Many people around the world celebrated Jesus’ resurrection this past weekend, most believe it actually happened. Paul wrote “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile… if in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied” (I Corinthians 15:17-19).
Some might call resurrection stories “the product of a developing tradition and as powerfully true metaphorical narratives,” as liberal Protestant scholar Marcus J. Borg does.
This interpretation fits nicely in Western society, where religion exists primarily in the private sphere and is equated to values, and therefore seen as inherently subjective.
Asserting Jesus’ resurrection actually happened moves the question from the private sphere to the public realm where such subjects as history and science are housed.
Many people argue that such assertions about the resurrection are oxymoronic — the resurrection is a scientific impossibility or a-historical at best.
Instead of being driven by consistent logic, the authority behind their argument is cultural: the post-Enlightenment concept of fact or hard-truth has exiled the supernatural.
I want to put this essentially anti-theistic bias aside and ask if we can believe with sufficient justification that Jesus physically rose from the dead.
We can observe the body of facts dealing with the resurrection and attempt to determine which explanation best explains the evidence.
Let us assume Jesus did not actually rise from the dead. His disciples either deliberately fabricated such stories or were mistakenly convinced Jesus rose after his body was stolen from the tomb, buried in a common grave, eaten by dogs and crows or resuscitated. What kinds of resurrection stories would they have invented?
Many Jews believed in an afterlife of darkness and slumber, though some did not believe in any sort of afterlife, like the Sadducees. A group of Jews called Pharisees did believe in the resurrection, but even their party was given to disagreement as to what that term meant.
In seeking to appeal to their Jewish contemporaries, one would suspect an appeal to previously existing beliefs about the resurrection. One would be wrong.
Instead of adapting to current resurrection assumptions, the early Christian community departed from them in a number of ways. Christians argued resurrection transformed the physical body, not simply reanimated it or occurred in a purely spiritual sense. They argued about while resurrection for all people did happen at the end of time, it had already occurred for one particular man.
They argued a resurrection connected to righteous living and baptism for living believers or simply as vindication for why Jesus was no longer around.
Something happened changing their preexisting views of resurrection and motivated them to advance those views in a society that counted them as strange and worthy of persecution. Furthermore, these alien views came to be held by former persecutors, like the above-quoted Paul.
If Christians had fabricated the resurrection, they would have been better off leaving out women – as demonstrated by second-century Celsus’ misogynistic quip: “But who really saw this? A hysterical woman…”
Certainly their stories need to be analyzed and evaluated, but analysis is not tantamount to discrediting or a predetermined rejection.
— Trevor Clark, professional writing and religious studies junior
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Pinchfist 1 year, 1 month ago
"Instead of being driven by consistent logic, the authority behind their argument is cultural: the post-Enlightenment concept of fact or hard-truth has exiled the supernatural."
The desire for evidence and using scientific methodology hasn't exiled the supernatural, it's an attempt to either move it into the natural (the rising of the sun, the germ theory of disease) or move it into the fantastic (unicorns, zombies).
If you think that "consistent logic" can explain how a person can be dead for three days then come back to life, feel free to do so.
All I see in your assertions, Trevor, is a slew of unfounded assumptions about people who aren't around anymore to either agree or disagree with your claims. That's not logic, that's storytelling.
Being skeptical of bizarre claims is good. The idea of "predetermined rejection" as you seem to portray it, seems more like defaulting to an outlook of the world where animals don't just reanimate or, in most peoples' parlance - reality. This is the world we live in. Asking to ignore the nearly limitless empirical evidence that reanimation isn't possible because it doesn't fail within your theistic framework doesn't diminish the pre-existing framework of reality. It's not a matter of discrediting your claims - religious sorts claim, against all available evidence, that resurrection is possible (at least the one time). It's a matter of religious sorts, making a bizarre claim against the fabric of reality as we know it, being held to the same standard that one would be held to if they insisted that unicorns were real.
mythman 1 year, 1 month ago
You'd best not limit the source of resurrection beliefs to Jewish traditions. Remember that the Middle East was under heavy Roman and Greek influence, both of which share several gods who died and returned. Even Justin Martyr saw parallels: “when we say … Jesus Christ, our teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propose nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you consider sons of Zeus.”
Samsonlike 1 year, 1 month ago
Yeshua (I don't like using His Christian nickname) Himself taught something essential in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man, after dying, is in torment, and seeing Abraham on the other side of Hades, asks for some water to be put on the tip of his tongue. He eventually requests that someone from the grave be raised up to warn his five brothers to repent so they don't end up like him. Abraham, in the parable, states; "they have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them." The rich man again pleads; "no, if someone from the grave goes to them they'll repent." Yeshua ends this little teaching by having Abraham state; "if they don't hear Moses and the prophets, they won't repent, even if someone was raised from the dead."
Here is Messiah Yeshua Himself (who I personally believe was raised from the dead), teaching that even if someone ("someone" includes Himself) appeared from the dead, that would not result in anyone repenting. Belief in what is taught in the Torah of Moses and the Prophets of Israel and Judah is what will lead to repentance.
I believe Yeshua is the Messiah, that He is the Redeemer, and that He rose from the dead, because ,by His grace, I believe and keep His commandments in Torah and hear His prophets.
Preaching someone who got up from the grave apart from what is taught in Moses and the Prophets is a fable as "effective" as Zeus in getting someone to change their minds.
leimapapa 1 year, 1 month ago
"The idea of "predetermined rejection" as you seem to portray it, seems more like defaulting to an outlook of the world where animals don't just reanimate or, in most peoples' parlance - reality."
@Pinchfist Trevor's argument here is that most peoples' view of "reality" consists of little more than predetermined rejection which is an exercise in intellectual laziness. He's asking people to be less like the intellectually lazy world they live in so, as a result, the world might change for the better. How was that not clear?
Steven Zoeller 1 year, 1 month ago
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That said, a non-sarcastic kudos to you for actually backing up your religious convictions with research. Not many people do this today, so you deserve some commendation even if I remain unconvinced.
Pinchfist 1 year, 1 month ago
@leimapapa
"Trevor's argument here is that most peoples' view of "reality" consists of little more than predetermined rejection which is an exercise in intellectual laziness."
Are you actually suggesting that questioning extraordinary claims is intellectual laziness?
The only intellectual laziness that I see is Trevor claiming that we should tell stories to one another and forbid any attempt to look toward actual empirical evidence to determine the validity of the claims within the stories.
Intellectual laziness is saying we should look at the evidence surrounding an event, then supplying nothing more than 2000 year old fairy tales as fact. Creating a pseudo-logic to bolster pseudo-evidence is intellectual laziness as well.
"He's asking people to be less like the intellectually lazy world they live in so, as a result, the world might change for the better. How was that not clear?"
How does the unquestioned belief in a sky camera and his zombie son make the world a better place?
How does Xenu make your life more complete?
What's so amazingly world boosting about wearing strange underwear once you're married?
What about the allegedly righteous killing of the non-believer makes our world safer or better?
These are the products of intellectual laziness, not of asking for evidence to support a claim. Trevor is condemning those who believe in Christ's resurrection as parable, not an actual event as well as rational thought as a whole. He argues that "it must be right because lots of people believed it." Intellectual laziness, indeed.
If intellectual laziness is holding religious claims to the same standard that one would hold any other claim about the world around us, then count me in. Trevor's extraordinary claims aren't off-limits and when he attempts to bring them into the fold of reality as fact, he should expect rational people to question it.