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[Spyridon]

There are two other things that I have not previously mentioned. Please keep in mind, by saying that there might be legendary elements in the resurrection accounts, that is not a claim that the resurrection itself is purely legendary. I cannot find a better explanation for the survival of early Christianity than the risen Christ.

The oldest account of an empty tomb is Mark's Gospel, which concludes without resurrection appearances. Instead, it ends claiming the women told nothing to no one, because they were afraid. If the empty tomb story was invented by Mark or was recent to Mark, that the women were afraid and told no one would explain why no one knew of it beforehand, not even Paul.

Matthew 27:53 tells us that, after Jesus' resurrection, many other holy people rose from their graves, came into the city and appeared to many. If this is true, why doesn't any other book of the New Testament or ancient historical document mention this? Isn't it more likely that this resurrection of the saints is purely legendary? And if so, what other parts of the resurrection accounts are legendary?

While the resurrection accounts may contain some legendary elements, it in no way detracts from the risen Christ as a living reality.

[CelticNorth]

I'll go out on a limb again, and point out that nearly all the symbollism and allegory used by Mathew and the other Gospel writers are an almost exact retelling of the Egyptian Rituals from the ascesnion story of Horus as told in the Pyramid Text and the Papyrus of ANI. It is from Iu-em-kept, the ancent Egytpian "Coming One" of peace, tranlated variably as Iaho, Iao, Iau, Iusu, Iusass, Jesus. Read Gerald Massey. The origin of the Christ story is not from the 1st century Christian era, but was formed some three thousand years earlier, and reached its apex in its teachings the Temples of Heliopolis. From heiroglyph to hebrew to greek to english, Jesus is translation of the name, in its oldest form, of Iu-em-kept.
Seek and ye shall find.

[Spyridon]

I'm sorry if I've not been clear as to what my point is. It is not to cast the Christian faith into doubt, but to strengthen the faith of those who are uncertain about the factual details of the Bible yet still want to believe.

If Jesus hadn't risen, we could not have a living relationship with him in the present. In living according to that relationship, we can leave the historicity of the empty tomb an open question. Transforming relationship with Christ is weightier than propositional belief about Christ.

[CelticNorth]

I think that in order to strenghten one's faith one has confront the factual details of scripture, and to do as honestly as we would scrutinize the factual details and foundations of other religious faiths; this we do wholeheartedly when we "examine" other religious tradtiions, but shy away from the responsibility when it is our own faith tradition. But I do think it is fair to say that mulitiple conecpts were woven together by the early Church fathers; the primary one entailing the life of Jesus of Nazareth, a member of a Jewish group called the Essenes, who perhaps based his personnel history and ministry on messianic lore from the writings of Isaiah. As we peel away the layers and centuries of religious writings we will probaly find common threads that are the seed origin for many of the world's faith traditions, and find they all have much more in common than they are different. However, much pre-biblical literature does contain and entail near same and identical resurrection, judgement day theology and imagery ascribed to Jesus of Nazareth by the Gospel writers, which one can reasonably conclude was borrowed and worshiped prior to the Christian Era period. My own sense is that if we give honest appraisal to these early seeds and roots of Christian religious lore, it gives us a deeper appreciation of the long history of man's search for meaning and purpose. I think Marcus Borg and his writings are very astute about the new currents of thought on what constitutes Christinity today. He is a great writer.

[Spyridon]

Since near-death experiences are common, as are out of body experiences that people have near death, it isn't hard to believe that the apostles witnessed Christ beyond death in some form. I believe the burden of proof is on those who claim that nothing happened at all to warrant the apostles' belief in the resurrection.

[Anthony]

[Spyridon]

i've thought that maybe the resurrection of jesus was something only his disciples could experience, as if they all had entered a higher state of consciousness. jesus could have appeared to pilate but chose not to, so it might be something that only the apostles were able to experience.

[CelticNorth]

I was looking for passages quoted by Gerald Massey in his work, " The Hisotrical Jesus and the Mythical Christ" to find the exact phrases taken from Egyptian Ritual text that appear in similar form in the Gospel writings which describe the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. They are contained in pages 80-100, if anyone cares to read them. "Easter", the current Christian day of celebration for the "risen Christ", was not "Christianized" until 755 A.D. by Elvod, accroding to Massey, and seems like another example of early Church fathers incorporating pagen ritual into faith and practice celebrations to incorporate converts and control temple access. This process of incorporating pagan immagery and ritual celebrations into Christianity accouts for the many contradictions and inconsistencies in the scripture, and why many biblical stories can be found to have had their origins prior to the advent fo the Christina era. Massey is not the only one to look into origin sources of scripture; Albert Clay explores many of these same themes in "The Origin of Biblical Traditions", and A. Smythe Palmer writes on the "Babylonian Influence on the Bible and Popular Beliefs; A Comparative Study of Genesis". There is quite a list of others, but the scholarhsip is out there.

[Anthony]

[CelticNorth]

It is a contested point, particulary with the ongoing excavations at Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1948. It was Pliney the Elder in 77 A.D. who first described a scattered Jewish group of religous sects with a communal lifestyle as "Essenes", and it was a scroll called "The Rule of the Community" found at Qumran that has led to the assumption that perhaps Jesus of Nazareth was a part of that community. One scroll mentions a messianic figure with the name "Son of God", and "Son of the Most High", which implies the terminology of Son of God was applied to the Nazarean at a later date; we know it was Horus, the Egyptain Son of God, who represented the risen KRAST, which was the name given to the physcial mummy in Egyptian tombs at the time of the soul ascension, upon death, and it is that imagery that is found in the Pyrmid Texts and Ritual of the Egyptians. My sense is that scrolls such as "The Rule of The Community" found at Qumran were basic, religious community civil codes, which various communities in the Judean Hills possesed and enacted due to their rejection of Roman Civil Law; in an age where there was no separation between church and state, this is a feasible reading on it. There is a good piece on this topic in the curent January 2010 issue of Smithsonian, which I quote from, that were extracted from articles and authors from the Biblical Archaeologists. The jury is out, apparently, of who the Essenes actually were- unless we dig up Pliney, and ask him.

[Spyridon]

Mark Allan Powell is a New Testament scholar at Trinity Lutheran Seminary. Powell believes in the corporeal resurrection of Jesus and the historicity of the empty tomb. At the same time, he insists that a reasonable person can believe otherwise and have a living relationship with Christ:

[CelticNorth]

What Borg, Bultman and others have come to appreciate is perhaps early Egytian- and Greek- thought regarding human immortality of the soul and its relation to celestial immortality of the universe. The simplistic exlanation of the idea is that once we agree that the universe is ruled and governed by some divine law or force, a "something" that we cannot perceive or hope to fully understand, it is a resonable assumtion that this same force permeates everything (including human life) with its design and purpose as part of a unified whole of creation that cannot be separated or subtracted from. The human soul, as a consequence and living expression of this, is a part in this intelligence and purpose, with the resurrection of the soul being a reunification with the astral and universal force from which it orginated upon death. Perhaps all resurrection theology, no matter what faith tradition, rest upon this single premise of the souls reunifcation with eternity and the cosmos, or that of God. It is this celestial conception of the souls descent and ascent, into and out of incarnation, by which individual soul's end up in "Heaven", "Nirvana" or "Vahalla" That this process can only occur through one's acceptance of Christian doctrine is a historic point of much contention.

[BetsyP]

I'm just now coming into this discussion at a rather late date, and had quite a time reading through the previous posts.

I grew up in a Protestant Christian home (Presbyterian), and believed all I was taught, including accepting the virgin birth and the bodily ressurection of Jesus.

Now I am a Quaker, and I believe my perception of God is far more mature and is not dependent upon the need to accept a virgin birth and/or bodily ressurection of the man and great teacher known as Jesus of Nazareth. I most firmly believe that there is "that which is of God in each of us," and that our souls are immortal. To me, this is the essence of a spiritual life.

I have friends who are LDS ("Mormon"), and I think to myself, "God is just not this complicated," at least not for me.

And God's "gender" is irrelevant as well. We know that there are Hebrew words that are considered feminine as well as masculine that are used in the writings from which the modern Bible has developed, so for me, God has aspects that are both male and female.

peace & blessings,
bets

[Anthony]

His anyone keeping up with the latest on the Turin Shroud?

http://www.shroudstory.com/

[Jim Wilson]

Good Friends:

For those interested, a recent (this year) book that defends the bodily resurrection of Jesus on historiographic grounds is "The Resurrection of Jesus" by Michael Licona. It is somewhat a difficult read; it was originally a doctrinal dissertation and it contains some of those awkward academic ways of saying things. It is heavily footnoted; so its actual reading size is less than half the number of pages. Still, it is thorough and presents the evidence, both pro and con, in a way that I found useful.

And then, of course, there is the magisterial work by N. T. Wright, "The Resurrection of the Son of God." Again, I found this sometimes a difficult read in that it seemed overly detailed. On the other hand, I suspect Wright felt that he had to respond to every possible criticism, no matter how remote, to make a convincing case. But it is well worth reading.

Good Friend McGuffy, I don't see any connection between the 'Egyptian Book of the Dead' and the Gospels. I just don't see any comparison.

The basic view of people like Licona and Wright is that the early history of Christianity simply does not make sense without factoring in the bodily resurrection of Jesus. No other view adequately accounts for all that happened. Personally, I agree with that conclusion.

Best wishes,

Your Friend Jim
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