THE MOST IMPORTANT HISTORICAL CLAIM IN CRAIG'S CASE
Craig's case for the resurrection of Jesus is based on three key historical claims. The most important of these historical claims is this one:
HC2: Beginning on the first day of the week following Jesus' crucifixion, various individuals and groups experienced on different occasions and under varying circumstances appearances of Jesus alive.
Because this claim is crucial to the success of Craig's case, if Craig fails to show that (HC2) is a historical fact, then his case will also fail.
In Part 25, I showed that the best piece of historical evidence presented by Craig is weak and dubious and thus fails to provide any significant support for (HC2).
In Part 26, I showed that another key piece of evidence, the alleged appearance of the risen Jesus to Peter, is also weak and defective evidence and thus fails to provide any significant evidence for (HC2).
In this current post, I will critically examine some more alleged appearances of the risen Jesus that Craig offers as evidence for (HC2).
THE ALLEGED APPEARANCE TO 500 BRETHREN
The third piece of evidence that Craig uses to support (HC2) is a alleged appearance of the risen Jesus to five hundred brethren (RF3, pages 378-379). Once again, Craig makes a very honest admission:
...we have no mention whatsoever of this appearance elsewhere in the New Testament. (RF3, page 378)
However, I don't think Craig realizes how devastating this admission is to his use of this evidence to support (HC2).
First, it is very unlikely that the authors of the four Gospels were aware of this alleged appearance of the risen Jesus but none of the chose to mention this astounding event. So, either the authors of the Gospels were unaware of this astounding event or else they had heard of this claim but had serious doubts about this event being a real historical event. In either case, the silence of all four Gospels plus Acts and the rest of the New Testament (other than 1 Corinthians) raises significant doubts about the historicity of this alleged appearance.
Second, it is not clear that the alleged appearance to five hundred brethren was part of the Christian creed or tradition that Paul was referencing. If this appearance was not part of the Christian tradition that Paul was referencing, then we cannot date this information to when Paul began preaching to the Corinthians, we can only date it as being as old as the writing of 1 Corinthians by Paul. This still dates the information to earlier than the writing of the Gospels. However, such an early date makes it even more puzzling why there is no mention of this event in any of the Gospels, nor in Acts.
Third, as with the alleged appearance of the risen Jesus to Peter, we have no story describing this appearance to five hundred Christian believers, and we have no details about this alleged event:
We don't know when this appearance took place (a few days after the crucifixion? a few weeks after the crucifixion? a few months after the crucifixion? a few years after the crucifixion?)
We don't know where this appearance took place (Jerusalem? Samaria? Galilee?
We don't know the weather and lighting conditions during this event
We don't know the social and psychological circumstances of the people who had this alleged experience
We don't know if anyone saw Jesus' face, or saw Jesus' body, or heard Jesus speak, or touched Jesus' body
We don't know how far away Jesus appeared to be from the people who allegedly had this experience (a few feet away? a few yards away? 50 yards away? 500 yards away? one mile up in the sky?)
We don't know how long this experience lasted (a few seconds? a few minutes? a few hours?)
We don't know if everyone in the crowd experienced this appearance of Jesus
We don't know if everyone in the crowd had the same experience of Jesus (did some see Jesus in the sky? did some see Jesus about 50 yards away? did some see Jesus just a few feet away? Did some hear Jesus speaking but others did not? did some see Jesus in and white robe while others saw Jesus in a red robe or some other clothing?
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