Thursday, March 15, 2012

Excavating the Empty Tomb

Youtuber TruthSurge has done a wonderful series on the gospels called Excavating the Empty Tomb: Beyond Reasonable Doubt. Because of the name I was skeptical at first (Excavating the empty tomb? Is this another guy promoting the idea that we have actually found the tomb of Jesus?!) but I was pleasantly surprised at the high quality content and presentation of the videos.

TruthSurge mentions in passing the Jesus myth theory, a theory which is rejected by the consensus of New Testament scholarship, but that isn't the centerpiece of his presentation and so it doesn't detract from what he says. The content of the videos is mostly a very well-done popularization of the material found in The Homeric Epics and Mark and Misquoting Jesus. TruthSurge is careful not to overdo-it with the issue of pagan parallels, and I think everything he says concerning this can be supported in the references I have given here.

That being said, here's what I think the most demolishing points against the resurrection myth are:
(a) The god of the Old Testament is a cultural creation of the ancient Hebrews, as demonstrated extensively in The End of Christianity. Therefore, there's no god who would raise Jesus.
(b) The dubious nature of historical evidence, especially hearsay historical evidence written by highly biased and provably errant writers.
(c) There are credible natural explanations for everything that took place at the beginning of Christianity, see the book cited above along with The Christian Delusion and this article you can read for free from Skeptic Magazine.

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