JESUS’ RESURRECTION – EVIDENCE IS POOR

The Dubious Resurrection of Jesus

 

Index – Click to Navigate

 

FOREWORD

THE FIRST RECORD  

500+ WITNESSES?

EVIDENCE VERSUS EVIDENCE

THE FEMALE TESTIMONY

THE APOSTLES’ TESTIMONY TESTED

THE MAGICAL BODY

HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS

COMPETING CLAIMS

CONCLUSION

PREFACE

 

The New Testament contains all the evidence that Jesus rose from the dead.  Though it is doubtful that the accounts are anything but legends let us for the sake of argument forget this and treat them as reports.

 

Despite the valiant efforts of lying Christian defenders of the faith, the resurrection of Jesus cannot be proved by a missing body or disciples having apparitions and having changed lives.  The attempts to prove the resurrection centre around these things but supposing the body just vanished by a miracle and wasn’t raised and some kind of clumsy supernatural force affected the apostles’ minds like radiation making them imagine they all had apparitions of Jesus and changed their lives?  False beliefs do change lives.  There is in fact no evidence at all that Jesus rose from the dead even if the other miracles can be proven.  This is the problem we face with all alleged apparitions, Lourdes, Medjugorje and so on.  Because the religious world is full of vision stories that can’t all be true, the Christians tend to hold that the resurrection would be dubious if it depended on vision stories but they say we have the empty tomb of Jesus and the change in the apostles and the fact that they met a risen Jesus they could touch and who could eat meaning he was more than a vision to justify belief.  The Handbook of Christian Apologetics page 180, says that the resurrection is not a vision because a vision is spiritual and subjective and can be caused by the hidden powers of your mind or something else.  The tangibility of the risen Jesus would then have to be the main argument for the resurrection but the evidence for it is very weak and in vision stories people think they touch ghosts and ghosts touch them and ghosts manipulate items just like Jesus manipulated things and allegedly ate fish after his resurrection.  So they are stuck with the weak vision argument for the resurrection.  So were the oldest resurrection accounts which never mentioned the tangibility of the risen Christ!  The accounts of the tangible Christ were too late and were not stressed enough as the writings and gospels that considered them unimportant or didn’t know of them show!

 

Richard Swinburne said we must get as much evidence as we can for a miracle for that increases the chance that a miracle really occurred (page 91, OCR Philosophy of Religion for AS and A2, Matthew Taylor, Editor Jon Mayled, Routledge, Oxon, New York, 2007). Apply this rule to the resurrection of Jesus and you find it has very poor evidence in its favour indeed.  For religion, miracles may happen but they don't count - it is the religious experience of the love of God and the desire to live a holy life that comes with them them that counts.  The miracle is just a curiosity without that element . And it is an element that doesn't need miracle which raises the problem of what use are miracles supposed to be?  Just because the apostles reported a religious experience doesn't mean we have to accept anything they claim.  Such an experience is so private and personal.  Also only Paul spoke of his religious experience in relation to the resurrection and even then it was the cross not the resurrection miracle that was his focus.  The evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is worse than the evidence of religious experience in favour of spiritualism that is reported so often.  The weakness proves that Christianity is unlikely to be true.

 

We need extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims.  We need extraordinary evidence that the apostles saw Jesus and it needs to be better than the evidence that the tomb being empty was a miracle (something even the New Testament is silent on for it doesn’t exclude the idea that Jesus was stolen and rose again in the thief’s lair) and the alleged miraculous change in the apostles (no need to assume a miracle here at all).  And we have nothing at all! 

 

Extra-ordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.  Miracle believers deny this.  Murders happen and yet we demand a huge pile of evidence before jailing killers for murders are out of the ordinary.  Miracles are more uncommon than murders and the same quantity of evidence would be no good for verifying them.  Believers demand extraordinary evidence for extraordinary miracles they don’t like such as Buddha’s enlightenment but they don’t for the miracles that suit their religious preferences!  The evidence they present is only an excuse.  They would believe without it.  Miracles invariably induce bigotry and dishonesty and blindness.  Not very godly are they?  The evidence for the resurrection is not impressive if you assume for the sake of argument that it exists which it doesn’t.  Jesus then cannot expect us to believe in it.  If he was able to rise from the dead he would have been able to look after the evidence.  He didn’t so he didn’t rise.

 

The Church admits that it cannot conclusively prove every miracle reported of Jesus in the Bible or outside of it when you consider every miracle by itself. The Church for example has only the word of the gospel of John that Jesus turned water into wine at Cana.  The gospels say that Jesus even concealed some of his miracles like when he warned nobody to tell that he raised the daughter of Jairus from the dead.  If Jesus does ten miracles and you can verify them all but the last then you can’t believe in the last one.  You must consider him a liar if he asks you to believe in it and of course he does for in the John gospel he tells skeptics to believe in his works if they can’t believe in him.  If a man commits ten murders and you can only prove he committed nine of them you are not permitted to believe he committed the odd one out. You need better evidence for miracles than murders for miracles are stranger and more unusual and very serious stuff.  To claim a miracle happened is such a serious claim that naturally the evidence has to be very serious as in strong and good and convincing and every individual miracle requires it.   You can’t say the resurrection of Jesus is provable so the other miracles of Jesus must have happened as well for Jesus rose to prove his teachings and claims and miracles to be real.  Bearing in mind that we need very strong evidence the stranger or more unlikely a claim is this is unacceptable.  Every miracle is so serious so it has to be checked out on its own.  Christians know that miracles are very serious for they as good as suspend or change natural law and you need near if not actually impossible evidence to believe in them.   Imagine the evidence you would need to justify believing in the tooth fairy – a miraculous being.   A miracle that doesn’t have extraordinary evidence backing it up isn’t worth talking about.  The failure of the Christians to prove every individual miracle in the gospel accounts and Jesus’ failure to prove the miracles reported by God in the Old Testament, proves that the miracles never truly happened.  He was a false messenger.  It is blasphemy against God and reason to say that they did prove them.  A God who does miracles should be able to preserve the proof for them.  If Jesus does ten miracles to prove he is from God and you can only prove nine of them then the one that can’t be proved proves that whatever did the miracles it was not God so we can dismiss Jesus from our minds with a clear conscience.  One failed proof proves that the resurrection even if supernatural was not a miracle from God. 

 

There are loads of explanations for the thought that Jesus did rise, which fit the biblical data.  The Bible would not like these explanations for it seeks to interpret the evidence supernaturally and as containing miracles.  The Gospels merely say that Jesus’ tomb was found empty and that he appeared to some people later.  The gospels interpret all this as meaning that Jesus rose from the dead.  In fact, they give no evidence for this but only an interpretation because they are full of gaps and several other interpretations can be made of their reporting.  The persons that said that Jesus rose were untrustworthy.  Books that set out to prove the resurrection as understood by Christians are fraudulent for they use the Bible to do it which is unfair and they pervert the meaning of the Bible to assist in this.  The sceptics are not saying the Bible is true and Jesus did not rise, as the Christians seem to think.  Sceptics are saying the Bible is wrong therefore Jesus probably did not rise.  No good God would raise Jesus from the dead for Jesus approved of the brutal laws given by Moses.

 

 

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FOREWORD 

 

This book shows that there are alternatives to the traditional interpretation of the gospel that Jesus rose from the dead supernaturally.  And these interpretations of it all fit biblical data whether it is right or wrong.  When we can manage that it is sufficient proof that the Bible gives no evidence for Jesus saving us by his death and rising from the dead.  It gives us an interpretation but what use is that?  Interpretation and evidence are two different things.

    The book stresses alternative interpretations and provides evidence for them from the Christian texts.  The refutation of the text takes second place. 

    The Christians throw down the challenge: “Prove that the resurrection never happened and we will agree with you”.  But in actual fact the truth is that if you assert something then it is up to you to prove it happened and that the contrary evidence fails.  The Christians then have to prove that the resurrection happened and if they cannot do that then we are entitled to disregard the alleged miracle.  They are the ones saying it happened not us so it is not up to us to give them the evidence that it didn’t but it is up to them to give it to us along with the proof that it happened.  This they never do.  We are not saying it never happened but we are saying nobody sensible would believe in it for the evidence is terrible.  This book shows they cannot prove it and that the evidence is nothing short of appalling.

    The Christians try to refute those who deny the resurrection of Jesus by using the gospel accounts to prove that the resurrection of Jesus happened which is pure deception because anyone who denies the resurrection of Jesus is saying the resurrection accounts are wrong or not infallible and you can’t refute anybody who sees the resurrection as impossible.  Reason says that the Christians are assuming and the anti-resurrection brigade are both assuming when it comes to these accounts.  If so the anti-resurrection assumption is the most reasonable for it is not everyday that somebody rises from the dead.

    It is conveniently forgotten by the Church that though the resurrection of Christ has great importance in the New Testament, it is not important by itself.  It is important in that Jesus was found alive after his death TO GO UP TO HEAVEN!  The resurrection was Jesus’ salvation.  However, we know that Jesus ascending into Heaven is nonsense for if he went up is he living in a cloud or did he go to the moon or to Mars?  It is totally ridiculous to believe in the resurrection and to deny that Jesus is up in the clouds.  If one is not true then why trust the other?

    Read on and let the true light of Easter lighten your heart for it cannot be the light of resurrection for us for even if it did happen we have no grounds for accepting it.

 

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THE <FIRST RECORD>

 

In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians we have the earliest Christian record of the resurrection appearances and because it is the first it is the first in significance.

    “I passed on to you first of all what I also had received that Christ died for our sins in accordance with [what] the scriptures (foretold), that he was buried, that he arose on the third day as the scriptures foretold, and [also] that he appeared to Cephas (Peter), then to the twelve.  Then later he showed himself to more than five hundred brethren at one time, the majority of whom are still alive, but some have fallen asleep [in death].  Afterward he was seen by James, then by all the apostles (the special messengers), and last of all he appeared to me” (15:1-8). 

    I would argue that when the text says that the scriptures foretold that Jesus would rise on day three it shows that the text is different from what was originally written and a forger has been at work.  Paul would not have written that in a million years for he knew the three days was never prophesied so somebody who knew little of the Old Testament had been interfering and because of the error the entire early Church came to accept the three day prophecy.  Since Paul was trying to combat heretics in Corinth who felt that Jesus had not risen he could not take the risk of seeming to have lied or to have been dense.  He knew they would try every word he wrote to breaking point.  Another reason day three is dubious is because it is probable that the resurrections of pagan gods Osiris, Attis and Adonis all transpired on the third day (page 40, The Resurrection of Jesus).  Paul would not have left himself open to being accused of stealing the story from the heathens.

    We do know for a fact that somebody was clumsily adding to and altering what was originally there in this part of Paul’s letter.  The original formula ended with Jesus having appeared but no detail was given.  On the basis that the vocabulary is not Pauline many believe the passage has been tampered with (page 98, The Resurrection of Jesus).  The text contains phrases that were never used by Paul.  The language tells against him being the author (Earliest Christianity, G A Wells, Internet Infidels).

    Some maintain that Paul would not have written that this information was transmitted to him and include the vision he had for it could not have been a part of it.  There might be a grammatical mistake but not necessarily an interference.  But we are not sure so we still cannot trust this passage.  Fr Raymond Brown’s book, The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection, page 82 says this was a blunder and an indication of interference.  It probably is when Paul later contends that the resurrection is true for we would all be lost if it never happened which proves he is stuck for evidence.  If Paul wrote about the appearances he would have written more for he was using them as support for his gospel.  Perhaps he could not use them as evidence except by simply alluding to them for they were unconvincing but still he could have said more and would have for there is no point in using bad arguments for the resurrection when the only way a resurrection could be known to have taken place is if appearances of the risen one have been made. 

    The gospels do not record the appearances to Peter, James or to the 500+.  Let us assume Paul really did record them and it was not a forger at work.  Then it is strange for books that were composed to convince people that Jesus had risen to leave the appearances out.  Paul’s letters were not confidential. Paul would have said similar things wherever he went for he was obsessed with Jesus’ demise and his startling return from the dead.  The first record, Paul’s, comes first so the Gospels were the ones doing the lying.  It is also strange that though people could have been familiar with what the apostles were saying about the resurrection, that nothing more is said about the 500+ who they couldn’t have been familiar with.  If they had been there would have been little bother getting the people of Corinth to believe in the resurrection which they denied.  Paul made it perfectly clear he had no good arguments for the resurrection which says either than the 500+ were fruitcakes and not to be relied on very much or that they were not mentioned in the original letter.  The latter is more likely.

    If Paul mentioned a vision to Peter as evidence then there is a serious problem for Peter was an uneducated and overemotional man who lied about his relation to Jesus the night Jesus was on trial three times though all he had to do was lie once and then leave the company who accused him of being Jesus’ follower.  In fact, he should not have been with those people in the first place when he was afraid they would realise he had been Jesus’ friend.  It is strange that when Jesus was supposed to be so popular in Jerusalem that the company did not recognise Peter sooner and took him to be a disciple only because of his accent – reason says Peter was not a close follower of Jesus at all.  Paul would not have dared present this man as evidence when the Corinthian Christians who had come to scoff the resurrection of Jesus would have had a field day with it.

    The brevity with which Paul spells out the evidence for the resurrection shows that he could not do any more to refute the heretics.  He made no attempt to prove that the witnesses had not hallucinated the visions or that they were not lying about what they saw even though the critics would have been accusing them of one of these.  The brevity indicates that if Paul wrote the record then the evidence for the resurrection was appalling and that if he didn’t then the brevity proves that he was not the author for the real Paul would have written more.  If it is not real then it indicates that what was there originally was known to be lies and had to be removed or if nothing was removed then the evidences listed were shorter than the evidences in the current version which makes it look completely feeble.   Christians say that Corinth was too familiar with the evidence to need details spelled out.  This is pure speculation.  It contradicts the fact that Paul was desperate to convince them.  Speculation is no good and then as now the vast majority of Christians would have made no effort to learn all they could about what God has said.

    Paul told the Corinthians who did not believe in the resurrection that the testimony that Jesus rose must be true for the dead are lost if he did not.  This weak argument says that the testimony was unconvincing so there was no evidence.  He said also that he used no clever arguments for his gospel which suggests there were none.  Despite what evangelical apologists say, Paul never says or indicates that he mentioned the five hundred for the sake of anybody who wished to check them out.  People say X, Y and Z saw this and that all the time and wouldn’t like you going to see them and interrogate them.

    Paul uses the word opthe for appeared in 1 Corinthians 15:3-9 in reference to the appearances of Jesus.  This is the same word used for the tongues of fire that appeared in Acts 2:3 showing that the visions might not have been of a material Jesus.  Opthe even refers to the man appearing to Paul in a dream (Acts 16:9).

    In 1 Corinthians 9 he says that he saw Jesus the Lord and that if he is not an apostle to others he is to them for they are the good fruits of his ministry.  He is saying then that the evidence that he was telling the truth about Jesus was in the converts God gave him.  He believed that the Holy Spirit not him was the one that made people respond to his message.  He then argued that his reluctance to live off his ministry proved his sincerity.  All false prophets have argued that the good fruits that followed them prove they are God’s men – and considering that Paul did not combat slavery and told married men to live as if they had no wives the good fruits would not have been very impressive.  What about the bad fruits we are not told about?  The good fruits of the Mormon Church are to be plainly seen but still they were founded by a false and untruthful though good-natured prophet.  Plus Paul shows he did not know that Jesus said that the man who hides his good works and is found out by accident is the real good man not the one that broadcasts his virtues.  Paul is trying to centre his religion on his own merits which shows there was nothing else to base it on.  There was nothing only visions and the testimony of the witnesses to these visions and the merits of the witnesses to go on.  The other apostles regarded Paul as a fake for he could have said they were real prophets and testified that he was a true prophet too.  That would have been better than trying to come across as bleached Boy Scout.  He said that he loved the Corinthians and would never take anything from them and was happy to milk money out of other Churches and boasted that he gave the Corinthians the gospel without cost (2 Corinthians 11:5, 7-12).  Not much to boast about after all!  He said he boasted that he did not take money from the Corinthians to show up the rival apostles who charged.  He was cheating.  He offered a fabrication as evidence for having seen the risen Jesus!  And an obvious one at that!  It is no wonder that we read in 2 Timothy 1:15 that everybody in Asia turned away from him and then we find that they turned away from him but not Jesus for the author of the Revelation wrote a nice letter blessing the Christians in Asia.  As with the rest of the apostles (Acts 5), it is plain that there was money to be made from the Jesus story.  It was easier for them all to preach and live by it than to work as fishermen and tentmakers so they had a reason to lie about Jesus rising.  Like all Christian leaders, when the apostles asked for money they were saying, “Give us money because Jesus rose from the dead so that the message will be known.”  I have no hesitation in accusing them then of religious theft for there are millions of evidences that they have no right to centre in on the resurrection of Jesus.  One would need immeasurable knowledge of the world and its other gods and miracles to be able to say that this one was the credible sign from God.  The dishonesty is disturbing and even seeing Jesus risen cannot do one thing to alleviate it. 

  In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul lies through his teeth and proves that his evidence for the resurrection and his reporting of other people’s evidence cannot be trusted.  First he says he will boast about a man who had many visions and revelations fourteen years before but he will not boast about himself.  Then he indicates that he is the man that had these experiences so he totally contradicts himself.  Then he boasts again that he will not boast and then he says that if he boasted about his visions it would not be folly for he would only be speaking the truth!  In other words, he boasted.  That is a boast.  He was trying to unduly impress the naïve with his alleged humility to get them to trust him and his alleged revelations – this was the man who had the nerve to take money from them which makes him no better than a thief!  He was a shady character.  Paul boasted of his weaknesses one of which was being persecuted - that is an example of the very type of boasting he stated was morally wrong and which he condemned rival apostles for.  He also claimed that the Lord had succeeded in preventing him being too proud about the revelations he got by sending him an angel of Satan to persecute him.  Didn’t know that Satan and Jesus were such great pals!  Satan would soon give up if he saw he was doing Paul and God a favour unless is Paul is hinting that the Lord Jesus and Paul and co were all into the black arts.  Worse Paul said that the Lord Jesus told him in a vision that the demonic angel was helping him which means that his visions of Jesus were not reliable for they gave false information.  Then the weirdo crowns the whole farcical piece of writing by stating again that he boasts in his weaknesses for they make him so holy and close to God!  If that boasting is not wrong then no boasting is wrong.  He had little concern as well for children who were being sexually abused by Christian ministers when he stated that the law God gave Moses was still to be kept which stated that at least two independent witnesses are needed to establish a judicial fact (2 Corinthians 13:1).  Of necessity, cases like that can’t have two witnesses who can testify legally and validly.  Would you trust the vision stories of a man like that who taught crap?  The apostles were no better for they were happy enough with his mission as a missionary.  So all their visions were unreliable.  Their visions then have nothing to do with helping us believe that Jesus rose for that is totally out of their element. 

  Paul declared that his rivals in religion, the false apostles, were like the devil in disguising themselves as ministers of God (1 Corinthians 11:14-15).  He says their end will match their deeds.  He means here that their true colours will not be seen except in the way they will die.  They probably said the same about him.  He wanted people to take his word for it that he was telling the truth which was hardly a fair approach.  All the Corinthians could do was hear all the sides and make up their own minds which Paul was set against.  His action was not about Jesus but about power.

   If these rivals were the Jerusalem apostles as some surmise, then Paul probably did not mention the appearances to Peter and James at all as evidence for the existence of Jesus.  It would mean a forger did.

   The earliest attempt to convince people the resurrection happened, namely what is in 1 Corinthians 15, was a desperate one.  Yet it never employed the allegedly empty tomb as evidence.  It would have had the tomb had anything to do with proving the resurrection.  This silence proves that there was no tomb found empty or at least it makes it extremely probable that Jesus’ tomb was not found deprived of his body.

    The Book of Acts hints that faith in the resurrection of Jesus was entirely based on mystical experiences and not on historical events.  Paul was on trial for his faith for the resurrection of Jesus and other “facts” concerning him before King Agrippa, Festus and Felix and never told these men that the records they had could prove that Jesus really did rise from the dead.  By drawing attention to the records he could have saved himself.  None of the apostles were there either to help him testify for himself.  The reason was there was no point.  But luckily for Paul he managed to get off but without convincing them that Jesus rose.

 

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500+ WITNESSES?

 

Paul in his First Corinthians 15v6 asserts that Jesus appeared to more than five hundred believers at the one time after his resurrection and that most of them are still alive.  You need to be very sure before you can take anything as evidence and we cannot be sure that this text was not tampered with for other parts of the chapter were.  When Paul argued that the resurrection of Christ must be true for we will be lost forever if it is not it shows that the five hundred is an interpolation for this stupid argument was the best he could come up with.  If it had not been we would be reading more about the five hundred.  Why did he not mention the book of testimonies that they were compiling?  There had to have been one if he was telling the truth or if they saw Jesus.  Perhaps he was the only one saying they saw Jesus whereas they thought they saw an angel.  Perhaps they saw something in the sky like a vision or perhaps they even saw a weird cloud.  The Bible says that Moses saw God in the appearance of a cloud (Exodus 34:5).

    It could be that Paul who spent little time in the Holy Land after his conversion and who was only interested in persecuting Christians and not in talking to them before that was told by somebody that 500 + had seen Jesus and he believed that person without checking it out.  We are not told if Paul met any of them or not.

    Christians think that Paul mentions most of them being alive so that doubters could meet them and have their doubts dispelled.  But one must remember that when Paul was a scoffer he was not impressed by this alleged apparition.  He was even on his way to Damascus to persecute when he was converted instead of staying in Judea and going after them to silence the witnesses of the apparition permanently.

    It may be that this is speculation for the witnesses would remain anonymous and hide for the times were dangerous for Christians and there were plenty of spies.  They would not take interviews.  The Corinthian sceptics would not have travelled to meet them but might have contacted them by letter through Paul.  They probably would have for it was more convenient.  But anybody could have been writing the replies.  And at least some of the replies would have been preserved.  There was also the language barrier.

    The witnesses could not be blamed for not answering the queries by mail or it would have been expensive.  Some who wrote and got no reply would have thought they had too many letters to answer.

    And Paul had no time to tell them who to write to and when.  And mail could have been intercepted to track down Christian promoters.

    No would-be detectives from Corinth would have gone to Palestine to check it out for travel was slow and arduous and hazardous and they might find the witnesses were wanted people and wanted people move about a lot.

    Only a few of the living witnesses would speak of the vision.  Some would have been too scared to speak and some or most might not have believed in what they saw and some might not have joined the Church but went on as if they seen nothing. 

    Some would have decided to say they saw nothing.

    Those who openly spoke of the vision would all have been exiled or put in jail for when the Church and resurrection story was suppressed by the Jews and Romans they would have been the biggest targets (Acts 8:1,3).  They would have been even more dangerous than the apostles for they would have been more influential.  There were more of them and so they would have been more credible. 

    Christians were not allowed to protect themselves by keeping silent as is obvious from the New Testament where people get stoned and jailed for being true to Christ.  That would have led to the rapid silencing of the witnesses.

    The detectives would have been frowned upon for doubting Christianity.  Doubt was made a sin.

    If Paul lied and was caught out he would have gotten away with it by claiming that it must have had something to do with that conspiracy against him (2 Corinthians 11; 2 Thessalonians 2:2).  Communication was slow in his day which made it easer for him to come through it weaker but essentially unharmed.  Look what Joseph Smith got away with in the 1800’s. 

    The verse is not evidence for the resurrection because Jesus appeared to Paul in the form of a light (Acts 22).  Jesus had a spiritual body that could take any visible form.  Was Jesus simply one of those strange lights that people have been seeing since the dawn of time?  Or did they see a look-alike?  Magic tricks could have been used to make the man seem to be supernatural.

    The author of Luke wrote a gospel to prove the Christian faith and he was a close friend to Paul.  If the story of the five hundred had been true it would have been inserted into the gospel or Acts for it was one of the main proofs.  Luke repeated things that had already been written about Jesus so even if Paul had mentioned it in a letter he would have written about it and elaborated on it.  Paul’s allusion was too brief and the author knew that if he had all the letters of Paul.  Luke wrote about all that Jesus did meaning all that had to do with showing he was from God (Luke 1:1-4).  Luke shows that either Paul was wrong about or never wrote about the five hundred. 

   If Paul wrote about the 500+ then the earliest he wrote was in 54 AD and the latest 57 AD.  The group could have had their vision as early as 33 AD the year of the crucifixion.  He said many of the group was still alive though some have fallen asleep.  He doesn’t say if most are still alive but many.  He writes as if the group had their vision longer than from 21 to 24 years previously.  If they had then clearly this doesn’t fit the gospel chronology and we can question their account of the timing of the resurrection.

   The verse about the 500 + need not unsettle the sceptic.

    Paul taught the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus as the heart of the Christian gospel and the truths on which all the Christian doctrines depend.  Paul taught in scripture in Galatians 1 that even if he and the apostles and angels from Heaven changed the gospel in any way they were to be treated as anathema or accursed (shunned) plainly admitting that he was more concerned about dogma than anything and even God wasn’t allowed to contradict him!  For Paul the resurrection was not important but believing in it was!  Is he and the other apostles who tolerated this nonsense really worth believing when they said Jesus rose?

 

 

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EVIDENCE VERSUS EVIDENCE

 

The Book of Mormon was a fraud and it had twelve witnesses including Joseph Smith.  They were persecuted for their testimony to the Golden Plates that Smith translated.  We know them better than the apostles so their testimony is greater and it testifies against Christ whose teaching was contradicted in the Book of Mormon.  For example, the book says that the Bible including the Old Testament was changed and corrupted contrary to Jesus who said that not even an iota of the Old Testament text would pass away.  Things like this cancel the trustworthiness of the apostles out.

    You do not believe an account about people seeing ghosts especially when the account is a second hand source.  You know that since such events are so rare and unnatural that you need stronger evidence than you would need even to convict somebody of murder because murder will happen more easily than a miracle.  The gospels are just not good enough for they are not first-hand documents.  And angel simply means messenger and a man can be a messenger and yet we read of men in white robes around the tomb at the time of Jesus’ disappearance.  This makes them ten times worse.

    The Virgin of Fatima added to the apostles teaching though the Bible and the Catholic Church are clear that God has finished giving the revelation that bears full authority over lives.  And Jesus and his early Church said that the resurrection would be the miracle of miracles and nothing else would be as good.  The evidence for her is better than that for the resurrection so she refutes the resurrection and she accuses the apostles of fraud.  She accuses herself of fraud for she supports the Catholic system with its belief in the resurrection. 

    To believe something you have to see all the evidence.  There are hundreds of objections, many of which are better-attested miracles, to the resurrection miracle and so to believe you would have to work through them all.  Nobody does this so Christianity manipulates people to think they believe in the resurrection and believe rationally. 

   

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THE LYING THEORY

 

The women and the apostles could have lied about the body disappearing from the tomb and about the visions. 

    No argument works against this possibility.  Considering the gospels say that Jesus stressed the second coming when he would purge the world of evil and sin forever and deliver the people it would appear that if Jesus had vanished from the grave or at least if it had been thought the body in the tomb was not his that the apostles and their friends who dearly and desperately wanted Jesus to be the saviour and who could not endure the setback of the cross would have believed that Jesus rose even if they never saw him.  Their belief might not have been that strong but if they felt that Jesus was with them spiritually it would have got stronger.  They would have felt that lying about his appearances was a small lie and not very wrong and no worse than the sins we all commit daily.  If these people suffered for their faith they certainly suffered more because they felt that Jesus was spiritually guiding them not necessarily appearing or speaking to them but internally being their mentor than for a missing corpse or miracle appearances.  After all, the grace of Jesus was what the religion was all about.  It was the main thing.

    It is suggested that Magdalene and the other women were not well enough known to be put up to lie.  But it had to be women who were ready and able to go to the tomb.  Perhaps they lied without being asked.  The gospels say the apostles did not approve of what they said and believed they were lying.  It is significant that we are never told that they ever believed the women although the gospel may imply that they did when their testimony was used.  But maybe the gospellers accepted the women and the apostles did not.

    It is suggested that the resurrection showed Jesus in a spiritual body and not in a merely resuscitated corpse (page 344, The Truth of Christianity) and that was too unique and original an idea to have been invented.  But it might have been necessary in case the body would turn up or in case people would wonder why they couldn’t find him the explanation being that he could vanish like a ghost for that was all he was.  Perhaps the idea of resurrection causing a transformation into a magical being was thought to give the old doctrine a more attractive slant.  A body with magical powers and that is like a ghost would be more fun than a resuscitated one.  Furthermore, this idea of the resurrection is only in Paul and is not in the Gospels or Acts and in 1 Corinthians 15 Paul stated that those who thought a rotted body could not be put together were wrong for the body was only the seed of the new one so he may have invented the spiritual body resurrection theory as a short-cut to closing up those who voiced such objections.  It is suggested that they would not have invented stories about Jesus being of a different appearance for that makes the story sillier and is hardly an indication of its probability but one of improbability.  Perhaps they thought Jesus would have had to change his looks if he appeared in case his enemies would recognise him.

    It is suggested that when Matthew 28 says some doubted when they saw Jesus it must be history.  When Jesus tells them to preach his entire gospel the doubt would seem to be fleeting but Jesus would ask doubters to preach his word for faith can be an endless struggle with doubt.  This could have been made up to make it seem that the resurrection was very convincing to sceptics, to make it sound more impressive.

    The change in the disciples that led to them losing their fears and courageously going out to preach the gospel proves nothing for they had been in danger with Jesus all the time for years.  The alleged change never took place until after the ascension.  Never was there anything written to indicate that it was cowardice that held them back until then.  We are told that they were in real concrete danger and could not preach.  Perhaps, the disciples had to make sure the body of Jesus was past the possibility of identification before they could lie in public. 

    And there is no evidence that any of them suffered just for Jesus or died for him.  Lots of lying prophets have a bad time but it is the people they have following them that give them the strength to go through it.  They do not suffer for the truth.  If an apostle was killed by the Jews it could have been because he was accused of blasphemy.  He died because he was caught and there was no escape and apologising wouldn’t help.  Nothing in this makes a real martyr.

    Apologists surmise that if the resurrection was lies then why did nobody say they saw Jesus rising from the tomb?  Since the original doctrine was that the physical body needed to provide a seed for the new body nobody needed to see the body coming back to life but only to see Jesus after the resurrection.  They thought that it did not matter when they saw the risen Jesus and many thought the same not realising that seeing the body rise would be best if that was the kind of resurrection that they believed in.

   Christians will say that if there is no evidence they were telling the truth there is no evidence that they were lying either so there is no problem.  But when somebody makes an unbelievable claim you do need evidence that they are telling the truth and if they could be lying you have to believe that they are lying otherwise we would believe anything and should believe anything.  The failure of the gospels to refute the lying theory proves that they are not the word of God.

    This is the evidence for the lying.

    The women believed before they saw Jesus (Matthew 28).  They lied to themselves for they hadn’t enough evidence.

    The two men going to Emmaus who claimed that Jesus had walked with them after his resurrection said that there were lots of scriptures that stated that the Messiah would suffer and then be glorified.  This is not true and the predictions are blatantly ambiguous.  No wonder these men were disbelieved by those who knew them and the Old Testament well (Mark 16:13).  Moreover, when these men saw Jesus they did not know him and they thought he was a stranger and they told him he must be the only one in Jerusalem who did not know what happened in the last few days.  They said then about Jesus being crucified and that in the two days since the death the women had gone to the tomb and seen visions of angels saying Jesus had risen and they found the body gone and that some of their friends went to the tomb and saw nothing of Jesus.  Then the disguised Jesus called them fools for not believing the women – a verse that is ignored by those who wish to say that since women were not regarded as reliable that the resurrection must be true when they were declared to be the first witnesses.  He complained then that the two men were slow to believe the message of prophets.  Jesus is plainly saying you should believe in tall stories.  He is also saying that weak testimony is enough.  He is also saying that the prophets are fulfilled because the women say Jesus rose and that the prophets are the evidence for believing the women.  This is all sheer conjuring trickery with facts.  Logic says the prophets should be as clear as day before being interpreted that way and the women alone were not enough to believe in such a serious claim.  Why should we believe the Emmaus stranger was Jesus?  He sounds like a joker!  It is like the hundreds of sane people who claim to have seen Elvis since his death.  The Christians maintain that Luke was telling the truth, which is arrogance for at most he would have THOUGHT he was telling the truth.  Maybe he was but maybe unfavourable facts were dropped out of the story he got.  And besides, the witnesses would have been named for Luke could be taking his information from one witness for all we know and the Bible forbids that so that shows how deep his faith in the Old Testament that he made his Jesus praise so much really was.  The same goes for the faith of the rest of the New Testament writers.  To trust anybody’s perception about Jesus is not to trust Jesus.  The Gnostics emphasised this truth and underlined the importance of direct mystical experience and the early Church hated them for that for it was a threat to the authority over minds and hearts that they had deceptively usurped.

    But the apostles said Jesus appeared telling them that Moses and the Psalms were about him (Luke 24:44).  The apostles evidently wanted people to believe that but they knew the Bible well enough to be aware that none of that could be honestly proved.  They either lied about Jesus or they knew he lied.

    Thomas did not believe in the apostles’ visions.  He told them that unless he would see and touch the Lord himself he would not believe.  He may have been accusing them of lying.  He may have been accusing them of hallucinating.  He may have thought that they were tricked by a Jesus lookalike.  These are the only options.  The gospeller evidently made the story up because had it been true and known he would have realised the need to rule out the idea that Thomas was accusing the apostles of lying or being gullible which is just as bad as lying for that is closing your mind in order to believe whatever turns you on.  Thomas lived with these men and he knew their ways.  Thomas believed that he was the only honest one among them.  Since Thomas vanished off the scene at this time the apostles could easily have lied saying he did see Jesus even if he denied it.

    The doubting Thomas story forever silences the Christian lie that when God won’t do a miracle for a sceptic it is because he does not wish to force belief on the sceptic.  When we don’t see Jesus then Jesus did not rise.

    Peter says that a text from the Old Testament spoke of the resurrection.  He lied for it could be referring to being saved from the dying process.

    Paul reported a vision of Christ when he was going to Damascus.  It can be doubted for he said we never completely avoid sinning and still said we can do good works!  He claimed that his vision was the beginning and the divine authorisation of his gospel.  Men who report lying visions are probably lying in saying they had the visions.

    Perhaps it was the gospellers who were doing the lying.  If the people they wrote about were liars then it could easily have been the gospellers who were the liars.  Acts 4 tells us that the Jews enforced silence on Peter and John for their part in the cure of a cripple in Jesus’ name because this bore witness to the resurrection of Jesus.  I cannot believe that the Jews delayed action until a healing took place.  Acts even says that Jews let the apostles preach the resurrection at the trial and let everybody see the healed man!  If they and the apostles were scheming to promote Jesus and fake persecution then the Jews would have stolen the body and they were all liars.  The Bible says the Jews hassled the apostles Peter and John because of the cure of a cripple that they said they could not deny.  Of course, they could deny it.  They were not forced to admit a natural explanation.  Also, why didn’t they react that way over the resurrection which was a worse miracle and more potent in the matter of getting converts in their point of view.  Acts is saying the resurrection did not happen as the gospels state.  The entire nation was accused of the death of Jesus (Acts 3) which is ridiculous for the Jewish leaders allegedly attempted to keep their plans for Jesus low-key for they feared his supporters among their flock. 

    The gospels show that Jesus promised to save the world by making God overthrow the kingdoms of the world and establish his own.  Instead of this happening he was nailed to a cross.  It may have been that the apostles continued to regard him as a prophet and that this overthrow would happen with the result that when he died they took it for granted without seeing anything strange that he rose again so that he could fulfil his prophecy later on.  The resurrection may have been posited as a reinterpretation of Jesus and the apostles lied about the visions of Jesus and did not see themselves as bad for doing this for Jesus had risen though nobody could prove it.  It is like how the Moonies believe in the resurrection of one of Moon’s sons and just take Moon’s word for it.

    The resurrection is a legend that we cannot take seriously for it was started by liars.

  

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THE FEMALE TESTIMONY

 

The first witnesses to the body having gone from the tomb and of the risen Jesus were women, the most important of whom was Mary Magdalene.

    Matthew says that Jesus manifested to Magdalene and another woman.  John and Mark know only of the former having the vision.  Books written to promote the gospel would say if there were more witnesses than Mary to strengthen the evidence.  That is what the gospels were written for and the more people a book says experienced something the more likely it is that that book is telling the truth.  For the same reason, one gospel would not be speaking of one angel and another of two, as they do, in case it would confuse and make people sceptical unless the gospels disagreed.

    When you state that Jesus appeared first to somebody you mean that that person was alone.  Mark did (16:9) so Mark meant that Magdalene was on her own contrary to Matthew (28:9).

    Jesus would have had his disciples cured of prejudice against women witnesses by the time he died.  Jesus talked to and listened to women.  The gospels say that the apostles did not believe the women about the empty tomb.  There was nothing amazing about that so the only reason they didn’t believe was that these women were known to invent stories.

    Magdalene was an ex-lunatic out of whom Jesus cast seven devils (Mark 16:9; Luke 8:2).  The apostles believe that Jesus cured her but I wouldn’t be so sure.  No evidence was offered for her sanity at the time of the resurrection.  She is no use as a witness without it.  And since she was the main lady we can safely ignore the other women with her if there were any. 

    John claims that Magdalene told the man she thought was the gardener that a mysterious “they” had taken her Lord and she did not know where they had put him and that was why she was weeping.  She was accusing either the Jews or the Romans without evidence and anybody that does that is not a reliable witness.

    The women were not believed by the apostles when they told them that the grave was empty and that they had met Jesus.  They were not really honest if they asked men who believed that women should not be listened to, to listen to them.  They wanted the men to deceive themselves.  Also, the Church says that the apostles were unreliable when they disbelieved the women and not when they changed their minds after they saw Jesus themselves.  What kind of double-standard is this?  The apostles did not accuse the women of being mistaken but of lying so they must have known that they had a habit of lying.

    The gospellers might have lied about the women seeing Jesus and believing he rose.  Scholars argue that the female testimony was not made up for that society did not recognise female testimony as valid and the gospels would not have invented anything embarrassing.  But everybody knew that a testimony was still a testimony.  And though not too much was staked on a woman’s testimony it had some value.  Women were not listened to in trials except to some extent and men were preferred but probably were in other things and the gospels are not legal documents.  Most non-Jewish people did recognise female testimony and the gospels catered for them.  Matthew was written for Jewish Christians hostile to Jewish tradition.  Mark and Luke and John were written for Gentiles.  Also, even the gospels did not depend on what the women said but only accept it because the men in white and the apostles back them up.  The apostles were the official witnesses which was why they were called apostles.  Any other witness was only to draw people to their testimony.  So, it is really the men’s witness that the women were right that is being leaned on.  In Matthew, the soldiers are stated to have seen what the women seen at the tomb though not necessarily anything that looked like an angel – the angel could have been a lightning bolt that was interpreted as an angel by the Christians - and all the disciples accepted what the women said when they saw Jesus themselves.  In Mark and Luke, Jesus says the women were right.  In John, the gospellers says that Jesus really manifested to Mary Magdalene and that Jesus appeared to the Eleven in confirmation of her claim that he was restored to life. 

    If what women say is weak it is better to use it for anything is better than nothing.  But it may show that you are stuck for evidence. 

    The women were originally thought by those who knew Jesus best to be liars which shows that they were not trusted.  If Jesus did miracles and the women were still not believed then we have several testimonies that they were not trustworthy against their few testimonies.  So, the most testimonies should be accepted. 

    The women were probably not near the tomb at all.

 

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THE APOSTLES’ TESTIMONY TESTED

 

The apostles claimed that they saw the risen Jesus.

    Jesus had told them he would rise again on the third day and the gospels claimed that they did not understand him for they acted as if they never expected it.  But the words were plain enough so that is an excuse for explaining why they did not believe when it happened. 

   Perhaps Jesus never said he would rise and the gospels are lying when they said he did.  Perhaps the apostles only pretended to disbelieve when they found the empty tomb and heard the testimony of the women for they didn’t want to preach a resurrection and get into danger.  Perhaps the apostles knew he never rose and decided to say he did after denying the resurrection.  But if Jesus had been a miracle-worker you would expect them to believe.  Were they afraid to support the resurrection at that time in case the Jews would accuse them of having stolen the corpse?  It is evident that the apostles were not telling the whole truth about what they made of it all.

    The John gospel says that Peter and another disciple put their lives and the lives of others at risk by visiting the empty tomb leaving them open to being framed for the theft by the hostile authorities and over something they did not believe, namely that the tomb was empty.  Men like that would lie about a risen Jesus.  And the apostles claimed to be lacking in faith after spending three years with a man who could not have got them all crucified as messianic supporters.  They were lying.  The Matthew gospel hints that they lied about the resurrection when it was more interested in the women and the guards than the apostles.  Yet it says they were to prove the resurrection not the women or the guards.  Matthew just wanted to forget about he apostles and there would only have been one reason for that.  They were a blight on the Christian cause. 

    There is proof that the apostles were gullible, fanatical, deceitful and so cannot be trusted as witnesses.  If Jesus had seemed to raise people from the dead when he was alive that would have prompted the apostles to say they saw Jesus after his death if the body disappeared or even if it didn’t for they would take it for granted that he would raise himself even if he wouldn’t appear.  They would have lied with a clear conscience.  That is why the gospels and Christian apologetics are nonsense for they seek to defend the resurrection appearances when what they should be doing is defending the badly substantiated raisings of the dead performed by Jesus before his own alleged comeback from the grave.

   

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THE MAGICAL BODY

 

According to Christianity, “The Bible says that Jesus was radiant and healthy and happy after he left his tomb after he died.  He wouldn’t have been if the swoon theory, the thought that Jesus survived the crucifixion and met up with his disciples again, were right.  If the disciples saw a sick and bleeding Jesus they would not believe that he really rose from the dead.” The doctrine that the resurrection requires the resuscitation of the whole body of Jesus is wrong.  Nor does the New Testament ever say that Jesus looked well after his resurrection.  There are no accounts of him being bathed in light in the gospels following his crucifixion or of how beautiful and angelic he looked.

    Lets assume that the swoon theory is right.  The disciples probably surmised that God was up to one of his plans that look like madness in human eyes if they saw a Jesus who looked like a crucifixion survivor.  They might have thought that that God left Jesus in the state a survivor of crucifixion would be in if that was the kind of Jesus they saw.  Jesus had made them more than familiar with and used to that idea about God’s mysterious plans. 

   The New Testament never says that Jesus was glorious and free from weakness and bleeding when his disciples saw him after he rose though Paul described him as glorious when he appeared to him.  John says he had wounds and Luke says he still ate.  He looked so ordinary to the men he went with to Emmaus that to say that the gospels support the view that Jesus behaved magically after his comeback from the dead is to be delusional.  All the Bible says is that Jesus was immortal after his resurrection (Romans 6:9).  Even Paul’s statement that Jesus has a spiritual body now does not refute me for Jesus might have had a spiritual body that materialised and behaved exactly as a normal one would.  Perhaps it was a normal body then and had gradually evolved into a spiritual one.  The stories about Jesus appearing and disappearing never actually say he came and went back into thin air.  They can be read more naturally so they should be.  For example, if you say your friend instantly disappeared people know what you mean and it is not a dematerialisation.  There is nothing to persuade us that Jesus was not just a crucifixion survivor.  Many say that the ascension story could be interpreted as Jesus walking up a mountain into a cloud.  The idea that he levitated is not there at all.

    The apostles might have thought that it was a good thing to lie or tell what they thought was the truth about Jesus being raised even if it did not look that way. 

    If Jesus really rose from the dead or survived the Jews and Romans would have looked for him even if it was just to discredit the supernatural resurrection story.  Why then is this not mentioned in the gospels?  What were they hiding?

    Matthew 28:17 tells us that when the disciples saw the risen Jesus some doubted and would not worship him.  We do not know if they doubted that it was Jesus or that Jesus was really raised from the dead and had survived naturally.  Bearing in mind their credulity in relation to things miraculous, and the testimonies that Jesus rose that would have impressed them, it is probably the latter.  But at least it shows that Jesus looked like an ordinary man and not like the holy pictures.  He looked so tangible and human that they doubted.

    John’s Jesus tells Mary Magdalene not to touch him for he had not ascended into Heaven to his Father.  He did not mean that she was not good enough to touch him for he was not like that according to John.  And if he did then she would be less right to touch him if he ascended to God.  He may have meant that she was hurting him for he had not ascended bodily to God to get that body turned into a perfect magical body.  He says he will get one but not when.  Or perhaps he did have the magical body which makes this fit Paul and that body was kept subject to ordinary conditions because he would not transform its behaviour and qualities until he went to Heaven.

    When Jesus ate fish before his friends according to Luke he seems to have had an ordinary body that needed food.  He told them he was not a ghost and did this and asked them to touch him to prove it.  It would not prove it if he could materialise a body and go through walls at will.  I stated that none of this proves the physical resurrection of the whole body of Jesus and I still stand by that.  The risen body could have been miraculously multiplied from some cells of the old one lying in the tomb and seemed to be the whole physical body revived.  Perhaps it became a spiritual body later. 

    John says that Jesus entered the room where the apostles were hiding though the doors were locked.  You don’t need a body that can pass through solid wood for locks to be unable to keep you out.  This was probably the upper room where Jesus had held the last supper for there was no place else (he was not as popular as the Gospels say!)  So Jesus could have had a key.  They were so excited to see him that they might not have even thought about asking how he got in.

    Hebrews 4 says that Jesus is able to sympathise for us now in Heaven because he knows what it was like to be a vulnerable man.  Not only does this tell us that Jesus was not God for God incarnate could not be described as vulnerable even if he lets people hurt him for letting people hurt you is not like being hurt and unable to do anything about it but it also tells us that Jesus suffers the pain of compassion for us now through his recollection of what suffering is like.  Only an ordinary body could undergo that pain.

    The magic body doctrine is in the Bible but no evidence from the resurrection visions is offered for it.  It cannot be found clearly in the gospels.  It is just an interpretation.  It is possible that when the apostles could not recognise the risen Jesus it could be because Jesus was sick and dying.  Christians will object that he did a lot of walking for a man who was dying but how do they know there was nobody wheeling him around – somebody that the apostles knew nothing about?

    When the Bible says that prophecy rather than witnesses verifies the resurrection it follows that all the witnesses agreed that they could have been deceived but it all depended on them interpreting prophecy right.

 

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HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS

 

This book argues against the hallucination possibility in relation to the resurrection visions in chapter eight.

    It says that there were too many witnesses to hallucinate.  It says that 500+ saw Jesus and just takes Paul’s word for that.  The laughable part is that it says the witnesses were reliable though we know next to nothing about them!  The gospels even say that the apostles had trouble believing in Jesus though they knew him best meaning that they were not reliable though the book does not mean for us to see it like that.

    The book then tells the lie that Mary appeared to 70,000 at Fatima knowing full well that she did not for they only saw the miracle of the sun and not all of them did.  It says that this matches the vision of the 500 and says that this however was a vision and not a physical resurrection.  But the appearances of Jesus were not a resurrection either but only visions of a resurrected man like the three children of Fatima supposedly saw Mary as a resurrected woman.  I don’t know why I bother attacking this shocking tissue of deviousness.  The book says that five hundred separate visions of Elvis may be dismissed.  This is because visions of Elvis do happen.  Yet the authors hold that Paul’s vision of the risen Jesus to which he was the only witness to the risen Jesus should be believed in.  The damn hypocrisy!  Should we reject 500 separate visions just because they are of Elvis?  The authors wouldn’t treat 500 visions of Jesus similarly.  Even the gospels give no real indication that all who saw Jesus saw the same thing at exactly the same time. 

   Then the book claims that unlike hallucinations Jesus hung around for forty days.  But he may have only been seen for a few moments at a time over that period.  Then it is dishonestly argued that the hallucination would not have been believed in if Jesus had been still in the tomb!  Besides only one gospel speaks of this forty day period.

    The book then discusses the theory that the resurrection story was a myth.  First it is alleged that the gospel stories all serve a purpose and even goes as far as to say that the detail about Jesus writing in the sand in John 8 proves that it was an eyewitness testimony!  As for the purpose many of the stories are repetitive.  Jesus says in a parable what need only be said in two sentences.  A real person would not have talked like that and nobody – especially in a busy world - listens to preachers who treat them like morons who need fairy stories to understand the simplest of points.  Then it is argued that there was not enough time for myths to develop (page 190).  But there are no hard and fast rules about such things.  Every town is full of mythological rumours that have started and are believed by many just in the course of a few days.  Many of these rumours will find themselves in two or three diaries and often if anybody read these diaries he would believe the rumours.

  Many Christians were Gnostics and mystics and Gnostics and mystics often held that an ability to great good myths was an indication of gnosis.  Christians would have developed good myths rapidly. 

    Page 193 says we can trust the gospel account of the resurrection for Acts was written before Paul died and Luke before that and that Jesus’ prophecies about the fall of Jerusalem were written before the event for the gospels connected it with the end of the world.  There is no evidence that Acts was written then.  Perhaps Luke died and could not finish the book or took a stroke or lost his mental faculties like the authors of this silly dose of apologetics have.  And when the gospels were written has no bearing whatsoever on their reliability for there is no evidence that they were widely published among those who would have known the truth about Jesus.  And how Catholic apologists can trust gospels they accuse of making a mistake about the end of the world is a mystery.  What other major mistakes did they make? 

    The tales of Jesus’ weakness and that of his friends is supposed to tell of the accuracy of the gospels.  Christians cannot seriously have expected the witnesses to boast about themselves if they were lying for that would turn anybody off.  People are attracted to humility and to say you believe in something though you did not want to makes you come across as more sincere than you would if you said you did want to believe it.  When the Christians invented their Jesus, they thought the spirit was telling them stories about him many of which were inspired by figures other than Jesus.  No wonder stories of the weaknesses had to come in.

    As for the vast number of conversions following the resurrection, it is known that though Tertullian boasted that most of the citizens in the cities were Christians he was lying for Origen stated that only a tiny number of people were Christians and no inscriptions or texts refer to Christians before 250 AD and Christians are omitted from the two biggest histories written in the third century. On the whole the picture is that in 250 AD only 2 per cent of the people in the Empire were Christian (page 230) and a lot of these would have been Gnostic heretics.

 

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COMPETING CLAIMS

 

Lots of people did better than Jesus so why should we believe in him or in his resurrection?  If they did as good as him or near as good as him the same question pops up and there is no answer to it.

   You will see from my book, The Pagan Idols of Roman Catholicism, that to pray to the saints is to repudiate the Christian faith and to create new gods.  Some of the saints performed resurrections from the dead which the Church accepts.  They did better attested miracles than Jesus.  The saints died and appeared to people afterwards.  The Catholics say they did not claim to be gods or Messiahs so they are different.

   They claimed to be gods better than God.  The fact that they were not explicit about this before they died means nothing.  If they should have been then Jesus was not who he said he was.

  The vast majority of Jesus’ doctrines were revealed supposedly by Jesus to his Church following Pentecost, 50 days after Jesus rose from the dead.  The Church allegedly came to understand that Jesus was God after he was off the scene.  Fundamentalist Christians explain that the apostles knew a lot of the stuff when Jesus was alive but they were so stubborn that it took time after Jesus’ death before they could come to terms with it and explain it and teach it.  There is no evidence for that speculation.  Liberal Christians happily admit that it was all made up or thought of long after Jesus was gone.  So a long dead obscure Catholic saint could start appearing from beyond the grave and start claiming that he rose bodily from the dead and reveal for the first time that he was the incarnation of God the Father all the time.  It is not that hard to arrange for people who can be trusted to say they met this being.  The Bible calls Jesus the only way to God and the only begotten Son of God but that does not rule out other incarnations of God.  The Christians think it is a great proof for the resurrection if they could prove that the Jews, disciples of Jesus or the Romans could not have nicked the body of Jesus as if it proved nobody else did it.  But it is not and the real evidence for the resurrection is the appearances of Jesus so a missing body is not an essential. 

    If Jesus was God then most of the body of God has rotted for we are shedding dead cells all the time and our bodies are endlessly replacing themselves with fresh materials so it is mad to think that God would necessarily raise a body he once incarnated himself into from the dead.  The evidence for the resurrection of Jesus can be easily made unconvincing merely by the emergence of evidence for the divine seal upon a rival who also rises from the dead.  It does not have to actually emerge.  It is enough that it can.  Faith in the resurrection of Jesus and his unique role as saviour is an insult to anybody who wants to believe in a copycat of his.    It’s sectarian.  Rather than calling us to love, the resurrection calls us to war.  It commands that we support it meaning that we should destroy the evidence for the resurrection of any other Messiah.  It despises God.

   Jesus, according to the New Testament, made huge claims for himself.  He claimed to be the best prophet ever and the Son of God and the saviour.  The evidence for the resurrection even if it is as strong as the Christians say still is not enough to justify his making those claims and to justify people believing him.  If Jesus was a man of integrity then he couldn't approve of us believing in the resurrection.  Sometimes you can have very strong evidence for something but there could be one fact that calls on us to ignore it.  You can perhaps build a very very strong case for X having been Jack the Ripper.  But this case is no good if X didn't keep on killing people as a serial killer would.  Then the evidence would be invalidated by a psychological fact, namely that serial killers don't stop killing and especially if they glut their appetite on gore like the Ripper did.  If you say it was a miracle that changed the Ripper so that he stopped killing you reinstate the evidence.  But you do this at the expense of credibility.  In reality you are not letting the evidence speak for itself though it looks as if you are.  You are showing undue and unfair bias.  When you shed credibility, the evidence is merely evidence in name only.  That's all.  That is what Christians do with the resurrection.  The evidence makes them no better off.  It is exploited to trick people to make them think they are making sense when they say Jesus rose from the dead.

 

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CONCLUSION

 

We don’t have a good enough reason to think that Jesus Christ did rise from the dead.  King Herod who so easily believed that John the Baptist came back from the dead and rose despite the evidence that this John was another man altogether, Jesus, didn't believe Jesus rose.  That says a lot.  And Herod had a lot to lose - eternal life.  Even if the apostles died for their testimony to Christ his testimony against was the stronger for he risked eternal damnation.

 

WORKS CONSULTED

 

Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible, John W Haley, Whitaker House, Pennsylvania, undated

Decoding Mark, John Dart, Trinity Press, Harrisburg, PA, 2003

Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Vol 1, Josh McDowell, Alpha Scripture Press Foundation, Bucks, 1995

Handbook of Christian Apologetics, Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Monarch, East Sussex, 1995

In Defence of the Faith, Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Eugene, Oregon, 1996

In Search of Certainty, John Guest Regal Books, Ventura, California, 1983

Jesus and the Four Gospels, John Drane, Lion Books, Herts, 1984

Jesus Lived in India, Holger Kersten, Element, Dorset, 1994

Jesus the Evidence, Ian Wilson Pan, London 1985

Mind Out of Time, Ian Wilson, Gollanez, London, 1981

Mother of Nations, Joan Ashton, Veritas, Dublin, 1988

The Bible Fact or Fantasy? John Drane, Lion Books, Oxford, 1989

The Encyclopaedia of Bible Difficulties, Gleason W Archer, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1982

The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh & Henry Lincoln, Corgi, London, 1982

The Jesus Conspiracy, Holger Kersten and Elmar R Gruber, Element, Dorset, 1995

The Jesus Inquest, Charles Foster, Monarch Books, Oxford, 2006

The Messianic Legacy, Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh & Henry Lincoln, Corgi, London, 1987

The Metaphor of God Incarnate, John Hick, SCM Press Ltd, London, 1993

The Passover Plot, Hugh Schonfield, Element Books, Dorset, 1996

The Resurrection Factor, Josh McDowell, Alpha Scripture Press Foundation, Bucks, 1993

The Resurrection of Jesus, Pinchas Lapide, SPCK, London, 1984 

The Truth of Christianity, WH Turton, Wells Gardner, Darton & Co Ltd, London, 1905

The Turin Shroud is Genuine, Rodney Hoare, Souvenir Press, London, 1998HoarHo

The Unauthorised Version, Robin Lane Fox, Penguin, Middlesex, 1992

The Vatican Papers, Nino Lo Bello, New English Library, Sevenoaks, Kent, 1982

The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus Raymond E Brown Paulist Press, New York, 1973

The Womb and the Tomb, Hugh Montefiore, Fount – HarperCollins, London, 1992

Verdict on the Empty Tomb, Val Grieve, Falcon, London, 1976 

Who Moved the Stone? Frank Morison, OM Publishing Cumbria, 1997

Why People believe Weird Things, Michael Shermer, Freeman, New York, 1997

 

 

BIBLE VERSION USED 

The Amplified Bible 

  

THE WWW 

 

Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?  Dan Barker debates Mike Horner. 

www.ffrf.org/debates/barker_horner.html

 

A Naturalistic Account of the Resurrection

http://www.phlab.missouri.edu/~c570529/PhilosoStop/resurrection.html

 

Earliest Christianity, G A Wells, Internet Infidels

www.infidels.org/library/modern/g_a_wells/earliest.html

 

A Resurrection Debate by G A Wells, 

www.infidels.org/library/modern/g_a_wells/resurrection.html

 

Still Standing on Sinking Sand, Farrell Till, 

www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/1997/1/1sink97.html

 

Why I Don’t Buy the Resurrection Story, by Richard Carrier

www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/resurrection/index.shtml

 

The Resurrection by Steven Carr 

www.bowness.demon.co.uk/resr.htm 

 

The Evangelical Apologists: Are They Reliable? Robert Price

www.infidels.org/library/modern/robert_price/beyond_born_again/chap5.html

 

Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?  Dan Barker versus Mike Horner  www.ffrf.org/debates/barker_horner.html 

 

Jesus Slept!  This page asks if Jesus could have been doped on the cross meaning that the explanation for the resurrection was that he was never dead. 

http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/146%20mandrake.schtml  

 

Beyond Born Again

http://www.infidels.org//library/modern/robert_price/beyond_born_again/chap6.html 

 

Did Early Christians use Hallucinogenic Mushrooms?  Archaeological Evidence.  Franco Fabbro.

http://people.etnoteam.it/maiocchi/fabbro.htm 

 

Blessed Easter

www.mindspring.com/~bab5/BIB/lessons.htm  

 

Craig’s Empty Tomb and Habermas on the Post-Resurrection Appearances of Jesus

www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/indef/4e.html  

 

The Case For Christianity Examined: Truth or Lies? 

www.askwhy.co.uk/awstruth/ChristianCase.html  

 

Challenging the Verdict

A Cross-Examination of Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ

http://human.st/jesuspuzzle/CTVExcerptsThree.htm#Twelve

     

 

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