Board index ‹ Resurrection of Christ

[Newbie]

If you cite the Bible, who wrote it and where did they get the information? If you cite witnesses, what makes them credible and who recorded their testimony?

[jimwalton]

The gospel of John, in particular, traces down the evidences:
1. The blocking stone (probably weighing several thousand pounds) was removed from the entrance. Mary was the first to the tomb and was an eyewitness of that fact.

2. She told Peter and John (the writer), who ran to the tomb. John looked in (eyewitness), and saw the body was not there but the linen strips were.

3. Peter entered the tomb. Peter studied the body wrappings and noticed their configuration and appearance. Eyewitness. Then John entered the tomb and made the same observations. (The text explains they were surprised by this and had not expected it. They didn't come to the tomb with assumptions of resurrection, but as skeptics. Yet, they were convinced.)

4. Mary also looks in the tomb. Eyewitness. She sees two angels in positions over the body shelf in a position mirroring the ark of the covenant. (Mary is not expecting the resurrection either, and is upset that the body is missing.)

5. Jesus is there, and Mary meets him. First-hand testimony, eyewitness. He identifies himself to her. She tells the disciples that she saw Jesus.

6. Most of the disciples are gathered in one place when Jesus comes to meet them, too. Eyewitnesses.

7. Jesus comes later to meet Thomas, the skeptic. He shows his wounds as evidence. He believes. Eyewitness.

Who wrote it? John did. He was there.

What makes his writing credible?

1. He was an eyewitness of the events. Not only John 20, but 1 Jn. 1.

2. His other writings show him to be a man of high moral standards.

3. His other writings can be confirmed by historical (time, customs, events) and archaeology records.

4. He is credible by his tendency to doubt that Jesus really had risen, the inclusion of material that reflected badly on himself in his writings, the multiple accounts of the same events that corroborate it.

5. The very early mention by Paul of the resurrection by means of reports that had been widely circulating within a very close time to the resurrection itself.

6. A conspiracy theory doesn't make a shred of sense. Nor does collusion.

7. John's writings are filled with other public and well-known events, which would make it easy to detect fraud or error. There is nothing in the account to suggest any fraud or hypocrisy, nor a grand scam.

[Newbie]

The Jesus seminar, while not filled with completely unbiased scholars, just educated humans, concluded that John was a church creation with very little if any actual words or acts of any real Jesus... it shows a lot of signs along with the letters attributed to John of a 2nd century creation when the orthodox battled with the gnostics. There is no easy to way to detect fraud or error in an historical fiction.

[jimwalton]

The Jesus Seminar is composed of only a tiny minority of New Testament scholars, and is a nest of poorly substantiated speculations. By their own admission, their motive was to create a new "fictive" Jesus. One of their presuppositions was a complete rejection of miracles, before an inch of study. Another presupposition was that christianity was influenced by the mystery religions, again, before they began their work. Their conclusions are meaningless.

The date of the writing of the Gospel of John is unknown. A papyrus fragment exists that is dated from 100-150 AD, so it can't be later than that. But a late writing date can't be proven. There are evidences in favor of a writing date before 70 AD:

1. There is no mention of the destruction of the Temple
2. There is an apparent unawareness of the other gospel accounts
3. Some of the expressions the author used look early (he calls the followers of Jesus "disciples," not "apostles"; the way he talks about "the Jews" sounds like 1st century writing, given their cultural context, not 2nd c. writing.
4. There is express concern over the followers of John the Baptist. This would have been a total non-issue later in the 1st c., and a ridiculous statement in the 2nd.

The Gospel of John is FILLED with what can only be defined as "eyewitness" statements (1.29; 2.13, 23; 35051; 4.6; 13.1-20, etc.).

There is no name attached. If it were written by someone in the 2nd c., they likely would have mentioned John's name to bolster the credibility of the work.

The writer knew the world and culture of the early 1st century as if he had been there. The same challenge for us would be to write a credible story about life in 1910.

The controversies are 1st c. controversies (Sabbath, Messianic credentials, true and false Judaism), not 2nd c.

The writer had intimate knowledge of the other disciples and their personalities.

The evidence weighs in favor of John being the author and it being written in the 1st century.