Historical Case for the Resurrection of Jesus

[Subduction Zone]

There was an epic debate between Barth Ehrman and Michael Licona. I have not found a free version of it yet, and it is Seven Freaking hours long!! You can pay to see it at least at one source. But I did find an overview of it and how Ehrman pointed out the errors in many of Licona's claims:

OnlySky

Welcome to OnlySky! Exploring possible futures since 2024.

onlysky.media

 

[Subduction Zone]

Licona already explained why he thinks that point 2 form the OP is correct.

If you disagree, if you think that his arguments are wrong or fallacious, or weak, you have to explain why

I did , but you did not listen. But you can read the same refutations here if you like:

OnlySky

Welcome to OnlySky! Exploring possible futures since 2024.

onlysky.media

 

[Trailblazer]

That is not a fact. That is merely a belief.

It is a fact that the Baha'i Faith has no man-made doctrines that are 'taught' by any religious leaders.
What that means is that the Baha'i leaders did not use the scriptures to create doctrines (the way Christianity did).

Once again, almost all religions believe that their doctrines came from God. Your doctrines appear to be as manmade as all other doctrines.

What evidence do you have for your claims that Baha'i doctrines are not manmade?

Obviously, if there is no God then all religions are man-made doctrines, but just because they 'appear' man-made to you does not mean they 'are' man-made.

We have covered this before. There is no way to prove that any religion came from God and that is why it is called a religious belief, not a religious fact.
If they did actually come from God, what evidence would you expect to see? How would you know? Your subjective opinion -- 'how they sound' is not good enough. You need something more concrete than that.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

If you disagree, if you think that his arguments are wrong or fallacious, or weak, you have to explain why

I recently finished Michael Licona's book The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach which argues that there are 3 minimal facts that are accepted by virtually all New Testament scholars which form the so called historical bedrock regarding the fate of Jesus. These are as follows:

1. Jesus was killed by crucifixion under Pilate
2. Very soon after his death, his disciples reported having experiences which they interpreted as the risen Jesus appearing to them, both individually and in groups
3. The early Church persecutor Paul also had an experience which he interpreted as Jesus appearing to him and this experience convinced him to convert to Christianity

Hearsay promoted by apologists decades after the purported crucifixion. Framing it as evidence is silly at best.

 

[Subduction Zone]

It is a fact that the Baha'i Faith has no man-made doctrines that are 'taught' by any religious leaders.
What that means is that the Baha'i leaders did not use the scriptures to create doctrines (the way Christianity did).

What did they base their teachings on? The article that you linked showed that there is a consistent doctrine in the Baha'i religion.

Obviously, if there is no God then all religions are man-made doctrines, but just because they 'appear' man-made to you does not mean they 'are' man-made.

Yes, but you keep ignoring the obvious: At most one of them can be right, but all of them can be wrong. That puts the burden of proof upon those claiming "I have the one right religion".

We have covered this before. There is no way to prove that any religion came from God and that is why it is called a religious belief, not a religious fact.
If they did actually come from God, what evidence would you expect to see? How would you know? Your subjective opinion -- 'how they sound' is not good enough. You need something more concrete than that.

And that is why it is faith based and not evidence based. There is not only no way to prove it, all that any religion has is rather weak subjective evidence. No one has claimed that you have to prove your beliefs, but you keep making claims that do require evidentiary support. You cannot change a claim to a belief after the fact. One has to go by how you wrote it.

 

[Colt]

I recently finished Michael Licona's book The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach which argues that there are 3 minimal facts that are accepted by virtually all New Testament scholars which form the so called historical bedrock regarding the fate of Jesus. These are as follows:

1. Jesus was killed by crucifixion under Pilate
2. Very soon after his death, his disciples reported having experiences which they interpreted as the risen Jesus appearing to them, both individually and in groups
3. The early Church persecutor Paul also had an experience which he interpreted as Jesus appearing to him and this experience convinced him to convert to Christianity

Licona argues in detail against the naturalistic hypotheses that attempt to account for the bedrock and concludes that the best explanation is that Jesus actually rose from the dead. He does so by ranking each hypothesis based on how well they satisfy the following criteria:

- Explanatory scope - does the hypothesis account for all the data
- Explanatory power - how well does the hypothesis explain the data
- Plausibility - is the hypothesis compatible with or implied by facts that are generally accepted as known
- Less ad hoc - does the hypothesis go beyond what is known and makes unevidenced assumptions
- Illumination (a bonus criteria) - does the hypothesis shed light on other areas of inquiry

Has anyone interacted with this argument or others similar to it such as those of N.T. Wright, William Lane Craig and Gary Habermas? If so, what are your objections to it?

Complicating the matter is the detail that the human body didn’t return, Jesus “returned” or reappeared in a new, different form. He was recognized by his former associates and others but is no longer what he was before.

 

[Trailblazer]

What did they base their teachings on? The article that you linked showed that there is a consistent doctrine in the Baha'i religion.

The teachings are based on the Writings of Baha'u'llah, Abdu'l-Baha, and Shoght Effendi.

Yes, but you keep ignoring the obvious: At most one of them can be right, but all of them can be wrong. That puts the burden of proof upon those claiming "I have the one right religion".

Baha'is do not claim to have the 'one right religion.' We only claim to have the latest religion.

And that is why it is faith based and not evidence based. There is not only no way to prove it, all that any religion has is rather weak subjective evidence. No one has claimed that you have to prove your beliefs, but you keep making claims that do require evidentiary support. You cannot change a claim to a belief after the fact. One has to go by how you wrote it.

I have only ever claimed to have evidence that Baha'u'llah was a Messenger of God, which would make the Baha'i Faith a true religion.
It is not subjective evidence, it is factual, but how those facts are interpreted is subjective.

 

[Left Coast]

No. In the OP I specifically called for responses from people familiar with the argument. That means I expect my interlocutors to understand what I'm talking about when I quote Licona's work. If we're supposed to pretend you have no background knowledge or if you refuse to plainly state what body of work I should bother explaining, then we're going against the point of the thread.

All I asked you to explain was your own argument. Again, this is a site where we are having conversations with each other, not others who aren't here. If your only point is to study the work of Licona and review it with others, I might recommend a book club.

Here, you can certainly reference the work of some outside author or link to it, but ultimately it blunts conversation to simply say "Go read _____," particularly when it's an entire book. As we've seen in this conversation, I haven't needed to read that particular book of Licona's to reply to the substance of the points you've made or to be familiar with apologetics attempts to use facts from history to build a case for the resurrection - ie, exactly what you are describing from Licona's book. In fact you even made reference to this in your own OP, when you asked if anyone was familiar with, "other [arguments] similar to [Licona's]." I am, and that's the basis upon which I replied.

When you are ready to reply to the substance of what I've actually said, let me know.

 

[YoursTrue]

Complicating the matter is the detail that the human body didn’t return, Jesus “returned” or reappeared in a new, different form. He was recognized by his former associates and others but is no longer what he was before.

makes sense to me. He died and was resurrected not in the same body he died with, even though some would use the idea that he showed the marks on his hands as proof. Of?? Proof that it was him. He could change appearance at that point. Thanks for your comment.

 

[Subduction Zone]

The teachings are based on the Writings of Baha'u'llah, Abdu'l-Baha, and Shoght Effendi.

In other words, no real difference from Christianity or Islam.

Baha'is do not claim to have the 'one right religion.' We only claim to have the latest religion.

No, when one believes in any religion one is saying that is the right religion. Otherwise why believe in that one and not another? By the way, you lose even by your standard. Pastafarianism appears to be an even more recent religion. Or are you saying that the claims of some that it has existed forever is correct?

I have only ever claimed to have evidence that Baha'u'llah was a Messenger of God, which would make the Baha'i Faith a true religion.
It is not subjective evidence, it is factual, but how those facts are interpreted is subjective.

You have made quite a few claims, that has been shown over and over and over again. And no, your evidence is not "factual". It is subjective. We have been over that.

 

[Subduction Zone]

makes sense to me. He died and was resurrected not in the same body he died with, even though some would use the idea that he showed the marks on his hands as proof. Of?? Proof that it was him. He could change appearance at that point. Thanks for your comment.

Do not conflate stories in the Bible with evidence.

 

[Apologes]

Again, this is a site where we are having conversations with each other, not others who aren't here. If your only point is to study the work of Licona and review it with others, I might recommend a book club.

Consider this a book club then.

You are promoting a claim that contradicts all the available evidence of how human bodies work.

If you're alleging an event that not only you've never seen happen, but that also contradicts all the evidence we have of how the world actually works, then you have no clue if resurrection is even possible, let alone that it's a "known option."

No one is arguing for the resurrection on the basis of how things naturally are and the evidence we have is related to people rising naturally from the dead. If you complain that even on supernaturalism people don't raise from the dead, the context of Jesus life establishes a chance for divine vindication via a resurrection and as such offers something not present in the other cases. This is the symmetry breaker, a chance to prove if Jesus actually was the real deal or not. Your requirement for establishing the miracles of his life as actual before a vindication can be offered is nonsensical as the vindication is what would serve to establish them. In other words, the claims are what provides the context, not the factuality of those claims.

Both the naturalist and the supernaturalist agree that natural phenomena occur. They don't agree that supernatural events occur. So if they are both bracketing their worldviews, the only candidate explanations they're going to entertain will be natural ones. Supernatural ones, while hypothetically possible, would be outside the purview of the bracketed historical analysis of the facts.

If a supernatural explanation is possible and it explains the data we shouldn't dismiss it just because someone else looking at it is a naturalist. That's the exact opposite of bracketing worldviews as we're dismissing an explanation based on someone else's horizon instead of the data. We need to follow the evidence where it leads, regardless of our horizons, not look at the evidence through tinted glasses of the horizon.

How would you tell the difference? How would you tell if an event you're seeing is caused by something supernatural or something natural that you don't understand?

By looking at the data and checking what best explains it. If we can't think of a natural explanation and a supernatural explanation does the job, the supernatural explanation would be the best explanation so I'd go with that. I'm assuming you'd instead throw your hands up and say "we just don't know what the explanation is but it must be natural".

 

[Subduction Zone]

Consider this a book club then.




No one is arguing for the resurrection on the basis of how things naturally are and the evidence we have is related to people rising naturally from the dead. If you complain that even on supernaturalism people don't raise from the dead, the context of Jesus life establishes a chance for divine vindication via a resurrection and as such offers something not present in the other cases. This is the symmetry breaker, a chance to prove if Jesus actually was the real deal or not. Your requirement for establishing the miracles of his life as actual before a vindication can be offered is nonsensical as the vindication is what would serve to establish them. In other words, the claims are what provides the context, not the factuality of those claims.

But one of your points was "plausibility" And it does go to that. The plausibility of the resurrection claims are as close to zero as possible.

If a supernatural explanation is possible and it explains the data we shouldn't dismiss it just because someone else looking at it is a naturalist. That's the exact opposite of bracketing worldviews as we're dismissing an explanation based on someone else's horizon instead of the data. We need to follow the evidence where it leads, regardless of our horizons, not look at the evidence through tinted glasses of the horizon.

Then show that a supernatural explanation is even possible. Stating that it has not been disproved does not mean that it has been shown to be possible. Following the evidence hurts your claims in this matter. Are you forgetting how you tried to use a strawman argument to make your version look more plausible? But even with the strawman that you tried to employ the naturalistic explanation is still far superior.

By looking at the data and checking what best explains it. If we can't think of a natural explanation and a supernatural explanation does the job, the supernatural explanation would be the best explanation so I'd go with that. I'm assuming you'd instead throw your hands up and say "we just don't know what the explanation is but it must be natural".

But we do have clear naturalistic explanations. And no, your argument from ignorance does not make a supernatural explanation the best. No explanation would still be better. If we did not have an explanation an honest "I don't know" still beats an appeal to magic. That is why this apologetics argument fails.

 

[leroy]

@Subduction Zone Are you saying that a person involved in an immoral action may not come to his senses? At least somewhat? Serial killers do sometimes quit. The ones that we catch are usually those that cannot quit. And remember, your explanation involves magic. Any naturalisitic explanation has more explanatory power than yours as a result. This is not a good argument to use.

That argument (Paul´s conversion) is not used to prove the resurrection directly. That argument is used to show that Paul honestly and sincerely saw something that he interpreted as having seen the risen Jesus.

 

[leroy]

It is special pleading that the case of Elvis is different in my view.

You mean an apologist like likona? Yes I do think that.

Sure they considered it then applied special pleading in my view

Well you argument was refuted.

The apostles, (and others) where willing to die for their belief in the resurrection. (implying that they were not intentionally lying)

You don’t have that for Elvis,

Discriminating Licona just because he doesn’t share your philosophical world view is special pleading.

 

[Subduction Zone]

That argument (Paul´s conversion) is not used to prove the resurrection directly. That argument is used to show that Paul honestly and sincerely saw something that he interpreted as having seen the risen Jesus.

That too is an unjustified assumption. People can think that they have seen things. A person's strong belief is not good evidence that it was real.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Well you argument was refuted.

Nope, you are incorrect again.

The apostles, (and others) where willing to die for their belief in the resurrection. (implying that they were not intentionally lying)

There is no good evidence for this. Paul, probably. But you keep making the mistake of conflating being in error with lying. In fact that makes your argument a strawman. No one has argued that Paul was lying except for apologists in their failed strawman arguments. Paul was probably mistaken. As to others dying for their faith there is no evidence that they did so in the sense that Christian use. In fact once again we only are reasonable sure of only two or three at the most of the apostles being put to death. How many of them were given the chance to recant? Probably none. Rome usually did not care about that from my understanding.

You don’t have that for Elvis,

Discriminating Licona just because he doesn’t share your philosophical world view is special pleading.

Actually we have pretty much everything that you do. The only reason that we do not have examples of people being killed for believing in Elvis is because there is no such law. So your claim that we do not have that is just a "So what?" argument. You would need to show that people would be killed for believing in Elvis for that part of your argument to work.

 

[Left Coast]

Consider this a book club then.

Nah. We're having a pretty productive conversation thus far. You even invited it.

No one is arguing for the resurrection on the basis of how things naturally are

Then it shouldn't perplex you why people would regard the resurrection as implausible, which was your original question to me.

If you complain that even on supernaturalism people don't raise from the dead, the context of Jesus life establishes a chance for divine vindication via a resurrection and as such offers something not present in the other cases.

How do you know any of that? Again, none of this is contained in the original 3 premises.

This is the symmetry breaker, a chance to prove if Jesus actually was the real deal or not. Your requirement for establishing the miracles of his life as actual before a vindication can be offered is nonsensical as the vindication is what would serve to establish them. In other words, the claims are what provides the context, not the factuality of those claims.

You can't just claim something with no evidence - not reasonably, anyway. How do you know that premise is true? And how does that premise lead logically to the conclusion that Jesus rose from the dead?

If a supernatural explanation is possible and it explains the data we shouldn't dismiss it just because someone else looking at it is a naturalist. That's the exact opposite of bracketing worldviews as we're dismissing an explanation based on someone else's horizon instead of the data. We need to follow the evidence where it leads, regardless of our horizons, not look at the evidence through tinted glasses of the horizon.

Again, no. Bracketing our worldviews requires that we only look at what can be demonstrated outside of our worldview. The overlap of that Venn diagram between the naturalist and the supernaturalist is natural things. Again, this is why serious professional historians don't explain historical events with "God did it," or "Magic did it," or "Ghosts did it," even if they might privately believe those things.

By looking at the data and checking what best explains it. If we can't think of a natural explanation and a supernatural explanation does the job, the supernatural explanation would be the best explanation so I'd go with that.

But that doesn't account for your potential ignorance of a natural explanation. Just because you can't think of something, doesn't mean it isn't there. So again I ask - how do you distinguish between a natural cause you don't understand, and a supernatural cause? At this point it seems you don't have a method. When you encounter something you don't know how to explain, you chalk it up by default to the supernatural. Sorry, that dog don't hunt.

One of the problems with supernatural explanations, and why they're not very useful or explanatory, is that they can be used to fit any evidence. What evidence could we possibly find that your version of God couldn't cause to happen? It's unfalsifiable. This is why I asked for your methods of discerning one type of cause from another.

 

[Left Coast]

Long, long ago, back in the OP of this thread, the question was posed:


Since then, a variety of objections have been raised and discussed in detail, and mostly rejected by the OP.

The sticking point seems to be over the existence of the supernatural, and whether a supernatural God would actually intervene, and if that possibility can be considered a plausible explanation--indeed, the MOST PLAUSIBLE explanation--for the STORY of the resurrection...

It seems there is no way to bridge the gap between these points of view. I'm wondering what the value of continued discussion of this topic is? What are people getting out of this back and forth?

For me, it's twofold: 1) I just find it an interesting subject, 2) I think it's useful to show people who are interested just how thin these types of apologetics arguments from the OP are. They consistently rely on unfounded assumptions and poor reasoning. .

 

[danieldemol]

Well you argument was refuted.

Any answer is not as good as a refutation.

The apostles, (and others) where willing to die for their belief in the resurrection. (implying that they were not intentionally lying)

A)Thats going outside the bedrock of facts.
B)There are people in my view who are prepared to die for lies, some have already been mentioned in this thread.

You don’t have that for Elvis,

Discriminating Licona just because he doesn’t share your philosophical world view is special pleading.

Its not discrimination in my view, Licona has written in the genre of apology a book which I doubt would pass peer review in a million years without significant modification