Micheal Nugent V WC

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Maybe Nugent might comment on that as there is often a good explanation for it. I can not remember it now, but I remember there was a rational technical explanation for why Dinesh DSouza appeared to be screaming like a mad lunatic in his debate with Daniel Dennett. It is so long since I heard the explanation now that I forget what it was (think the debate was 9 years ago now? Long before Dsouza became a convicted criminal) But I remember at the time thinking "ah yes, that makes sense, I will give DSouza the benefit of the doubt on this one".

From the reasonable debate site they said they had audio issues, technical ones.

Here's the full debate from our camera.

Their recording team had technical problems, I'm not sure what they were.

I see where you're coming from. But I think you have the problem that, if burial of execution victims was not normal (and I believe it wasn't), then anybody shown an empty tomb would not regard it as evidence that Jesus had risen (or, for that matter, that his corpse had been stolen). They'd first look for some reason to accept that he had ever been buried there in the first place, since no burial would have been expected. The usual fate for crucifixion victims was to be left hanging and, if Jesus had been left hanging, there'd be plenty of witnesses to the fact, since it was a public place.

Which means, I think, that if you're trying to cast about for evidence in support of a claim that Jesus is risen, you're unlikely to point to an empty tomb, since it's not evidence that would be expected, or that would seem particularly compelling, and any claim that he had been buried in the tomb (a) would require an explanation as to how and why he had been buried in the first place, and (b) if false, would be fairly easily refuted.

To my mind, the most plausible explanation for the "empty tomb" detail in the resurrection stories is that Jesus had actually been buried there, unusual as that might have been. If he hadn't been, any story that he had been would have been unlikely to pass muster. That doesn't mean that he rose from the dead, obviously - he could have been buried there and his body later removed. But, as an explanation for the empty tomb "he was never in the tomb in the first place!" seems to me to have its own problems.

We know the story - as we have it - was put together many years after the events it purports to describe, Paul. That's not in any doubt. And I'm not arguing that "it must be so, because nobody said otherwise"; I'm only pointing out that, just as we can subject all the elements in the canonical story to critical analysis, so the elements of alternative hypotheses (such as "Jesus was never in the tomb") can be subject to a similar critical analysis.

"Jesus was never in the tomb" has one thing going for it - executed criminals were not normally laid in tombs, so why was Jesus? - and one thing going against it - if executed criminals were not normally entombed, and Jesus in particular was not entombed, how did the idea that he was entombed ever acquire any currency? If we're going to consider the first objection we must also, to be consistent, consider the second.

I remind myself, Paul, that we said we wouldn't do this.

I don't think the historicity of Jesus was really the focus of Michael's address, and there may be other aspects of the evening that people want to discuss, including people who were present on the occasion, which neither of us were. Much as we might enjoy it, I don't think this thread will be improved for others if you and I have the same conversation here that we have previously had elsewhere.

So, I propose a truce; we drop the subject here. If either of us wants to continue the discussion about historicity, we should open a new thread (or revive an old one). To be honest, I'm not minded to do that at the moment (though I dare say if you are I will rise to the bait).

Michael OBrien wrote: »

I asked the question at this time in the Q&A. I also did further research that showed that Bart Ehrman has some interest in the idea of Jesus not being buried due to Roman shaming of crucifixion.
I only had about a minute to compose the question unfortunately but my reasoning for doing so was to offer a challenge to Craigs argument that the best explanation for the empty tomb is a supernatural intervention. My view was that Jesus might not have been buried in that fashion at all, because while he WAS a jew and there WERE examples of bodies being allowed buriel, it was not common and not reserved for peacetime as standard. Also since Jesus was allegedly hated by the Jewish authorities they would not have been greatly concerned about giving him burial rites and might have actually found it useful to shame a heretic by denying him those rites.
The goal along this reasoning is not to prove that jesus was not buried, but to show a more likely scenario often overlooked in such debates by Craig, that is plausible and more likely than a human being raised from the dead.
What do other people think?

Later his followers may have claimed a buriel, but with no body, then it would have been by default an empty tomb.

Well, here's the thing.

As far as crucifixion goes, the Roman crucifixion method was adopted from a Greek execution method begun in Athens known as apotympanismos which was reserved for a particular class of criminal known as kakourgoi which included thieves, pickpockets, traitors and kidnappers. The condemned would be fixed to a cross using iron shackles around the wrists, neck and ankles. Since they weren't nailed to the cross, death usually came about from thirst and exhaustion. This was, it seems, the primary intent of the execution method, a long drawn out death for, at that time, socially reprehensible crimes. So, although the Romans modified the method slightly the basic intent of a public drawn out death remained. Thus there was very little regard for the condemned either during or after the execution. Usually the bodies were dumped in mass graves.

However, if we have any reason to believe the gospel accounts at all (and I'm not sure we do)*, then there are some persuasive reasons to believe that at the very least Jesus was buried.
Firstly, the narrative is more coherent with at least some form of proper burial. It was the Jews who sought Jesus' execution and their theological basis for doing so as outlined in Mark 14:53-65 was that Jesus was guilty of at least blasphemy and prophesying falsely as condemned by Leviticus 24 and Deuteronomy 13 respectively, both capital offenses under Jewish law. However, rather than denying Jesus burial rites as per your theory, the burial of Jesus is best explained by the Old Testament. You see, the Pharisees are depicted as a group obstinately dedicated to observing the letter rather than the spirit of the law. So when Joseph of Arimathea goes to ask for Jesus' body, it is not born out of any sympathy for Jesus (since he voted to have Jesus put to death in the first place) but rather fulfilling his obligation to the law:

"If someone guilty of a capital offense is put to death and their body is hung on a tree, you must not leave the body hanging on the tree overnight. Be sure to bury it that same day, because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse."
Deuteronomy 21:22-23


Secondly, it's important to remember Mark's overall objective in creating the passion narrative. (I say Mark because all the other gospels use a modified version of Mark's narrative). Mark's gospel comes 40 years after the supposed death of Jesus and 20 years after Paul's earliest writings. In it's original form it ends on a cliffhanger and doesn't actually feature a resurrection. Also, as previously discussed on this thread the idea of a dying and rising Messiah runs counter to the concept of a Messiah that Jewish people of the 1st century would have understood. Mark's narrative being so far removed from the events is best seen as an attempt to keep faith in Jesus alive in light of his death. The resurrection is a way of keeping the Jesus as Messiah story alive by having the potential for him to come back and fulfill the actual Messianic prophecies remain open. So Mark opens up the potential for this possibility by getting the ball (or the stone) rolling by having the tomb observed to be empty. Mark's intention is to leave the possibility of a resurrected Jesus as an exercise for the reader or to paraphrase Mickey O'Neill from Snatch, to say something without talking.

*As I mention above, all of this is based on the extent to which we can believe that the gospels are in any way reliable. With specific regard to the passion, I'm not sure that's at all true. Like I said above also, Mark's gospel is the basis for all of the other passion accounts. We have good reason to believe that Mark has no clue about the actual customs, traditions and laws of the time and place he refers to in his gospel.
Firstly, we are told in Mark 16:4 that:

"But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away."

This illustrates the loss of perspective that occurs sometimes in pseudohistorical fiction. At the time when Mark's gospel was written it was becoming relatively common for spherical or at least spheroidal boulders to be used to close the entrances to tombs. However, at the time when the gospel is set, this wasn't the case. Archaeological evidence shows that the stones used to seal tomb entrances early in the 1st century were cube shaped and that round stones were only used by the mega rich and powerful (e.g. Herod).
Secondly, Mark makes a number of mistakes surrounding the trial and burial of Jesus which shows his ignorance of Jewish laws and customs:

• The trial would never have been held at night as it would have been contrary to Jewish law.
• The trial would only have taken place in the Hall of Hewn Stones in the temple and not in the home of a council member.
• The trial and execution would never have been conducted during Passover
• Sentences in such trials were not pronounced for 24 hours and not immediately in the case of Jesus.
• Mark has Jesus buried in a single piece of cloth rather than the traditional individual wrappings (as mentioned by John)

Finally, as outlined in detail previously on this thread Mark makes other factual mistakes and borrows from Greek mythology, literature and the Old Testament which reveals his gospel as a fictional novel (like Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon) rather than a historical account.


In short, the best explanation for the empty tomb when the gospels are taken at face value is that Joseph of Arimathea buried Jesus out of consideration for his obligation to the law but simply had Jesus body dumped somewhere else once those obligations were fulfilled. However, the idea that we should at all take the gospels at face value is unsupportable by what we know about them.

Akrasia wrote: »

Historicity argument aside, Craig's scientific understanding of the origins of the Universe are misleading and in my view dishonest (because he has been informed of the science many many times but still continues to use the same incorrect premises to his cosmological argument.)

Well, for the record, he does exactly the same thing with the Jesus argument. He continues to use the same factually incorrect statements about the New Testament that he has been corrected on by numerous New Testament Scholars including Bart Ehrman, Richard Carrier, Gerd Ludemann, John Shelby Spong, James Crossley etc. Craig seems to be pretty impervious to facts in general and seems to regard his debates as a method of preaching his view of the world (similar to Galileo's Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo).
It's just that for the most part even less people seem to be interested in the nuances and depths of the Jesus argument than the cosmological argument. Also, given the perils of debating Craig outlined by Nozz in the OP, most liberal NT scholars are unwilling to give Craig the oxygen of publicity.

recedite wrote: »

Its a ploy commonly used by newspapers when they want to report some contoversial or possibly false story, while remaning immune to libel proceedings themselves.

Also used by the donald and Spicer.

MrP