I'm sorry to have to put such a large writing on this thread, but I wanted to get this point across. This is from the Dan Barker debate. This is Dan talking here. (the link is above). He captures some of the mistranslations that corrupt the bible. (Remember the OT 'young woman' becoming a NT "virgin")
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Here's Paul's recitation, all right? Now, remember that when Paul is writing this to the Corinthians, his agenda is for himself. He's trying to establish that he is one of the in-crowd too. Not just Peter, not just James, but "Me, too. I have apostolic authority." That's why he's giving it to these people in Corinth, this newly formed church. Here's the hymn [I Corinthians 15:3-8]:
"Christ died for our sins
in accordance with the Scriptures,
and was buried.
"And he was raised on the third day
in accordance with the Scriptures
and he appeared to Cephas," which is Peter,
"and then to the twelve."
(I thought there were only eleven there. But anyway.)
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editorial: What Dan means here is there were
only 11 after Judas bit the big one...but I guess
Paul didn't know that
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"Afterward, he appeared to more than 500 brethren, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.
"Afterward he appeared to James,
and then to all the missionaries." (Or to all the apostles.)
"Last of all, as to one untimely born,
he appeared also to me."
Paul is saying, "Hey, you can trust me. Jesus has appeared to me, too, not just to the early ones."
Now, notice this. This is very simple. Very stark. We don't have any earthquakes, we don't have any eclipses or astronomical events, we don't have any angels, we don't have any women telling stories, we don't have any of these fantastic embellishments. We just have a simple recognition of what the early Christians believed. Paul is passing this on, from what other people believed.
There's three words I want you to look at in this hymn, in this legendary-style hymn that Paul is quoting.
The first word is the word "buried." The word there is "etaphe," which is from the Greek word for "taphos," which just means "burial." It does not mean "tomb," it does not mean "sepulchre." The word for tomb is "mnema," and sepulchre is "mnemeion," (if I pronounced it correctly). It's just a place of burial. And if Jesus was truly crucified by the Roman authorities, it was their practice in those days to throw the decayed corpses of the crucified people into a common grave.
Paul is not talking about a tomb here. He is simply talking about a man who died. Just like when Moses died, in Deuteronomy, he was thrown in a grave -- nobody knows where the grave was, somewhere in Moab -- yet Moses was seen resurrected bodily from the dead. Did you know that? But nobody assumes that therefore there must have been an empty tomb of Moses. Remember in Matthew 17, when Peter goes up into the mountain with Jesus, James, and John, and Jesus is transfigured, and suddenly, who does he see? Moses and Elijah. There he is. Are we to assume that there is an empty tomb of Moses because Peter saw Moses up there? Of course we don't assume that.
Paul did not have a belief in an empty tomb, and he doesn't say that he did. Now, if you think he did, you're committing a historical no-no here. What you are doing is you're committing a kind of "Back To The Future" kind of historical analysis. You think you know what is in Paul's mind because you know what the later Gospel writers in the 80s and 90s, you think you know what they said about a bodily resurrection, so you are imposing that, back in time, on to Paul's mind because you think you know better. Paul was just kind of simple, but you know what he really meant. But the earliest Christians didn't mention any of these exaggerated bodily things.
The second word I want you to look at is the word "raised." He said "he was buried. And he was raised on the third day." That's not the word "resurrected." The word resurrected is "anastasis [noun]," or "anistimi [verb]." The word that Paul used here for "raised" is the word "egeiro" -- "egergetai." That is the word that is used throughout the New Testament for the word "to wake up," to "awaken." Remember when the disciples were on this boat and there was a storm and Jesus was asleep down below? They were scared, and they went down below and they woke him up? [Matthew 8:25] They used that word "egeiro": They "woke him up." "Jesus, help, help!" And all through the New Testament we find this word "egeiro" being used not for a bodily resurrection, but for a spiritual awakening, or for just waking up.
In Romans, Paul said, "Now it is high time to awaken out of sleep." [Romans 13:11] "Egeiro."
In Ephesians. We think Paul might have written Ephesians, we don't know for sure. This is really interesting. Paul is giving a whole bunch of advice to Christians, okay? Do this, do this, avoid this, don't do that, do this, here's how to live, and right in the middle of this advice, daily advice, he says, "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." [Ephesians 5:14] What's the word that he uses? "Egeiro." Can you command a living, breathing person to rise from the dead? Of course Paul doesn't think that that word has anything to do with a bodily resurrection.
The third word I want you to see in this phrase is the word "appear" or "seen," depending on the translation. That word is "ophthe." Paul uses the word "ophthe" five different times -- or was it four, I forget exactly, but he uses that word, one, two, three -- four times, and he was the last one. This is from the Greek word "horao" which is used for both physical vision and of a vision, to "have a vision." In fact, Paul had a lot of visions in the bible, and he uses that same word. When the Macedonian guy came to him and said, "Please come preach to us," [Acts 16:9] it wasn't in a bodily form -- it was a "vision," the same word. When Ananias . . . when he had a vision of Ananias [Acts 9:12], the same word. He didn't see Ananias physically. He used that word, that he had had a "vision" of Ananias.
And in Matthew 17, when Peter went up the mountain and saw Moses, what's the word that was used? "Ophthe." Moses "appeared" to Peter. [Matthew 17:3] Now, do we think that Moses bodily appeared to Peter? Did Moses bodily resurrect from the dead before Jesus had died for our sins? You have to believe that if you use these words consistently. Of course, I don't think most Christians believe that Moses bodily resurrected from the dead before that time -- maybe you do. But in any event, we can see that they are talking about a visionary experience here. And in First Corinthians 15, Jesus "appeared" to Peter and to James using that same word: "ophthe."
Now, we know, Paul tacks himself at the end here, and he said Jesus "ophthe" to Peter, he "ophthe" to James, he "appeared" to these others, and he "appeared" to me. We all know that Jesus did not physically appear to Paul. Paul said he did. He was blinded. He was knocked off his horse. He was in the habit of hearing voices and seeing lights in the sky. The people that were with Paul didn't see anyone. The people that were with Paul didn't hear anyone. Well, it depends on which account you take. In one account the men did hear the voice [Acts 9:7], and in another account they didn't [Acts 22:9] -- there's a biblical contradiction. They didn't hear or see anyone. So, what kind of a "physical" appearance is this? In fact, this was after Jesus' ascension. What was Jesus doing? Did he ascend up above the clouds for a while, and his body hung around, and he came back down and said, "Hi, Paul. I want you to know I'm still hanging around." Do you really think there was a physical, spatially limited body of Jesus hanging up there, coming down to Paul? No, I don't think most Christians today believe that.
The fact that Paul says that Jesus "ophthe" to him, and it was not a physical appearance, gives us a clue that he does not intend us to believe that the other appearances to these others were also physical. They were "spiritual" experiences, what they believed to be spiritual experiences.
And, to nail this thing shut, just a few verses later, Paul is talking about the Resurrection, right? He's explaining what the Resurrection means, and he says, in I Corinthians 15:50, "Now, I say this, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." So, how could he be talking about a physical resurrection and turn right around and say "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God"? He obviously intends this to mean that Jesus resurrected, but in a spiritual way, not physically, not bodily.
So, the first Resurrection account that we have has no empty tomb, no physical appearances. That's as close as we can get to the views of the early church. We see later, though, an evolution of Christian thought.
Now, I don't know how much weight historians should give to an argument from silence. There's a big debate about that. Just because somebody doesn't say something doesn't mean it didn't happen, right? But I do know that Mike really likes the argument from silence. He used it three times tonight. He used it to try to date the Gospels earlier by mentioning the things that were not said in the Gospels. He used it to try to criticize what criticisms might have been said and weren't said. So, Mike does like the argument from silence, and he uses it a lot. So, if he's going to use it, I'm going to use it as well. The absence of competing stories, for example, is another one of your arguments from silence.
Paul, we know, never claimed to have met Jesus, not before he died. He didn't meet the physical Jesus after the Resurrection. In fact, one of the ways we know this for sure is that if Paul had met Jesus and known him, he would have said something about him. Yet never does Paul quote a single Gospel saying of Jesus, anywhere in all of his writings -- and his writings were first. Never does Paul make reference to any of the miracles of Jesus that appeared in the Gospels. And Paul supposedly hung around with these people, and talked to them. And Paul talked about a lot of the same issues and would have benefited from quoting Jesus, for example, on divorce -- Paul talked about divorce a lot, and Paul said there should be no divorce. He forgot to take into account the fact that Jesus did allow for some divorce, in some case. He contradicted Jesus.
So, Paul seemed to be pretty ignorant. I know this is an argument from silence, but wouldn't it have been good evidence if Paul had said something? Mike is telling us that we have good evidence. It would have been good evidence if Paul had told us a few things about this man that he supposedly had met physically.
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