Some guy calling himself Farmer Craig has chosen to dialogue with me about Jesus' resurrection, so since YouTube isn't really set up to facilitate that much scholarly back and forth, I demanded that he contact me here, where posting responses is easier.
Farmer Craig4 hours ago
@Barry Jones Part 2 //" in fact his sites a creed that is dated earlier than the Gospels, in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the scriptures: And that He was seen of Cephas (Peter), then of the twelve: After that, He was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that he was seen by James (Jesus’ half-brother), then of all the apostles. And last of all he was seen of me also….”. --------But that "creed" has no historical value because it wasn't given to him by other apostles, it was given to him by the "Lord". The way he phrases that creed in 15:3 is exactly paralleled in 11:23, which indicates that Paul intends "what I received, I passed on to you" to mean "what I received FROM THE LORD, I pass on to you". Paul's reception of the gospel from the Lord was by way of vision or divine telepathy, see Galatians 1:11-12. Your trifles about how this could merely reflect a general truth without implicating the "creed" may possibily be true, but you don't win a historical argument by simply pointing out that your interpretation of the data remains a logical possibility.// That’s the difference here, and your inserting another part of a verse to make your case. The creed doesn’t start off with “from the Lord I pass onto you”. Paul uses that phrase multiple times, but not here. I agree Paul’s gospel came from Jesus, himself, but everything he says about Christ lines up with the gospel accounts. //"Almost all scholars agree that 1 Corinthians was written by the early 50’s AD, that’s only 20 years after the death of Jesus. Therefore, it’s dramatic that Paul includes the passage “of whom the greater part remain onto this present, but some have fallen asleep.” ----------Or that was just added by a later copyist during the first 100 years for which we have no manuscripts. Educate yourself on how often the later copyists modified NT wording before you pretend that "there's no evidence for that". Blame the Christians for not preserving the first 100 years of manuscripts, apparently their comfort in disposing of older manuscripts indicates they didn't expect the church to continue on earth for another 2,000 years.// No mate, you can’t just assert that claim with no evidence. Because we have so many manuscripts from all over middle east, and they say the same thing, is the evidence nothing was changed. Papyrus was something that didn’t last long, and had to be copied. Also having a Roman emperor who was hell bent on destroying the works of the church, a lot would have been lost. Paul said what he said, then and we have it now, this is a 100% certainty. // " Talk to some of these 500 people yourselves." -----------That's an easy challenge to hurl at the reader, given that Jerusalem and Corinth were separated by more than 750 miles, and most people in those days were so tied to their families, local communities and jobs that they simply couldn't go on long voyages, especially if the sole purpose was to see whether what some local preacher told them was consistent with what the original apostles were saying. And that's to say nothing about how many dangers and perils of robbers existed, ready to pounce on unprotected travelers. // Really in a way they didn’t have to because Paul talks about the miracles that were done in their presence. Paul back up his claim with signs and wonders to the Corinthians. Surely someone would have gone from Corinth to Jerusalem. It just needed person. //"Talk to Peter, John and James." ---------Yeah, give up caring for your kids, quit making money at your job, and take a prohibitively dangerous, expensive and time-consuming trip merely to satisfy your curiosity about whether what I say is the same thing the original apostles were saying. LOL.// See above reply "If Paul’s claims could easily be falsified and the costs of falsification were high, then he would ensure his claims were not mistaken." -------------How easy is it to? How much are Mormons affected by the fact that Mormonism is DEMONSTRABLY false? LOL. Yes Mormonism is easy to refute. But Christianity is a historical event, people could ask hostile eye witnesses of Christianity events.
Craig's second post (fourth reply from YouTube:
Farmer Craig
Barry Jones Part 3 //"He wouldn’t have included a statement like that if he was trying to hide something like a conspiracy, hoax, myth, or legend." ---------But he would if he was relaying to them what he thinks he received by divine telepathy. Once again, the Corinthian creed's historical worth is tied to its being a case of other apostles telling him the creed, and I previously established that Paul got the creed by divine telepathy. I've never met any Christian who would seriously try to argue that a 2,000 year old vision-story is "historically reliable". // It’s a case of the apostles passing on the creed. You didn’t establish that Paul got the creed from telepathy, you inserted he did. You’ll find in 1 Corinthians 11:23 Paul saying “For I received from the Lord..” //"So what happened at Galilee, there’s enough info to gather, that the apostles saw Jesus alive and went forth to preach the good news." -----------You were wrong to date the Corinthian creed before the date the gospels were published. That may be technically true, but how old is authentic Mark's ending the resurrection story at 16:8? Was Mark ending it at that point before Paul wrote 1st Corinthians? I can't prove it, you can't disprove it, so it is something about which reasonable persons can reasonably disagree. You need to shake the bad habit of pretending that proper application of the rules of historicity always yields trustworthy information about ancient events. // There is good evidence to suggest that the Gospel of Mark is early. Paul’s writings are dated to the 50’s. Paul quotes Luke’s Gospel twice in 1 Tim 5:18 and 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, even calling it scripture. Luke in his intro says of the eye witness accounts before his, and what is found in his work? Information from Matthew and Mark. This puts the Gospels into the 40/50’s. When I see the New Testament, I see more trustworthy information than another work in the ancient world. We have more documents, earlier documents, better copied documents than we have for any book in the ancient world. So, if we cannot trust the reliability of the New Testament, then we have to reject all of ancient history. //"No we find that they suffered great persecution, jail, torture and death because of their belief. History tells us, liars make poor martyrs." ---------------You couldn't prove the martyrdom of any original apostle or of Paul to save your life. Read the ending of John's gospel : didn't Jesus predict that Peter would be UNWILLING to go to his death? Isn't unwillingness to die the exact OPPOSITE of a Christian martyr's expected mindset?// Haha good play on words there. “To save your life”. Well firstly about Peter, I guess no one wants to be led to death. But also if you read on, John says this, “Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God.” It sounds like John knew of how Peter’s death was a willing event. Well Acts 12: 1-2, gives the death of the apostle James, brother of John. Josephus and Hegesippus give the death of James’ Jesus brother. Clement of Rome who was a contemporary of the apostles reports the sufferings and deaths of Peter and Paul. “By reason of jealousy and envy the greatest and most righteous pillars of the Church were persecuted and contended even unto death. Let us set before our eyes the good Apostles. There was Peter who by reason of unrighteous jealousy endured not one not one but many labors, and thus having borne his testimony went to his appointed place of glory” Dionysius, bishop of Corinth. “You have thus by such an admonition bound together the planting of Peter and of Paul at Rome and Corinth. For both of them planted and likewise taught us in our Corinth. And they taught together in like manner in Italy, and suffered martyrdom at the same time” Polycarp “ …Paul himself and the other apostles. You should be convinced that none of them acted in vain, but faith and righteousness, and that they are in the place they deserved, with the Lord, with whom they also suffered” This information given by Polycarp, born around 69 A.D, that all of the other apostles all suffered. There is more out there, but that’s not bad for a start. //"Matthew’s guard story starts before Mark 16:9." -------But you cannot authenticate the author or his sources, so today's skeptics are doing nothing unreasonable in regarding Matthew unique content as useless.// There is plenty of sources for Matthew as the author of his gospel. Papias (c. AD 60-130) writes, “Matthew put together the oracles [of the Lord] in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as best he could.” Pantaenus also confirmed that Matthew was the author of the First Gospel. Take this quote from Justin Martyr. “when a star rose in heaven at the time of his [Jesus'] birth, as is recorded in the Memoirs of his apostles, the Magi from Arabia, recognizing the sign by this, came and worshipped him.” This is from Matthew because it is the only gospel that accounts for this story, and Martyr says “as is recorded in the Memoirs of his apostles” He knew who wrote the gospels. In fact he had a student who made a work of combining all four gospels into one, called the Diatessaron in Greek, meaning " of /from/out of " " four ". With the addition of Origen and Irenaeus’s acceptance of Matthew writing the First Gospel, one is hard-pressed to dismiss their claims. They didn’t give their sources back then. But seeing that a large number of priests joined the group and Nicodemus who was a pharisees, the info about the guards came from them. //"He didn’t get that from Mark, and obviosity true, as you couldn’t make up a story like that in Jerusalem." -------What makes you think Matthew wrote that in Jerusalem? Don't ancient patristic sources say the apostles had early split up and went to different parts of the earth? For all you know, Matthew's original was written in Rome, and its Semitisms indicating only that Matthew intended a mail-carrier to carry it back to his intended Jewish audience.// It sounds like Matthew wrote his gospel for the Jews, just reading his gospel it is very Jewish, mentions the Old Testament quite a bit. The following is Eusebius’s report of Pantaenus’s encounter with the Hebrew edition of Matthew’s Gospel: “It is reported that among persons there who knew of Christ, he found the Gospel according to Matthew, which had anticipated his own arrival. For Bartholomew, one of the apostles, had preached to them, and left with them the writing of Matthew in the Hebrew language, which they had preserved till that time.” //"Do Matthew and Luke tell ” dramatically different events”. No, they say the angel tell the women Jesus will meet you at Galilee." ----------But whereas Matthew necessarily implies that that the women's experience at the tomb was a true literal historical event, Luke version tells us their experience was a "vision", see Luke 24:23.// If you read Luke24:4-8, states a physical appearance, really Cleopas saying the women had seen a vision of angels, is simply saying the saw angels. //"They go on to add that they did meet Jesus." ---------So? You can't show that any of this crap // Mark states that the women were told to tell the disciples to meet Jesus in Galilee. Christianity starts after this event. //"Matthew finishes off the guard account. Luke finishes with Jesus’ ascension." -----------Luke last few verses also have Jesus rising from the dead and ascending to heaven ALL ON THE SAME DAY, whereas Acts 1:3 inserts 40 days between the resurrection and ascension. Christian scholars would hardly comment as often as they do about that, if the proper harmonization scenario was the least bit "obvious".// Luke doesn’t pacifically say that all happened on one, and you’re missing the phrase in verse 50, “WHEN he had led them out…” That could be a later date.
Farmer Craig
Barry Jones //Really the question to you is, how did Christianity start, if not how the Gospels stated it?" -------------There is no rule of hermeneutics, historiography or common sense that requires anybody to provide an alternative explanation for the explanation they are seeking to falsify. I can know the space-alien theory of the Bermuda Triangle is false, even if i can't explain every last little mysterious detail.// //Again what is false in the Acts account?" -------Most everything, it was written by Luke the Liar.// //" What do you think happened to Paul? -------Don't care. I could justify ignoring the story by reason of my need to go grocery shopping, and if so, it could very well be that for all hours of each day I have more important things to do than read 2,000 year old histories,// These replies from you, really sum up how weak you position is, basically you don’t have any idea what alternate theory you can put forward. You give a throwaway line, about Luke lying about everything, but totally ignorant of the years of archaeology work that has been done, the references in secular works. You know as well as I do, Luke has yet to be proved wrong of anything. Again with Paul, you haven’t a reasonable theory to put forward against Paul’s conversion. Why after 2000 years do you care about what happens with Christianity, Why not get on with your life?
Farmer Craig
Barry Jones "To key question is has Christianity been shown to be historical false in its writings. The answer is a resounding no." ----------------Jesus' family didn't even find his "miracles" the least bit convincing. Mark 3:21, John 7:5. That evidence for Jesus being a fraud is even earlier testimony than your Corinthian "creed". Oh good your taking the New Testament as true account, then so can I. This is a very interesting detail, and great for historians. What a thing to say about the Son of God, Your forgetting also that James became head of the Jerusalem church, both Jude and James wrote letters which we have in the NT, Jesus mother Mary was in the group of believers in Acts.
Barry:
I will answer these later as time permits.
