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I was listening to Lane Craig debate Bart Ehrman on YouTube and thought to myself, "What if we didn't have the Bible and the rumors were that men following a man claiming to be the Son of God were saying he rose from the dead. I imagined myself getting the opportunity to debate Lane Craig. What would I say for my opening statement? Here's what I might come up with:
The majority of secular scholars don't accept the Bible as evidence of Jesus' resurrection. These scholars have concluded based on the best evidence that
1. the gospels are anonymous. They were NOT written by eyewitnesses. Therefore everything in the gospels is hearsay. That makes the gospels un-credible as evidence of the resurrection "Strictly speaking, each Gospel is anonymous."[55][56]
2. The gospels were written at the earliest, some 40 to 80 years after Jesus. That's like someone, who has no records of John F Kennedy, trying to reconstruct his entire life based on stories, rumors and 50th-hand information that have been circulating since 1945. "Written over the course of almost a century after Jesus' death, the four gospels of the New Testament, though they tell the same story, reflect very different ideas and concerns."
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/front...ry/mmfour.html
3. The gospels were written by highly literate Greek writers in Koine Greek, not the Aramaic we'd expect from backwater uneducated Galilean fishermen. "How well educated were fishermen in rural Galilee? We actually have a reliable answer to that. They were not educated at *all*."
4. We have no autographs of the original gospels. Therefore we cannot ascertain with certainty how much they were altered, redacted, added to, and tampered with until the first complete copies start showing up in the 4th century. "We know stories were changed since we have numerous examples of “distorted memories” of Jesus"
So, Dr. Craig, given that the gospels are not reliable testimony to anything having to do with Jesus, how do you dare make the case for Jesus' resurrection using nothing in the secular record and ferreting out dubious "facts" from the gospels like the apostles believing the risen Jesus appeared to them and that Jesus appeared to multiple parties after his resurrection? Upon what actual historical writings do you base this conclusion? And the empty tomb. Since we have not a single secular historian mentioning anything about a Jesus of Nazareth being crucified, much less rising from the dead, upon what actual historical writings do you base your conclusion the empty tomb proves Jesus rose? Ditto for your claim Joseph of Arimathea buried Jesus in a tomb. Ditto for your assertion the apostles were willing to die for their faith. Since we have not a single mention anywhere of any of the apostles outside the New Testament, and in fact the Bible itself mentions nothing of the apostles' fate, upon what sources do you assert all the apostles died for their belief in Jesus? These are just a few of the many question, Dr Craig, that I'd like you to address directly and not with your customary loquacious sleight-of-hand.
It’s unlikely that a religion would have developed in the first place if that was true. Too many people would have had to perpetuate the lie.
I second that. And it's even more notable in that it grew to something huge, all while in a vacuum of "no information age". Information now is accepted simply by exposure, and passed remotely. But the Gospel, in contrast, was with personal eyewitness, by thousands of people over several years. There's no way to bury or hide that. With with no Bible, it still would have continued on.
Oh gosh, not another one of these threads. Only skeptics want us to believe that the disciple John, Matthew and Mark didn’t write or dictate said books. That Dr Luke did not actually compile eyewitness accounts. So I guess skeptics also want us to believe that James (half brother of Jesus) didn’t exist, and the disciple Peter didn’t write or dictate those Peter books. These speculations have been put forth by skeptics since the 1700s to no avail. And over a 100 times here. I have one word: yawn.
The actual evidence has supported the validity of the Bible, new and Old Testament.
That argument has to fail. There are other religions that spread just as well in their time (with personal experiences too) and if you believe in Christianity, one can hardly believe all those others were true. This is just the 'millions would not die for a Lie' argument. Millions (or hundreds of thousands, at least) have done so.
It struck me that the evidence does rely on one book; one claim. But there are some other accounts of historical events that must rely on one account, and we just have to make a judgement about whether it is a believable account or not. Just because it exists in just one book doesn't itself make it unbelievable. Though, if Paul had been done in by some mugger on the way to Damascus, it might be that Christianity wouldn't exist today. How odd; my gut reaction is that this would have been a pity. I always regret information being lost to us.
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Probably the leaders deleted all records & killed all witnesses, as evil leaders do.
