Thanks again for your thoughtful responses. Appreciated.

Best wishes,

CF.

As the book of Acts depicts, there was no penalty for claiming to have seen someone in a dream or vision. This is why Paul never gets convicted of claiming to see Jesus, or even for following the teachings he imagined this spirit of Jesus to have related. Acts is correct as to the law of the time.

And one needn’t even have done that—one could admit to seeing a thing, and dismiss it as merely a dream or a trick of the Devil (exactly as Paul says of heretical Christians he denounces in Galatians: they saw a fake spirit, he insists, not the real Jesus). There was no penalty for that either.

So there is no known incentive for anyone to have concealed a visit from Jesus; whether it convinced them of anything, or did not, relating the encounter had no legal consequence to fear. Therefore, the silence of the record is not probable if any such encounters occurred, much less lots of them (least of all if they were indeed convincing visions—if God is really appearing to people, it already starts quite unlikely they’d not be convinced by it).

As I wrote in The Christian Delusion:

If God himself were really appearing to people, and really was on a compassionate mission to reform and save the world, there is hardly any credible reason he would appear to only one persecutor rather than to all of them. But if Paul’s experience was entirely natural and not at all divine, then we should expect such an event to be rare, possibly even unique—and, lo and behold, that appears to be the case. Paul’s conversion thus supports the conclusion that Christianity originated from natural phenomena, and not from any encounter with a walking corpse. A walking corpse—indeed a flying corpse (Luke 24:51 and Acts 1:9–11) or a teleporting corpse (Luke 24:31–37 and John 20:19–26)—could have visited Pilate, Herod, the Sanhedrin, the masses of Jerusalem, the Roman legions, even the emperor and senate of Rome. He could even have flown to America (as the Mormons actually believe he did), and even China, preaching in all the temples and courts of Asia. In fact, being God, he could have appeared to everyone on earth. He could visit me right now. Or you! And yet, instead, besides his already fanatical followers, just one odd fellow ever saw him. If Jesus was a god and really wanted to save the world, he would have appeared and delivered his Gospel personally to the whole world. He would not appear only to one small group of believers and one lone outsider, in one tiny place, just one time, two thousand years ago, and then give up.

Whereas that’s 100% what we expect if no real visitations were occurring at all, just standard, natural, psychologically and culturally driven dreams and visions.

Hi Richard,

Thanks for your response.

I imagine anyone at the time who witnessed with their own eyes the brutality of a scourging, followed by crucifixion, would have been slow to admit to any such encounter anyway, lest they find themselves suffering the same fate. No less his persecutors. A brave, sure, and secure man it would take.

Speculative indeed, but the mind does wonder.

All the best,

CF.

There is no use discussing evidence that might have existed but doesn’t. Conclusions can only follow from evidence we actually have. And there is no evidence of that. So that’s the end of that. Speculation in, speculation out.

Thank you for your fascinating article. I’m intrigued by this whole subject matter, and something in particular caught my attention at the end of your article.

‘He would not appear only to one small group of believers and one lone outsider, in one tiny place, just one time, two thousand years ago, and then give up’.

Is it possible he may have done just that, appeared to many, but just wasn’t recognized, and as such not taken seriously?

Many thanks.

CF.

Objection 1: Indeed. That’s why I say “may have become corrupted” and not “did.” For more on the options and their significance see Then He Appeared to Over Five Hundred Brethren at Once!.

Objection 2: We have no information stating that about James. It’s ironic to have a critic claim we can’t make things up and treat them as facts, then immediately make something up and treat it as a fact. Pick a lane.

Objection 3: Only the Gospels say that. Paul says the opposite: Apostles are by definition those “who saw Jesus” and thus had authority to speak for Jesus. Paul says all the leaders (Peter, James, etc.) were Apostles. He never mentions Disciples nor distinguishes the twelve from Apostles. In fact, there are only Apostles in his one statement about ranks in the church. Given that, the later Gospel invention of a distinction not known even to Paul is therefore not reliable history.

Objection 4: See Then He Appeared to Over Five Hundred Brethren at Once!. And for more scholarship, cited science and data proving the points made there, see Element 15 in Ch. 4 of On the Historicity of Jesus.

Objection 1:
Carrier suggests that the creed did not originally mention the five hundred, but rather was “then he appeared to all the brethren together at the Pentecost.” That is a simple assertion and there is no evidence for this alternative reading.

Objection 2:
He also discounts verse 7 because it is redundant, since James and the Apostles were already covered in the earlier mention of the Twelve. This is simply incorrect. The James mentioned in verse 7 was not one of the Twelve (that was James, son of Zebedee), but was the half-brother of Jesus. Acts clearly knows two James, as the brother of John is an early martyr and brother of Jesus becomes an important leader in the church. I understand it is important for Carrier to conflate the two James because of his belief that Jesus never existed, but it doesn’t fit the evidence.

Objection 3:
Also, the Twelve and the Apostles are not exactly the same. The Apostles were a larger group (a number of people outside the Twelve are described as Apostles in Acts) that had a core group of the Twelve. So all of the Twelve were Apostles but not all of the Apostles were the Twelve.

Objection 4:
Even if Carrier is right about the five hundred (which I highly doubt), that does nothing to diminish the apologetic value of the creed. It would still make it unlikely that the appearances were a mass hallucination. You don’t need five hundred to make this unlikely.

Can you specify what in it I need to respond to?

http://www.stephenjbedard.com/2016/08/11/responding-richard-carriers-dating-corinthian-creed/

I don’t see any reason James should be mentioned anywhere else in 1 or 2 Corinthians (likewise “the twelve”). So there is nothing odd about his not being so. Meanwhile, he is mentioned in Galatians.

Though I also agree verse 7 is the most likely to be an interpolation if any verse here is. But the evidence for this is not 200 to 1 strong. Thus not strong enough to establish this as a premise.

And no. I have never found Price’s arguments on 1 Cor. 15 convincing. To be honest, I find few of his arguments about anything convincing (most of them are just conjectural possibilities, not valid arguments to a probability). Though I give credit to when they are. This just isn’t one of them.