JESUS' RESURRECTION FEAT IS NOT THAT IMPRESSIVE - OTHERS DID AS WELL
AND BETTER
Christians make a huge deal about Jesus supposedly having risen from the dead.
Miracles are really not that special except to propagandists.
Lots of people did better wonders than Jesus so why should we believe in him or
in his resurrection? If they did as good as him or near as good as him the same
question pops up and there is no answer to it. Unlike Jesus, his rival
Simon Magus, was said by those who did not believe in him to have had the power
to do miracles. We have no source like that at all about Jesus. It
is all information from people who believed.
Books that have a case for belonging in the Bible speak of Judas Maccabeus. His
relative unpopularity in Jewish culture and in the records of him are
inexplicable considering his achievements and how the book of Daniel virtually
calls him Messiah. Proposed explanations are that he was suspected of being a
messiah or a model for messiah.
To pray to the saints as Catholics do is to repudiate the Christian faith and to
create new gods. The pagan gods were just saints for they could do do what they
wanted as other gods controlled their powers and gave them the powers. So it is
with the Catholic saints so the Church cannot say, "They are nothing without
God" and use that as a cover for what they are, deities. They are demigods if
you want to take inspiration from the Hindu pantheon. Some of the saints
performed resurrections from the dead which the Church accepts. They did better
attested miracles than Jesus. The saints died and appeared to people afterwards.
The Catholics say they did not claim to be gods or Messiahs so they are
different.
They claimed to be gods better than God. The fact that they were not explicit
about this before they died means nothing. If they should have been then Jesus
was not who he said he was.
The vast majority of Jesus’ doctrines were revealed supposedly by Jesus to his
Church following Pentecost, 50 days after Jesus rose from the dead. The Church
allegedly came to understand that Jesus was God after he was off the scene.
Fundamentalist Christians explain that the apostles knew a lot of the stuff when
Jesus was alive but they were so stubborn that it took time after Jesus’ death
before they could come to terms with it and explain it and teach it. There is no
evidence for that speculation. Liberal Christians happily admit that it was all
made up or thought of long after Jesus was gone. So a long dead obscure Catholic
saint could start appearing from beyond the grave and start claiming that he
rose bodily from the dead and reveal for the first time that he was the
incarnation of God the Father all the time. It is not that hard to arrange for
people who can be trusted to say they met this being. The Bible calls Jesus the
only way to God and the only begotten Son of God but that does not rule out
other incarnations of God. The Christians think it is a great proof for the
resurrection if they could prove that the Jews, disciples of Jesus or the Romans
could not have nicked the body of Jesus as if it proved nobody else did it. But
it is not and the real evidence for the resurrection is the appearances of Jesus
so a missing body is not an essential.
If Jesus was God then most of the body of God has rotted for we are shedding
dead cells all the time and our bodies are endlessly replacing themselves with
fresh materials so it is mad to think that God would necessarily raise a body he
once incarnated himself into from the dead. The evidence for the resurrection of
Jesus can be easily made unconvincing merely by the emergence of evidence for
the divine seal upon a rival who also rises from the dead. It does not have to
actually emerge. It is enough that it can. Faith in the resurrection of Jesus
and his unique role as saviour is an insult to anybody who wants to believe in a
copycat of his. It’s sectarian. Rather than calling us to love, the resurrection
calls us to war. It commands that we support it meaning that we should destroy
the evidence for the resurrection of any other Messiah. It despises God.
Jesus, according to the New Testament, made huge claims for himself. He claimed
to be the best prophet ever and the Son of God and the saviour. The evidence for
the resurrection even if it is as strong as the Christians say still is not
enough to justify his making those claims and to justify people believing him.
If Jesus was a man of integrity then he couldn't approve of us believing in the
resurrection. Sometimes you can have very strong evidence for something but
there could be one fact that calls on us to ignore it. You can perhaps build a
very very strong case for X having been Jack the Ripper. But this case is no
good if X didn't keep on killing people as a serial killer would. Then the
evidence would be invalidated by a psychological fact, namely that serial
killers don't stop killing and especially if they glut their appetite on gore
like the Ripper did. If you say it was a miracle that changed the Ripper so that
he stopped killing you reinstate the evidence. But you do this at the expense of
credibility. In reality you are not letting the evidence speak for itself though
it looks as if you are. You are showing undue and unfair bias. When you shed
credibility, the evidence is merely evidence in name only. That's all. That is
what Christians do with the resurrection. The evidence makes them no better off.
It is exploited to trick people to make them think they are making sense when
they say Jesus rose from the dead.
What is the use in the Christian boast that the resurrection of Jesus is
convincing and their salvation when they cannot prove that the beautiful
Victorian medium, Florence Cook, didn’t raise the long dead Katie King
temporarily from the dead? Florence was caught out in fraud later but there is
no satisfactory evidence that she was faking the Katie King appearances. Unlike
the resurrection of Jesus, we have witnesses we can trust and who we know were
careful. We know next to nothing about the witnesses of Jesus and none of these
witnesses wrote the gospels.
Jesus claimed that his resurrection was a sign that he had authority to speak
for God. After death experiences of a being of light are stronger evidences than
the evidences of the resurrection. Yet this being of light never judges. He
meets nearly everybody at the gate of a Heaven so he contradicts Jesus who hoped
that most people are destined for Hell. So the evidences against Jesus' divine
authenticity are stronger than evidences for it. The being of light then
contradicts the resurrection of Jesus. We can know and interview the witnesses
of the being of light experiences which we cannot do with the self-proclaimed
witnesses of the resurrection of Jesus.
The near death experiences make it evil to stake so much on the apostles for it
is through the apostles that we have to learn about Jesus and his resurrection.
There was not much point in a resurrection as a sign when men had to testify to
it so Jesus should have written his own testimony and got them to testify that
it was genuine and believable to them instead of letting them interpret things
for themselves. A testimony which is provided by people we can meet and check
out and evaluate for ourselves is vastly superior to the apostles. Jesus
appeared after his death to give evidence and the cancellation of that evidence
by better evidence means that the appearances were illusions or lies or from the
devil.
Christians boast that sources hostile to Jesus admitted that his miracles were
real and attributed them to demons. They take it that Jesus’ miracles prove that
he had the right to demand absolute control over our bodies and minds. But Jesus
had plenty of rivals to destroy their right to assume such things. The
Christians claim that it is harder to believe that the apostles or other
disciples of Jesus stole his body or that Jesus got out of the tomb himself and
pretended he rose from the dead than to believe that he did rise. So
impossibilities are more convincing than improbabilities! It is strange that
Christians admit there is an extreme minority of people who have bizarre powers
like people who can hold light bulbs in their hand and make them light up which
ought to put them on their guard with Jesus. They say Jesus was not one of these
people but his power came from God. But Jesus could have had limited miracle
powers with which he played dead and escaped from the tomb and made his friends
hallucinate his appearances until he was well enough to meet them personally.
They cannot refute that.
There were many Messiahs who did not need the degree of dishonesty it took to
believe in Jesus to believe in them.
Hostile sources said that the false Messiah of the second century Simon Bar
Kochba, who bore the messianic title, Son of a Star, did signs and wonders (page
20, The Beast and the Little Horn) and got loads of followers through them.
All early Christian sources claimed that Simon Magus, who became a false
Messiah, had incredible miraculous powers. Even the Bible says Simon Magus was
said to be the Power of God and was regarded as such by ALL the Samaritans, a
sect similar to the Jews, and who was famed for his miraculous powers. Jesus had
no rivals grudgingly writing that he did miracles but Simon did!
Al-Hallaj the Sufi God-man from Persia seems to have claimed to have been God.
He suffered a horrific death by martyrdom for his blasphemy of claiming he could
speak for Allah. He was crucified and mutilated and the body was burned to
ashes. But the head however was put on display to put others off following him
or copying him. He famously laughed with delight as he was nailed. If Jesus had
been burned you would have missing ashes to worry about not a missing corpse!
Joan of Arc allegedly came back from the dead after being burned at the stake.
The Catholic Encyclopedia says, "Five years after the Maid was burnt at the
stake another woman impersonated her, was received at Orléans as the true Joan
of Arc, and found influential supporters in that character for more than three
years." It is agreed that the new Joan who came after the real one was burned at
the stake for heresy and witchcraft was an impostor. But there is no proof of
this. If a sect appeared based on her resurrection it would be more convincing
than Christianity. Joan had during her time in prison heard from the saints who
talked to her that she would not be martyred but have a "great victory". That is
open to interpretation and it could be that it means she will be transported
from the flames or perhaps even rise again victoriously. Nobody believes that
Joan rose from the dead though her evidence that she did is better than Jesus'.
Soon after the fake Jewish Messiah Sabbatai Zevi died there were stories that
became strong established legends. One is that he used magic words to vanquish a
gang of bandits. He was able to walk through fire without a mark. He raised the
dead. He cured lepers. He was able to go to Heaven and let the angel Gabriel
pretend to be him. Even when he was alive the historical facts about the man
became embellished in a magical way which was why his fame was so great.
Robert Price in his book Beyond Born Again reminds us that Zevi reportedly
appeared to his followers after his death. Some of the visions are implausible
but many of them are as good as the resurrection appearance accounts. There had
to have been people in the first century who heard what the apostles were saying
about apparitions and claimed apparitions of their own. That always happens.
Indeed the New Testament complains about false apostles. The twelve apostles
bring suspicion on themselves for they just say they had the real visions for
they were made apostles by Jesus. But no proof is given of this. Jesus could at
least have issued deeds to prove this. Their word is not good enough for why
their word and not the rivals?
St Gregory of Tours believed that the healing miracles of an ex-lunatic who
claimed that he was Christ and should be worshipped were real miracles but that
the Devil was behind them (page 41, The Pursuit of the Millennium). He died at
La Puys when he was cut to pieces by his enemies and his followers still
believed in him after that holding that he was resurrected in a spiritual way
and that he died for their salvation. Multitudes followed another Messiah called
Eudo de Stella who claimed to be Jesus Christ the Son of God. He did miracles
too. He claimed the power to control the world and he died at Rouen in prison
probably of malnourishment (page 46, ibid).
Another very successful Messiah claimed to be God and had loads of followers. It
was said he commanded murders. This may have been slander. His name was Tanchelm
and there is no reason to hold that he was anything but a holy man (page 46-50)
despite the slanders. It is certain that his followers gave up their wealth for
the love of him. Yet we are commanded to believe in Christ because his followers
took him seriously and testified to him unswervingly. You can’t be a cult figure
unless you have followers like that. Having such followers doesn't mean a thing.
Frederick II was credited with Messianic authority and if having supernatural
power to fight the Antichrist by his German following (page 113). Prophecies by
Joachim of Fiore were understood to be talking about him. And when Frederick
died it was believed that he would rise again and indeed after his death two men
claiming to be him got many followers (page 114).
Another godman was burned at the stake and no bones were found in the ashes
which is similar to the body of Jesus vanishing from the tomb (page 115).
Later, Conrad Schmid was accepted by a nation as being the resurrected Frederick
and as God incarnate (page 143). He taught that instead of water baptism saving
you, you had to save your soul by being flogged so that the blood will run- in
effect, a baptism of blood. Nobody knows for sure what because of him after the
Inquisition got him (page 144). Many testified that Schmid/Frederick had
appeared to them after that and would come again one day to save the world (page
146). They were so sure of this that they beat up their babies to save their
souls from original sin by making the blood run.
The Christians brag that some people saw and chatted with and touched Jesus
after his resurrection. The Jesus witnesses are largely enigmas to us for the
writings they left behind are very very short and don’t give us much insight
into what kind of people they were. Christians what about the far more
trustworthy and better known people who had similar experiences with the Bigfoot
most of whom were not alone when they saw the prodigy? I say more trustworthy
for we can talk to them and cross-examine them. I don't call them trustworthy.
The witnesses of the revived Jesus were never cross-examined and took the
precaution of saying nothing for forty days. That shows that Jesus was not too
bothered about accuracy and credibility. Accuracy and credibility are reduced as
time goes on which is always an indication that something naughty was going on.
They were able to state reasons for being sure that what they saw was not just a
hoaxer dressed up. The resurrection seers gave no such assurance in Jesus’ case.
They just took it for granted that it was Jesus. The accounts are of little
value when they failed to even state that the identity of the apparition was
checked out. Even if he did rise he could not expect us to believe that he did
and there are several other ways to prove this as well. Despite the testimonies
and the calibre of the witnesses Bigfoot does not exist. Neither does the Loch
Ness Monster. There is no doubt about this. When we reject belief in the Bigfoot
and Nessie because they cannot exist we are entitled to reject the reports of
the resurrection of Jesus Christ too. In fact, the resurrection report is far
worse in the credibility stakes than these two myths.
There is a first-hand testimony that money which was guessed to be left by a messenger from God used to appear miraculously in the Mormon Prophet, Brigham Young's pockets. $250 appeared in his trunk. His close associate Heber C Kimball was thought to be putting it there but he said he was not. We are compelled to talk about Jesus' empty tomb as if is the only mystery there is. It is nothing special.
Jesus is not that special.