who do not give the Creator the courtesy of existing? Please.
But I’ll repeat just for you, since you appear to be deaf as to something constructive:
The Word of God is good, and it slays all the petty gripes of the rebellious. There. Hope you are happy.
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@CS, ” The Word of God is good, and it slays all the petty gripes of the rebellious. ”
Had you been born into a Muslim home, you would be referring to the Quran . This is why ALL religious holy books are of human origin. You may not, but generations after you will all realize this . Only then will there be a chance for World Peace.
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CS: Your words are so foolishly and ignorantly composed that I cannot believe you understand them.
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