Which Bible version will make me believe is the most real?

When I said historical case for Christ I'm referring specifically to the death and resurrection.

>thinks the historical argument for the resurrection actually happening is convincing and doesn't require faith

>historical case for Christ
>resurrection

Virtually every scholar, including secular, agrees that the tomb was found to be empty by a group of women, that Jesus' disciples had real and authentic experiences with somebody they believed to be the real Jesus -- and the number of these disciples who experienced this is upwards of 500 different people, and the church grew from the preaching of these disciples.

>Virtually every scholar, including secular, agrees that the tomb was found to be empty by a group of women

it's pretty fucking obvious the romans didn't really want to kill him, so they took him down before he croaked and then he dipped out the tomb at night when no one was looking, can't believe people don't get this

An empty tomb and people having authentic experiences isn't really being disputed - but this isn't convincing evidence of an actual miracle / resurrection happening. I can provide you numerous historical sources about people experiencing spiritual events (e.g. Oracle of Delphi), but this does not make it a credible source or reality.

The Romans would have no motivation to hide or steal the body because they were interested in suppressing Christianity, and fulfilling prophecy would not have worked towards that end. This is why they guarded the tomb in the first place.

"The hallucination theory is untenable because it cannot explain the physical nature of the appearances. The disciples record eating and drinking with Jesus, as well as touching him. This cannot be done with hallucinations. Second, it is highly unlikely that they would all have had the same hallucination. Hallucinations are highly individual, and not group projections. Imagine if I came in here and said to you, "wasn't that a great dream I had last night?" Hallucinations, like dreams, generally don't transfer like that. Further, the hallucination theory cannot explain the conversion of Paul, three years later. Was Paul, the persecutor of Christians, so hoping to see the resurrected Jesus that his mind invented an appearance as well? And perhaps most significantly, the hallucination theory cannot even deal with the evidence for the empty tomb. "

Hiding the body would have prevented people from taking it to use as relics or to show him off as a martyr.

>The Romans would have no motivation to hide or steal the body
>the body
>thinking christ actually died

dude, crucifixion takes forever to kill people obviously whoever was in charge of overseeing his death was sympathetic and saved his ass

if john the baptist got resurrected after getting his head chopped off that would be a miracle, if some guy gets "resurrected" after a couple hours in the sun it's not that impressed

You don't understand. If the body was there after 3 days it would have been proof that Jesus wasn't the messiah, and Jesus would have been exposed as a liar This is why it would have been against the Roman or Jews interest to hide the body.

you dont believe that the Bible exists?

Due to Jewish law, crucifixion could not take days. This is why Jesus was speared, to speed it up. I can't look up specific laws and customs right now to prove this but give me a few hours and I'll get back to you.

so the romans gave a shit about jewish law? why would they care?

I'm not really sure there's any evidence the Romans were worried about it being "proof" or that the word of his disciples can be taken as evidence of anything they said happened, actually did.

Religious laws yes. If I remember right it had something to do with a Jewish holiday, or maybe not. The point is they could handle dead bodies after a certain time. I'll have to dig through Leviticus when I have the time.

The pyramids weren't built by slaves. There's no actual evidence to support this Biblical claim.

Well Romans were definitely trying to suppress Christianity. This is why they crucified Jesus and were guarding the tomb. Why should the words of disciples be taken as evidence? If they were the only evidence, sure I can see you're point but they're corroborated by non believers, and many of them only became believers after experiencing the resurrected Christ.

it was built by corvee labor, and you can only imagine how much bitching would come from the dindus if such a thing were attempted today

>Why should the words of disciples be taken as evidence?

I meant to say "Why shouldn't the words of disciples be taken as evidence" I really should proofread.

the romans didn't give a shit about christianity at that time, it was a minor jewish sect, no one except jews cared

Could you explain to me why they crucified Jesus and guarded his tomb if they had no interest in suppressing what they saw as a Jewish revolt?

you claim asking questions is embraced by Christianity and you scepticism isn't met with resistance, yet you lay the possibility of the resurrection at the foundation of your theology. No matter how much appreciation I can harness for Christianity, this is exactly why I can't call myself a Christian and no true Christian will call me that either-and for good reason. I do suspect that cultural Christians will become an acceptable category, this seems to be the path new apologists are taking.

>Render unto caesar what is caesar's

yeah, sounds like a big revolt

it was the other jews that wanted him killed, the romans didn't care about jewish infighting

retard

I'm saying it's possible he didn't make any claim of resurrection, this may have been invented later and further possible that the Romans didn't give a shit about his predicted resurrection and were just guarding the body as a matter of course. Maybe they weren't even doing that. Given that the people who corroborated the story later became believers, they're as good as believers in the first place and the only evidence of any of this at all is from disciples. They could have made up any old shit. Nothing in that book is particularly historical or reliable in any way. The only real fact we can take from the bible is that the people writing it want to convert people and affirm the faith of those who have converted; they have a clear agenda so why should we believe anything they say?

Have I told you that you shouldn't ask question about the resurrection? I don't understand the issue your having. You're asking questions and I'm trying to answer them the best I can. You seem to be under the impression that skepticism is merely asking question and anyone attempting to answer them is somehow suppressing skepticism. That's the impression that I'm getting anyways.

if he was actually dead, and the romans didn't want people to think he was resurrected, why did they guard the tomb? why didn't they just let all his followers go in and find his stinking corpse? why even take him down off the cross? why not leave him up there to rot like every other crucifixion they did?

I addressed that in my post.

It was not a standard practice for Romans to guard to tombs of dead people. They were there for a specific purpose. You're factually wrong about the only evidence being from disciples, in one instance the Jews tacitly admit that the body is missing in the first place by accusing the disciples of stealing the body. This inadvertently corroborates the disciples claim that the body was missing.

This idea that believers cannot be trusted in any way even if they only became believers later in life is ridiculous. Wouldn't it make sense that if the evidence was overwhelming, that people would change their mind? This strengthens the Christian case because guys like Paul had no worldly motivation to go from prosecutor, to believer, to martyr.

no you didn't you just said "something something jewish law" and did some handwaving

Are there any serious scholars that believe the body was stolen?

wait, are some of you faggots actually proposing that this nigga rose from the grave and became a fucking zombie? what's more likely, dude didn't die during the crucifixion and some sympathetic bros let him escape, or he came back to life and the guards didn't notice a living corpse walk by?

>you claim asking questions is embraced by Christianity and you scepticism isn't met with resistance, yet you lay the possibility of the resurrection at the foundation of your theology. No matter how much appreciation I can harness for Christianity, this is exactly why I can't call myself a Christian and no true Christian will call me that either-and for good reason. I do suspect that cultural Christians will become an acceptable category, this seems to be the path new apologists are taking.

Jesus as moral philosopher with a weak "hope" in place of undoubting faith for the metaphysical aspects is enough to make a claim to Christian identity

>Virtually every scholar, including secular, agrees that the tomb was found to be empty by a group of women
Incorrect, in fact most historians of the era say it's unlikely a jew executed for sedition would even be taken down from his cross, the entire point of crucifiction was a long death from exposure and the body being left as a warning.

About the group of women: which women? The gospels don't even agree who was among the women who found the empty tomb and what happened. Did an angel roll away the stone? Was it already rolled away? Did Jesus show up at the tomb or later?

>that Jesus' disciples had real and authentic experiences with somebody they believed to be the real Jesus
Correct. Whether the gospels are exactly what they thought is what's up for debate. No critical historian thinks the gospels are perfect eyewitness accounts.

>and the number of these disciples who experienced this is upwards of 500 different people
You're conflating a historical Jesus, the Jesus of the gospels, and the Jesus of Paul's letters. Only Paul claims Jesus appeared to 500 followers (1 Corinthians 15:6), nothing like that appears in the gospels. They only claim he appeared to the 11 remaining disciples (in fact, Paul mentions the 12 disciples as seeing Jesus, apparently he was unaware of Judas' betrayal and death!).

The only things serious scholars of historical jesus really believe are multiply attested non-miraculous events shared between sources, that Joseph wasnt his biological father, that he was baptized by john, and that there really was an INRI/King of the Jews sign over his head at crucifixion (and by extension that there was indeed a crucifixion).

Wrong post. Nice reading comprehension.
>in one instance the Jews tacitly admit that the body is missing in the first place by accusing the disciples of stealing the body.
In one instance of what? Where does it say this?
>This idea that believers cannot be trusted in any way even if they only became believers later in life is ridiculous.
I didn't say believers cannot be trusted in any way, I'm saying that the people writing the core canon of a religious text intended to convert and propagandise itself can't be trusted.
>Wouldn't it make sense that if the evidence was overwhelming, that people would change their mind?
Given how many people convert with no evidence whatsoever (all of them), no.

>Incorrect, in fact most historians of the era say it's unlikely a jew executed for sedition would even be taken down from his cross, the entire point of crucifiction was a long death from exposure and the body being left as a warning.

I agree with this from what I have read, but I have also read that there is some agreement on the importance of Joseph of Arimathea being rich enough to bribe his way to grabbing the body. Also, the passover unrest may have lead to expeditious romans giving the body back.

That's a very good point. It's possible, but how likely is it? As far as I've read it would have been pretty exceptional, especially because the Romans couldn't care less about the Passover. They shat all over other Jewish customs like not monotheism by trying in install the Imperial cult in Jerusalem.

Maybe it's because I've been reading secular historians, I know Christians historians would dispute that.

>Incorrect, in fact most historians of the era say it's unlikely a jew executed for sedition would even be taken down from his cross, the entire point of crucifiction was a long death from exposure and the body being left as a warning.

This would contradict written accounts that describe Jesus being taken down from the cross, but aside from that, if he was meant to die from exposure than why was he speared? I believe he was speared in order to speed up the process of dying, this is because the Passover sacrifice was the next day and Jews could not touch a dead body after sundown or they would be ritually unclean and be unable to participate.

dude, they speared a lot of people that got crucified, usually enough that their guts would fall out and drape down to the ground (which is still non-fatal, you can live for a long time with your intestines hanging out) so just the fact that they didn't cut him open enough for his entrails to fall out shows they weren't really into it

Regardless if the spearing killed him more quickly or not there was a very strong motivation for Jews to attend the required sacrifice, and they could not have done that if they touched a dead body after a certain amount of time. This is a very strong motivation for the Jews, and the Romans acting at the behest of the Pharisees, to not leave Jesus on the cross overnight.

>Romans couldn't care less about the Passover

I seem to remember in Josephus that there were riots some years prior in like AD 1 or 2 where a couple thousand were killed that they were trying to avoid.

That's another good point, yeah. I guess then it depends on how much influence the followers of Jesus had in the early 1st century. We've got no independent sources about them, so really it goes back to how reliable the gospels are. If you're Christian, they're totally reliable, if you're not, they aren't very reliable.

From a secular perspective, I think theological interests, personal bias, and age make the gospels suspect as totally historical accounts. This is partly why I remain agnostic, if you look into ANY history you realize how uncertain it is. To try and justify a whole theological system on history is pretty dubious. Many christian philosophers thought so, and put faith into its own category, separate from rational knowledge.

>This is a very strong motivation for the Jews, and the Romans acting at the behest of the Pharisees, to not leave Jesus on the cross overnight.

yeah, and so they took him down before he was dead, and then somehow he got out of the tomb and the rest is history

So you believe he survived the crucifixion?

yes, we've all seen the gore videos of people with their faces blown off walking around giving thumbs up signs n shit, so compared to some shit out there, being crucified for a couple hours is just not that deadly

Why would the Romans or Jews be okay with letting Jesus survive the crucifixion? I don't believe the Romans had a habit of letting people accused of treason survive the worst form of execution they employed. I suppose we should just disregard all this stuff about Jesus being put in a tomb and the Romans guarding it as well?

It's an interesting position to hold.

>I don't believe the Romans had a habit of letting people accused of treason survive the worst form of execution they employed.

they probably thought he was dead, again there have been enough cases where someone gets shot in the head, passes out, and then wakes up later and goes to the cops and the killer is identified... they probably didn't intend him to survive, but now that you're telling me they rushed to take him down due to passover just makes me more certain. the reason crucifixion was so brutal is because it took a long time to die and they left the corpse on the cross for all to see, so if the romans are used to leaving people up for a month, they probably didn't have much experience pinpointing exactly when the dude died, and again they might have been sympathetic too him, or just didn't want to start a riot and just got the fuck out of there fast...but really it's the only plausible explanation, paul bribing the guards to take the body is ok, but what did he do with it? dump the body of the messiah in an unmarked grave somewhere and act like nothing happened? why bother? they could have just said his "spirit" ascended to heaven leaving his body behind, in matters of religion the dude doesn't have to literally be resurrected, so why go through all that? ..., surviving and then escaping is the only explanation that makes sense

I'm not a Christian, but your view is totally speculative. There's no evidence for it at all. It's on par with ideas that Jesus took some drug that put him into a trance and he woke up 3 days later. Sure it's possible, but what evidence is there that it happened?

yes, you're right, it's speculative, unlike the view that he came back to life and floated up to heaven which is clearly supported by scientific evidence

I agree, both are speculative. There's no good reason to believe either. Really, we don't know what happened.

This is really why agnosticism wins out over theism in this specific instance. Theism relies on objective knowledge of God. Even if a person is fallible, theism presupposes that objective knowledge of God is possible. This is a supreption that assumes subjective information about God comes from an objective God, when the objective existence of God hasn't been proved at all.

You can only be agnostic to the issue of Jesus' resurrection if you preemptively take any possible supernatural explanation off the table, but in doing so you're no longer agnostic to the issue. You're taking the position that there could not be a supernatural explanation which biases you toward any alternative material explanation regardless of the evidence. If on the other hand you would allow the mere possibility of the supernatural, you would find that the supernatural resurrection of Jesus is the best explanation for the empty tomb and the appearance of Jesus to over 500 people -- two events that not doubted by any serious historical scholar -- because the alternative theories of the body being stolen or it just being a big hallucination do not hold up to scrutiny.

Here now fuck off.

>we've all seen...

i haven't. this sounds intense.

this is quite possibly the most retarded thing I have read today.

Not him but I'm looking for poetic and accurate

a proper reading of the bible would show you the radicality of what jesus did and make you know that its an either-or scenario, where he either is god made man and thus you should give your whole life to him or that he is a religious fanatic and should thoroughly be vilified for how he duped billions.

i urge you not to reject or accept christianity based on the historicity of jesus. it is an obsession of our relatively recent late modern scholarship. i'd like to think that there were wise men before our time and i'd also like to think that there were valid reasons as to why they did not accept or reject jesus as god based on historical argument(s). thinking of and wrestling with the implications of the resurrection, the chief doctrine of christianity, and accepting or rejecting it on that basis is what i would suggest.

Are you surprised?

> Its easier for me to take Jesus as teacher rather than Jesus as redeemer.

This is the one argument I think CS Lewis got right. Jesus told you to call the man currently handing you over to death your friend and to love him. If you really call that 'a great moral teacher' then I don't know what to say.

I can't give the bible a proper reading having studied Gnosticism and the varieties of proto-orthodoxy (Christ-cult vs Jesus people). Lewis' arguments are not convincing with modern scholarship