What Happened To The Resurrected Saints?

Ed Babinski has some great thoughts and questions concerning an alleged miracle that is only mentioned in the book of Matthew.(See also Farrell Till's comments on Babinski's article which will follow soon). From The Skeptical Review, 1992:

by Ed Babinski

Two short verses in Matthew raise perhaps the most serious questions that can be put to a literal interpretation of the resurrection stories. Matthew said that at the moment of Jesus' death "the tombs were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they entered into the holy city and appeared unto many" (27:52-53). This is an account of a miracle unsurpassed anywhere else in the gospels. It makes the postresurrection appearing of Jesus "to above five hundred brethren at once" (1 Cor. 15:6) appear tame in comparison.  

In this case, many saints were raised and appeared to many. Unlike the accounts of Jesus raising Lazarus or the synagogue ruler's daughter or Jesus himself being raised, this depicts saints dead for way over "three days" being raised. And, from the phrase, "they entered the holy city and appeared to many," it is possible to infer that these many raised saints showed themselves to many who were not believers! Yet Josephus, who wrote a history of Jerusalem both prior to and after her fall, i.e., forty years after the death of Jesus, knew of Jesus but nothing of this raising of many and appearing to many. Of this greatest of all miracles, not a rumor appears in the works of Josephus or of any other ancient author. Surely at least one of the many raised out of those many emptied tombs was still alive just prior to Josephus's time, amazing many. Or at least many who had seen those many saints were still repeating the tale. Although people may have doubted that Jesus raised a few people while he was still alive and although "some doubted" Jesus' own resurrection (Matt. 28:17), who could fail to have been impressed by many risen saints appearing to many? How also could Peter have neglected to mention them in his Jerusalem speech a mere fifty days after they "appeared to many in the holy city"? Surely their appearance must have been foremost on everyone's mind. So why didn't Paul mention such a thing in his letters, our earliest sources? Why did the women who visited the "empty tomb" on Sunday morning not take notice that many other tombs were likewise open? Why didn't the visitors to Jesus' tomb mention that they had met or seen many raised saints in that vicinity, meeting them on the way to Jesus' tomb or on the way back to town? Why did the apostles disbelieve the first reports of Jesus' resurrection when a mass exit from the tombs had accompanied his resurrection? Why didn't Matthew know how many raised saints there were? Why couldn't he name a single one or a single person to whom they had appeared? How did Matthew know that these saints had come out of their tombs? That would be more than anyone had seen in the case of Jesus' resurrection.

More Of The Wit And Wisdom Of Mark Twain

In all the ages the Roman Church has owned slaves, bought and sold slaves, authorized and encouraged her children to trade in them. . . . There were the texts; there was no mistaking their meaning; . . . she was doing in all this thing what the Bible had mapped out for her to do. So unassailable was her position that in all the centuries she had no word to say against human slavery.  
~Mark Twain 

It is best to read the weather forecast before praying for rain.    
~Mark Twain

The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and seal. It could not be expressed better.

~Mark Twain

Raised On The Third Day In Accordance With The Scriptures?

This is another post from the Errancy Discussion list from June 14, 1997. After Magill, our Christian apologist, committed the logical fallacy of begging the question (i.e., in a debate, when one assumes that what he is arguing for is true without putting forth any evidence for it), Farrell Till, then gives an example of real argumentation:

MAGILL
Magill- Yes, would anyone want to have assurance and peace of
everlasting life in Christ Jesus? It's such a terrible thing to have
one's eternal destiny settled. It's such a horrific thing to know you
are going to live forever in a perfect body that will never again be
subject to corruption and mortality with all its hurts and pains. It's
such a tramatic experience to give one's life over to Jesus Christ
and have the shed blood of His sacrafice be personally applied to
my sin and atone for the penalty that I rightly deserve yet will never
receive because Christ has bore the penalty for me in my place.

"For the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is everlasting life
IN Christ Jesus." (Romans 6:23)

TILL
As usual Magill engages in question begging with no attempt at all
to offer reasonable supporting evidence for the questions he begs.
As I said in a posting yesterday, I don't intend to dignify postings
like this with responses. However, I will urge Magill again to make
a serious effort to debate logically. I'll even help get him started.

Long-time subscribers will recall that when he came onto the list, we
were discussing Jesus's prediction that he would be three days and
three nights in the heart of the earth and the contexts of what the
gospels  claimed about the length of his burial. Magill sent a posting
that accused us of stupidity and said something to the effect that
we need to study what the OT says about the Messiah's resurrection
on the third day.

In response to this, I challenged Magill to cite the OT scriptures that
refer to or in any way imply that the Messiah would die and be resurrected
on the third day. Magill, of course, was unable to supply the OT
references, because they simply don't exist. I pointed out that NT
writers clearly indicated in the following scriptures that the OT had

predicted a third-day resurrection of the Messiah:

Luke 24:45 Then he [Jesus] opened their minds to understand the
scriptures,
46 and he said to them, "Thus IT IS WRITTEN, that the Messiah is
to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day....

I Corinthians 15:3 For I handed on to you as of first importance
what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in 
accordance with the scriptures,
4 and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day
IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE SCRIPTURES....

Now here are two NT writers who clearly said that the OT said that
the Christ would rise from the dead on the third day. If skeptics are
as ignorant as Magill claims we are, then why doesn't he produce
the OT scriptures that Luke and Paul were referring to? That would
really expose our ignorance. Magill, however, hasn't produced these
scriptures for the simple reason that they do not exist. Anyway, I 
have  presented this challenge to him again, so let's wait and see 
if he can produce the OT scriptures that made a third-day 
resurrection claim.

Farrell Till

My Reply To A Church Of Christ Preacher

By Kenneth W. Hawthorne

This is part of a reply (with some editing) to a Church of Christ preacher who claimed in his weekly bulletin that it is impossible to know that miracles are impossible. However, there is absolutely no convincing, verifiable evidence that Yahweh, the god of the Bible has caused any miracles to occur that would attest to his existence. To the contrary, the Bible is full of evidence that Yahweh cannot be God. This blog has many examples of such evidence, especially concerning this alleged god's eternal hell. For example see: An Omni God And His Eternal Hell, A Letter To A Concerned Christian Friend:

Christians make the claim that God came to earth in the flesh of a man, Jesus Christ. That he was born of a virgin, performed various miracles while on earth, died and about three days later came back to life never to die again, then forty days later ascended into heaven, and that all or much of this was miraculously foretold by God-inspired prophets in the Old Testament. These are all positive and distant claims (distant in this context has to do with how close the claims correspond to empirical knowledge such as for the claims "pigs snort" {close} and "pigs fly" {distant}) which go against all personal and community experiences. These Christian claims, therefore, bear an extremely high asymmetrical burden of proof. That means that before a rational person should seriously consider believing these extraordinary claims are true the evidence presented would have to consist of many reliable, disinterested, contemporary witness accounts--of which we have none or involve an immediate, unequivocal, personal experience  so that one would be forced to seriously consider these distant claims instead of believing what he knows happens all the time--and go with something that, as far as his experiences, has never happened.

Unfortunately, what I've seen as evidence for these Christian claims is not even close to being sufficient for the type of claims made. The four Gospels are nothing but hearsay, written by biased, anonymous writers. Certain church "fathers" made a fanciful connection to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John being the authors, based merely on biased speculation and tradition--but no one really knows who wrote these books. These church fathers amount to no more than what you would consider denominational preachers today--yet you believe them on this essential matter--and would, today, be very skeptical of anything they had to say on the subject of religion. None of the disinterested, contemporary scientists or writers of the time Jesus is said to have lived record anything about Jesus, much less his miracles. Josephus does not qualify because he is not a contemporary of Jesus and it is obvious that his work has been tampered with concerning his mention of Jesus and is therefore flawed and unreliable.

Alexander Campbell (Church of Christ icon) had this to say:

“Josephus, the Jewish historian, was contemporary with the Apostles, having been born in the year 37. From his situation and habits, he had every access to know all that took place at the rise of the Christian religion. Respecting the founder of this religion, Josephus has thought fit to be silent in history. The present copies of his work contain one passage which speaks very respectfully of Jesus Christ, and ascribes to him the character of the Messiah. But as Josephus did not embrace Christianity, and as this passage is not quoted or referred to until the beginning of the fourth century, it is, for these and other reasons, generally accounted spurious” (Evidences of Christianity, from Campbell-Owen Debate, p. 312).

The more accurate word Campbell should have used at the end instead of "spurious" is forged.

The Apostle Thomas was allegedly given direct, unequivocal evidence of Jesus's resurrection. Why shouldn't we be given this same type of evidence? The Bible claims that Yahweh shows no partiality, Acts 10:34, so how could he have given this amazing advantage to Thomas and not to every man? Especially since the Bible teaches that Thomas already had several tremendous advantages to cause belief: 1) he had seen Jesus raise the dead, John 11; 2) Thomas, himself, with the rest of the Apostles, was given the power to raise the dead, Mt 10:1-8; 3) Jesus had told Thomas and the rest of the Apostles that he would rise from the dead, Mt 16:21; 4) the culture Thomas lived in was predisposed to believe that resurrections were possible, Mt 14:1-2; Mt 16:13-14.

But this type of direct evidence obviously cannot happen because of all of the other evidence that goes counter to the god of the Bible being the true God, primary of which is that he created man for his glory, knowing man's flawed nature. Knowing that to get this glory that he wanted, but didn't need, untold billions of his beloved (?) humans would have to be tortured forever in the hell that he decided must exist.

Why this fiction, called Christianity, has managed to hold on so long has a lot to do with this admission that you made, "The message of the Bible is such that any rational person will want to believe it. And, wanting to believe it, he will look for rea­sons to be­lieve rather than reasons to dis­believe."  These sentiments are understandable but they are not rational, not scientific and are anything but a blue print for finding the truth. Your admission speaks volumes about why you continue to delude yourself concerning the truthfulness of Christianity. You want to believe that miracle claims associated with Christianity are true and you only look for reasons to believe this. I think this is the problem with most false religions. They too have the same mindset.

That is why the vast majority of people born in Islamic countries are Muslim and remain so throughout their lives--and ditto for countries that are predominantly Christian, Hindu, etc.

Kenneth

Logical Fallacies

Farrell Till takes a biblical inerrantist to school on the subject of logical fallacies. From the Errancy discussion list, June 14, 1997:
MAGILL
Your response my dear was indeed quick but your brain nevertheless is
slow to listen and quick to judge as all fool's brains are!

TILL
Oh, well, why not have a little fun and analyze the logical fallacies in
Magill's posting?

MAGILL
"THE FOOL HAS SAID IN HIS HEART THERE IS NO GOD!" (Psalm 53:1)

TILL
This is an appeal to authority, tradition, and popular belief. It carries no more force of argument than would a Mormon's quotation of the Book of Mormon or a Muslim's quotation of the Qur'an. We have pointed this out many times to Magill, but he persists in thinking that he can settle any issue by just quoting a scripture or two.

MAGILL
By God's very definition of non-believers you are a fool! He said it not me!

TILL
This begs the question of God's involvement in the writing of the Bible.
Until Magill has established beyond reasonable doubt that God inspired the
writing of the Bible, his scripture quotations prove no more than a Mormon's
quotation of the Book of Mormon or a Muslim's quotation of the Qur'an? I
don't suppose Magill is ever going to learn this basic logical fallacy.

MAGILL
He can say it because He is God and you are not!

TILL
This is an appeal to both authority and fear. It also begs the question of
God's existence. Magill needs to establish beyond reasonable doubt that a
god exists, and then he can talk to us about what God has the right to do.

MAGILL
This is the first lesson in true humility.

TILL
This is a fallacy of unproven assertion. Magill should accept the burden of
proof and try to establish that the assertion is true.

MAGILL
If you cannot accept it your heart is hard and your brain is on recess not
to mention the fact that your spirit and soul are dead!

TILL
In this we have an ad hominem attack and the begging of a question that
Magill needs to prove. Is there a spirit or soul? What is the evidence
that such exists?

More important, does Magill expect anyone to take him seriously when he
sends the list sophomoric postings like this one? If he will make serious
attempts to state and support arguments, I will gladly respond to him, but
stuff like this doesn't deserve to be dignified with responses. Thus, he
will hear no more from me until he posts a serious argument or else makes a
serious attempt to rebut an argument.

Farrell Till

Supernatural Claims

Farrell Till responds to a believer in biblical supernatural claims (from the Errancy discussion list):

I accept historical records for which there is no good reason to think that they are inaccurate. When historical records claim the occurrence of the supernatural, I do not accept the claims, because it is more reasonable to believe that the records have exaggerated or lied or passed along unconfirmed tradition or rumors than that these occurrences actually happened.

Now I predict that this is exactly what you do EXCEPT for supernatural claims recorded in the Bible. Tell me if you accept the Mormon claim, for which firsthand testimony exists, that an angel delivered to Joseph Smith golden plates on which the Book of Mormon had been transcribed in "reformed" Egyptian characters. Now if you reject this claim, please tell me why you accept the NT claim, for which there is NO firsthand testimony, that an angel came down and rolled the stone away from the tomb of Jesus.

Farrell Till

The Absence Of Evidence (1)

Farrell Till responds to inerrantist Dave Miller's article in the Skeptical Review:

I commend Mr. Miller for an excellent definition of the Bible inerrancy doctrine and perhaps an even better explanation of the importance of the doctrine to Christianity. Maybe it is a carry-over from my own fundamentalist background, but I have a much deeper admiration for Christians who believe in a divinely inspired inerrant Bible than those who believe in a divinely inspired errant Bible. To the latter, I can only repeat what Mr. Miller said in the foregoing article: "If the Holy Spirit is responsible for what the biblical writers wrote, and if the Bible contains errors in historical details, then the Holy Spirit is the author of error" (p. 2). As Mr. Miller effectively argued, for the Bible to be authoritative, it must be inerrant; otherwise, man is left with an impractical moral guide, for what good is a moral guide that is blemished with errors? If the Bible says X, and one can establish that X is an untruth, then how can he trust anything else it says? 

Mr. Miller may have been on track in recognizing the absolute necessity of an inerrant, "trustworthy" revelation in order to give credibility and authority to a religious system, but he wandered far afield in his attempt to prove that the Bible provides Christianity with such a revelation. An entire section of his article was devoted to a discussion of "the biblical claim for inerrancy," but I have to disagree with his contention that the Bible claims inerrancy, because it doesn't. Every scripture that Miller cited in this section concerned either promises to send the Holy Spirit to guide the disciples in what they should say or claims that the scriptures were inspired of God or that prophets had spoken as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. However, to say that the Holy Spirit was sent to guide men in what to say or that men spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit is not to say that whatever these men said or wrote under the direction of the Holy Spirit was inerrant. To arrive at the doctrine of inerrancy, one must go through the logical process that Miller took us through in his article. A basic premise of this process is that if the Holy Spirit is omniscient and omnipotent, then any document that he verbally inspired would have to be inerrant, because an omniscient, omnipotent deity would be incapable of error.

I would agree with Miller's logic if he could prove three things: (1) an entity known as the Holy Spirit actually exists, (2) this entity known as the Holy Spirit is both omniscient and omnipotent, and (3) this Holy Spirit verbally inspired all of the writers of the Bible in everything that they wrote. Unfortunately for Miller's confidence in Bible inerrancy, these are all very big ifs, none of which he could actually prove if his life depended on it. This underscores the major problem in the Bible inerrancy doctrine: it is based on unprovable assumptions. Any belief founded on assumptions is worthless.

Even if we grant Mr. Miller the first two of his assumptions, he would still have a very high hurdle to clear in the third one. That hurdle, of course, would be to establish the truth of the biblical claim that its writers were inspired by the Holy Spirit. A claim is only a claim and must therefore be examined before its truth can be confirmed. Mr. Miller can never prove the truth of the biblical claim of divine inspiration. Claims of divinely inspired books are almost a dime a dozen. The Book of Mormon claims to be a "latter day" revelation from God; the Avesta claims that it was divinely inspired; the Koran claims that it was revealed to man by the angel Gabriel. So what evidence can Miller give us to prove that we should accept the biblical claim of inspiration over all the many others? Christian apologists have tried to give us such proof, but Miller made no attempt to do so in his article. Like so many Bible fundamentalists, he just made the claim and expected his readers to accept it. In the publication in which his article originally appeared, he could get away with this, because the paper is aimed at a predominantly fundamentalist audience. However, more rational readers, which we believe The Skeptical Review has, will insist on much more than what Mr. Miller gave them in the reprint of his article.