Christians- How do you know Jesus and the Bible are true?

[Saint Frankenstein]

Your comment is "dumb"? And you comment on the imagination of McDonald?

Maybe explain why you disagree? Mark is known in scholarship to be using the Epistles and OT to create narratives, there are many papers in journals about this. As well as mythical language (ring structure, chiasmus, and several more) and Jesus scores an almost perfect score on the Rank- Ragalin mythotype score. So this isn't history but myth making. So a Greek writer using Greek stories isn't far fetched and they do contain similarities.
You didn't object, you just said "dumb". What is dumb, that more people don't see the connections? That it's obvious myths are going to borrow from other myths?

Dr Carrier disagrees with McDonald on some points, they have a written debate here:

Is Jesus Wholly or Only Partly a Myth? The Carrier-MacDonald Exchangehttps://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/16580​

McDonald has several books on the subject,

https://www.amazon.com/Gospels-Homer-Imitations-Luke-Acts-Literature/dp/1442230525/ref=sr_1_4?qid=1680770210&refinements=p_27%3ADennis+R.+MacDonald&s=books&sr=1-4&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.006c50ae-5d4c-4777-9bc0-4513d670b6bc

If you find his PhD to be comparable to a cereal prize could you explain what about his methodology you find incorrect? To make such a comment you must have read at least one of his books, you cannot make a judgment based on 2 short lists of comparisons?

He was on a podcast with another scholar and they went over some of the material. Maybe you can point out what you find to be in error there?

Yeah, it is dumb. I don't care who this guy is. Some people eating in both of the stories doesn't mean they're the same. I mean, really. Basically all of your examples were general things like that. Talk about reaching. I guess all stories are ripoffs of all other stories since they have humans in them.

 

[PearlSeeker]

Dennis McDonald's work is not completely accepted. What is accepted is that Mark used a variety of sources and fictive literary structure to construct his Gospel.
Much of the sources are re-workings of OT narratives - Kings, Elijah, Psalms,
explained here, taken from Dr Carriers work and other journal papers:

The Gospels as Allegorical Myth, Part I of 4: Mark

Previously, I’ve written about the historicity of Jesus, and mentioned how the most recent analysis, in Richard Carrier’s On the Historicity of Jesus (the first comprehensive, academica…

lagevondissen.wordpress.com

and Mark's extensive use of the Epistles to create Earthly narratives for Jesus:

Mark's Use of Paul's Epistles • Richard Carrier Blogs

Many studies have argued the Gospel that came to be labeled “according to Mark” based some of its content on the Epistles of Paul. Here I’ll discuss this scholarship and its evidence. “Mark” is of course the earliest Gospel we have any surviving text or even any real evidence of. It was then...

www.richardcarrier.info

here Carrier is sourcing other historians who specialize in this -
The principal works to consult on this (all of which from peer reviewed academic presses) are:

• Michael Bird & Joel Willitts, Paul and the Gospels: Christologies, Conflicts and Convergences (T&T Clark 2011)
• David Oliver Smith, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul: The Influence of the Epistles on the Synoptic Gospels (Resource 2011)
• Tom Dykstra, Mark: Canonizer of Paul (OCABS 2012)
• Oda Wischmeyer & David Sim, eds., Paul and Mark: Two Authors at the Beginnings of Christianity (de Gruyter 2014)
• Eve-Marie Becker et al., Mark and Paul: For and Against Pauline Influence on Mark (de Gruyter 2014)
• Thomas Nelligan, The Quest for Mark’s Sources: An Exploration of the Case for Mark’s Use of First Corinthians (Pickwick 2015)

But McDonalds parallels are legit, those listed were just 2 small lists covered on this podcast with another scholar

He did a written debate with Carrier on aspects they disagree with as well.

I agree that (the author of) Mark and/or earlier oral tradition mythologized the story. However some historical events couldn't be left out (baptism, rage in the temple, execution).

Of course he used the OT. One of the points of gospel genre is to show Jesus fulfilled the OT prophecies. I doubt Paul was a source because Paul himself didn't know much about life of Jesus. Greek stories might be an influence but exact matching with the Homer's story is exaggerated.

 

[Brian2]

I agree that (the author of) Mark and/or earlier oral tradition mythologized the story. However some historical events couldn't be left out (baptism, rage in the temple, execution).

Of course he used the OT. One of the points of gospel genre is to show Jesus fulfilled the OT prophecies. I doubt Paul was a source because Paul himself didn't know much about life of Jesus. Greek stories might be an influence but exact matching with the Homer's story is exaggerated.

Why would Paul not know as much about Jesus life as any other Christian of the time?

 

[Brian2]

No. There are no "skeptic" scholars. Not all Biblical historians were atheist either. Bart Ehrman was a fundamentalist Christian.

Historians look at evidence. They don't start with an assumption and then go from there, that is what apologists and fundamentalists do. Fundamentalists also seem to be the ones informing you of how they think scholarship works.

I mean, I gave you a link no? To educate yourself. Not for you?
They study the original text. Find evidence. In a very lengthy and detailed process, then write papers and get peer-review.

Percentage-wise, 97% of Mark’s Gospel is duplicated in Matthew; and 88% is found in Luke. Here is just the first argument and the rest are just outlined.

"It is quite impossible to hold that the three synoptic gospels were completely independent from each other. In the least, they had to have shared a common oral tradition. But the vast bulk of NT scholars today would argue for much more than that.3 There are four crucial arguments which virtually prove literary interdependence.

Is there a problem with the synoptic gospel interdependence?

9. CONCLUSION​

To sum up reasons for Markan priority, the following eight arguments have been given.

(1) The argument from length. Although Mark’s Gospel is shorter, it is not an abridgment, nor a gospel built exclusively on Matthew-Luke agreement. In fact, where its pericopae parallel Matthew and/or Luke, Mark’s story is usually the longest. The rich material left out of his gospel is inexplicable on the Griesbach hypothesis.

(2) The argument from grammar. Matthew and especially Luke use better grammar and literary style than Mark, suggesting that they used Mark, but improved on it.

(3) The argument from harder readings. On the analogy of early scribal habits, Luke and Matthew apparently removed difficulties from Mark’s Gospel in making their own. If Matthean priority is assumed, then what is inexplicable is why Mark would have introduced such difficulties.

(4) The argument from verbal agreement. There are fewer Matthew-Luke verbal agreements than any other two-gospel verbal agreements. This is difficult to explain on the Griesbach hypothesis, much easier on the Lachmann/Streeter hypothesis.

(5) The argument from agreement in order. Not only do Luke and Matthew never agree with each other when they depart from Mark’s order, but the reasons for this on the assumption of Markan priority are readily available while on Matthean priority they are not.

(6) The argument from literary agreements. Very close to the redactional argument, this point stresses that on literary analysis, it is easier to see Matthew’s use of Mark than vice versa.

(7) The argument from redaction. The redactional emphases in Mark, especially in his stylistic minutiae, are only inconsistently found in Matthew and Luke, while the opposite is not true. In other words, Mark’s style is quite consistent, while Luke and Matthew are inconsistent—when they parallel Mark, there is consistency; when they diverge, they depart from such. This suggests that Mark was the source for both Matthew and Luke.

(8) The argument from Mark’s more primitive theology. On many fronts Mark seems to display a more primitive theology than either Luke or Matthew. This suggests that Matthew and Luke used Mark, altering the text to suit their purposes.

The Synoptic Problem | Bible.org

Any serious discussion of the Synoptic Gospels must, sooner or later, involve a discussion of the literary interrelationships among Matthew, Mark, and Luke. This is essential in order to see how an author used his sources (both for reliability’s sake as well as for redactional criticism), as...

bible.org

Now Mark as the source also has strong arguments beyond this in the leading experts work Mark Goodacre

OK so Mark could be the first of the 3 synoptics, so?

Mark itself can be shown to be using the OT, Epistles and other sources of fiction. Leaving no room for oral tradition at all.

Yes of course Mark uses the OT, that is where the Messianic prophecies are.
Where does Mark use the epistles? and is it the epistles of Paul who did not write about the life of Jesus much if at all?
If "other sources of fiction" is anything like the Odyssey story you mentioned, that is no source at all.
So anyway, what have people got against Mark being a companion and translator for Peter, as the early Church history tells us?

 

[wellwisher]

Christians today have never met Jesus physically yet believe in Him. Why?

If you say you believe in Christ because of the Bible then how do you know the Bible is true?

How do you know Christ and the Bible are true?

What makes you so sure?

One way I know Jesus must be true is because of the amount of effort that the Atheists continue to exert to disprove Jesus. Atheists are supposed to be rational and not all emotional. If they had successfully reasoned away Jesus, they would have disproved Jesus to themselves, and moved on with calm Mr Spock like emotions. But their rational position does not feel complete to them, so they still need to convince others to calm their doubting hearts. This is not rational anymore.

The Atheists, by definition, have unknowingly placed themselves in the role as a type of mirror religion. If religion, such as the Bible, says X, the Atheists are forced to believe -X. If religion says there is two sexes; male and female, they will deny even evolutionary biologists like Dawkins and say transgender has to be natural, since they have to be -X, to the male and female of religion. They are being defined in the mirror by something else beyond natural.

Since Jesus was a nice, kind and loving person who was also victim of violence, the Atheists, as the mirror religion, have to become opposite due to their mirror role; a not so nice, kind or loving predator who creates victims. Being negative all the time, for a cause, adds a burden to life, since this is not natural but a social construct. The only way to get past having to hold the negative and crap end of their own religion binary stick, is to get rid of the stick. If Jesus can be made to equal 0 or nothing, they will become negative zero=0, and no longer so negative. This is not rational, but then again, nor are the emotions that drive this.

What I like find unique about the story of Jesus, is how a nice God figure; son of God, allowed humans to kill him. The gods of the past were typically tough and would stay beyond the reach of humans. Some minor pesky gods were killed by humans but it often took a superhero human, who was part god, to kill even a small level god. But this son of God, allowed weak humans with only a hard heart, to take him out.

The symbolically caused the age of the gods to end for many people; the first Atheist victory. But for some reason this Son of God; Jesus, will not fully go away. Nobody messed the God of the Old Testament. The modern Atheists feel a need to complete the first and only hit job, that their founders began, before God changes his mind. The Easter story of the resurrection has them scared. But Happy Good Friday, this day when the Atheist rejoice, before their doubt returns.

Killing Jesus made what was called a God appear just a human illusion; magic trick. But the resurrection feels like this was more like a test and a trap. There is a need to finish the job, but the growing numbers of faithful, is like a barrier that protects Jesus, as he is transformed in space without time, and time without space; building a place.

 

[Brian2]

Peter was clearly responding to accusations that Jesus was a myth.

Yes he could have been responding to that. Does that mean that what he said has to be lies?

As to Mark, all of his Gospel can be broken down, he uses the OT narratives in several places, the Epistles over and over, Homer, Romulus, Greek poetry, to create narratives on Earth for Jesus. He is writing fiction. This involves many papers to demonstrate examples for each topic.


Dr Carrier on Peter,
"1 and 2 Peter are regarded as forgeries. 2 Peter most definitely was not written by the same author as 1 Peter, they are far too divergent stylistically, and therefore we can certainly place 2 Peter with all the other forgeries (in fact it's author certainly knew the Gospels and was therefore not writing independently of them), so we must therefore draw the same conclusions regarding it's value as evidence. However Peter 1 could be authentic, and if so should be included with the authentic Pauline letters, because it would be roughly the same date, and by the very man who may have founded the entire Christian religion (having received the 1st revelation if we are to trust 1 Cor 15.5).
Few scholars would agree with this position, but I personally believe it has more merit than is supposed. For the only reason given to assume it's a forgery is that Peter was an illiterate fisherman, but that is information only the Gospels produce, and they have every reason to invent or exaggerate the humble origins of the cult's founder (so as to make their appeal to the masses and the subsequent brilliance look all the more miraculous), whereas based on every precedent in history, prior probability heavily favors any religious leader and founder of the period being educated (whatever stories he then told his congregation later)...........the same trend may be evident in the treatment of Peter (as a poor person like Muhammad), especially if the Gospel authors wanted to reify the "least shall be first" doctrine of the Gospel by embodying it in the apostles themselves. It's otherwise quite unlikely that the highly educated Paul would defer to the authority of an illiterate Peter (Galations 1-2) or never mention the disparity of their educations and knowledge of scripture, in their disputes over who should be in charge.
Accordingly, I think assuming Peter was an "illiterate fisherman" requires considerable gullibility......so the evidence of Peter 1 is uncertain.

At least he says that most scholars would disagree with him

No that Peter heard people saying Jesus was a myth because savior deity stories were all over Greek religion and now a sect of Judaism had one and it is a made-up story. So people were saying this. Peter was responding to these people by saying "no, it's real".

Interesting speculation, and Peter said why it is not true, and you believe the speculation and that Peter lied.

Justin Martyr also says something similar.

I'm not willing to believe "any story" is the source for Mark. I need good evidence.
Like his use of Psalms,

Only a few verses later, we read about the rest of the crucifixion narrative and find a link (a literary source) with the Book of Psalms in the Old Testament (OT):

Mark 15.24: “They part his garments among them, casting lots upon them.”

Psalm 22:18: “They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon them.”

Mark 15.29-31: “And those who passed by blasphemed him, shaking their heads and saying, ‘…Save yourself…’ and mocked him, saying ‘He who saved others cannot save himself!’ ”

Psalm 22.7-8: “All those who see me mock me and give me lip, shaking their head, saying ‘He expected the lord to protect him, so let the lord save him if he likes.’ ”

Mark 15.34: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Psalm 22.1: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

So Psalm 22 describing details of a Roman crucifixion before it existed is not a prophecy about a crucifixion, in this case the crucifixion of the Messiah, Jesus.

Well then you have supernatural bias. Which is weird because you say this is the problem with scholars. Why don't you believe Muhammad was visited by Gabrielle and given updated messages on Judaism and Christianity? Millions believe, they have miracle stories, apologetics and so on. Theologians with PhD in Islamic theology who say it's true. Why the bias?

I'm a Christian, I believe in Jesus not Muhammad.

Satan is the Angel of Yahweh in the OT.

So you mean the NT version, which looks exactly like the Persian devil. Even with the Revelation story and everything? The Persians who occupied Israel for 3 centuries before the Gospels were written and had a huge impact on theology. There is clear evidence of where they got the new ideas from and you still find it real?

Yes Satan started off well but went down hill. Easy to see in the OT.
Plenty of people believe that the Pentateuch and much of the OT were written around the time of the Exile, but I don't.

 

[Brian2]

Uh, no. No "blind eye" is turned? There are millions of people who want to PROVE supernatural things are real. Desperately. Dr Dean Radin and Lynn McTaggart (2 random authors I thought of now) write popular books on experiments and are trying very hard to demonstrate the supernatural.
James Randi offered 1 million dollars to anyone who could demonstrate anything supernatural?

No one can show it's real. Faith healers try like crazy. They give people adreneline surges which helps pain. They also kill children with cancer because they are frauds like all supernatural practicioners, enough that the American Cancer Society had to write a paper on it. Which is here:

Faith Healing

Faith healing is founded on the belief that certain people or places have the ability to cure and heal—that someone or something can eliminate disease or heal injuries through a close connection to a higher power.

web.archive.org

It is presumed that the witness reports of the supernatural are not true. Then the circular reasoning begins about the scriptures with those reports and they are presumed to have been written after prophesied events and the theology is presumed to have been copied from other religions etc

No he demonstrates evidence. You are making a claim about Dr Carrier, let me ask before I make a massive criticism, which books by Dr Carrier have you read? Since you are in a position to make this statement?

I read articles and other bits and pieces that you post. I don't need to be an expert on Carrier to have my opinion.

HE combines the Epistles, the OT, Greek poetry, mythic language and Greek savior theology combined with Judaism.
That is it.

No, you combine the Epistles, the OT, Greek poetry and Greek savior theology and imagined use of mythic language with a presumption that Mark is not true and must have been copied from somewhere. After all, for you Jesus did not even exist.

Luke is the first gospel to overtly represent itself as history. He adds superficial details as local color, attempts to date some events and includes a vague preface. He creates a resurrection narrative engineered to answer skeptics of Matthew's account, a tactic that "requires" his story to be true. This count is known to be a fabrication. No prior Gospel, or Paul, had ever heard of the peculiar and convenient details that suddenly make their first appearance in Luke, such as that Peter double-checked the womans claim that the tomb was empty and handled the burial shroud, or that Jesus showed disciples his wouonds and made sure the disciples touched him and fed him food to prove he wasn't a ghost, or that resurrected Jesus actually hung out and partied with dozens of his followers for over a month before flying into the clouds of heaven.
So we know Luke is making things up to sell a fake history, for purposes of winning an argument against doubters (both with and within Christianity, as his opponents included, for example, Christians with very different ideas about the nature of the resurrection).

Despite pretense at being a historian, preface and all, Luke's methods are demonstrably nonhistorical: he is not doing research, weighing facts, checking them against independent sources, and writing down what he thinks most likely happened. He is simply producing an expanded and redacted literary hybird of a couple of previous religious novels, each itself even more obviously constructed according to literary conventions rather than historiographical. Unlike other historians from Luke's era, he never names sources, explains why we are to trust them, or how he chose what he chose to include or exclude. In fact Luke does not even declare any critical method at all, but rather insists he slavishly followed what was handed to him - yet another claim we know to be a lie (since we have 2 of his sources and can confirm he freely altered them to suit his own agenda).

Why do you claim to know what you do not know. Why not just say that this is what you believe?
I don't know those things to be true. When you say "we know" who are you referring to, other skeptics who believe the same things?

There is no testimony, there is a story by a Greek fiction writer and several redacted versions. 36 of those didn't make the cut and are considered "heretical". So 36 people wrote Gospels that were fictive. Hmmm, could Mark also be fictive? The gospel using Greek /Persian theology, written using only fictive language, intentionally using all the mythic structure? Who borrows his material from other stories ONLY?

The 4 gospels we have come through the early Church which was associated with the apostles.

Name one book and name one bias. The "anti-supernatural bias" is fiction. There has to be evidence for something supernatural.

What? First you say that the anti-supernatural bias is fiction and then you show anti supernatural bias.
It is the new aggressive atheism wanting to say that any God and any scriptures have been shown by modern scholarship to be lies.
You know because it is in a peer reviewed book, by someone who is a real scholar and not biased.

I have given reason after reason about Mark being fiction, to which you have no answer. You seem to expect all of that be swept away and what looks exactly like a myth be thought of as a prophecy because a clearly fictional character makes a prediction?

If in a scripture Zeus predicted an event and it happened a few years after his prediction would scholars say "well we thought Zeus was a myth and we thought the book came out after the prediction, BUT maybe Zeus really made the prediction, therefore he is a real God. Yeah, that's good enough, Zeus must be real and we should worship him. Forget all the other issues, like it's known mythology"

There is no "known mythology" with the Bible or the gospels, all that is presumption. You (or your scholars) think that the naturalistic methodology of science should be used with scriptures about the supernatural and presume them to be untrue until, for a start, the supernatural is shown to exist,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, scientifically, and even then that says nothing about the truth of those scriptures anyway. The presumption from the start is that any supernatural scriptures are untrue, and then as I have said before, there is circular reasoning which is supposed to prove the scriptures to be untrue.
It is all a big lie but that does not stop people being sucked in and thinking they are getting the latest is historical scholarship and end up saying the speculations about the Bible etc are facts.

 

[PearlSeeker]

Why would Paul not know as much about Jesus life as any other Christian of the time?

Paul's conversion experience is discussed in both the Pauline epistles and in the Acts of the Apostles. According to both sources, Saul/Paul was not a follower of Jesus and did not know him before his crucifixion. (Wiki)

 

[Muffled]

When did John witness the “beginning “ again?

I believe here we have the Holy Spirit informing John. That is what Jesus promised the paraclete would do.

 

[Muffled]

Paul's conversion experience is discussed in both the Pauline epistles and in the Acts of the Apostles. According to both sources, Saul/Paul was not a follower of Jesus and did not know him before his crucifixion. (Wiki)

However the Holy Spirit assists the writers with information they would not normally have.

 

[Muffled]

Peter isn’t reliable in both canon and noncanon stories.

Why would that be. Was Peter ever found to be a liar? It seems to me he is more apt to make rash statements than to lie.

 

[Brian2]

Paul's conversion experience is discussed in both the Pauline epistles and in the Acts of the Apostles. According to both sources, Saul/Paul was not a follower of Jesus and did not know him before his crucifixion. (Wiki)

True, but plenty of people knew about Jesus and about events in Jesus life before becoming Christians. Paul would have heard Christians speak about Jesus and would have known about Jesus before he went off to arrest Christians. And Paul did spend enough time with Christians after his conversion to learn more.

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

Yet 10 out of the 11 original Apostles died as martyrs believing Christ rose from the dead. What accounts for their transformation into men willing to die for their message? It must have been a very compelling event to account for this.

Many Muslims are willing to die for their Islamic beliefs and have done so. What is the distinction between the apostles and other Christians who willingly die for their faith and Muslims who willingly die for their faith? Why would a Christian's martyrdom be more spiritually significant than that of a Muslim?

 

[Trailblazer]

Many Muslims are willing to die for their Islamic beliefs and have done so. What is the distinction between the apostles and other Christians who willingly die for their faith and Muslims who willingly die for their faith? Why would a Christian's martyrdom be more spiritually significant than that of a Muslim?

or more spiritually significant than that of a Baha'i?
There were also many Baha'i martyrs.

Martyrs | Bahá’í Stories

www.bahaistories.com

 

[Brian2]

Many Muslims are willing to die for their Islamic beliefs and have done so. What is the distinction between the apostles and other Christians who willingly die for their faith and Muslims who willingly die for their faith? Why would a Christian's martyrdom be more spiritually significant than that of a Muslim?

Martyrdom of a Muslim or Christian may not be any different in that it shows a person's faith in whatever they believe.
The apostles however were people who saw the risen Jesus, they are the witnesses who spread the gospel to the world because of what they witnessed. If they recant their teaching on the risen Jesus, they are denying that they saw Jesus after His resurrection, but they did not recant, and being willing to be martyred rather than deny what they were teaching, shows that their witness of Jesus was true, it actually happened, God showed that Jesus was really the Messiah by raising Him up from the dead.

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

Martyrdom of a Muslim or Christian may not be any different in that it shows a person's faith in whatever they believe.
The apostles however were people who saw the risen Jesus, they are the witnesses who spread the gospel to the world because of what they witnessed. If they recant their teaching on the risen Jesus, they are denying that they saw Jesus after His resurrection, but they did not recant, and being willing to be martyred rather than deny what they were teaching, shows that their witness of Jesus was true, it actually happened, God showed that Jesus was really the Messiah by raising Him up from the dead.

I have my own opinion on what you've said in your post and how to respond to it, but I'd like to know what @joelr and @F1fan have to say first because I respect their perspective on the Bible and Christianity. I hope they don't mind that I tagged them in this thread, but I'm interested in knowing their opinion.

 

[PearlSeeker]

The apostles however were people who saw the risen Jesus, they are the witnesses who spread the gospel to the world because of what they witnessed. If they recant their teaching on the risen Jesus, they are denying that they saw Jesus after His resurrection, but they did not recant, and being willing to be martyred rather than deny what they were teaching, shows that their witness of Jesus was true, it actually happened, God showed that Jesus was really the Messiah by raising Him up from the dead.

There is no evidence that apostles were martyred for believing in resurrection of Jesus.

 

[Brian2]

There is no evidence that apostles were martyred for believing in resurrection of Jesus.

If they were martyred for being Christian then they were martyred for believing in the resurrection of Jesus.
BUT as I said, for the apostles, they would have been martyred for what the claimed to know.
So the question is whether they died for what they knew to be a lie?
And it was the resurrection of Jesus which convinced them about the truth of Jesus in the end.

 

[PearlSeeker]

If they were martyred for being Christian then they were martyred for believing in the resurrection of Jesus.

Do you have any sources?

 

[CG Didymus]

Martyrdom of a Muslim or Christian may not be any different in that it shows a person's faith in whatever they believe.
The apostles however were people who saw the risen Jesus, they are the witnesses who spread the gospel to the world because of what they witnessed. If they recant their teaching on the risen Jesus, they are denying that they saw Jesus after His resurrection, but they did not recant, and being willing to be martyred rather than deny what they were teaching, shows that their witness of Jesus was true, it actually happened, God showed that Jesus was really the Messiah by raising Him up from the dead.

For one thing, people in cults die for their belief too. But, about the physical resurrection of Jesus, the Baha'i Faith denies it. Who's wrong? The Baha'is and their prophet or the gospel writers? In a lot of ways, I think it might be both. But I do not deny that the NT claims that the tomb was empty and a flesh and bone Jesus appeared to the disciples.