It’s their word against that of the disciples; you have no reason to believe one side or the other, side from the fact that resurrections are so improbable.
There are ways to test oral testimonies and eye witness accounts for truthfulness and our courts do it all the time. There are lots of reasons to believe the Gospel writers over the other side. The late Simon Greenleaf, a skeptic at one point and also one of the founding members of Harvard Law School, wrote an essay on why the Gospel writers should be taken as innocent of deception if given a fair trial.
Greenleaf, one of the principle founders of the Harvard Law School, originally set out to disprove the biblical testimony concerning the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He was certain that a careful examination of the internal witness of the Gospels would dispel all the myths at the heart of Christianity. But this legal scholar came to the conclusion that the witnesses were reliable, and that the resurrection did in fact happen.
In trials of fact, by oral testimony, the proper inquiry is not whether is it possible that the testimony may be false, but whether there is sufficient probability that it is true.
The credit due to the testimony of witnesses depends upon, firstly, their honesty; secondly, their ability; thirdly, their number and the consistency of their testimony; fourthly, the conformity of their testimony with experience; and fifthly, the coincidence of their testimony with collateral circumstances.
Simon Greenleaf proceeds in the essay to expand on each one of the five tests of the Gospel testimonies. It’s an interesting read.
Okay, so let’s go back to another one of your statements, Randaly.
These kind of screwups happen....not all the time, but there are a fair number of recorded and verified instances. (As opposed, again, to zero recorded resurrections. 5 seconds googling found Maggie Dickson, Anne Green, Zoleykhah Kadkhoda, and William Duell as execution survivors.) Also, the Jews were not in charge at the time, the Romans were- and the Roman leader, Pontius Pilate, didn’t want to kill Jesus, according to all of the Gospels.
It seems that most of the examples you give are cases of execution by hanging or stoning. None of them are cases of people surviving execution by Roman crucifixion.
You also seem to speculate that maybe Pontius Pilate was somehow going soft on Jesus because he really didn’t want to kill him. There’s no need for me to rebuttal that, is there?
More broadly, we simply don’t have much solid evidence; it’s a he-said she-said kind of situation- only it’s also one where one side was entirely made up of fanatical cultists (or, equivalently, extremely faithful believers) who were claiming something impossible by natural means.
Yes, that’s the definition of a real miracle; something that occurs but is impossible by natural means. You will have to absolutely prove that miracles never occur in order for you to be able to completely write-off the claims of the eye witnesses of the resurrection based on the argument that such claims cannot be true because resurrections are impossible due to natural law. If there is a God, it’s not unreasonable to believe that He can bend or supersede His own natural laws whenever He wants to.
The claims of the Bible, upon scrutiny by unprejudiced men and women, are often found to be consistent with sound reason.
Greenleaf also makes a number of claims, like this one:
That the books of the Old Testament, as we now have them, are genuine; that they existed in the time of our Savior, and were commonly received and referred to among the Jews, as the sacred books of their religion; and that the text of the Four Evangelists has been handed down to us in the state in which it was originally written, that is, without having been materially corrupted or falsified, either by heretics or Christians; are facts which we are entitled to assume as true, until the contrary is shown.
Greenleaf has basically no idea what he’s talking about. He appears to be using theory and the bible as his main sources. But most of his claims (eg that the Gospels were written almost immediately after Jesus’ death, or that they didn’t change thereafter) are wrong. (Note: I only skimmed the essay, since it’s long. He may quibble later on.) See Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus, or for that matter, Wikipedia. More generally, every single ancient religion produced numerous claims similar to those of the bible, with countless eyewitnesses; many events that weren’t religious also produced similar claims. For example, Herodotus, a historian, interviewed eyewitnesses of the Persian Wars, who produced the following claims:
the temple of Delphi magically defended itself with animated armaments, lightning bolts, and collapsing cliffs
the sacred olive tree of Athens, though burned by the Persians, grew a new shoot an arm’s length in a single day
a miraculous flood-tide wiped out an entire Persian contingent after they desecrated an image of Poseidon
a horse gave birth to a rabbit
a whole town witnessed a mass resurrection of cooked fish
These claims, and countless others made by almost every other religion in the world, are backed up by the exact same evidence you are claiming: that is, eyewitness testimony. We’ve also seen numerous modern events (UFO’s, ghosts, etc) where eyewitnesses claimed nonnatural causes; these were actually testable, they were tested, and found to be natural.
It seems that most of the examples you give are cases of execution by hanging or stoning. None of them are cases of people surviving execution by Roman crucifixion.
You also seem to speculate that maybe Pontius Pilate was somehow going soft on Jesus because he really didn’t want to kill him. There’s no need for me to rebuttal that, is there?
Yes, there really is. We have numerous examples of people who were ‘executed’ and survived, contradictory witness testimony which isn’t directly available today, reliable evidence from today that people often see ‘supernatural’ things which are perfectly normal, no reliable accounts of resurrections, and very good evidence (aka all of modern biology) that they are impossible. There’s no reason to start out believing the bible without strong evidence, which isn’t available. For something to be regarded as a miracle, you need to rule out natural causes.
Yes, that’s the definition of a real miracle; something that occurs but is impossible by natural means. You will have to absolutely prove that miracles never occur in order for you to be able to completely write-off the claims of the eye witnesses of the resurrection based on the argument that such claims cannot be true because resurrections are impossible due to natural law. If there is a God, it’s not unreasonable to believe that He can bend or supersede His own natural laws whenever He wants to.
No, I definitely don’t need to prove that miracles never occur in order to claim that an event was not a miracle. Miracles by definition are incredible events, and require incredible strong evidence to be believed. Without that evidence then there is no reason to belief that an event was a miracle. More generally, if you claim that something which a) has never been reliably seen and b) goes against all available evidence (aka modern science), then you need strong evidence to believe that claim. (Also, once again, you are ignoring the witnesses who claim that there wasn’t a resurrection.) (Also, you’ve given no evidence that distinguishes your belief in the resurrection from any of the miracles with similar evidence that you don’t believe in.)
The claims of the Bible, upon scrutiny by unprejudiced men and women, are often found to be consistent with sound reason.
I suggest you read through the rest of this site, and/or the heuristics and biases movement and history. People are crazy.
ETA: Also, once again, to bring this back to your original point: if you were a citizen of Rome, perhaps in Gaul or England, what potentially available evidence would have convinced you that the resurrection was false?
There are ways to test oral testimonies and eye witness accounts for truthfulness and our courts do it all the time. There are lots of reasons to believe the Gospel writers over the other side. The late Simon Greenleaf, a skeptic at one point and also one of the founding members of Harvard Law School, wrote an essay on why the Gospel writers should be taken as innocent of deception if given a fair trial.
Here’s the essay if you wish to read it: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/jesus/greenleaf.html
Here are a few quotes from the essay:
Simon Greenleaf proceeds in the essay to expand on each one of the five tests of the Gospel testimonies. It’s an interesting read.
Okay, so let’s go back to another one of your statements, Randaly.
It seems that most of the examples you give are cases of execution by hanging or stoning. None of them are cases of people surviving execution by Roman crucifixion.
You also seem to speculate that maybe Pontius Pilate was somehow going soft on Jesus because he really didn’t want to kill him. There’s no need for me to rebuttal that, is there?
Yes, that’s the definition of a real miracle; something that occurs but is impossible by natural means. You will have to absolutely prove that miracles never occur in order for you to be able to completely write-off the claims of the eye witnesses of the resurrection based on the argument that such claims cannot be true because resurrections are impossible due to natural law. If there is a God, it’s not unreasonable to believe that He can bend or supersede His own natural laws whenever He wants to.
The claims of the Bible, upon scrutiny by unprejudiced men and women, are often found to be consistent with sound reason.
Greenleaf also makes a number of claims, like this one:
Greenleaf has basically no idea what he’s talking about. He appears to be using theory and the bible as his main sources. But most of his claims (eg that the Gospels were written almost immediately after Jesus’ death, or that they didn’t change thereafter) are wrong. (Note: I only skimmed the essay, since it’s long. He may quibble later on.) See Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus, or for that matter, Wikipedia. More generally, every single ancient religion produced numerous claims similar to those of the bible, with countless eyewitnesses; many events that weren’t religious also produced similar claims. For example, Herodotus, a historian, interviewed eyewitnesses of the Persian Wars, who produced the following claims:
the temple of Delphi magically defended itself with animated armaments, lightning bolts, and collapsing cliffs
the sacred olive tree of Athens, though burned by the Persians, grew a new shoot an arm’s length in a single day
a miraculous flood-tide wiped out an entire Persian contingent after they desecrated an image of Poseidon
a horse gave birth to a rabbit
a whole town witnessed a mass resurrection of cooked fish
These claims, and countless others made by almost every other religion in the world, are backed up by the exact same evidence you are claiming: that is, eyewitness testimony. We’ve also seen numerous modern events (UFO’s, ghosts, etc) where eyewitnesses claimed nonnatural causes; these were actually testable, they were tested, and found to be natural.
Yes, there really is. We have numerous examples of people who were ‘executed’ and survived, contradictory witness testimony which isn’t directly available today, reliable evidence from today that people often see ‘supernatural’ things which are perfectly normal, no reliable accounts of resurrections, and very good evidence (aka all of modern biology) that they are impossible. There’s no reason to start out believing the bible without strong evidence, which isn’t available. For something to be regarded as a miracle, you need to rule out natural causes.
No, I definitely don’t need to prove that miracles never occur in order to claim that an event was not a miracle. Miracles by definition are incredible events, and require incredible strong evidence to be believed. Without that evidence then there is no reason to belief that an event was a miracle. More generally, if you claim that something which a) has never been reliably seen and b) goes against all available evidence (aka modern science), then you need strong evidence to believe that claim. (Also, once again, you are ignoring the witnesses who claim that there wasn’t a resurrection.) (Also, you’ve given no evidence that distinguishes your belief in the resurrection from any of the miracles with similar evidence that you don’t believe in.)
I suggest you read through the rest of this site, and/or the heuristics and biases movement and history. People are crazy.
ETA: Also, once again, to bring this back to your original point: if you were a citizen of Rome, perhaps in Gaul or England, what potentially available evidence would have convinced you that the resurrection was false?