Was Jesus Crucified? Part 4

The Cross, the Empty Tomb, and the Charge of Irrelevance

Our third section in this first part to this is two eight-minute rebuttals. We'll do that with a ten-minute break. So we're going to invite Sammy to come with this first part of our eight-minute rebuttal.

Thank you, sir. All right. Thank you for that. I'll go again in order. The first point you make is I'm trying to throw your questions out the window by saying they're irrelevant. And I repeat, they are irrelevant because Sura 4157 and Sura 1458 say that Jesus was not on the cross.

Jesus did not die and he was saved. That's all I really need to know. So asking me how he was saved and who was on the cross is irrelevant because we know the main points. So you aren't trying to be picky.

Now, you say, well, you can't expect me to throw your Bible out the window. I never said you should throw your Bible out the window. I'm not trying to convert you. But on the same token, don't expect me to believe in your Bible and don't expect me to believe that the supposed evidence for the crucifixion and resurrection is rock-solid and hurts my faith.

That's what I'm just trying to show. Now, what about the woman who saw Jesus on the cross? I repeat, the text says they saw them from afar. But what about their testimony? Now, this comes all together because there's a straw man in your argument against me.

The Resurrection Narratives as Later Invention

You say I'm trying to use the Bible and I'm trying to say it's also unreliable. In my opening presentation, I clearly mentioned what methodology I'm using. I said that the post-appearance of Jesus could have been an alive Jesus.

However, so the resurrection accounts, the supposed empty tomb incident, that resurrection incident. So, the woman's testimony at the tomb, the empty tomb, the angels. My contention is that is not authentic.

And the reason why it's not authentic, as I said, they had a misunderstood belief that Jesus rose from the dead. So, in order to confirm or to conform that belief with what they now believe, they went back and started making these stories to account for it.

Well, if Jesus resurrected, then it must have been like this. And that's why I wrote the contradictions about the resurrection accounts. That's why I showed there's an evolution in the story. That's why I even told you Mark's ending says nothing about some post-resurrection appearance and all those testimonies.

So, there's a lot of added information. That's the argument I'm using. Those resurrection accounts, the empty tomb, the angel who came down, who was at the tomb. I argue that that is not authentic. And all the contradictions are the proof in the pudding.

Now, you can say, well, all these alleged contradictions can be solved. Yes, they can. But as Laura Herman said, the way to solve these contradictions is by simply creating another gospel. So, yes, that's how you solve them.

If one says two people were at the tomb, and another says nobody was at the tomb, and another says no one was at the tomb, all three cannot be right. And I saw your response that said, well, yesterday two police officers were tragically killed.

And I'm sure you get contradictory responses. Yes, you get contradictory responses within the hour, within the day. But the gospels weren't written the day after Jesus' crucifixion. They were written decades after.

So you think that after a few decades, they have those information in check. For instance, if we look at a historical event that took place ten years ago, we have those details in check. But obviously, if something happened yesterday, it takes a bit of time to get all the details put together.

So that's even a strawman on how your own life was created and written. Because that's not what happened. What about the end times? The end times. James White tells me to read up on it. I have read up on it.

And I suggest you read up on it. And go read the books of E .P. Sanders, one of the most renowned New Testament historical scholars on the historical Jesus. Paul of Fredericton. And even Bart Ehrman. And even Giza Hermann.

And the list goes on. These academic books are out there. And if you want a simple book, just go read E .P. Sanders, The Historical Jesus, where he brings up all these verses and more. Which talks about how Jesus was that apocalyptic prophet who preached the end of the world and he was wrong.

So I have it there in my reading. And even if you read the chapter I wrote up, Jesus doesn't simply say that only Jerusalem would be destroyed as a sign. And Jerusalem wasn't destroyed anyway. But he doesn't only say that only Jerusalem would be destroyed.

He gives a whole list of other things that would happen, including his second coming. Secondly, you ignore the other citation I wrote from Mark's Gospel. In Mark's Gospel, Jesus tells the high priest, you, yes you, will see me coming in the clouds.

So it's not only in math. So it's a mistake, no matter which way you look at it. And you either say that your Gospel is wrong, or you say whoever wrote it misunderstood Jesus. Which is my contention, that they also misunderstood him when they supposedly thought he resurrected.

When he was in fact alive. What other arguments did he bring up? Okay, the other point about Allah or God, Islam started Christianity by mistake. No it didn't. Because how do you connect believing in Jesus' death, and how do you connect that to now saying that this man died for your sin and rose in three days?

How is there a connection? There is no connection. Simply believing that a man was killed by his enemies and became martyr does not necessitate the next belief that he rose after three days and that he died for your sin.

You want proof? Bart Ehrman believes in the crucifixion of Jesus, but he doesn't believe in Jesus' resurrection. So it is possible to believe in the crucifixion of Jesus, believing that this man was killed by his enemies.

But that doesn't necessitate him rising from the dead and dying for your sin. This is mainly a later Christian theological interpretation. God, and nobody else is responsible for that but your own books.

And if you don't believe, again, many people believe in the crucifixion, but they don't believe that he died for your sins. So it would have been perfectly okay for early Jewish Christian believers in Jesus to have believed that their prophet had died as a martyr.

But that comes to the next point. The Jewish people and the Jewish Bible, there are no Jews who believe that the Messiah was going to be killed by his enemies. That is a fact. It is only Christians who believe that.

Let's be consistent now. You're saying only Muslims believe that. Well, it's only Christians who come 2 ,000 years later, after Moses, up to this day, and say, well, yeah, it's all over the Bible. So why don't the actual holders of the book believe in that?

They never believed in that. And that's why the Quran is even correct when it says that Jesus was saved from his enemies. That proves that the Quranic Messiah does not contradict the criteria. Because if he died, then he can't be the Messiah because the original teaching about dying and rising.

Paul, Sin, and the Later Christian Interpretation

What about the point about sin being forgiven before the crucifixion? Well, Paul says this. That doesn't matter to me. That's Paul's interpretive account of why sin could be forgiven before Jesus' death.

Jesus didn't say that. No Jewish prophet said that. Paul said that because he had his belief that Jesus supposedly died for your sin.