As i promised to come up with the part 2 of my honest survey for 4evergod, now here we are.

Meanwhile, this thread won't serve as an honest survey for 4evergod alone, rather to him and DoctorAlien and every other Christians out there. I hereby call on my friend Kingebukasblog to kindly follow this thread. Other Christians: parisbookaddict, oladeegbu, annunaki2, anas09, malvisguy212, plappvillemoi, winner01, albhagdadi, damogul, analice107, Emusan, true2god, truthmans2012 and others should as well follow up to see this honest survey I have for them all.

This is rather a long post and I will be updating the thread as i cannot drop the whole post all at once. Counter arguments will be entertained when I'm done with the posts.

Thanks

INTRODUCTION
It is not the peripatetic "ministry" of Jesus, with all its healings, wise teachings and astounding miracles, that is the bedrock of the Christian religion. Rather, it is the extraordinary melodrama of his death and resurrection, sometimes expressed as the "promise of the cross" or in the pithy aphorism, "No Resurrection, No Christianity."

:What is it that made Jesus so special? In fact, as we will see, it was not his message. That did not succeed much at all. Instead, it helped get him crucified—surely not a mark of spectacular success. No, what made Jesus different from all the others teaching a similar message was the claim that he had been raised from the dead. Belief in Jesus’s resurrection changed absolutely everything.

Such a thing was not said of any of the other apocalyptic preachers of Jesus’s day, and the fact that it was said about Jesus made him unique. Without the belief in the resurrection, Jesus would have been a mere footnote in the annals of Jewish history. With the belief in the resurrection, we have the beginnings of the movement to promote Jesus to a superhuman plane. Belief in the resurrection is what eventually led his followers to claim that Jesus was God.

You will notice that I have worded the preceding sentences very carefully. I have not said that the resurrection is what made Jesus God. I have said that it was the belief in the resurrection that led some of his followers to claim he was God. This is because, historians can't show— HISTORICALLY — that Jesus was in fact raised from the dead. To be clear, I am not saying the opposite either—that historians can use the historical disciplines in order to demonstrate that Jesus was not raised from the dead. I argue that when it comes to miracles such as the resurrection, historical sciences simply are of no help in establishing exactly what happened.

Religious faith and historical knowledge are two different ways of “knowing.” From the book of Job in the Hebrew Bible): “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” But we “knew” this not because of historical investigation, but because of our faith. Whether Jesus is still alive today, because of his resurrection, or indeed whether any such great miracles have happened in the past, cannot be “known” by means of historical study, but only on the basis of faith. This is not because historians are required to adopt “unbelieving presuppositions” or “secular assumptions hostile to religion.”

In this thread we will discuss both the facts we can know and the claims we cannot know, historically. We begin with what we are not able to say, either at all or with relative certainty, about the early Christian belief in the resurrection:

Plagiarism?

Seun:
Plagiarism?

References will be added

Let's wait and watch

lemme come back and read later,betta nat post rubbish like dat expensive guy or so abt that pyramid ish

I'm here .

Rilwayne001:


References will be added

Every post containing copied content should have a link to the source material. So one link on every post (not topic)

Seun:
Every post containing copied content should have a link to the source material. So one link on every post (not topic)

There's no link. All copied contents will be from a book, with my own brief interpolations. Is that okay?

Rilwayne001:
There's no link. All copied contents will be from a book, with my own brief interpolations. Is that okay?

I think you should read the book, digest it, and then express the thoughts from the book in your own words citing the book as your reference.

Following

Seun:
I think you should read the book, digest it, and then express the thoughts from the book in your own words citing the book as your reference.

Anything bad the way i wanted to do it, will i be banned? After all i will be referencing the book at the end.

Rilwayne001:
Anything bad the way i wanted to do it, will i be banned? After all i will be referencing the book at the end.

Reference the book on every post, not in the end. Link to the google books page or amazon page. The recent cut and paste trend must end.

Seun:

Reference the book on every post, not in the end. Link to the google books page or amazon page. The recent cut and paste trend must end.

I support this

Seun:

Reference the book on every post, not in the end. Link to the google books page or amazon page. The recent cut and paste trend must end.

Alright sir

Am in

Rilwayne001:
INTRODUCTION
It is not the peripatetic "ministry" of Jesus, with all its healings, wise teachings and astounding miracles, that is the bedrock of the Christian religion. Rather, it is the extraordinary melodrama of his death and resurrection, sometimes expressed as the "promise of the cross" or in the pithy aphorism, "No Resurrection, No Christianity."

Everything about Yahshua is the bedrock of Christianity. Never has mankind seen a man that lived without Sinning. Even as unholy as the Quran is, it still mentions Him as a man that was sinless. Everything he did are what Christians follow. His purpose was to come show mankind the path to the Father and redeem us with his precious blood which he himself knew would be shed. He came to grant Man eternity. This he did by dying and resurrecting in order for him to posses the keys of graves. This shows that, on the last day, he will fulfil his promise by raising us all like he did to lazarus. Without his death and resurrection, he won't have been much different from the prophets that came before him. Now, who are you to doubt that the man that raised Lazarus from the dead couldn't resurrect?

Rilwayne001:
[b][size=12pt]
:What is it that made Jesus so special? In fact, as we will see, it was not his message. That did not succeed much at all. Instead, it helped get him crucified—surely not a mark of spectacular success. No, what made Jesus different from all the others teaching a similar message was the claim that he had been raised from the dead. Belief in Jesus’s resurrection changed absolutely everything.

His message of truth, love, forgiveness and peace SUCCEEDED in making him achieve his AIM which is to DIE and RESURRECT so as to REDEEM mankind. Preaching such message can get you killed in a wicked world of ours.

If he had preached some other kind of message that pleased the wicked world, he won't have achieved his aim cos they won't kill him but would want him to live long with them.

his resurrection was no claim cos there were witnesses to it. Even Paul, a killer of Christians, who didn't believe any of what you call nonsense, later became a witness as he met with Yahshua in the road to Damascus.

Rilwayne001:
[b][size=12pt]
Such a thing was not said of any of the other apocalyptic preachers of Jesus’s day, and the fact that it was said about Jesus made him unique. Without the belief in the resurrection, Jesus would have been a mere footnote in the annals of Jewish history. With the belief in the resurrection, we have the beginnings of the movement to promote Jesus to a superhuman plane. Belief in the resurrection is what eventually led his followers to claim that Jesus was God.

None of the previous prophets are snap footnotes in Jewish history. Now, what makes you think that the man whom all those prophets prophesied about will now end up as snap footnote or nobody?

Even before his death, he was already celebrated as king of Israel. He healed almost people, raised the dead, gave sight to the blind amongst other things as never seen before.

His resurrection is still manifesting even till today with many humans encountering him.

Rilwayne001:
[b][size=12pt]
You will notice that I have worded the preceding sentences very carefully. I have not said that the resurrection is what made Jesus God. I have said that it was the belief in the resurrection that led some of his followers to claim he was God. This is because, historians can't show— HISTORICALLY — that Jesus was in fact raised from the dead. To be clear, I am not saying the opposite either—that historians can use the historical disciplines in order to demonstrate that Jesus was not raised from the dead. I argue that when it comes to miracles such as the resurrection, historical sciences simply are of no help in establishing exactly what happened.

What better historians would one want other than the accounts of the disciples, apostles and his followers who wrote what they experienced? Are you expecting to believe an historian born 50yrs ago over those who actually witnessed the events?

Rilwayne001:
[b][size=12pt]
Religious faith and historical knowledge are two different ways of “knowing.” From the book of Job in the Hebrew Bible): “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” But we “knew” this not because of historical investigation, but because of our faith. Whether Jesus is still alive today, because of his resurrection, or indeed whether any such great miracles have happened in the past, cannot be “known” by means of historical study, but only on the basis of faith. This is not because historians are required to adopt “unbelieving presuppositions” or “secular assumptions hostile to religion.”

Once again, you must be a big fool to believe the account of historians born today over people that witnessed those events.

Rilwayne001:
[b][size=12pt]
In this thread we will discuss both the facts we can know and the claims we cannot know, historically. We begin with what we are not able to say, either at all or with relative certainty, about the early Christian belief in the resurrection:

This introduction of yours has shown how much of a failure your research is.

Why Historians Have Difficulty Discussing the Resurrection

I have stressed that historians, in order to investigate the past, are necessarily restricted to doing so on the basis of surviving sources. There are sources that describe the events surrounding jesus’s resurrection, and the first step to take in exploring the rise of the Christians’ early belief is to examine these sources. The most important ones are the Gospels of the New Testament, which are our earliest narratives of the discovery of Jesus’s empty tomb and of his appearances, after his crucifixion, to his disciples as the living Lord of life. Also critical to our exploration are the writings of Paul, who affirms with real fervor his belief that Jesus was actually, physically, raised from the dead.

The Resurrection Narratives of the Gospels

We have already seen why the Gospels are so problematic for historians who want to know what really happened. This is especially true for the Gospel accounts of Jesus’s resurrection. Are these the sorts of sources that historians would look for when examining a past event? Even apart from the fact that they were written forty to sixty-five years after the facts, by people who were not there to see these things happen, who were living in different parts of the world, at different times, and speaking different languages—apart from all this, they are filled with discrepancies, some of which cannot be reconciled. In fact, the Gospels disagree on nearly every detail in their resurrection narratives.

These narratives are found in Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20-21. Read through the accounts and ask yourself some basic questions: Who was the first person to go to the tomb? Was it Mary Magdalene by herself (John)? or Mary along with another Mary (Matthew)? or Mary along with another Mary and Salome (Mark)? or Mary, Mary, Joanna, and a number of other women (Luke)? Was the stone already rolled away when they arrived at the tomb (Mark, Luke, and John), or explicidy not (Matthew)? Whom did they see there? An angel (Matthew), a man (Mark), or two men (Luke)? Did they immediately go and tell some of the disciples what they had seen (John), or not (Matthew, Mark, and Luke)? What did the person or people at the tomb tell the women to do? To tell the disciples that Jesus would meet them in Galilee (Matthew and Mark)? Or to remember what Jesus had told them earlier when he had been in Galilee (Luke)? Did the women then go tell the disciples what they were told to tell them (Matthew and Luke), or not (Mark)? Did the disciples see Jesus (Matthew, Luke, and John), or not (Mark)? 1 Where did they see him?—only in Galilee (Matthew), or only in Jerusalem (Luke)?

https://www.amazon.com/How-Jesus-Became-God-Exaltation/dp/0061778184

^^

There are other discrepancies, but this is enough to get the point across. I should stress that some of these differences can scarcely be reconciled unless you do a lot of interpretive gymnastics when reading the texts. For example, what does one do with the fact that the women apparently meet different people at the tomb? In Mark, they meet one man; in Luke, two men; and in Matthew, one angel. The way this discrepancy is sometimes reconciled, by readers who can’t accept that there could be a genuine discrepancy in the text, is by saying that the women actually met two angels at the tomb. Matthew mentions only one of them but never denies there was a second one; moreover, the angels were in human guise, so Luke claims they were two men; Mark also mistakes the angels as men but mentions only one, not two, without denying there were two. And so the problem is easily solved! But it is solved in a very curious way indeed, for this solution is saying, in effect, that what really happened is what is not narrated by any of these Gospels: for none of them mentions two angels! This way of interpreting the texts does so by imagining a new text that is unlike any of the others, so as to reconcile the four to one another. Anyone is certainly free to construct their own Gospel if they want to, but that’s probably not the best way to interpret the Gospels that we already have.

Or take a second example—one that is even more glaring. Matthew is explicit when he says that the disciples are told to go to Galilee since that is where they will meet jesus (28:7). They do so (28:16), and that is where ]esus meets them and gives them his final commands (28:17-20). This is both clear-cut and completely at odds with what happens in Luke. There, the disciples are not told to go to Galilee. The women are informed at the empty tomb, by the two men, that when jesus had earlier been in Galilee, he had announced that he would be raised. Since the disciples are not told to go to Galilee, they do not do so. They stay in Jerusalem, in the land of judea. And it is there that Jesus meets them “that very day” (24:13). Jesus speaks with them and emphatically instructs them not to leave the city until they receive the power of the Spirit, which happens more than forty days later, according to Acts 1-2 (that is, they are not to go to Galilee; 24:49). He leads them right outside Jerusalem, to nearby Bethany, and gives them his last instructions and departs from them (24:50-51). And we learn they did as he commanded: they stayed in the city, worshiping in the temple (24:53). In the book of Acts, written by the same author as the book of Luke, we find out that they stayed in Jerusalem for more than a month, until the day of Pentecost (Acts 1-2).

Seun:

Reference the book on every post, not in the end. Link to the google books page or amazon page. The recent cut and paste trend must end.

You trying to frustrate him now?. Let him get it all out. We following......

Op, just keep each post simple to read cuss they will be here now to say "it is to long". That's why they fail exams anyways.

Parrisbookaddict and true2god are busy with Muhammad elsewhere right now.

Why not give the highlights from the book that buttress your position and perhaps a link to the book or links to the various parts thereof that matter? Reading long posts with a secondary source (and perhaps some points that will be raised have been discussed here already) is not always a welcome assignment.

Empiree:


Op, just keep each post simple to read cuss they will be here now to say "it is to long". That's why they fail exams anyways.

Exactly what I'm doing. No point rushing.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Jesus-Became-God-Exaltation/dp/0061778184

Rilwayne001:
^^
And we learn they did as he commanded: they stayed in the city, worshiping in the temple (24:53). In the book of Acts, written by the same author as the book of Luke, we find out that they stayed in Jerusalem for more than a month, until the day of Pentecost (Acts 1-2).

^^^

There is clearly a discrepancy here. In one Gospel the disciples immediately go to Galilee, and in the other they never go there. As New Testament scholar Raymond Brown—himself a Roman Catholic priest— has emphasized: “Thus we must reject the thesis that the Gospels can he harmonized through a rearrangement whereby Jesus appears several times to the Twelve, first in Jerusalem, then in Galilee. . . .The different Gospel accounts are narrativing, so far as substance is concerned, the same basic appearance to the Twelve, whether they locate it in Jerusalem or in Galilee.”

Later we will explore further how this discrepancy matters for reconstructing the actual course of events. For now it is enough to note that the earliest Gospels say that when Jesus was arrested, his disciples fled the scene (Mark 14; Matt. 24:46). And the earliest accounts also suggest that it was in Galilee that they had visions of Jesus alive after the crucifixion (intimated in Mark 14:28; stated in Matthew 24). The most plausible explanation is that when the disciples fled the scene for fear of arrest, they left Jerusalem and went home, to Galilee. And it was there that they—or at least one or more of them—claimed to see Jesus alive again. Some people have argued that if Jesus really was raised from the dead, it would have been such a spectacular event that of course in their excitement the eyewitnesses would have gotten a few details muddled. But my points in the discussion so far are rather simple. First, we are not dealing with eyewitnesses. We are dealing with authors living decades later in different lands speaking different languages and basing their tales on stories that had been in oral circulation during all the intervening years. Second, these accounts do not simply have minor discrepancies in a couple of details; they are clearly at odds with one another on point after point. They are not the kinds of sources that historians would hope for in determining what actually happened in the past. What about the witness of Paul?

To be continued..

alBHAGDADI:

This introduction of yours has shown how much of a failure your research is.

Like i said in my first post, i will entertain you when I'm done. Meanwhile, you have a lot to address, so stay put.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Jesus-Became-God-Exaltation/dp/0061778184

Rilwayne001:

What about the witness of Paul?

^^
The Writings of the Apostle Paul

Paul speaks of the resurrection of Jesus constantly throughout the seven letters that scholars agree he actually wrote. No passage states Paul’s views more clearly or forcefully than 1 Corinthians 15, the so—called resurrection chapter. In this chapter Paul is not intent on “proving” that Jesus was raised from the dead, as it is sometimes misread. Instead, he is assuming, with his readers, that Jesus really was raised; and he is using that assumption to make his bigger point, which is this: since Jesus was raised bodily from the dead, it is clear that his followers—despite what Paul’s Christian opponents are saying—have not yet experienced the future resurrection.

The resurrection for Paul is not a spiritual matter unrelated to the body, as it was for some of his opponents. It is precisely the body that will be raised immortal on the last day, when Jesus returns in triumph from heaven. The Christians in Corinth therefore are not experiencing, in the here and now, the glories of the resurrected life. That is yet to come, when their bodies will be raised.


Paul begins his discussion of the resurrection of Jesus, and the future resurrection of believers, by citing a standard Christian confession, or creed (i.e., a statement of faith), that was already known to his readers (as he himself indicates):

[3 For I handed over to you among the most important things what I also had received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 4 and that he was buried; and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures; and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve; 6 then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, many of whom survive until now, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles; 8 and last of all he appeared even to me, as to one untimely born. (1 Cor. 15 3-8 )

Paul’s letters are the first Christian writings that we have from antiquity; he was writing, for the most part, in the 505 of the Common Era, so some ten or fifteen years before our earliest surviving Gospel, Mark. It is hard to know exactly when 1 Corinthians was written; if we place it in the middle of Paul’s letter-writing period, we could put it around 55 ce or so—some twenty-five years after Jesus’s death.

What is striking is that Paul indicates that this statement of faith is something he already had taught the Christians in Corinth, presumably when he converted them. And so it must go back to the founding of the community, possibly four or five years earlier. Moreover—and this is the important part— Paul indicates that he did not devise this statement himself but that he “received” it from others. Paul uses this kind of language elsewhere in 1 Corinthians (see 11:22-25), and it is believed far and wide among New Testament specialists that Paul is indicating that this is a tradition already widespread in the Christian church, handed over to him by Christian teachers, possibly even the earlier apostles themselves. In other words, this is what New Testament scholars call a pre- Pauline tradition —one that was in circulation before Paul wrote it and even before he gave it to the Corinthians when he first persuaded them to become followers of Jesus.

There is evidence in the passage itself that it, or part of it, is pre—Pauline, and it is possible to determine just which parts were the original formulation. This is what we find here in this passage. For example, the phrase “in accordance with the scriptures” is found nowhere else in Paul’s writings; nor is the verb “he appeared”; nor is any reference to “the Twelve.”

This passage almost certainly contains a pre-Pauline confession, or creed, of some kind. But is the entire thing, all of v.3-8, part of that creed? The second half of v.6 (“many of whom survive . . .”) and all of v. 8 (“last of all he appeared even to me are Paul’s comments on the tradition, so they could not have originally been part of the creed. There are very good reasons, in fact, for thinking that the original form of the creed was simply w. 3-5, to which Paul has added some comments of his own based on what he knew. One reason for restricting the original pre-Pauline creed to just these three verses is that doing so produces a very tightly formulated creedal statement that is brilliantly structured. It contains two major sections of four statements each that closely parallel one another (in other words, the first statement of section one corresponds to the first statement of section two, and so on). In its original form, then, the creed would have read like this:

https://www.amazon.com/How-Jesus-Became-God-Exaltation/dp/0061778184

Rilwayne001:
. Below, I will show why there are reasons to doubt that the tradition is historically accurate.

^^

One other frequently noted feature of this creed—and its expansion by Paul in w. 5-8—is that Paul seems to be giving an exhaustive account of the people to whom Jesus appeared after being raised. The reason for thinking this is that after listing all the others who saw Jesus, Paul indicates that he was the “last of all.” This is frequently understood, rightly I think, to mean that he is giving the fullest list he can. But then the list is striking indeed, in no small measure because Paul doesn’t mention any women. In the Gospels it is women who discover the empty tomb, and in two of the Gospels—Matthew and John—it is women who first see Jesus alive afterward. But Paul never says anything about anyone discovering an empty tomb, and he doesn’t mention any resurrection appearances to women —either here or in any other passage of his writings.

0n the first point, for many years scholars have considered it highly significant that Paul, our earliest “witness” to the resurrection, says nothing about the discovery of an empty tomb. Our earliest account of Jesus’s resurrection (1 Cor. 15 3-5) discusses the appearances without mentioning an empty tomb, while our earliest Gospel, Mark, narrates the discovery of the empty tomb without discussing any of the appearances (Mark 1621-. This has led some scholars, such as New Testament expert Daniel Smith, to suggest that these two sets of tradition— the empty tomb and the appearances of Jesus after his death—probably originated independendy of one another and were put together as a single tradition only later—for example, in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke . If this is the case, then the stories of Jesus’s resurrection were indeed being expanded, embellished, modified, and possibly even invented in the long process of their being told and retold over the years.

But what lies at the foundation of these stories? What, if anything, can we say historically about the resurrection event?

To be continued..

Cc: alBhAdadi, you talked about the witness of Paul in your post up there, i hope you followed all through this analysis of his witness. I'm still coming back to your post in full.

Rilwayne001:
As i had promised to come up with the part 2 of my honest survey for 4evergod, now here we are. Meanwhile, this thread won't serve as an honest survey for 4evergod alone, rather to him and DoctorAlien and every other Christians out there. I hereby call on my friend Kingebukasblog to kindly follow this thread. Other Christians: parisbookaddict, oladeegbu, annunaki2, anas09, malvisguy212, plappvillemoi, winner01, albhagdadi, damogul, analice107, Emusan, true2god, truthmans2012 and others should as well follow up to see this honest survey I have for them all.

This is rather a long post and I will be updating the thread as i cannot drop the whole post all at once. Counter arguments will be entertained when I'm done with the posts.

Thanks

I saw this very late.

Emusan:


I saw this very late.

Pls dont dignify this person with a response.
Kings do not engage in duscussions with the commoners.

Rilwayne001:


But what lies at the foundation of these stories? What, if anything, can we say historically about the resurrection event?

^^

The Resurrection: What We Cannot Know

In addition to the resurrection itself—the act of God by which he raised Jesus from the dead—a number of other traditions are subject to historical doubt. The two I mention here will come as a surprise to many readers. In my judgment, we cannot know that Jesus received a decent burial and that his tomb was later discovered to be empty.

These two traditions obviously stand hand-in-hand, in that the second makes no sense unless the first is historically true. No one could have discovered that Jesus was no longer in his tomb if he had never been buried in a tomb in the first place (although the reverse does not necessarily follow: in theory Jesus could have been decendy buried, and the tomb was never discovered empty). And so in many respects the second claim depends on the first. Therefore, I devote more discussion to it, explaining why we cannot know on historical grounds whether Joseph of Arimathea buried Jesus, as the Gospels claim he did.

Did Jesus Receive a Decent Burial ?

According to our earliest account, the Gospel of Mark, Jesus was buried by a previous unnamed and unknown figure, Joseph of Arimathea, “a respected member of the council” (Mark 15:43)—that is, a Jewish aristocrat who belonged to the Sanhedrin, which was the ruling body made up of “chief priests, elders, and scribes” (14:53). According to Mark 15:43, Joseph summoned up his courage and asked Pilate for Jesus’s body. Pilate granted Joseph his wish, and Joseph took the body from the cross, wrapped it in a linen shroud, “laid it in a tomb that had been hewn out of the rock,” and then rolled a stone in front of it (15 44:47). Mary
Magdalene and another woman named Mary saw where this happened (15:48).

Let me stress that all of this—or something very much like it—needs to happen within Mark’s narrative in order for what happens next to make sense, namely, that on the day after the Sabbath, Mary Magdalene and two other women go to the tomb and find it empty. If there were no tomb for Jesus, or if no one knew where the tomb was, the bodily resurrection could not be proclaimed. You have to have a known tomb.

But was there one? Did Joseph of Arimathea really bury Jesus?

Emusan:


I saw this very late.

Welcome on board bro. We haven't really gone far and so you can drop your input(s), I will be addressing them when I'm done with my posts.

Anas09:

Pls dont dignify this person with a response.
Kings do not engage in duscussions with the commoners.

Yes indeed! You are only good at cursing and insulting people and so this thread is way over your head, i only called you to read, maybe you can think for yourself then, i don't expect any reasonable contribution from you. As usual, oya start your insult and curse.