Sleepy said:
Shame that Paul didn't write 1 Peter.
, Opps, my bad, I meant to write Peter, not Paul. Meh!
Thats right, Paul was for a large part of his life anti JC, did you not know this?
Rubbish, and also irrelevent
No its not and anyone who can 'rubbish' such a claim needs a dam good reason as to why no historical accounts are as textually pure as the Gospels.
Also you assume that there would have been a need for the authorities to put out anti JC propoganda at that time
No I don't. The simple answer for all of this would have been for the Authorities to produce a body which would have silenced all the weirdos of the day who claimed to have seen Jesus. They couldn't. Why not? They couldn't well say the body was stolen as we've been down that part and its been disprooved countless times over.
The writing of Paul and the Gospels are all dated to within at least 15 years of the crucifixtion, some even 7 years.
Why would 12 men, scared, doubting, fearing death suddenly get together and go "Oh alright then, lets crack this religion thing and start up Christianity"? - Something pretty extraordinary must have happened within days / weeks of the crucifixtion for this to occur. Surely when this extraordinary man (JC) died, the teachings of such a religion would have stopped had it not been for the resurrection. The 'movement' would have died with him condisering the 12 had trouble understanding the teachings of JC whilst he was alive.
These are not trivial differences
But they are NOT contradictions. I have four newspapers sat here on my desk talking about last nights riots at old Trafford. Shock horror, all of them have at least one difference.
Its true to note that the "benefit of the doubt should be delegated to the document itself, not arrogated by the citric to himself".
Pauls lack of a physical resurrection is no bother. The Gospels each detail a physical approach by Jesus to his disciples. Oh but wait, maybe this was a group hallucination
. I suppose also when Thomas touched the wounds of Jesus that this was also indeed some spiritual guise, but Paul never implies a spiritual resurrection. He uses the word 'egeiro' which means 'to awaken'.
Matthew, Luke and John state that Jesus appeared physically.
Matt. 28:9 says "they clasped his feet." Luke 24:39 says "Touch me and see, a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see I have them." John 20:27 says "Put your fingers here; see my hands." These same gospels also describe raising as 'egeiro', which is the same term Paul used.
Matt. 28:6-7 says "He is not here, he has risen (egeiro) just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. He has risen (egeiro) from the dead." Luke 24:6 says "He is not here, he has risen (egeiro)!" And John 21:14 says "...he was raised (egeiro) from the dead." The point is clear, the writers of Matthew, Mark, and Luke saw no contradiction in affirming that Jesus was alive bodily and physically with the word egeiro as used by Paul.
In Mark's record of the empty tomb a source is used which originated before AD 37. Scholars know this because the high priest is referred to without using his name. Caiphas (the high priest during Christ's death) must have therefore still been the high priest when this story began circulating since there was no need to mention his name in order to distinguish him from the next high priest. Caiphas' term ended in AD37, so that is the last possible date for the source's origination. The evidence for the empty tomb is so near to the events themselves that it is hard to argue that legend could sweep in and replace the hard core historical facts.
Can we tango some more? I'm enjoying this greatly