Freethought Association | Jesus, The Empty Tomb, and other Myths

Jesus, The Empty Tomb, and other Myths

Don Hansen Memorial Lecture

Meeting Minutes and Commentary for May 10, 2006; #207

Announcements

Check our website: www.freethoughtassociation.org for the most up to date information about upcoming events and opportunities. And for questions regarding specific items of interest, send e-mails to: info@freethoughtassociation.org. Meetings are held at 7PM on the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month at the Women’s City Club, 254 E. Fulton Street, Grand Rapids, MI.

It was announced that at the last FA Board Meeting (open to the general membership, held on April 30), board members Dr. Gregory Forbes and Dr. Robert Collins have gone on to sit on the Advisory Board, while highly involved members, Jason Pittman and Jennifer Beahan have joined the Executive Board. The rest of the Board configuration remains the same at this writing.

This Secretary would also like to thank FA member, Amanda, for handling the minutes recording/ write-up for our previous meeting ion April 26, when I was called away to attend a special ceremony.

Jeff discussed our Fund Drive underway now. An anonymous donor has set up with us a matching dollar amount for funds raised by the general membership, up to $10,000, with our goal being to get to $25,000 at which point we may hire a part time assistant director to take on many of the day to day tasks involved in running our growing organization. It would also help us address ideas from our membership for getting a Youth Group started, be able to provide child care, attract more nationally-recognized speakers, etc. Visit our website, shown above, for more information and see our frequently updated donation level graph and how you may help us attain our goal. Donations are tax deductible, as we are a recognized 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

Jeff also mentioned that our mailing list is now approaching 900 people with many many more who keep up with us solely by our website or eNews postings. A new edition of our newsletter, The Freethinker, was recently issued, complete with donation slips. Please consider donating to the FA to make this the best possible organization of its kind, and to provide ever more services to you, our supportive membership.

Upcoming Events

May 14, at 6PM: The Freethought Meditation Group meeting at 1416 Wilcox Park Drive, SE (GRMI). Meetings are held Sunday evenings except the last Sunday of the month. For more information, send an e-mail to Jeremy: modern.dharma@gmail.com or visit www.freethoughtassociation.org/meditation. The next three FMG meeting dates are: May 21, June 4 and June 11.

May 17, starting at 7PM: The Freethought Movie Night at Jason and Sarah’s house, 740 Lockwood Street, NE. The featured film will be Hell House. BYOB and a snack to share. Please RSVP and/or for more information by e-mail to jpittman@backpacker.com or phone 616-634-2471. The next two FMN gatherings are June 7 and June 21.

May 20, at 10AM: The Freethought Women’s Group at Jennifer and Amanda’s house; 736 Lockwood St., NE. For details, contact Jennifer at musiqueforlife@gmail.com, or 616-706-2029.

May 20 is also the date for the next Dinner for 8. These are Saturday evenings occurring throughout the year for adults to get together for drinks, dinner, and good conversation. Contact Jan at jabivo@aol.com for more information.

Our next Freethought Association meeting features special guest speaker, Howard Van Till, Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy at Calvin College. This will be held on May 24, at 7PM, at the Women’s City Club; 254 E. Fulton Street. Professor Van Till’s presentation will be on the topic: From Calvinism to Freethought: The Road Less Traveled. You won’t want to miss this meeting.

May 27, starting at 6PM, is the Freethought Spring Fling at the Seaver Farm, 10721 52nd Ave., Allendale, MI. This is a great time for the whole family. Please BYOB and a dish to share. For more information: jeff@freethoughtassociation.org or 616-892-9300.

Newly added to the calendar: This year’s Freethought Garage Sale Fundraiser. It is coming up fast—June 10 (Sat.) opening to the public at 8:30AM with set up prior to that time. It will be located again at the Freethought Commune, between 736 and 740 Lockwood, NE, off Eastern, near E. Fulton. We really need your donation of items for sale that day and could use any volunteer assistance in set up and selling that day as well. The last one we had proved to be a fun social occasion, while generating money for the FA’s future, and giving us a chance to clear out our cluttered closets and storage areas.

Contact Charles at charles@freethoughtassociation.org or calart@hotmail.com, or by telephone at 616-458-2992 for more information or to coordinate for hauling and storing your donated goods for the Garage Sale. Also, feel free to bring donations to the next FA meeting and I (Charles) will load them up in my truck.

Other fun events coming up are the Freethought Canoe Trip (on the Pere Marquette River), hosted by Greg Forbes; The Freethought Picnic, coordinated by Charles LaRue; and the Freethought on the Lake gathering, hosted by Jan and Bill Van Oosterhout at their Lake Michigan cottage among other things. Check future minutes, eNews or visit our website for details on these and other happenings brought to you by the Freethought Association.

This meeting was our second Donald Hansen Memorial Lecture. The first one was when Professor Pennock spoke to us. We welcomed the family of our beloved, late, co-founding member, Don Hansen, who were in attendance for this meeting; Vicki, Anne and Bruce. By the way, we have a separate Don Hansen Memorial Fund that one may donate to as well to be used for special projects, rather than basic operating expenses or paid services.

We thanked member, Josh Dunigan, for picking up our special guest speaker at the airport and treating him to a meal at a popular eatery prior to the meeting. We also had a backyard potluck meal on this meeting date from 5–6PM at the Beahan’s, where some of us gathered to meet our speaker informally and share great food and talk prior to the presentation. Some of us gathered at Vitale’s Restaurant after the meeting as well for more informal talk, food and drinks and our speaker joined us.

Presentation

Our topic for this meeting was: Jesus, the Empty Tomb, and other Myths. It was presented by special guest speaker, Dr. Robert Price, member of the notorious Jesus Seminar and author of many books including (among many others): Beyond Born Again; Deconstructing Jesus; The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave; The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man; How Reliable is the Gospel Tradition?, and The DaVinci Fraud: Why the Truth is Stranger Than Fiction. He was also featured in the documentary: The God Who Wasn’t There, shown at one of the Freethought Movie Nights, regarding the origins of the Jesus mythology.

Robert M. Price is a Mississippian by birth, lived in New Jersey for most of his life, and has recently resettled in North Carolina. After early involvement in a fundamentalist Baptist church, he went on to become a leader in the Montclair State College chapter of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. Having developed a keen interest in apologetics (the defense of the faith on intellectual grounds), Bob went on to enroll at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he received an MTS degree in New Testament. Billy Graham was the commencement speaker.

It was during this period, however, that Dr. Price began to reassess his faith, deciding at length that traditional Christianity simply did not have either the historical credentials or the intellectual cogency its defenders claimed for it. Embarking on a wide program of reading religious thinkers and theologians from other traditions, as well as the sociology, anthropology, and psychology of religion, he soon considered himself a theological liberal in the camp of Paul Tillich. He earned the PhD degree in systematic theology from Drew University in 1981.

After some years teaching in the religious studies department of Mount Olive College in North Carolina, Price returned to New Jersey to pastor First Baptist Church of Montclair—the first pastorate, many years before, of liberal preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick. Dr. Price soon enrolled in a second doctoral program at Drew, earning the PhD in New Testament in 1993. These studies, together with his encounter with the writings of Don Cupitt, Jaques Derrida, and the New Testament critics of the Nineteenth Century, rapidly eroded his liberal Christian stance, and Price resigned his pastorate in 1994. A brief flirtation with Unitarian Universalism disenchanted him from even this liberal extreme of institutional religion. For six years Bob and his wife, Carol, led a living room church called The Grail. Now, back in North Carolina, he attends the Episcopal Church and keeps his mouth shut.

While Dr. Price is an authority on the entire New Testament and could give us a scholarly presentation on virtually any aspect of these books of the Bible, he focused—for his lecture to us—on the story of Christ’s resurrection after crucifixion and entombment; the Easter story. But as with all of the apocryphal accounts in this collection of ancient texts, one sees there is not a single, coherent Easter story any more than there is one unified version of the Christmas story or, indeed, any other pivotal, let alone minor, legend given to us from the Bible.

Since Jesus was not supposed to be merely a teacher or example for others, but the virgin-born prophesied Messiah and Savior of all humankind, the story of him returning to the realm of the living after a brief foray into corpsehood, provides the engine that drives Christianity. It has been said that if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. The power of Christianity absolutely hinges on the concept of Jesus cheating death. This is what gives cogency to Jesus’ claim of being the son of God, and his assertions that an afterlife awaits his followers, that there will be a Second Coming, and his preaching that he is truly the way to Salvation and eternal life with the Creator.

So this story is the one that one would assume must be tight, clear, and corroborated in all its details by all who have recorded it in the gospels. But as Dr. Price demonstrated, the gospel writers disagree with each other in all critical passages; there are odd insertions and deletions and extravagant attempts to reconcile one point with another.

Even the core idea of resurrection, however, is not crisp and unified. There is, for example, the Scheintod, or Swoon Theory, which is a theory that deals with being awakened to an apparent death or a second life. People occasionally survived crucifixion, and adherents of this theory as it may pertain to Jesus, feel that Jesus not only did not rise from the dead but never actually died in the first place. This freed him to have a second life—one of travel, spreading his teaching to other lands, including Japan, Britain, India, Rome, etc. As Price quipped, he must have had a truly excellent travel agent. The further implication is that he would have had a second, natural, death as well in some other region.

There is also a difference between the concept of resurrection and those of reanimation, resuscitation, or revivification. Also, there are many other biblical (not to mention countless extra-biblical) accounts of people returning to life after experiencing death. One Gospel story, for instance, has the saints rising en masse from their burial holds after Jesus expires on the cross. But there is no word of how they conducted their lives after reawakening, or if—or when—they died again. Lazarus too is similarly rendered, with no account of whether or not he died again after a brief respite from Sheol. There is, similarly, a belief by many that Jesus too continued to walk the Earth after physical death and resurrection, rather than ascending into Heaven until his portentous return to Earth (within the lifetime of those he told this to, by Jesus’ own account). Being transformed in the process of resurrection, Jesus does not age (in this version), cannot be harmed, and has many of the attributes of a ghost. This writer thought he seemed like the hero in The Crow graphic novel series (and later movie trilogy) in this system of belief. Both The Crow and Jesus, in this version, appear in ordinary bodies (not wraith-like, floating, semi-transparent, etc.) but bodies that are indestructible and incorruptible, after rising up from the state of death. And both can appear or vanish rather abruptly, even though they otherwise employ standard locomotion and display other physical, corporeal bodily evidence.

It is important in the Christian belief system to have a personal, available and abiding Jesus; one in which people in any time may have a personal relationship with. If he were merely a significant historical figure who lived and died in the usual manner, he would not be available to pray to, would not be a real presence in the lives of his followers, and would be reduced to being someone who had some good ideas, along with all the countless other mortals who likewise formulated systems of thought that drew adherents. The Pietist stresses the emotional or personal aspects of religious faith and he affects exaggerated piety. Such a person would have had to find a different mythic figure from the pantheon of supernatural entities to worship, as he needs something above and beyond purely intellectual or philosophical teachings to incite his extreme devotion and engage his anagogical sentiments.

Some, however, have asked how a mechanism for salvation had been triggered by Jesus’ atonement on the cross and why it should have occurred in that time and place, if Jesus was intended to be the Redeemer for all humankind forever. Why 1st Century Palestine? And could not redemption occur without resurrection—or indeed without the bloody death of one third of God? And would not Jesus’ sacrifice have been more meaningful if he had stayed dead? If someone was told he would die but then come back to life again afterwards and later ascend to bask in glory in heaven, would this really be a sacrifice? If, however, one was slain and was destined only to be reduced to worm food, that would seem to be the greater testament of unconditional love.

As mentioned above, Robert Price is a Fellow of the Jesus Seminar, which started in the 1980’s and his own involvement, he told us, began in 1994. It approached the New Testament scriptures in a critical, scholarly fashion. The scholars involved came out of different faiths as well as no particular faith tradition and had expertise in various disciplines of biblical research and met in a collegial atmosphere. They debated the N.T. Stories and voted on them, ranking them according to levels of likelihood of actually occurring. They then published books on the results of their studies and why they voted as they did. Those lay people who read these works would often come away from it asking why they never heard these things in church or why their Bible study groups never addressed these ideas.

The problem, as Dr. Price sees it, is that there is too great of a divide between those who are informed on how the the writings came to be; the motivations, beliefs of the time, and so on, and those whose main contact with the gospels and acts of Jesus are derived from unquestioning faith and what is filtered to them by the clergy. This is why the majority of Bible believing Christians merely parrot what they are told of this least read—relative to ubiquity in American society—book, rather than critically investigate the discrepancies, the background history and the fuller, richer story.

Dr. Price was very clear in stating that the work of the Jesus Seminar and his own independent writing about the New Testament, is not about producing value judgments or bashing religious belief, but is rather borne out of intellectual curiosity. This approach does not seek to find ways to show that what is presented did not happen but instead to critically evaluate what is actually stated. Price himself is an agnostic as to whether there actually was an historical Jesus. If he existed, he was not a writer and had no scribes accompanying him to capture his thoughts and deeds. Most accounts were written several decades after he was supposed to have died and there is virtually no corroboration from extra-biblical records of such a person existing. Further, what is recorded in the New Testament is riddled with inconsistency, and lack of internal cogency within the gospels, to an extent if there was a Jesus, who he really was, what he really said and what he actually did, is lost to us.

Apologists would not work so hard as they do (or have so much to apply apologetics to) if there were not so many difficulties and challenges in making sense of the Gospel stories. The kerygma—the proclamation of religious truths, especially as taught in the Gospels—that the apologists seek to promote is further frustrated by the conundrum of trying to establish plausible (even scientific) sets of criteria to bolster a reason to believe in supernatural concepts that transcend those sets and are apart from logic, science and natural laws, as seen in the miracle stories and the resurrection of Christ. If Jesus was not a divine being with supernatural powers, he loses too much credence for his claims to authority and for being the only path toward eternal life with his heavenly father. But if he was able to make use of supernatural powers, then he and his actions (the expression of those extra-normal powers) cannot be explained naturalistically. Others have commented on the strangeness of using reason to justify faith, with is belief without recourse to rationality or evidentiary support.

Also when making claims that appeal to mythic, supernatural or paranormal phenomena, the problem arises that anything goes. For instance, there is the space alien version of the core stories about Jesus, where Mary is artificially inseminated by superior, technologically advanced beings from the stars; the miracles are accounted for by the use of the aliens’ technology, and the resurrection of Jesus is explained by the extraterrestrials scientifically regenerating his body after death. However, explaining the mythic stories in the Bible by natural means not only robs the myths of their power and intended messages and teachings, but adds nothing to the scientific, critical investigation of claims and accounts. It is sort of like explaining a joke. This strips away any vestige of humor while producing no new knowledge that can be applied to other areas of investigation.

There is also the error in thinking that the stories regarding Jesus’ death and resurrection are novel (whether deemed to be either inventions or as recorded fact), rather than situating them within the larger, rich context of the Mythic Hero Archetype, as exemplified in Appolonius of Tyana, Asclopius, Romulus, Hercules, etc., etc. This well worn archetype involves a deified, martyred being who appears again to his followers for some last words of encouragement and/or instruction, and then ascends to the realm of the gods. The supernatural aspects of Jesus are also based on older pagan traditions and beliefs. The Christmas story is a retelling of the coming sun (not Son) at the time of the winter solstice and the so-called Easter tale is scarcely even disguised from its pagan origins; even down to the name, Easter. Eostre (Ostara, Eostra, etc.) relates to the Great Mother Goddess and is derived from an ancient word for spring. The celebrations of the spring deities regard fertility and rebirth. There’s a reason the fecund rabbit carries about a basket of eggs in the springtime for an otherwise odd symbol of the reanimated Jesus. What we read about Jesus is merely the retelling of stories we encounter in the myths of Attis, Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis, etc. Such retellings are not limited to Jesus. As just one other example, Samson (whose name is reworked from one that translates to sunlight or sunshine) is a refashioned solar deity (representing Shemesh). His wild hair is shorn by Delilah (Laylah in Hebrew) who represents the moon and night~talking away the flaming rays of the sun reduces its power... Samson is rendered weak by her action but recovers (just as the sun does each day) to destroy the pillars of night.

It is the fundamentalist, not the Bible scholar, who propagates false and misleading views of the Bible stories, by failing to delve deeper beneath the superficial gloss, rather than understanding the texts for what they actually represent. Dr. Price explained that many of the original stories were not intended to be understood as factual accounts but rather as stories to provide guidance using symbolism familiar to the people of the time. But when fundamentalists rigidly held to the idea of an inerrant, factually accurate book written for people in all times and places, they lost all sense of the poetry and historical mythic reference while striving to legitimize symbolism and concepts that were never intended to be read literally. It would be akin to a future civilization finding materials preserved from our time regarding Smokey the Bear and insisting that we believed in a bipedal, talking, park ranger uniform-wearing bear, while missing the entire point that he was a symbol for forest fire (via human activity) prevention. Viewing the Bible in a scholarly light, one would no more strive to debunk or destroy it than one would have that goal for Beowulf or the Iliad, as Dr. Price noted in his introduction to the book The Empty Tomb, where he further drove home his point by also writing that one who cherishes the Greek myths would take offense at having them cheapened, distorted and made grotesque in the process of attempting to force a literalism upon those stories. The problem arises when a specific outcome is sought (what one wants the stories to say) rather than doing straight and objective scholarly research.

Regarding the resurrection story and how it is viewed as signifying a second, eternal life for the believer as well as giving greater meaning to the teachings and life of Jesus, it was asked: if one cannot find meaning in this life, how would an infinite increase of it become more meaningful? Add a string of zeros to a zero and you are still left with zero. Also, if the significance of Jesus is not clear from what we know (or believe we know) from his earthly life, how does the addition of resurrected life add more importance to his personhood or teachings? The works and/or lessons and /or ways of Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Gandhi, Confucius, or M.L. King—for examples—are no more or less great if these people were to come back to life. Many of the great lessons of the Bible become subsumed by focusing on miracle stories as literal accounts of real events. This may account for the popularity of Jesus, relative to the lack of knowledge (by the general public) of what is actually written about him, and, therefore, he can be used to bolster agendas completely at odds with his teachings, without fear of contradiction. In this way, the name Jesus becomes a popular commodity, like Coca Cola and as meaningless as when the formula for the soft drink is changed.

One way that it may be discerned that something is unlikely to have occurred, this Secretary asserts, is when there is absolutely no consensus as to the nature of the entity or phenomenon in question. Ghosts are held to be sheet-like, amorphous, or semi-transparent versions of otherwise normal bodies; floating or grounded, able to pass through solids (yet their feet bear weight upon the ground without slipping through somehow), as a cold spot, monstrous in appearance or with regular human features, wearing regular clothes or wrapped in ectoplasmic swaddlings... mischievous, evil, benign, lost and forlorn, able to moan only or speak eloquently or ferociously bellow... One would suppose that if they were part of reality and had existed as long as there have been people, that a single formulation would exist. But since they are purely imaginary, they are free to be depicted in any form and with any behavior and characteristics. So it is with the Gospel renditions of Jesus after his resurrection. He variously shows his wounds from the crucifixion (and even invites the doubting Thomas to touch them), vanishes and appears, drinks and eats, seems to interact with matter sometimes or passes through matter as a spirit is said to, etc. He appears in different ways to Mary Magdeline, the other Mary, to Paul on the Road to Damascus, in The Upper Room, and in the house in Emmaus. Having nothing in the natural world to base their accounts upon, the Gospel writers made up (one might reasonably assert) wildly divergent accounts of the bodily properties of the newly risen Savior.

Dr. Price focused primarily upon the equally diverse tales of the Messiah’s activities upon quitting the tomb. Again, his purpose was not to engage in bashing, but instead to illuminate the various accounts and explore why they may have come down to us in the ways that they have. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all differ in their accounts throughout, from the state of the tomb, who came, when, and what information or instruction they were given and by whom, the whereabouts and plans of the resurrected one, and whom the Lord visited and in what fashion and his physical/metaphysical qualities at the time.

In Mark, there were young men in white who could have been disciples or angels but who are not identified with any specificity who were at the tomb when the Nazarene was searched for. They told the seekers they would find the risen one in Galilee. This information frightened them, they ran away and said nothing to anyone... so how did the record come to be made? Good question; and one not addressed. In other accounts, Jesus tells those who see him alive again not to tell others that he is the Messiah. Dr. Price explained that some early Christians believed that the Messiah would make his appearance only at the time of The Second Coming (and while returning from Sheol for a second appearance at the time of resurrection, the Easter story is not considered this portentous Second Coming), so he would not be considered the Messiah to those who held to that belief. This is reconciled by him being declared to have always been the Messiah, but when one employs exegeses in studying the texts, one comes to see that these were all later-occurring stories, not drawing from historical occurrences or ones that would be considered the fulfillment of any expectations—let alone prophesies—by any who heard it.

Christianity is all about belief and faith. The most despicable cretin may enter the gates of the Christian heaven if he has an honest deathbed conversion and believes in the Lord. By contrast, one may be a non-believing Jew, who still draws something special from his identification with Judaism and its links to traditions, culture, rituals and the long, long history of a people. But an unbelieving Christian is an oxymoron. The identification is not with a people he is a part of directly or a particular history; his link is solely one of shared belief in a certain set of stories. It is not important to even know those stories well; just to be able to parrot a few pericopes as given by Church leaders, is sufficient. This may be why the Torah is debated and scrutinized, and rabbinical scholarly interpretation and argument is welcome but is, conversely, discouraged in the Christian approach to scripture.

In the book Dr. Price co-authored with Jeffery Jay Lowder; The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave, one of the contributors, Richard C. Carrier, makes a strong case for the antiquity of the Resurrection theme in early Rabbinical writings and among the many diverse Jewish sects abundant in the 1st Century. The idea of an old body left behind upon death, with the spirit inhabiting a new one predates and dominates the one later of the same body returning to life such as we have in the empty tomb scenario of the Easter story. The older idea, called the two-body one, is a doctrine that was common and wholly plausible in early Judaism, and we must remember that Christianity was but a new sect, not a fully formed religion at the time. Christianity now is a world religion with so many splits and fractures; sects and versions, that it is difficult to reconcile them as being under one large umbrella of ideology. This was the case for early Judaism as well, with no fewer than thirty-two named sects and another four described but unnamed. And, Carrier reminds us, what comes down to us is only what survived of the record, so there may well have been many more. And these sects, while sometimes having overlap, were quite distinct in many chief doctrinal beliefs. Some took Hellenistic and Persian influences to heart while others took major players, such as Moses and even, incredibly, Herod (!) for figures to exalt as the Christ. The former saw Moses as a heavenly being who served as an intermediary between God and humankind, and the latter saw Herod the Great as a Savior being. Joshua proclaimed seeing Moses in two forms~one with the angels and one on the mountains with a burial in the ravines. Even the Dead Sea Scrolls have two Messiah figures in them, so how modern Christians are able to maintain that those ancient writings enhance their belief in a solitary being who is THE Way, Truth, and Light to salvation is a mystery.

Resurrection for the ancient Jews was but one part of a trilogy of miracles that God issued, with birth and rain being the other two. Only resurrection remains as something not explained scientifically by natural cause in moder times. There was also the belief, Carrier tells us, of a sequential resurrection, so the early Christians could adopt this to explain Jesus as the first Resurrected One, with others to follow. Jesus, in some constructions, too, becomes the New Adam. The concept of a resurrected Jesus was already well established in early Judaism before Christianity. The Ossaens, as another example, rejected the Torah yet worshiped their own Christ figure. Little known is that the Samaritans believed in a Christ before Jesus. Other disparate beliefs at the time included those of the Magariya, who believed God would never have created something so base as the Earth, so instead employed an interceding angel to do the job. And there were those who worshiped idols (in direct contradiction to a later Commandment), or exalted certain Midrash writings above all others to base their core beliefs upon, or otherwise rejected major key elements (as we would deem them today) of Judaism, while generating novel ones to follow.

The two body system of thought had its basis in the dualistic idea that the corporeal form returned to the Earth while the soul or spirit returned to the ether from which it was born. Josephus and Philo were both proponents of the 2 body belief system. To respond to arguments about how bodies that have dissolved after burial could reanimate, for those who promulgated that form of resurrection, the religious leaders would equate it to spontaneous generation (which of course is now known to be baseless but used to be believed widely) as when flies seem to be literally spawned by feces, for instance. So life could emerge, in this system of thought, from thoroughly corrupted non-life.

In the belief system where a dead body returns to life, it was believed that the Earthly body would retain all the defects it had before resurrection. The blind would reawaken still blind; the lame, still lame, etc. But later they would be healed and transformed. This system also expected the reuniting of body and soul, where the two aspects could be judged together. Paul flew in the face of these long established concepts by not allowing for dead bodies to return to life and he countenanced no reuniting of spirit and flesh. The spiritual body was distinct from the dead husk left behind and it was flawless and unencumbered by Earthly challenges. This also sidestepped questions of what manner the newly resurrected ones would be clothed. Perhaps, because of the competing belief systems of the time, this explains why there are two simultaneously occurring streams of thought on how Jesus returned from the dead; one that has him in a body bearing the marks of his crucifixion, eating, etc. and the other as more apparition-like. Paul himself doesn’t see a fleshly Jesus on his famous Damascus experience, in keeping with his view of the distinctness of spiritual and bodily existence.

The differences Paul drew between his declarations and those of the Pharises extended even to circumcision, which was considered more a spiritual than physical ritual. His conception was one of trading Earth for heaven, without any coexistence believed in. The Earthly body was fit only for destruction and decay and we exist as citizens of heaven, not Earth; so we are returning home when we cast off our flesh upon death, in his conception. This is what he preached to the Corinthians, who did not initially comprehend the concept, and for which Paul labeled them idiots. This discontinuity also allowed for a testing of the newly faithful early Christians~no actual physical resurrected body; no evidence. Belief in the second, eternal life, then, demanded great faith. Christ’s own resurrection, in this scheme, could be merely metaphorical. Another objection to the idea of a resurrected physical body, from the deceased state was that God would have to keep track of each decaying, disintegrating part and reassemble it all. In Paul’s vision, there was no need for such supernatural record keeping.

When Dr. Price was interviewed by reporters shortly before he took the podium to give his presentation to us, he had been asked no fewer than three times by the same reporter at this one interview if he believed that Jesus had existed. That is the key point. Not what the Bible accounts actually say about a people at a time or how they link to other historical events; the agendas, subterfuge and the discovery of other edifying pearls that may be derived from studying the text in a scholarly fashion—but only: do you believe in Jesus? It may be logically assumed that if he or another scholar had flatly answered in the affirmative, that there would be no follow up questions, asking on what basis he formed his conclusion. That is the only question of interest to the typical Christian, not how or upon what one bases one’s belief—simply THAT one believes the basic set of stories (virgin-born half god who dies for our sins, rose on the third day, ascended into heaven, where he meets his flock in heaven). There is not even a ripple upon the brow of the believer when he sees there is nothing to glean from the scriptures about his personal Savior’s life between childhood and the time shortly before he is crucified. In the movie The God Who Wasn’t There, that Dr. Price may be seen in, believing Christians are interviewed about the New Testament and about their awareness of other myths that directly compare with (and predate) the Jesus one, and they are unified in their lack of knowledge about these subjects. But they know the Sunday school three-liner basis of their faith and that is all that matters. Dr. Price does not assert conclusively that a man did or did not not rise from the dead two millennia ago. For him that is not the issue and not what drives his scholarly search for the underlying information contained in the Bible.

He was not satisfied to merely passively imbibe the superficial offerings derived from the New Testament. He needed to delve deeper and explore the issues, after amassing a great deal of learning and research on them. Dr. Price talked about how he got started. He initially looked into Apologetics and researched extra biblical writings with the intention of arming himself better in order to proselytize more effectively. But he found himself slipping further into a quicksand bog of probability and realized that he was striving to find factual rational reasons for his own personal beliefs (which were eroding as he learned more)... instead of trying to just find ways to promote The Word better to others. What he found in his studies, as he pieced together the story behind the stories was far more fascinating than the standard themes (usually taken on faith) presented regarding the gospels.

Mark, the earliest account, is positing novel, non-historically based stories and the other gospels are based upon Mark, likewise not on historical events. Matthew, who wrote decades after Mark inserts bits of description into his tale such as Earthquakes and guards at the tomb who looked like lightning. Such events should have not only been recorded (including also the saints who also rose from the ground at this time) in the other gospel accounts but also in other non-biblical, historical writings of the time. But they are not. Can it really be believed that no one took particular notice of such momentous events? Other additions have Roman troops shocked and fainting dead away and an angel telling the two Marys to inform the disciples that Jesus has risen from the dead and they depart not only in fear but in joy (!) in this account. They are not told to keep this as a secret and are eager to share the good news, in contradiction to the predating, pre-existing accounts. Some apologists explain away the contradictions by saying that Matthew is just a longer, fuller, richer account. But this view cannot be maintained with intellectual honesty upon scrutiny. In some accounts, Jesus gives instructions to tell the brethren that he will meet them in Galilee, or not to say a word to anyone, or there is an account of money being exchanged to tell a story that guards were asleep and the body of Jesus was stolen. Sometimes there are human guards; sometimes angels or other mysterious figures in gleaming white apparel. Jesus is also given to saying the same information twice to those who see him.

Some of the text of what Jesus says during his re-appearance is derived from Greek translations of text from the book of Daniel and is dripping with Matthew’s stylistic flourishes. In Luke there are other distortions by use of insertions so that all resurrection stories occur in Jerusalem and nearby environs. Jesus even accompanies the women who are carrying out their duty but renders them incapable of recognizing him, so that they tell him the sad tale of his own crucifixion and how they found an empty tomb. They suddenly recognize him once they break bread with him but he vanishes after explanations to them. This is in keeping with a common ancient story device (not something novel to the New Testament), which has for its moral that one should treat visitors well, as you may be visited by angels or gods unrecognized at the time. A good rule of thumb to keep in mind is that when one reads more spectacular stories in later texts one may be confident that these were additions based on the author’s fancy, or based upon other stories in circulation at the time that would have immediate familiarity for those who hear them. They may not have been intended to be believed beyond storytelling metaphor and legendary embellishment.

This was Dr. Price’s response to a later question from a member during the Q&A portion, where it was suggested that if the stories of Jesus were not based on a real person (albeit with miracle and supernatural embellishments) would they not be more well rendered and hang together better as other myths and fairy tales do? Does not a pastiche of accounts, derived from various sources of a person who actually lived at the time better explain the conflicts and strangeness of how they have come down to us? But to reiterate, we may be judging the stories by modern sensibilities and too cleanly categorizing what were intended to be factual and what are obvious fictional aspects. The person in that time and place hearing those stories would have been brought up on a whole suite of common folk tales and allegorical stories meant to treat themes and provide guidance, but not needing to contain true historical reference or have blind belief in them to achieve their goals.

Luke repeats a speech from Jesus that he had the apostles say in another time and borrows terms from an account of Moses’ ascension in his writing. There is simply nothing akin to a transcript of events that happened involving Jesus, but rather a blending of other accounts and terminology referencing others. The stories grow and change over time with John’s being the most freely adapted version, where he borrows even from the Isis and Osiris stories when he places in the mouth of the discoverer of the empty tomb the phrase: They have taken away my Lord and I don’t know where they took him. There is more detail in John’s account, including wrappings left behind to indicate that the body was not just stolen. Jesus again is not recognized and this time the coterie is reduced to Mary Magdalene, who thinks Jesus is a gardener and there is no account of a meeting in Galilee. When he does encounter the disciples he shows his hands and side wound, rather than feet as in prior accounts of his display of crucifixion injuries. But it is John’s lone account (unsupported by the other gospels) of the Lord being wounded in the side on the cross that is incorporated into THE Passion scenario that we all know. There are also accounts of Jesus escaping the nailing process but instead being tied to the cross. Thomas is brought into the tale to address the doubts that one who is hearing/reading the story is likely to have and we are told that the blessed are those who do not have to see in order to believe. It all becomes a stage play for the benefit of an audience, rather than a record of events that actually transpired.

There is also the contradictory report of the disciples first seeing Jesus when they are fishing in a boat and (of course) not recognizing him at first, and Mary is surprised he rose from the dead; the tomb was intended as a temporary place to store Jesus’ body before a proper burial after the Sabbath. All the stories of sightings cancel each other out; every page of the gospels blows others out of the water, as Dr. Price expressed it, showing them to be pasted together from various sources and for various intended reasons and messages. It simply did not matter to the writers at the time if the stories seemed like reasonable historical accounts. That was not the intention, any more than fables and morality plays are. Even with the ascension we find disparity; in one account Jesus takes his skyward journey straight away and in another he hangs around for 40 days (40 is a well-worn numerical designation in the ancient texts) and continues teaching.

The empty tomb theme is a common device in hero stories that are intended as an apotheosis and Dr. Price gave numerous examples of heroes who vanished suddenly at a significant time to become one with the gods, but with others trying to find him. In these sorts of stories one does not need a resurrection account, and as mentioned, Paul does not go for a reanimated dead body traipsing about. The evolution of the hero myth shows it growing ever more mystical over time, creating what our presenter called the Stained Glass Curtain, which occludes any clear vision into anything that may have actually transpired or in really knowing Jesus’ personhood. The late Joseph Campbell used to say that myths are other people’s religion. A problem occurs for the believer when s/he consigns a certain category of archetypal stories to mythology, and then her/his own religious beliefs and characters that s/he worships reflect the same storytelling devices as those s/he believes to be mythical stories only.

One member pointed out that even the wording of three days and three nights is in conflict with the story of when Jesus expired and when he rose again. This is probably an artifact, Price said, of how the story grew and changed, leaving behind conflicts in its wake that were never repaired. Pontius Pilate and Herod were both responsible for Jesus’s death in two separate accounts, so they had to be woven together in a way that sought to mitigate the contradictions. Also there is the problem, raised by another member in the audience, of how there were no contemporary accounts by historians to corroborate the Jesus myth. Josephus’ historical writings had obvious insertions by other hands to make it appear that he had written of an historical Jesus. But, as Price points out, even if Josephus HAD written of Jesus, it would not help to ensure the veracity of the account, since he wrote some 70 years after Jesus’ death and would only be retelling what the early Christians at the time were saying, also not based on first hand or eyewitness accounts. Josephus was no Christian and the additions to his writings were said to be inserted to correct inadequacies. Or in other words, since he didn’t say what the Christians wanted him to, they insinuated them to make it compatible with their vision. Jesus would have been regarded as just another faith healing Jew at the time; of no particular historical note. And just as tales grow taller as they become more remote from the source, we see that the further one goes in geography and time from where Jesus was to have done his work, the more miraculous and extraordinary they become.

In the resurrection story, only a handful of people were supposed to have seen him alive again (though there is one account of some 500 witnesses—but this is a fairly obvious insertion), and always behind closed doors or with other devices to disallow independent, corroborative information. Even the place of birth had to be reworked from Bethlehem to Nazareth, to reconcile disparate tales and prophesies. The whole taxation/census issue, Price noted, was rather silly on the face of it. The tax man needs to know where YOU live, not where your ancestors lived. Also the designation Nazarene seems to have come not from a place but a people; the Nazarenes were skilled carpenters (interestingly!) and keepers of the Torah. This seems to be a common situation. In another presentation to us, our speaker (Calahan) explained that Cain was derived from the Kenites who were skilled craftsmen and weapon makers. They were both admired and feared and bore a mark (think of the mark of Cain) to designate them and protect them from being killed. But returning to the Nazarene issue, it was probably seen as inappropriate to have Jesus become merely a member of a sect, where he would be learning from others.

A lot of the odd sorts of stories one reads in the New Testament were probably inserted to reconcile inconvenient prior writings with their message. Dr. Price gave numerous examples of these. The point being that at the time the earlier accounts were written, there was no controversy and nothing to be reconciled or massaged or placed into another context. But later, as the stories grew and changed and different concepts were deemed necessary to present to the masses, the later writers were stuck with ideas that had to be somehow worked into the new tales. Again, as mentioned, initially the stories were not meant to be accurate historical accounts in order to serve their purpose in the society of the time. It was only when it was deemed to be necessary to tell a tale of a real life son of God that troublesome issues came to the fore.

Even Mary Magdalene has suffered under the revisionist/apologetics hand. Intended to be a fulfillment of how Jesus was to have married a Fallen Woman; Magdalene, which means hair curler—which was a euphemism for prostitute—has been torturously reworked to imply that she was Mary from some place called Magdala. Hmmm.

One person brought up the recently discovered texts portraying Judas as a priestly figure and what spin that puts on the Jesus stories. But Dr. Price noted that they do not really add anything of significance to the matter. In any event, if there had not been a Judas character, there would have been no foundational basis for Christianity as a world religion. Christ would not have been captured, tortured and killed for our sins, resurrected, seen as divine, etc. So in that way, at least, the familiar account of Judas Iscariot makes him the indispensable instrument to initiate God’s plan.

Dr. Price talked of how he loves the pageantry and symbolism and mythology enacted in the church he attends, so while he may not be getting edification, and is not taking the presentation as factual data on faith, he derives something from his continuing church attendance nonetheless. Scarlett O’Hara and Prince Hamlet do not need to be historical beings to make for an interesting and engaging tale and one that may be addressed from many different angles.

Secretary: Charles laRue