Truth of resurrection and death of the apostles (for Willowtree)

Except that the apostles would have been unique in that they were eye witnesses to Jesus resurection and would have known with 100% accuracy that he was risen. Todays martyrs of Islam were not eyewitnesses of Mohamad. That's were the difference lies.

The main parts of the story are accurate. The stone was rolled away. Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to the apostles. The stories were told by four different people. They were retold and retold in the oral tradition at the time. When they were written down sometime later there may have been a few facts that were different but these didn't change the main fact. Jesus rose from the dead.If you were to do any type of experiment were you do something and then ask four witnesses about it you will probably get four similar, but not exact stories. I do it all the time in my class. I do an experiment and then ask the students what they saw. THey are always right on the main facts, but there are always differences in what they say they saw. If the stories were exactly, word for word, the same you would be sitting here arguing that they were obviously copied.
The main facts are still the same. If two people told me about a fish that one of them caught and one said it was 12 lbs and the other said it was 15 lbs. I would never say they didn't catch a fish because the stories were different.

You are right in saying no one saw him rising from the dead. All four texts say that. But if you saw him die, and then saw him alive again, then obviously he arose from the dead.

Actually the women were the eye witnesses, not the writers. The writers were retelling the story they heard from the women and then recounting their own experiences. As Rei said in post 34 if you play a game of "telephone" people will then differ on some of the details. Anyway those details are not the important part of the story. If you gave these four accounts to a police officer as eye witness testimony they would be able to pick out the parts that really happened from the smaller details that were not consistent.From the four accounts you could tell1. Jesus was not in the tomb
2. The very large stone had been rolled away
3. At least one angel appeared to the eye witnesses and said "jesus is risen"
4. Jesus appeared to the apostles at a later time.And these are the important parts of the story!! It doesn't matter if one author thought two women were at the tomb and one thought three were there. They got the important part of the story right.

His mother, mary Magdalene, The centurion who stabbed him, and probably many of the disciples since the place of execution was a very public place. If you understand crucifixion you would have no doubts about his death. Jesus was beaten severely and then nailed to a cross. The way you die on a cross is by suffocation. When you can no longer support your weight with your legs your shoulders come out of their sockets, and you can no longer breath under your own weight. This is why they broke the legs of the two thieves so they would die rapidly. But for further proof remember the centurion plunged his spear into Jesus side and into his heart.You must remember these centurions would be killed if a prisoner escaped or was not executed. There is no way they were going to take Jesus down from the cross until he was dead. When Jesus appeared to the disciples he let them put their hand in the nail prints and the wound in his side.Our resurrected bodies will not be the same as our human bodies. Jesus looked enough like himself that they recognized him eventually, but enough different that these two didn’t recognize him at first. Especially since they thought he was dead and wouldn’t have been looking for him anyway.Why would you think Thomas was his twin?

I believe the text clearly states that the women were the ones who went to the tomb and were the witnesses that it was empty. I don’t know why that is hard to see. They saw it with their eyes, therefore they are eye witnesses. They were not the ones who wrote it down or the books would have been called Mary, The other Mary, Salome, and Joanna. Therefore the writers of the gospel were retelling what the eye witnesses said. Where do you not read of these conversations? They are described in all four Gospels. Or do you suppose that when it says they tell his disciples that it’s describing something other than a conversation.

Not surprising. Women were not even allowed to be witness in court during these times and probably were not educated enough to write. But the Gospels still indicate that women were eyewitnesses and came back and told the others. This actually helps validate that it is true because women were considered of such little importance that had it been written much later, the writers would have certainly said that the disciples found the empty tomb. Not really considering the torture he had gone through. He was beaten once, and then scourged by Pilate. The Gospels then say he was unable to carry his cross because of the beating. Most could carry the cross. And the crucifixion started at 9:00 am and he died on the sixth watch, which would have been 6 hours. If you were beaten that severely you would not be able to stand up for long to breath.John also says that Jesus was left on the cross until they broke the legs of the thieves. So he was left there after he died. Not specifically but the fact that he was stabbed in the side and blood and water came out, suggests that the spear pierced the pericardium of the heart. There are several web sites which give a medical description of the crucifixion. They left him up long enough to break the legs of the two thieves, make sure they were dead, and pierce Jesus side with a spear. He would have been hanging in a position which would have been impossible to breath for some time. I definitely wouldn’t call Da Vinci an eye witness. This is his interprettion.

I will try to address this issue but I must warn that I am a teacher and I have a student teacher who is just finishing her internship. Therefore I do not have an abundance of free time.There are no listings in the bible of the apostles martyrdom. But I did find a site that had the early church traditions. Now please don’t show me sites which critique the author, I have seen them already. I am just pointing out a sight which discusses many of these early church traditions.
Telnet Communications - High Speed Internet & Home Phone SolutionsI found another site which talks about the historical Jesus. It is a course designed to be used in Sunday school classes but it has some archeological finds and other sources which relate to Jesus outside the Bible.ContentsThe point Christians try to make with the martyrdom of the apostles is not that martyrdom, in and of itself, proves Christianity is real, because you are right many other religions have martyrs. The point is that the apostles were in the unique position of being eye witnesses. I’ll say that again, the apostles were eye witnesses. If you or I died for our beliefs right now we are both dying because of faith. But the apostles had more than faith. They actually knew what they were dying for first hand. That’s the difference!!The real point is that these people showed a great transformation from being cowards who ran when Jesus was arrested, to Men who gave up everything to spread the word of Jesus to the World..The apostles, before the crucifixion thought that Jesus was going to establish his kingdom on Earth right then and they would be a part in his rule here on earth. That’s why many Jewish people don’t believe that Jesus was the Messiah because he was killed and they thought the messiah would set up his kingdom on earth. Even Peter didn’t understand that Jesus had to die to pay the price for our sins. These verses show he didn’t really understand what Jesus had to do at that point and still thought if he was the messiah that he would establish his kingdom then.And when Jesus was arrested the apostles all fell away and Peter even denied that he knew him under oath three times. So at this point they were probably very disillusioned and probably thought they had wasted part of their life on a would be messiah. Also after the crucifixion the apostles were obviously returning to their old lives before Jesus appeared to them in his resurrected form. But once they saw Jesus resurrected, they were transformed and never went back to their old lives. They spent the rest of their lives preaching the Gospel and got nothing from it but ridicule, prison, and beatings as 1 Corinthians points out.. So the points are;
1. The apostles didn’t have faith like the modern day Christians or Muslims or any other religion, They were in the unique position to know for a FACT2. They abandoned Jesus when he was arrested because he didn’t fulfill their idea of a messiah, and then came back after the resurrection.3. They could have, and began to, pick up their old lives and probably make a pretty good living, but they didn’t.4. They spent the rest of their lives, with nothing, wondering from place to place receiving beatings, prison terms, ridicule, and starving, and possibly being martyred.Now why would these obviously rational people before the crucifixion, become so irrational after the resurrection if they were in a position to know for a fact the resurrection was false. The answer is that the resurrection must have been fact.

I didn't really have time to research the site. I just put it up there so people could look at it because it had archeological mentions of places in the Bible.So Pilate is mentioned outside the Bible and so is Jesus. So what is your point. Just because someone didn't know it was mentioned somewhere else doesn't change the fact that Pilate is mentioned outside the Bible.As for Josephus being forged, I only found one source which said Josephus was thought to have be forged by many historians. They don't mention any of these historians and I found a majority of sources which didn't indicate this. If it is so well established I would like to see more proof.Here is another site I found with archeological discoveries that support the bible. They include dates of the new testiment and other books from antiquity. The new testiment has over 24,000 copies and some date within 30 years of the event. This is far more than any other of the documents.Foolish Faith - Chapter 6: Unparalleled Historicity - Shaking Modern Discoveries

I have read a book by David Rohl who gives some good suggestions about the dating of the exodous. Here is a site which goes over some of those arguments. I have looked at some of the evidence in the book and it is pretty compelling. For example one of the first dynasty pharaohs tomb is partially built on top of a second dynasty pharaohs tomb. He lists other inconsistencies like this used in the dating of the pharaohs and kings of Isreal. He then demonstrates a new chronology and when you correct the chronology the stories match up.
The site also contains a statue which is thought to be that of Joseph.http://www.mystae.com/restricted/streams/thera/joseph.htmlHere is another which goes over some of the same information.http://www.levitt.com/essays/joseph.html[This message has been edited by keith63, 12-11-2003]

I have seen several people use Finkelstien to show the bible is not correct but newer evidence is showing that Finkelstein was not correct on his dating of many of the sites.Just a moment...http://www.accuracyingenesis.com/solomon.html

Go back and read post #43 on this site. There is a big difference in the martyrdom of the disciples and all these other martyrs. In short the disciples were eye witnesses and to a man died for something they were in a unique position to know about. That's different than you or me or the pilots of 911. We all have to have faith and I'm sure their faith is just as strong as ours. THe appostles didn't have to go on faith. They knew because they were eyewitnesses. That's the difference. On my post #43 I have lots of quotes from the Bible that doesn't tell of their martyrdom but it does tell of their changed lives and how they lived poor and persecuted lives.

If you read the post on #43 I included all the places in the Bible which corroberate their stories. I also believe that history shows the disciples started the early church so I would not place these stories in the realm of legends with no evidence.

What does this have to do with anything being discussed here?

Martyrs blowing themselves up and flying planes into buildings I would agree with. But the Christian martyrs are, and have been, killed for simply pracitcing their beliefs. I don't recall any homicide bombings being carried out by a Christian.