> Lunatics can tell the truth, depending on your definitions.

Of course they can, but anyone who objective reads the books of the NT can easily tell these are not nutcases, but men of high moral standards, reasoned thought, and clarity of communication.

> This is a great way of thinking about the bible if one has no evidence that it is true.

There is plenty of evidence that the Bible is true. It is filled with historical, geographical, cultural, political and religious elements that have been corroborated. Where skeptics part company with it is when it makes theological claims. You believe those are specious, and I believe they are warranted. It just depends on what you have chosen to put your trust.

> Because if we already were Christians we didn't need to substantiate it.

This is a misunderstanding. I am always on the lookout for substantiation. Always.

> For me to take a prophecy seriously it must be specific or else we end up with too much "hints" and leave a whale-sized hole open for interpretation.

There are many such prophecies in the Bible.

> Also, if prophecies aren't confirmed in history

Many are.

> And I wish every Christian good luck in doing so. It falls on the Christian to solve this problem, or produce evidence for a god, and then show that such a god was directly involved in the resurrection.

There is a caterpillar (Pyrrharctia Isabella) that lives in the arctic that completely dies each winter. Scientists have found it freezes solid. The heart stops beating. All functionality ceases. And yet in the spring it comes back to life and continues on its merry way. Resurrection is scientifically possible, and occurs regularly in this caterpillar. Christians claim God did this same thing with a human. Jesus' body was never produced, there were many people who claim to have seen him alive, and witnesses became ardent proselytizers, even to the death.

> "God did it" doesn't stand as the default position just because a book said it.

I never did this.

> According to the stories

There are no stories and no evidence to the contrary. But we all know that the direct evidence is scant. I guess it comes down to what evidence I wish to believe (me, the evidence we have that the tomb was empty and the record in the Gospels from people who were there) and what lack of evidence you give weight to (you claim to set aside the evidence we have, asserting lack of evidence, and in that you set your faith). We each reason to what we claim is the most logical explanation of the data.

> Truth doesn't spring from popularity

Of course not, but these claims sprang up in the city in which the event occurred, almost immediately, in the middle of people who were eyewitnesses to the events. If you choose to cavalierly brush all that aside rather than engage it, that's your choice.

> Is this not trivially common within all religion?

Not at all. Many people who change religions within other religions are merely making a belief commitment, and the only life change they speak of is adopting new cultic practices. Not so with Christianity, where people speak of deliverance from addictions, radical value system changes, lifestyle transformations, etc. It's completely different.

> True historical details doesn't mean the supernatural claims are true. Fiction can also contain real history.

I agree. You yourself gave an example of Peter Parker, and many do about Harry Potter, set in historical London. The Bible is making claims different from that, mentioned occasions in history where there were other people present to confirm the occurrence. We have those records, and yet skeptics such as yourself brush them aside as fictional, with no evidence to do so except bias.

> The first commandment seems to go against this claim

Not at all. Having no other gods is a statement that God should be our top priority and final authority. We owe him preference and obedience. It has nothing to do with question, investigation, reason, and verification. The Bible encourages and applauds such things.

> the authors are not lunatics

Lunatics can tell the truth, depending on your definitions.

> the authors are reasonable writers discussing reasonable things

This seems trivial also since it's preceeded by "if the bible is true..." and since the bible contains things that are not reasonable in any other context.

> The claims the Bible makes that cannot be verified by evidence because they are theological interpretations of historical events. As such, they are interpretations that must be accepted on a different level than hard scientific evidence.

This is a great way of thinking about the bible if one has no evidence that it is true. It's also worrying that one must apply special thinking in this one case to realize some kind of truth. How can you verify any "truth" like this without being circular?

Also, if we want to substantiate the bible in a context that must reach outside of the religion, we can't first accept special truths about the bible? Why not? Because if we already were Christians we didn't need to substantiate it. This seems like confirmation bias.

> I disagree. The OT speaks heavily of God being a God of love, salvation, of grace and judgment. The NT speaks of God the same way; Jesus even speaks of himself the same way.

The OT also speaks of a god that is jealous and genocidal. This does not fit with the portrayal of Jesus.

Someone killing everything on earth is quite a big character trait to leave out of your comparison.

> I agree, but that's the theological interpretation of them. One must come to accept certain theological tenets before one accepts the interpretation of them.

Why should one accept any such tenets in the context of trying to substantiate the bible?

> the problem, as I see it, is that the Jews are looking only at certain "fingerprints" of messianic prophecy through the whole Tanakh, whereas I take the ENTIRE Tanakh as being filled with messianic expectation and messianic hints and messages. It's on every page.

For me to take a prophecy seriously it must be specific or else we end up with too much "hints" and leave a whale-sized hole open for interpretation.

The prophecies are only convincing to Christians. But I guess one must first accept some tenets to understand these prophecies, right? Which means prophecies are not convincing evidence for Jesus and the bible.

Also, if prophecies aren't confirmed in history (like you seem to say that things in the bible can't be anyway) then it's impossible for a non-Christian to consider prophecy when substantiating the bible.

> but then we have to wrestle with what scientific explanation brings about a resurrection, which is quite problematic as well.

And I wish every Christian good luck in doing so. It falls on the Christian to solve this problem, or produce evidence for a god, and then show that such a god was directly involved in the resurrection. "God did it" doesn't stand as the default position just because a book said it.

> Something very unique happened there, and we have to infer the most logical conclusion, whether physical or metaphysical, natural or supernatural.

Must we not prove that aliens exist before we can say "aliens did this"? That seems logical.

> A body was never produced

According to the stories. If the author wanted us to believe in the resurrection, would he have included a body? Of course not.

> A global movement started based on the claim that a resurrection had taken place

Why do you think this is convincing? Truth doesn't spring from popularity. Was Peter Parker actually bitten by a radioactive spider because the movies are popular? Could everyone in that movement verify that the resurrection happened?

> The people who claim to have been witnesses of his resurrection body were radically changed people.

Is this not trivially common within all religion?

> There is reason to think the origin of Christian is different from other religious cults

Different doesn't have a bearing on truth. I don't understand why you bring this up.

> Christianity asserts itself as being a historical religion, opening its books and doors to verification of its claims

True historical details doesn't mean the supernatural claims are true. Fiction can also contain real history. This does not support the claim that Christianity is more real than other religions.

> Christianity invites us to verify, to reason, to question and investigate

The first commandment seems to go against this claim, but I appreciate the thought nonetheless.

> So if the stories from the bible are true, it substantiates the bible?

Not particularly, because the Bible is making more claims than historical ones. If the stories from the Bible are true, it tells us things like (1) the authors considered themselves to be accurately recording history, (2) the authors are not lunatics, or (3) the authors are reasonable writers discussing reasonable things. The claims the Bible makes that cannot be verified by evidence because they are theological interpretations of historical events. As such, they are interpretations that must be accepted on a different level than hard scientific evidence.

> Anyone that has read the Old Testament and compare the character of god from that set of books to the NT can only come to the conclusion that they are nothing alike.

I disagree. The OT speaks heavily of God being a God of love, salvation, of grace and judgment. The NT speaks of God the same way; Jesus even speaks of himself the same way.

> The birth reads so obviously like myth so it's very hard for a non-Christian to take that seriously.

I agree, but that's the theological interpretation of them. One must come to accept certain theological tenets before one accepts the interpretation of them.

> The prophecies are not convincing, especially not to Jews

I know. I've had many conversations with Jews. The problem, as I see it, is that the Jews are looking only at certain "fingerprints" of messianic prophecy through the whole Tanakh, whereas I take the ENTIRE Tanakh as being filled with messianic expectation and messianic hints and messages. It's on every page.

> His resurrection doesn't explain what caused his rising from the dead. It certainly doesn't automatically follow that a god did it, or that he was divine.

Point taken, but then we have to wrestle with what scientific explanation brings about a resurrection, which is quite problematic as well. We all know that resurrection like that doesn't happen. Something very unique happened there, and we have to infer the most logical conclusion, whether physical or metaphysical, natural or supernatural.

> First we must rule out that it wasn't just made-up

There are a few things we know:

1. A body was never produced

2. A global movement started based on the claim that a resurrection had taken place

3. The people who claim to have been witnesses of his resurrection body were radically changed people.

There is reason to think the origin of Christian is different from other religious cults. Christianity asserts itself as being a historical religion, opening its books and doors to verification of its claims. Hinduism, Islam, and various cults do nothing of the kind. Christianity invites us to verify, to reason, to question and investigate. It's very different.

> You're mistaken if you think that the only stories circulating "long after his death" were opposed to his resurrection. Christianity grew up as a faith system specifically because of stories that he had risen.

I think you misread him. He meant "If Jesus had been resurrected, instead of it all being just stories..."

> The other side of that coin, though, is that it does substantiate the teachings of the Bible.

So if the stories from the bible are true, it substantiates the bible? Is that what you are trying to say here? It seems like a very trivial statement to make.

> the proof that Jesus is God lies in being convinced from everything we know about Jesus that he was God incarnate. It includes his birth, his teachings, the signs he performed, his fulfillment of prophecy and his utterances of prophecy, his death, resurrection, and ascension.

Anyone that has read the Old Testament and compare the character of god from that set of books to the NT can only come to the conclusion that they are nothing alike.

Also, we don't know that these stories from the bible are true. The birth reads so obviously like myth so it's very hard for a non-Christian to take that seriously.

The prophecies are not convincing, especially not to Jews. And even if they were, the most likely scenario would be that the authors of the NT just wrote them in to make it seem like Jesus was a messiah. That is hard to deny.

I can buy that he died, sure.

His resurrection doesn't explain what caused his rising from the dead. It certainly doesn't automatically follow that a god did it, or that he was divine. First we must rule out that it wasn't just made-up. We know religious cults come up with all kinds of fantastical stories and we have no reason to think the origin of Christianity would be any different.

Paul certainly interprets it this way (that it is proof that it will happen again) in 1 Thes. 4.13-5.11, Galatians 1.1-5, 2.19-20, 3.10-14, 5.14, and especially 6.7-9 (the resurrection is the inauguration of the promised new age), and mainly 1 Corinthians 15. It's also in Paul's writings in Philippians, Ephesians, and Colossians. Theologically speaking, Paul argues that the resurrection of Jesus is proof that there is life beyond life for all of us, including a future resurrection of the body (1 Cor. 15.20-28, 42-53).

> give evidence that there is life beyond life and a future resurrection of the body.

It would have proof of one instance of this. But not proof that it will ever happen again.

I say it on the basis of the teachings of the Bible, which I have come, through investigation, to trust. If you reject lack of film, you reject all of history before 1839. If you reject writings (or historiography, to be more specific) because it's ancient, you reject almost all of what we know of ancient peoples and cultures. If you reject the Bible because it's a collection of numerous writings from numerous authors, then you also reject Wikipedia.

But I'm sure you don't reject any of that stuff. So the point is not really that there is no video footage, or that it's ancient, or that it's a collection of writings. You reject the Bible because you think it's false, would be my guess.

The point of my answer was to address the original post that "historical belief in the resurrection is not sufficient reason to believe in Jesus or any of his claims." I was addressing his/her misunderstandings about the point in telling the resurrection story. Your objection, however, seems to be on a different theme: we can't trust the Bible because it has proved to be in error. That's a different discussion. I can have that discussion with you, but it's a different direction.

What I was saying in my post is that I can KNOW why the Bible includes the teaching of the resurrection in its pages, what it means by it, and what it hopes to accomplish. In that sense, yes, I can say I know any of that.

No offense, but you don't know any of that. I mean no one was there to film it, you're basing these things on a book that took the span of 100's of years to complete, written by multiple people, over a thousand years ago. You can't say you know any of that.

Most views of death and the afterlife in the ancient world were shady at best. The ancient Greeks and Romans believed life just ended. They believed some version of ghosts or disembodied shadows lived on, but the picture was dreary, gloomy, subhuman, without hope, and even the possibility of terror. Egypt may have been the only ancient cultures that believed in some kind of afterlife, but again no allowance for anything like resurrection. Mummification and the Egyptian theology of the dead implied some kind of bodily state after death and soul. Even in Judaism, while some Jews believed in an afterlife, some did not, and ideas about what form it took were murky at best. In other words, Christianity was born into a world where its central claim was considered to be not only false, but impossible. Many believed that the dead were non-existent, Only one sect of Judaism even entertained the possibility of some kind of life after death. I highlight a few significances:

1. When the early Christians spoke of Jesus being raised from the dead, the natural meaning of that statement, throughout the ancient world, was the claim that something impossible had happened to Jesus that had happened to no one else ever. The Greeks and Romans assumed it was impossible and nonsense, and some Jews believed resurrection would happen eventually but not yet. They would never have supposed that Christians were saying Jesus' soul had attained some kind of metaphorical heavenly bless.

2. This was not one way of Christians claiming Jesus was divine. Greek and Roman thought was that perhaps souls could become divine, and that such things didn't require resurrection. It involved the soul, not the body.

3. The language of resurrection in their world was not a return to bodily life on this earth, but of non-bodily life after death.

The specific claim of a bodily resurrection of Jesus to this earth after death, to walk around and converse with people, able to be touched, and able to eat, was to give evidence that there is life beyond life and a future resurrection of the body. This is how the NT teachings, as explicated by Paul, develop the theology of resurrection in the early church.

> It proves there is life beyond life and there will be a future resurrection of the body.

How does Jesus being resurrected prove this?