Thousands upon thousands of human beings have gone missing throughout human history, many of them without leaving a trace. [Read here for a few examples.] When no explanation can be found to indicate the cause of the disappearance, superstitious human beings frequently jump to supernatural conclusions. So here is my question: If the only “story” circulating about a particular person’s disappearance is a ghost tale/tales (or an alien abduction) are modern, educated people obligated to accept the ghost tale(s) as fact just because they are unable to produce evidence for another cause?
Of course not!
Just because a couple of guys write some supernatural tales about a particular person’s disappearance, does not in any way obligate us to accept their stories as fact.
So why then do intelligent, educated Christians insist that we must accept as fact the “only” explanation in existence for the disappearance of Jesus of Nazareth’s body from his grave: The Resurrection Stories in the Gospels and the writings of Paul?
Here are some comments on this topic from our Bible scholar friend and reader of this blog, Joel Edmund Anderson:
You are putting forth an alternative theory to what was reported and claimed in actual documents [in the Gospels and Paul’s writings] dating back to the first century. …The earliest evidence we have for Jesus is that he was resurrected. You have chosen to reject it–fine. But if you make another claim as to what happened WITH JESUS, you have to have evidence for what happened WITH JESUS. Saying, “Oh look, people die and don’t physically resurrect” is not evidence.
…Just as long as we agree: (A) There is 1st century textual evidence that you reject, and (B) Your alternative claims have no evidence whatsoever. But we’re talking about the actual evidence that we have. And we have first century documents. And your alternative theories don’t explain how the Jesus movement survived after the crucifixion. At least I’m dealing with actually textual evidence. You guys have nothing on which to base your speculations. …It is easy to cry “no evidence!” when you reject the textual evidence we actually have. lol
Gary: Must one possess evidence to make the assumption that most people who disappear and are never found after many years are…dead? Sure, there are other possible explanations. Maybe they took off with a lover to South America. But the most probable explanation for a person who has been missing for decades is that they are dead! Period. They had an accident (fell into a mine shaft) or someone killed them and hid their body. So if a story exists that aliens abducted the guy, are we obligated to accept the alien abduction version or can we stick with the “he’s probably dead” theory, even though we lack any evidence whatsoever for this hypothesis? Put another way: Is it sometimes reasonable and rational to go with an hypothesis which has no evidence as the most likely explanation for an odd event??
Absolutely!
[And by the way, the Bible itself contains “written documentation” of the most probable cause for Jesus’ missing body: Someone moved it:
The angels asked Mary, “Why are you crying?” She answered, “They have taken away my Lord’s body! I don’t know where they have put him.” –Gospel of John
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End of post.
Escaping Christian Fundamentalism 
“There is 1st century textual evidence that you reject”
Who rejects it? Sure, we have second-, third-, and fourth-century documents that appear to have their autographs in the first century. If you claim this is reliable history, then you’ve got a big job ahead of you.
“Your alternative claims have no evidence whatsoever.”
What evidence are we missing? If we must, we can provide evidence that oral history is unreliable, much could have been lost between first-century autographs and our oldest copies centuries later, that supernatural tales are common but are universally scrubbed out by historians, and so on.
“But we’re talking about the actual evidence that we have. And we have first century documents.”
No, you have unreliable copies written usually centuries after the first-century autographs.
“And your alternative theories don’t explain how the Jesus movement survived after the crucifixion.”
Why? Is this hard to explain? Tell you what: you explain how the Millerites survived their Great Disappointment when the world didn’t end in 1844, as predicted, and how Harold Camping’s followers didn’t quit Christianity in 2011 when the world didn’t end as predicted. Then perhaps there won’t really be much to explain about how the Jesus movement survived.
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Well said, Bob.
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re: ”Is it sometimes reasonable and rational to go with an hypothesis which has no evidence as the most likely explanation for an odd event??“
I’d say “sure, absolutely”. I think, though, that in the Trad Christian hypothesis, the “odd event” you have to explain is that there were some people who all claimed to have seen a person who died, a couple of days after his death, as a living-again person. The reason I say that THAT is the “odd event” is because in the Trad Christian hypothesis, nobody claims to have seen the *resurrection itself” – the “moment of Jesus’ resurrection”. Nobody was there to see that. They said they saw a living-again (formerly dead) Jesus.
“Witnessing” something isn’t “odd”, though, is it? People witness stuff all the time. But, in this case, it’s “what they witnessed” that was odd. But – it wasn’t an event at all. It was a person.
I think what I’m getting at is that the question you posit is not really a relevant question. Because we’re not really talking about an “event” at all. Nobody ever made any claims of witnessing the event of the resurrection.
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So you are saying that the discovery that Jesus’ body was missing was not an event??
If the body of Jesus was missing from his grave, the most likely cause for his missing body, like all other missing bodies with empty graves in cumulative human history, is that someone moved it. The stories of sightings of his ghost are the likely result of hysterical religious minds concocting a supernatural explanation when none was needed!
Mary Magdalene had it right the first time: Somebody moved the body!
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Gary, you are working on the basis these people were actual historical figures.
Furthermore, there is no archaeological evidence of a tomb, and neither was it Roman practice to allow those crucified for sedition to be removed from the cross, and certainly not from someone like Pilate who had a reputation for brutality and cruelty.
Perhaps this is where any argument should start from rather than the old ‘What happened to the body at the tomb approach?’
If there was no tomb then there could not have been a body that disappeared.
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re: ”So you are saying that the discovery that Jesus’ body was missing was not an event??”
I’ve never accepted it as “established fact” that there was a discovery that Jesus’ body was missing.
I guess you must think The Gospels are historically reliable,
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If there was no missing body then the Resurrection belief is entirely based on ghost sightings. Is that what you believe?
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re: ”If there was no missing body then the Resurrection belief is entirely based on ghost sightings. Is that what you believe?”
First, I believe that the notion that there had to be a “missing body accounted for” in order to believe in a bodily resurrection is an utterly absurd notion.
IF (and only if) what the disciples witnessed was a corporeally-existent, living-again Jesus, then it hardly mattered whether anyone could account for the whereabouts of the corpse, because there *wasn’t* one: the “risen Jesus” was standing right in front of them.
And, THAT was their claim, whether they even knew where Jesus had been buried or not. If it was “the real (and risen) Jesus” standing before them, then, there simply wasn’t a corpse left anywhere else,
If I see MY dog out on the street, I have no need whatsoever to confirm that my dog is “missing” from the house.
So, your premise that “If there was no missing body then the Resurrection belief is entirely based on ghost sightings” is utterly fallacious. It’s a totally false premise, I’d even put it in the ridiculous category.
And to answer your question, I’d say “No, I don’t believe that, because your premise is totally fallacious reasoning”.
Next question….
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Question: Why would God the Creator come to earth in human form to ostensibly save the world…but appear in just one tiny backwater region of the Roman Empire, performing a few healings in public to prove his claim of divinity, and then only appear to a handful of his fishing buddies after performing his greatest miracle: raising himself from the dead? It makes no sense.
Celsus (second century Greek philosopher): No wise man believes the gospel. If Jesus were God, he would have appeared to the illustrious and educated men of the empire. Jesus should have appeared to his Jewish and Roman enemies. The Christian notion of resurrection is anti-philosophical and anti-intellectual, not to mention irrational.
I must deal with the matter of Jesus, the so-called savior, who not long ago taught new doctrines and was thought to be a son of God. This savior, I shall attempt to show, deceived many and caused them to accept a form of belief harmful to the well-being of mankind. Taking its root in the lower classes, the religion continues to spread among the vulgar: nay, one can even say it spreads because of its vulgarity and the illiteracy of its adherents. And while there are a few moderate, reasonable, and intelligent people who interpret its beliefs allegorically, yet it thrives in its purer form among the ignorant.
― Celsus, On the True Doctrine: A Discourse Against the Christians
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Gary: How insightful, Celsus! You saw the truth 1,900 years ago. Go to any fundamentalist Christian church today, made up of high school educated, working-class people, and you will find that they believe the “purer” form of the Gospel of Jesus [ie, the literal interpretation of the text]. The moderate, reasonable, and intelligent Christians like Bible scholar Joel Edmund Anderson desperately attempt to spin the Gospels as mostly allegorical, to make them sound more reasonable and sophisticated. Yes, it is all allegorical…except the resurrection appearances! Those events were literal.
How silly.
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You have no idea what the original claims involved. Even the Early Creed lacks any mention of people seeing a touchable flesh and blood body.
They were ghost sightings until proven otherwise.
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You brought in The Gospels when you brought up the empty tomb. So, I was just responding on that basis.
But even then, I was QUITE CAREFUL to say “IF (and only if) what the disciples witnessed was a corporeally-existent, living-again Jesus, then it hardly mattered whether anyone could account for the whereabouts of the corpse, because there *wasn’t* one: the “risen Jesus” was standing right in front of them. ”
How you could POSSIBLY have missed the upper-case “IF” followed by “(and only if)” is beyond me.
Your idea that they were “ghost sighting” is certainly one of the million hypothesis floating around. But, so is the Trad Christian hypothesis. You can SAY, as your hypothesis, that they were “ghost sightings”, but the Trad Christian can SAY, as their hypothesis, that it was a corporeally-existent, living-again Jesus that they saw.
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Silly.
Any claim of seeing a dead person is a ghost sighting until proven otherwise. Period. Even children know this, FT. Your lack of good critical thinking skills is shocking and disappointing.
Trinitarians can scream “But they saw a literal body” all they want but until they provide even ONE undisputed eyewitness testimony of what was seen…it is just a ghost sighting.
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hey, I’m not trying to “prove” anything one way or another. I’m just saying that that’s the Trad Christian hypothesis: what the disciples saw was a bodily-raised-from-the-dead, living-again Jesus.
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No, you claimed that “the original claim” was…
You have no idea what the original claim was. Be honest for once and admit it.
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re: “No, you claimed that “the original claim” was…
You have no idea what the original claim was. Be honest for once and admit it.”
READ THIS VERY CAREFULLY. GARY. WORD FOR WORD. READ IT ALOUD TO YOURSELF IF NECESSARY:
“IF (AND ONLY IF) what the disciples witnessed was a corporeally-existent, living-again Jesus, then it hardly mattered whether anyone could account for the whereabouts of the corpse, because there *wasn’t* one: the “risen Jesus” was standing right in front of them.
And, THAT was their claim, whether they even knew where Jesus had been buried or not. If it was “the real (and risen) Jesus” standing before them, then, there simply wasn’t a corpse left anywhere else”.
Did you read that? I’ve pointed out that ‘IF (AND ONLY IF)” ONCE BEFORE, BUT, YOU STILL DIDN’T SEEM TO CATCH IT.
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What a silly point.
The OP is that IF the only evidence for a missing person case is a ghost story must we accept that story as fact? The rational answer is: No! Of course, if the disciples really did see a touchable, flesh and blood body they wouldn’t need proof that the grave was empty. Duh.
You are either dense or just attempting to gaslight me. I suspect the later.
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re: ”The OP is that IF the only evidence for a missing person case is a ghost story must we accept that story as fact? ”
“Put another way: Is it sometimes reasonable and rational to go with an hypothesis which has no evidence as the most likely explanation for an odd event??”
I already answered this in the VERY FIRST SENTENCE OF MY VERY FIRST MSG:
ME: ”I’d say “’sure, absolutely’”.
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Of ccourse you know it’s all bullshit, right?
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No belief is more devious, full of contradictions and open to criticism, than the report of Jesus’s resurrection.
Who really saw [the resurrection]? A hysterical woman [Mary Magdalene], as you admit and perhaps one other person—both deluded by his sorcery, or else so wrenched with grief at his failure that they hallucinated him risen from the dead by a sort of wishful thinking . . . If this Jesus were trying to convince anyone of his powers, then surely he ought to have appeared first to the Jews who treated him so badly—and to his accusers—indeed to everyone, everywhere. Or better, he might have saved himself the trouble of getting buried and simply have disappeared from the cross. Has there ever been such an incompetent planner: When he was in the body, he was disbelieved but preached to everyone; after his resurrection, apparently wanting to establish a strong faith, he chooses to show himself to one woman and a few comrades only. When he was punished, everyone saw; yet risen from the tomb, almost no one . . . This is not my own guessing: I base what I say on your own writings, which are self-refuting. What god has ever lived among men who offers disbelief as the proof of his divinity? What god appears in turn only to those who already look for his appearances, and is not even recognized by them?
–Celsus, second century Greek Philosopher
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It isn’t really evidence of the veracity of the claims it makes as Joel implies but simply evidence of an ancient anonymous text making unsubstantiated claims.
Also, acceptance of such claims relies on the belief that supernaturalism and miracles are fact, again without providing any evidence whatsoever to support such an assertion.
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Due to health problems the last 6 months I haven’t kept up with any blogs, so maybe this has already been discussed, but I have watched some Paulogia YouTube vids and he has made several concerning his development of a naturalistic explanation for belief in the Resurrection. He has gotten critiques and feedback from Dale Allison and Bart Ehrman. Here is his latest one if anyone is interested:
https://youtu.be/Isnl9A50ySY?si=L2yqX5TQ4TAmtwQR
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I hope you are ok, Epicurus!
(By the way, I was unaware of your namesake until recently. Marvelous Greek philosopher!)
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Thanks. I was a philosophy major in university, and his promotion of simple living, friendship, and that if the gods exist they certainly don’t show any concern about us humans, so they can be safely ignored, appealed to me. Particularly refreshing after sloughing through some other torturous systems such as the German idealists and insanity of Hegel.
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