The Empty Tomb

[TimCallahan]

Since Jerusalem exists today, I assume it was rebuilt. Maybe it was rebuilt too late to account for the writings, mind you, but I am wondering about that.

Jerusalem was rebuilt after CE, but was rebuilt, specifically without the temple, which is why we know the gospels were written after CE 70. Paul's references to Jerusalem don't mention any previous, recent, Roman destruction, which given the apocalyptic mind set of first and second century Christians isn't something he would have left out.

That's a mighty big margin, don't you think ? Why choose 70 when you can choose 150, for instance ? And where does this place Paul ? Why pick 50-ish when you can pick 130 ?

I've said what I'm gong to say on the subject. In my post I gave the specific reasons for why Mark is considered the earliest of the four canonical gospels, why Mark had to have been written after CE 70, why we know that the Synoptic Gospels, in some form, were written by 150 and why John may have been written as early as 125 and was definitely written by 180 - 200.

As to dating Paul's writings, had he been writing ca. 130 or later, there wouldn't have been any Christian congregation in Jerusalem, due to the Bar Kochba revolt, to which paul would likely referred, considering Simon bar Kochba a false messiah. As to dating Paul's writings ca. CE 50 - 60, remember the Gallio inscription, about which Oystein posted. You don't seem to be reading people's posts.

 

[TimCallahan]

This is fascinating stuff, but I have a question. Bear in mind that I ask it as a person with little to no expertise in this area and who asks only out of ignorant curiosity.

Does this really falsify the temple-destruction prophecy? Could that prophecy not be a lucky guess? Perhaps I am mistaken, but would it not be possible for someone aiding a revolution in the Jewish faith ("revolution" may be the wrong word) to wish for the physical destruction of the temple in that it would signify destruction of the old order, and subsequently predict it out of hope? Or is there more to the post-70CE analysis than this?

Not sure if I am making sense here, but I trust you get the gist.

Thanks

I suppose that's possible. However, the specific statement that one stone will not be left standing on another fits Vespasian's destruction of Jerusalem. According to Josephus, the destruction was so complete that, had the Romans not deliberately left three towers and a section of wall between two of them standing, passersby wouldn't have been able to tell that there had w=once been a city on that site.

 

[Belz...]

You don't seem to be reading people's posts.

I was just asking for clarification. I am reading your posts. Thank you for your time. I shan't be asking you again.

 

[TimCallahan]

edge: Rather than quoting your long post and trying to answer this point or that, I'll just make these points regarding Mt. 16:27, 28:

For the Son of man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father and then he will repay every man for what he has done. Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.

I don't see how the hilited area can refer to anything but the last judgment. That the early Christians, and particularly the gospel writers, saw the world ending in their time can be seen in these passages, as well. In Mt. 10:23, Jesus tells his foollowers:

When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next; for truly I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel, before the Son of man comes.

Then there's this passage in John (Jn. 5:25 - 29), in which Jesus says:

Truly, truly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear it will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself; and has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of man. Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come forth, those who have done good, tho the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.

When, at the beginning of the passage above, Jesus says the hour is coming, the word used in the original Greek is erchomei, the present imperfect, meaning that, " is
coming" is a very accurate translation. Then Jesus adds, "and now is." In other words, the passage has a sense of immediacy: The hour is coming and, is in fact, here right now, when the dead are going to hear the voice of Jesus, come out of their tombs and face the last judgment.

Again the Book of Revelation begins (Rev. 1:1 emphasis added):

The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place; and he made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, . . . .

Thus, the gospels of Matthew and John, along with Revelation, specifically predict the return of Jesus, the end of the world and the last judgment in the generation of those who wrote them in the late first and early second centuries. These thing did not take place. Ergo, these documents were not divinely inspired. As such, the "prophecy' of the total destruction of the Jerusalem temple, in the Little Apocalypse, was history, written after the fact. Therefore, even Mar, the earliest of the gospels, was written after the year 70: QED.

 

[SlackerBabbath]

Again? That's an outside source that helps confirm what took place who else would they be talking about?

Well, while I agree that it's probably whoever the character of Jesus was based upon that they are talking about, considering that there were several people in Judea around the beginning of the first century who were considered as the prophesised Messiah, it could still really be any of a number of people, the Samaritan 'Simon Magus' for example immediately springs to mind because he was apparently a Messiah claimant who lived at the same time as Jesus, visited many of the same places as Jesus, was associated with several of the same people as Jesus and had similar miraculous powers to Jesus. Although the apocryphal 'Acts of Peter' says that Simon met his end after miraculously levitating in the forum when the apostle Peter prayed to God to stop his flying, causing him to stop in mid-air and fall to the ground breaking his legs and is then stoned to death by the previously non-hostile crowd, that's actualy just one of several contradicting accounts of how he died, so we don't actualy know how he really died... he could have been crucified for claiming to be the Messiah and rightful heir to the throne for all we know.

Look, consider this for a moment, for every gospel that was eventualy included in the compilation of the New Testament and the Christian Bible, there are lots more that didn't make it, such as for example;

Gospel of Basilides.
Gospel of Truth.
Gospel of the Four Heavenly Realms
Gospel of Mary
Gospel of Judas
Greek Gospel of the Egyptians
Gospel of Philip
Gospel of Perfection
Gospel of the Hebrews
Gospel of the Nazarenes
Gospel of the Ebionites
Gospel of the Twelve
Gospel of Peter
Gospel of Matthias
Gospel of Cerinthus
Gospel of Apelles
Gospel of Valentinus
Gospel of Andrew
Gospel of Barnabas
Gospel of Bartholomew
Gospel of Hesychius
Gospel of Lucius
Gospel of Merinthus
Gospel of the Adversary of the Law and the Prophets

....and those are just some of the ones that we know about, there could potentialy have been many more that have since been lost to history. But the interesting thing is, many of them tell quite different stories about the character of Jesus to the Biblical ones that we're more familiar with, and while the 4 Biblical Gospels agree with each other on the whole, although there are still contradictions between some of them, some of the non-Biblical gospels agree with each other too.
The point I'm making is that Jesus could quite easily have been quite a different character to the one we are familiar with. Remember, the New Testament canon, as it now appears, wasn't considered as canon until it was accepted at the Third Council of Carthage in 397, and even then it took until 419 for the Book of Revelation to be added.

The New Testament was effectively compiled by ordinary mortals hundreds of years after Jesus' death by picking just a few books from lots of equaly plausable but contradicting books. Now, of course that contradiction would normaly make us consider that many of the non-canon books about Jesus were simply fictional, but what is equally possible is that the character of Jesus was actualy based upon several different people. This isn't as far fetched as you might consider it to be because that's exactly what many historians think about the characters of Robin Hood and King Arthur.

So, were the Christians named after someone who was killed by the Romans? According to Tacitus, who's a trusted source of Roman history, the answer to that is a resounding 'yes', but that 'someone' could easily have been just one of several people that the character of Jesus is based upon.

It doesn't confirm the whole bible.

It doesn't confirm any of the Bible. It simply says that a man who was considered to be the Messiah (Christ) by a particular group of people was killed by the Romans. Remember, as I said earlier, 'Christ' was a title, not a name, so there could possibly have been several 'Christs' and several different groups who considered themselves as 'Christians'.

Not only that but what you aren't is a believer if you were then you would see what I see and experiance what I have till you get it.

But that's hardly a sufficient argument. If it was then someone saying that they 'believe' in Thor, the Norse god of thunder, because they've 'experienced' the power of a thunder storm, would make their belief in the Norse pantheon of gods just as plausable as your belief in the existence of the Abrahamic God.

How would you feel if a Hindu, or a Pagan, or someone from any other faith said that exact same thing to you about their own beliefs?
Would you just dismiss it as something that's meaningless to you? Would you consider that your beliefs based upon your experiences is somehow more meaningful than anyone elses?

 

[TimCallahan]

I was just asking for clarification. I am reading your posts. Thank you for your time. I shan't be asking you again.

Perhaps I was overly testy. However, I thought I had already given sufficient clarification.

The important thing, of course, is that the whole empty tomb mythos wasn't created until the gospels were written, and the earliest of these, Mark, was written after the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in CE 70. So, if Mark was written in CE 70 or shortly after, then for about 40 years or so (assuming the traditional date of the crucifixion of Jesus is accurate) the post resurrection appearances of Jesus did not necessarily include that specific detail.

It's interesting to note that the story of the empty tomb isn't written until it's too late to actually verify, i.e. until after said tomb had been either flattened or buried in rubble.

ETA: Since, AFAIK, we don't really have an exact date for the crucifixion of Jesus, all we know is that both the gospels and Tacitus say that it occurred while Pontius Pilate was governing Judaea, which was CE 26 - 37. So, the Crucifixion could have been as late as CE 37.

Jerusalem was totally flattened in CE 70 and, according to Wikipedia, wasn't rebuilt - as Aelia Capitolina - until Hadrian began to do so in 130. the rebuilding was disrupted by the Bar Kochba Revolt 132 = 135, after which Hadrian completed the new, thoroughly pagan, city as a Roman colony, calling it Colonia Aelia Capitolina, in 136. There seems to have been some Jewish presence in the city's environs between 70 and 130, but the tombs in existence in the 30s would have remained buried during that time.

 

[Apology]

Although the apocryphal 'Acts of Peter' says that Simon met his end after miraculously levitating in the forum when the apostle Peter prayed to God to stop his flying, causing him to stop in mid-air and fall to the ground breaking his legs and is then stoned to death by the previously non-hostile crowd, that's actualy just one of several contradicting accounts of how he died, so we don't actualy know how he really died... he could have been crucified for claiming to be the Messiah and rightful heir to the throne for all we know.

LOL, what a dick!

Peter: "Hey, watch this, Paul...Oh Lord, who art in Heaven, please smitheth this foul demon Simon who doth stealeth thy only begotten son's act..."

CRASH*THUMP*CRUNCH!!!

 

[Belz...]

Perhaps I was overly testy. However, I thought I had already given sufficient clarification.

Thanks. I was just wondering if, unlikely as it sounds even to me, it was possible that the "Paul" letters were written after Jerusalem was rebuilt. I seriously doubt that... so I agree that they must have been written before.

It's interesting to note that the story of the empty tomb isn't written until it's too late to actually verify, i.e. until after said tomb had been either flattened or buried in rubble.

Convenient, isn't it ?

 

[tsig]

Thanks. I was just wondering if, unlikely as it sounds even to me, it was possible that the "Paul" letters were written after Jerusalem was rebuilt. I seriously doubt that... so I agree that they must have been written before.



Convenient, isn't it ?

If an empty tomb is proof of the truth resurrection would an empty tombstone be proof of the truth of the gospels?

Jesus? He ain't here man.

 

[pakeha]

...The writer of Matthew has it all down pretty much and only leaves out a few of the facts.
But when speaking about Judas adds some facts, which were probably added for the reasons I stated in my previous post because of the order of things and Judas following in John.
Back in those days they surly didn’t want to give woman any of the credit and were sure that salvation was available to men only. Look at where the church he started is today, where it all lead through that slightly corrupted thinking of being the most loved. Only recently did they accept woman as priests or witnesses.
I think Paul is more credible and honest and even chastises Peter for wrong way thinking.
Plus the fact that Judas was the favorite.
This whole event was prophesied and for believers that have accepted Jesus, he works in their lives today, for those that don’t won’t see as written and that disbelief increases as written. So there are those truths that are revealed. ...

I'm rather confused about the idea Judas was the favourite disciple.
Are you now claiming you know this by personal revelation?

...The important thing, of course, is that the whole empty tomb mythos wasn't created until the gospels were written, and the earliest of these, Mark, was written after the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in CE 70. So, if Mark was written in CE 70 or shortly after, then for about 40 years or so (assuming the traditional date of the crucifixion of Jesus is accurate) the post resurrection appearances of Jesus did not necessarily include that specific detail.

It's interesting to note that the story of the empty tomb isn't written until it's too late to actually verify, i.e. until after said tomb had been either flattened or buried in rubble.

ETA: Since, AFAIK, we don't really have an exact date for the crucifixion of Jesus, all we know is that both the gospels and Tacitus say that it occurred while Pontius Pilate was governing Judaea, which was CE 26 - 37. So, the Crucifixion could have been as late as CE 37.

Jerusalem was totally flattened in CE 70 and, according to Wikipedia, wasn't rebuilt - as Aelia Capitolina - until Hadrian began to do so in 130. the rebuilding was disrupted by the Bar Kochba Revolt 132 = 135, after which Hadrian completed the new, thoroughly pagan, city as a Roman colony, calling it Colonia Aelia Capitolina, in 136. There seems to have been some Jewish presence in the city's environs between 70 and 130, but the tombs in existence in the 30s would have remained buried during that time.

Thanks, TC. What sorry times those must have been in that area.

From an earlier post of yours
" According to Josephus, the destruction was so complete that, had the Romans not deliberately left three towers and a section of wall between two of them standing, passersby wouldn't have been able to tell that there had w=once been a city on that site. "

Am I right in concluding Jesus' prophecy about 'not a stone' was, in point of fact, falsified?

 

[R.A.F.]

Again?

Yes...until I receive a reasonable answer, I will repeat essentially the same question...

That's an outside source that helps confirm what took place...

Only if you must "rely" on circular reasoning to make an unevidenced "point".

...who else would they be talking about?

Really?...your "argument" is "I don't know, so it must be Christ?" Do you not see the irrationality of such an "argument"??

It doesn't confirm the whole bible

.

As has been pointed out to you, it doesn't confirm any of the bible....which leads me back to my original assertion that you are using the bible as if it were an historical text.

Please stop doing that.

Not only that but what you aren't is a believer...if you were then you would see what I see and experiance what I have till you get it.

First off, it is irrelevant what I believe

Second, you are demonstrating the same type of "mind set" as flying saucer believers...the ole' if you saw what I saw, you would believe...

Sorry, but when a claim is so extraordinary, I demand evidence before I surrender belief.

Simple as that...

Now answer this:
So tell me how you could even believe what you propose to be true when you say and think...

Umm...sorry, but I can't see the question in this sentence...

 

[TimCallahan]

Thanks. I was just wondering if, unlikely as it sounds even to me, it was possible that the "Paul" letters were written after Jerusalem was rebuilt. I seriously doubt that... so I agree that they must have been written before. . . . (snip) . . .

One would think, were that the case, that he would have mentioned the previous destruction as a demonstration of God's wrath. Also, there doesn't seem to have been much of a Christian presence in the region after CE 70. IIRC, Simon bar Kosiba, who renamed himself Simon bar Kochba ("Simon, son of a star") claimed to be the Messiah and thus wasn't tolerant of Christians during the period of his revolt.

So, were Paul actually writing Galatians, for example, in the second century, his trip to Jerusalem, along with his contentions with the Jerusalem church would be an anachronism.

Finally, as Oystien noted, we have the Gallio inscription, which ties Paul to the period of the 50s and 60s.

 

[Belz...]

The only reason I see would be that they were deliberately written to give the appearance of being written before. I don't see why, and don't see that as likely.

 

[ShadowSot]

Tacitus provides a non-Christian confirmation of the crucifixion of Jesus.
See, this is the thing about you all that I don’t get, you want an outside source and when one is given, it then isn’t viable either? Go and figure the mind of an ‘atheist?

The issue with this is it gives us evidence of the claims of the Christians, not evidence of the event itself. So we know the early Christians believed Jesus was put to death by Pilate.

 

[TimCallahan]

The only reason I see would be that they were deliberately written to give the appearance of being written before. I don't see why, and don't see that as likely.

Agreed. I don't think the early Christians said, "Hey, let's fool people who will be reading this, say, 2,000 years down the road.

Of course, making up a false past is another matter, as in the Testamentum Flavianum in Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews.

 

[ddt]

One would think, were that the case, that he would have mentioned the previous destruction as a demonstration of God's wrath. Also, there doesn't seem to have been much of a Christian presence in the region after CE 70. IIRC, Simon bar Kosiba, who renamed himself Simon bar Kochba ("Simon, son of a star") claimed to be the Messiah and thus wasn't tolerant of Christians during the period of his revolt.

Not a single Jewish sect was very tolerant those days. While the Jews revolted against Rome in the first revolt, they also happily infighted who was the boss of the revolt.

So, were Paul actually writing Galatians, for example, in the second century, his trip to Jerusalem, along with his contentions with the Jerusalem church would be an anachronism.

Agreed.

Finally, as Oystien noted, we have the Gallio inscription, which ties Paul to the period of the 50s and 60s.

Of course, the Gallio inscription only says that the writer of Acts pulled the name of a real existing Roman governor out of his hat, which meshes in timeline with the name of Pilate in the gospels.

Agreed. I don't think the early Christians said, "Hey, let's fool people who will be reading this, say, 2,000 years down the road.

That seems very unlikely indeed. But there's one thing bothering me. The conclusion I took from a DOC thread about the OT was that each and every OT prediction had two interesting properties:
(1) it was false, and I don't mean false in the technical sense as pakeha points out that the Romans deliberately left a few buildings to accentuate the rest of the rubble, but really besides the truth;
(2) it was a postdiction, i.e., it was actually written after the events it "predicted".
Think, e.g., of Ezekhiel's (?) predictions of the destruction of Tyre, and of Nebuchadnezzar laying waste to Egypt.

 

[ddt]

The issue with this is it gives us evidence of the claims of the Christians, not evidence of the event itself. So we know the early Christians believed Jesus was put to death by Pilate.

An interesting question then is "how early"?
(a) the "early Christians" in Tacitus' time, ca. 110 AD, who could have been his informers for him writing this off-hand dependent clause (or maybe his friend and colleague Pliny was his informer).
(b) the "early Christians" in Nero's time, 64 AD, when the actual incident took place.

My vote goes to (a).

 

[pakeha]

...Of course, the Gallio inscription only says that the writer of Acts pulled the name of a real existing Roman governor out of his hat, which meshes in timeline with the name of Pilate in the gospels.
...

In the same way Nicolas Flamel and Paracelsus are featured in the Chocolate Frog cards?

 

[Belz...]

Agreed. I don't think the early Christians said, "Hey, let's fool people who will be reading this, say, 2,000 years down the road.

Of course, making up a false past is another matter, as in the Testamentum Flavianum in Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews.

Although someone could have forged the Pauline letters in order to fool people back then and take advantage of the credulous.

 

[pakeha]

Although someone could have forged the Pauline letters in order to fool people back then and take advantage of the credulous.

Of course.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Some things never change, Belz.

Like Rafa mordiendo (biting)his 8th Roland Garros trophy.