I think the main problem with this argument is that, assuming you take the text at face value, Jesus appeared to them multiple times and spoke with them and ate with them. This wasn’t just a case of one or two random sightings. Unless the Jesus twin was intentionally trying to be Jesus, which could be true but just becomes another conspiracy theory. Considering conspiracy theories of the Dan Brown variety or Christ myth variety generally have no direct support from the text and rely on evidence that is equally historically dubious as the gospels themselves, I generally tend to prefer to accept the explanation that Jesus actually rose from the dead. If you are not ready to believe that, I understand resorting to these alternative scenarios but I generally don’t find them convincing enough to consider them otherwise preferable to the resurrection explanation.
Halleluia!
i would claim that without the resurrection there is no Christianity, and Paul seems to agree with me (or is it I agree with Him @St.Roymond ?)
Richard
I take that on the chin Roy 
Having said that, St Roymond so regularly states “a university professor of mine…” surely he has given me license to us intelligence other than my own here? 
i wouldnt make that statement you are referring to there if i didnt have evidence of my claim…AIG have a youtube video specifically about that:
Darwinian Evolutionary Illustration
Creationist Illustration of the same fossil
If you want to honestly study how the Creationist ended up with a completely different artistic illustration, you will have to watch the video.
a great post Vinnie…great post. 
thats a great point Caleb, humans so often are willing to accept less plausible alternatives…funny that we do that when it comes to religion and the notion of God.
the thing is, when it comes to trying to look at the evidence, internal consistency of the story is a vital piece there. We find holes in peoples stories, they start to quickly unravel. The same cannot be said of the bible account…internally it is extremely consistent. I think that, when combined with loads of historical concurring evidences, over hundreds of kilometers and hundreds (if not thousands) of years apart, across different cultures and languages, it becomes increasingly difficult for even the most skeptical individual to ignore the likelihood that its all really true.
the really funny thing is, im almost certain that most atheists dont believe in a God because they cant actually prove he doesnt exist…if it cant be proven he doesnt exist, then they make the decision that it cant be proven that he does exist despite all of the evidences that support the story about Him. So unless God is willing to run a TV advertising campaign any time soon???
I dont think i will ever understand why such a powerful being has to keep himself mysterious and hidden (something he apparently didnt have any problem in demonstrating during the days of Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Elijah etc.) That is probably one of the most frustrating things about Christ i think…the Old Testament “I am” quite willingly sent fire down from heaven and blew s.h.i.t up, the God/Man (Christ) on the other hand, well he seems to have avoided all of that and it leaves us with a lot of concerns about whether or not He was who He claimed to be. Why did the God of the “primitive man” so willingly send fire from heaven…the God of highly evolved or intelligent man who is more likely to want serious intellectual answers to questions…modern intellectual man observes barely a peep out of that same Old Testament powerful God?
I struggle to subscribe to the notion that 3rd world countries for some reason seem to be in need of Gods miracles and 1st world dont. That skewed record of modern miracles in 3rd world countries is rather unconvincing to me actually.
I am reluctant to like because your views of Scripture are interwoven with the arguments against cessationalism.
I sort of like this but probably because it smacks of the sarcasm I am too fond of.
The truth is that He hasn’t, and I am pretty sure you now that. God is neither dead or sleeping (resting!)
But the “proofs” people look for are for the wrong reasons. What amazes me is How God does interact with the faithful yet manages to keep the skeptics content. Identifying and seeing God is part of the freedom of choice but maybe that is a little too simplistic for some. I am certain that science will never succeed until Christ returns, and by then it will be too late.
Richard
yeah i know Richard, but i really struggle with a God who is willing to completely engulf the altars of the nonbelieving prophets of Baal, but He (Christ) wont engulf anything in proving himself to people of his own home town (Nazareth). I mean he went to so much trouble to preach all about his power…but when it came to demonstrating it in the New Testament to those who did not believe …crickets.
One thing i have never really been able to fully accept about God…Satan is allowed to “run wild” and God has to remain hidden…mysterious. How that is supposed to be a defense there, im always struggling to accept that part about faith. Perhaps thats the point…we should simply have blind faith.
I don’t think I need to. It appears that the creationists ended up with a completely different artistic impression because they wanted to give the illusion that that fossil (Archaeopteryx?) was of a bird, so they deliberately didn’t show the teeth, the tail or the front claws.
If you tell me I’m wrong, I’ll watch the video and see if you are lying.
Meanwhile, you still haven’t pointed out the “obvious reasons” that allow you to determine whether a dinosaur illustration was produce by a Christian artist or an atheist artist.
Your bluff was called, and you ran away.
Familiarity breeds contempt? You must know this.
But you misinterpret the reason for miracles. Miracles are for the faithful. They are not proof of the existence of God. The reason miracles were more prolific and obvious in Biblical times was that everyone believed in a god. I say a god because sometimes, like on Mt Carmel God had to show that Bhaal was not real, but everyone accepted that gods and miracles go and in hand.
Herod was a different matter. Herod wanted proof that Jesus was God, or at least had the powers of God. He would have let Jesus go in an instant, and that would have ruined everything.
You must have seen me explaining why God must be a god of faith, and the Devil relies on the same thing. He can do so much with people who do not recognise his influence The Devil wants to be seen no more than God does.
One of the repetitive topics of sermons is the existence of evil (The Devil)
It is not blind faith that God wants either. He wants us to choose him by accepting the signs that He does give. Perhaps the first leap is almost blind, but my faith has so much “proofs” there is no way I can loose it.
The “trick” is to recognise those proofs.
Richard
ran away??? Am i supposed to stay on these forums to suit your hours? Very obviously you havent even bothered to notice…i live in Australia…so for me, its night time right now and i have been on the phone to my wife and kids for the last hour or so (because i have been “fly in fly out” every 7 days, working 900km away from home for the last 15 months) and i also dont get to answer all of the responses to every post on these forums. There is one of me and a number of you guys…that should suffice to put that to bed i think.
Now in answer to your post there about watching the video or not…id suggest that before you continue to make up stuff in criticism there, you should at least entertain the video to ensure that you are not parroting someone elses ideas just in case they also havent seen the video and are parroting someone elses ideas too.
One cannot develop an ecclectic view of the world around us unless we are willing to entertain the idea that perhaps there are alterantives to what has been parroted to us. I do that to better understand the genuine flaws in TEism…if you are not also willing to do the same, then you do not have the knowledge to defend your own world view…because you do not genuinely know the strong and weak points in the alternatives.
Your statement about teeth…clearly you havent looked at a dog recently…i have two dogs, neither of whom has visible teeth when there “gobs” are shut!
Your other statement about claws…watch the video then we can talk about that. In passing though, are you aware of this bird?
You know there is a rather interesting feature found on this little brute, it is shown in the next image…I have first hand experience with these little …(i cant use the word). ive chucked more than my fair share of golf clubs at them!
oh whilst i think of it…ever seen a microrapter drawing?
And, take a look at the claws on this little beauty
It doesn’t. You’ve had over a month, and when you did finally respond you posted a video link rather than answering the question.
That’s gibberish.
I’ll look at the video if you tell me I was wrong. Otherwise it’s not worth my time.
So, you admit that the teeth, front claws, and tail, have been deliberately hidden to downplay any transition from dinosaurs? Birds do not have teeth, although they may have serrations made of cartilage. The artist also attempts to show a beak where none exists.
Even some creationists are giving up on the AiG war on plainly feathered dinosaurs. From the New Creation website
However, young-earth paleontologists recognize many distinct groups of dinosaurs that go back to ancestors God created during Creation Week. One recent study found that there are at least eight distinct groups, or created kinds, of feathered dinosaurs. Each member of a single created kind of feathered dinosaur is related, but they are unrelated to birds and other dinosaurs outside of their kind.
Nice misquote – you left off " it indicates an action by the material in question".
ἀνίστημι (ahn-ISS-tay-me) isn’t a vague metaphorical assertion, it refers to a material item getting back up. The material in this case was Jesus’ human body. No one back then would have thought that “Jesus arose to speak to them again” meant anything other than that His body was alive again. This is demonstrated when Jesus tells Thomas to touch the holes in His hands and in His side: He was saying, “It’s Me; this is the same body you saw on the Cross, it’s alive again – check it out”.
There’s no such thing in the text, there’s just Jesus’ body returning to life, somewhat altered – that’s not “inserted”, it’s right there. You have to twist the language to get something else, imposing concepts alien to the writer and his audience.
I suppose you can claim they got it wrong, but why?
I agree with Caleb:
Changing the meaning of the words to fit some preconceived – and rather arrogant – notion is just inventing an “alternative scenario” rather than just believing the text as it stands.
You agree with him:
(1) He was inspired to write what he did, and the church affirmed that, so he has higher authority.
(2) He wrote before you did.
Sure – but AI is not intelligence in that sense. It understands nothing, it contemplates nothing, indeed it learns nothing except how to follow patterns for putting words together. You insist on using conversational AI, which doesn’t understand what it writes and which by its own admission slants responses towards what it thinks the questioner wants to hear, plus by its own admission cannot distinguish between truth and falsehood, between good content and bad.
He did demonstrate His power – at the Cross. The Cross doesn’t show the weakness of God, it shows His great strength. So to look for fire from heaven (as a certain pair of disciples wanted) is to look wrongly, it is to look for worldly triumph rather than God’s triumph.
Sure, we love the taunts of Elijah against the prophets of Ba’al, but that was before God had shown us the cruciform power of the Cross; to do the same now would be misleading.
Satan doesn’t “run wild”, he’s at least as hidden as God! 99.999% of Satan’s work is done by minions, and they’re not even loyal minions (his kingdom is divided against itself). What power Satan manages to demonstrate is always self-oriented power – which is why he has lousy minions; they want to do the very same thing Satan does, namely be in charge and do things their own ways. Almost always when we want to see God’s power we’re actually functioning as Satan’s minions, wanting things that look flashy and triumphant to us, demonstrations of power by our standards. But God says, “Look – you want to see power?” and He shows us the Cross.
Ponder Luther’s words about faith:
I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me . . . .
Faith that looks at itself and asks if it is strong (enough) or vibrant (enough) is no different than someone asking for signs. Faith doesn’t rest on our efforts – reason or strength – but relies on the Lord.
Blind faith? Hardly! We have the Incarnation; we have a Savior Who under half a dozen or more different legal systems could be “convicted” of living and dying and rising from the dead.
Or kept Him around to show off at parties.
Can’t you see when I am baiting you?
Richard
I spent a long time debating with Jesus mythicists. Much more than I should have. They essentially do what fundamentalists do when harmonizing away evidence contrary to their beliefs: retreat defensively up a never ending apologetical hill with what ifs and ultraskepticism.
I agree with both. I think some—even many— of Jesus’s original followers thought he rose from the dead. I also think when some of the works were written some of those members were still alive.
But there are many questions? When did Jesus appear to those 500? All at once? In groups? What exactly did they claim to see? We can’t actually examine or know much about any specifics. Did someone sit there and count the people? Was that a number that grew larger after a few retelling? Did five go to 50 and then 500. Was it precise or imprecise? Was there a gathering of Jesus’s followers and a few claimed to have seen him and the story got out as them all seeing Jesus? Was Paul lying or fabricating details? Did Paul believe in a more spiritual resurrection and had no concern about Jesus’s actual body? And as far as the tomb stories and resurrection in the Gospels go, most scholars see a lot of contradictions and question the historicity of significant portions of them.
But despite all this I think it’s clear some of Jesus’s original followers did think their crucified messiah returned to them.
Also, their belief was serious and they faced many hardships but the idea they all went on to die for their beliefs is mistaken. We know a few did but as for the rest, traditions come very late and they clearly start being very legendary. State persecution by Rome is sometimes overblown by apologists. It’s also under-appreciated at times by skeptics.
But at any rate, how does a potential convert or opponent in Corinth cross examine a witness in Jerusalem? Paul can say Jesus appeared to whoever he wants a thousand miles away. Apologists act like beliefs everywhere can be immediately controlled or verified or stopped. This is not true whether they were true or not. Christians went all over preaching Christ crucified. People may have asked, how do you know, what did you see. But ultimately they could probably neither confirm nor falsify what was being preached. Christianity spread, in my view, partly because of Christian missionary work but primarily because the Holy Spirt was also, as ever, at work. The gospels have numerous instances where Jesus says follow me and people do, or people recognize He is special right away. None of them are recorded as asking 79 questions and some of them did not need to see a miracle. For me that is the Holy Spirit at work and it’s beyond the scope of the historian to talk about theological issues.
Well Paul’s five hundred is early and IIRC, he is passing it on. He wrote in 50s and had frequent contact with the original followers of Jesus. Whether the story was overblown and exactly what it involved is unknown.
I think it’s important that the cornerstone of our faith has nothing against it historically. In fact, the belief that Jesus rose is extremely early in that it started occurring shortly after Jesus died. Whether or not it was three days or three years is difficult to tell.
Approaching the gospels historically leads us to less certitude, but I think we should approach them in faith because history works in terms of methodological naturalism and our faith is nothing but the opposite of that. If true, the sober canons of history will not get it right.
Even if some of the disciples did believe they’d seen a risen Jesus and did die rather than recant their belief, that doesn’t mean they were right. Plenty of people have martyred themselves for other beliefs.
Right, and based simply on the number of people who believe they’ve seen evidence for conspiracy theories, aliens, religious sightings, and others now, let alone other times, we could believe a lot of conflicting theories
I agree that “This must be the way we write histories.” is a good way to end up with problems. Following from that, the biggest issue I tend to have with popular presentation of, or certain unreasonably loud proponents of, critical scholarship (and specifically those, not all critical scholarship monolithically) is the level of purported certainty included. Things like “People could not have been strict monotheists in the 900s BC because my scheme for how religions progress doesn’t allow it.” or claiming that something didn’t happen when all that can really be concluded is that the only historical evidence for it is the biblical texts and they can neither be confirmed nor argued against well from the data (things like “Did Abraham exist?” or “Are some of the prophecies actually from before the events they are corresponded to?”) or uncritical use of claims from Wellhausen that don’t pan out well with newer data.