Proof of Jesus' Resurrection

Setanta is probably right that the decision to leave Judea after Gallus' retreat was a no brainer - for anyone but those too proud to think. So you could call the Christian exodus a coincidence.
You could.
Indeed.

neologist wrote:

Setanta is probably right that the decision to leave Judea after Gallus' retreat was a no brainer - for anyone but those too proud to think. So you could call the Christian exodus a coincidence.
You could.
Indeed.

You are willfully ignoring the particularism of what you purport to be your evidence.

First, you ignore the point i made, after providing evidence at great length, that people in the ancient world had habitually underestimated the military resources of the Romans for more than 600 years when the Judean rebellion began. In so doing, you ignore that even had your putative Hey-Zeus existed, predicting that the Jews would rebel was a no-brainer, and that it only required a little more intelligence and perception to realize that a rebellion against the Romans without outside intervention would fail.

In the second place, and more to the point about your particularism, you ignore that anyone who displayed enough sense to get the hell out of dodge before Titus showed up and the hammer came down, was showing simply ordinary prudence--whether we consider them to have been Christians being meaningless in the face of a lack of evidence. To break that down, first, even assuming, just for sake of discussion, that large numbers of "Christians" fled Judea, without good evidence of what proportion they were among all the people who fled Judea, and an ability to relate that to the proportion of "Christians" among the entire population of Judea, you have demonstrated nothing. Second, laying aside unsupported contentions on your part about whether or not "Christians" fled in significant numbers, precisely because you cannot support the contention, the inability to distinguish Jews who were members of that cult and those who were not means that if evidence were discovered in the future about the numbers of people who fled Judea, it will provide no evidence of the extent to which "Christians" reacted to a prophecy. That is why it is significant to note that these people were not known as "Christians," and that no one outside Judaism made a distinction between members of that cult and any other Jews.

In short, you'll never have good evidence from a disinterested source about whether or not there were significant numbers of "Christians" who fled Judea in the first century CE, both because you don't have any baseline data on what proportion of the Jewish population adherents of that cult constituted, and you won't have anyone outside the cult who is going to make a distinction between cult members and all other Jews. What i am pointing out is that you have to take on faith the contention that significant numbers of "Christians" fled Judea just as you have to take all of the rest of it on faith--because you don't have any unambiguous evidence.

Quite apart from that, upon what basis would you assert that before 70 CE, the scriptural texts to which you refer were widely-known, or even existant? Without that, you have absolutely no evidence that such a prophecy were generally known. Finally, of course, you have no basis upon which to refute an accusation that the alleged prophecy were inserted into scripture after the fact.

Before you object that 'those are from the Bible', has it occurred to you that when they were written they were not 'in the Bible' ?

The Jews already had a pretty good idea of Roman military superiority, having been a province of one world power after another for over 600 years, according to Jesish texts.

You will note that I was in complete agreement with you about the insufficiency of "evidence from a disinterested source", stating only that the account could not have evolved from nothing. That scriptural texts were not widely known is for the same reason, although they would have been well circulated among those calling themselves Christians.

as real life appropriately wrote:

Before you object that 'those are from the Bible', has it occurred to you that when they were written they were not 'in the Bible' ?

Additionally, I admitted that these events could be ignored as coincidence or even fabrication. . .

You will not be offered a 'smoking gun'. The Israelites witnessed many and still found reasons to disobey. The best I can do is offer you reasons to continue searching, even if your stated purpose is to disprove.

BTW, coffee's on; and I've got some fresh scones.

Oh, and you continue to dodge the issue that predicting a Jewish revolt, was a no-brainer, and that predicting that the Romans would easily crush it required only a modicum more of perceptive ability. Not much of a prophecy.

annoyed111 wrote:

Is there physical proof that Jesus resurrected from the dead? (Such as an empty tomb?)

No. Of course not. Besides, I don't know about you, but it would take a lot more than an empty tomb to convince me that someone rose from the dead.

If a stranger you met today told you that he saw someone rise from the dead, you would assume he was crazy. Yet when someone tells you he read the exact same story in an old book, millions of people believe it's true.

Why? Because they trust the person who read the book? He wasn't there either.

Because they trust the book itself? It's just a book, and it's not the original, and it's been translated by people who weren't there either.

Because they trust in a higher power which made the book infalable? The book is the thing which proposes the higher power in the first place.

rosborne979 wrote:

annoyed111 wrote:

Is there physical proof that Jesus resurrected from the dead? (Such as an empty tomb?)

No. Of course not. Besides, I don't know about you, but it would take a lot more than an empty tomb to convince me that someone rose from the dead.

If a stranger you met today told you that he saw someone rise from the dead, you would assume he was crazy. Yet when someone tells you he read the exact same story in an old book, millions of people believe it's true.

Why? Because they trust the person who read the book? He wasn't there either.

Because they trust the book itself? It's just a book, and it's not the original, and it's been translated by people who weren't there either.

Because they trust in a higher power which made the book infalable? The book is the thing which proposes the higher power in the first place.

The first to believe didn't read about the event in a book. Nor did they believe in a HIGHER POWER because a Book proposed the Belief. The Belief was prior to writing.

in response to the initial question, I believe the only "proof" IS in fact, an empty tomb. However, an empty tomb is not proof of anything except a missing body. There is no solid proof that he was ever placed in that tomb. And there very well could have been a group of people to remove the body from the tomb only to claim that as proof of the resurrection.

petros wrote:

rosborne979 wrote:

annoyed111 wrote:

Is there physical proof that Jesus resurrected from the dead? (Such as an empty tomb?)

No. Of course not. Besides, I don't know about you, but it would take a lot more than an empty tomb to convince me that someone rose from the dead.

If a stranger you met today told you that he saw someone rise from the dead, you would assume he was crazy. Yet when someone tells you he read the exact same story in an old book, millions of people believe it's true.

Why? Because they trust the person who read the book? He wasn't there either.

Because they trust the book itself? It's just a book, and it's not the original, and it's been translated by people who weren't there either.

Because they trust in a higher power which made the book infalable? The book is the thing which proposes the higher power in the first place.

The first to believe didn't read about the event in a book. Nor did they believe in a HIGHER POWER because a Book proposed the Belief. The Belief was prior to writing.

book or belief first, it doesn't lend any more validity to the story. a child can believe the cat-in-the-hat is real, and the fact that the story was in the writer's head before he made the book doesn't validate the child's belief.

there is no real "proof" of anything miraculous in the bible other than the bible itself, which isn't exactly objective.

Is there physical proof that Jesus resurrected from the dead? (Such as an empty tomb?)

Do you think the guy Qin Shi Huangdi existed? Based on what physical proof?

Bartikus wrote:

Do you think the guy Qin Shi Huangdi existed? Based on what physical proof?

I don't think he's even comparable. Unlike Jesus, Qin Shi Huangdi deliberately wanted to be remembered and deliberately did everything to ensure his mark was left on this world. It's hard not to know he existed, what with his damned Terracotta Army, huge tomb, his legacy of uniting China, his legacy of the Great Wall, his name written into the historical records etc. etc.

Inconvenient to the central Christian proposition asserting the existence of the Christian-purported Jesus are the dual considerations that neither contemporary public record nor archaeologic evidence of that person exists, and that the aspects and attributes of that personage are strikingly consistent with the aspects and attributes of personages known to be constructs of legend and myth. While the actual evidence at hand serves neither to confirm nor deny Jesus' existence as a person consistent with Christian scripture, probability argues strongly against the actuality of that circumstance.

Inconvenient to the central Christian proposition asserting the existence of the Christian-purported Jesus are the dual considerations that neither contemporary public record nor archaeologic evidence of that person exists, and that the aspects and attributes of that personage are strikingly consistent with the aspects and attributes of personages known to be constructs of legend and myth. While the actual evidence at hand serves neither to confirm nor deny Jesus' existence as a person consistent with Christian scripture, probability argues strongly against the actuality of that circumstance.

rosborne979 wrote:

annoyed111 wrote:

Is there physical proof that Jesus resurrected from the dead? (Such as an empty tomb?)

No. Of course not. Besides, I don't know about you, but it would take a lot more than an empty tomb to convince me that someone rose from the dead.

If a stranger you met today told you that he saw someone rise from the dead, you would assume he was crazy. Yet when someone tells you he read the exact same story in an old book, millions of people believe it's true.

Why? Because they trust the person who read the book? He wasn't there either.

Because they trust the book itself? It's just a book, and it's not the original, and it's been translated by people who weren't there either.

Because they trust in a higher power which made the book infalable? The book is the thing which proposes the higher power in the first place.

Because they trust their hearts to tell them the truth? Maybe. Maybe it's just as simple as that. No logic, no reason, just a simple gut choice.

Ros,

Let's say, for the sake of the argument, that you actually did see someone who had risen from the dead. You not only saw him, you ate dinner with him and talked with him.

What 'proof' would you have?