THE LIAR THEORY OF THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS

The New Testament gospels say that a miracle healing man called Jesus Christ lived. They say he died by crucifixion and three days later he rose again. The tomb he was placed in was found wide open with the stone that had been across the entrance moved back and the tomb was mysteriously empty. His body was gone. Certain witnesses claimed that Jesus appeared to them as a resurrected being.

The first witnesses were women and then the close friends of Jesus got on the bandwagon.
 
The women and the apostles could have lied about the body disappearing from the tomb and about the visions.

No argument works against this possibility. Considering the gospels say that Jesus stressed the second coming when he would purge the world of evil and sin forever and deliver the people it would appear that if Jesus had vanished from the grave or at least if it had been thought the body in the tomb was not his that the apostles and their friends who dearly and desperately wanted Jesus to be the saviour and who could not endure the setback of the cross would have believed that Jesus rose even if they never saw him. Their belief might not have been that strong but if they felt that Jesus was with them spiritually it would have got stronger. They would have felt that lying about his appearances was a small lie and not very wrong and no worse than the sins we all commit daily. If these people suffered for their faith they certainly suffered more because they felt that Jesus was spiritually guiding them not necessarily appearing or speaking to them but internally being their mentor than for a missing corpse or miracle appearances. After all, the grace of Jesus was what the religion was all about. It was the main thing. Grace works and enforces not through itself for it is not real. It is just the placebo effect mistaken for a supernatural assistance.

It is suggested that Magdalene and the other women were not well enough known to be put up to lie. But it had to be women who were ready and able to go to the tomb. Perhaps they lied without being asked. The gospels say the apostles did not approve of what they said and believed they were lying. It is significant that we are never told that they ever believed the women although the gospel may imply that they did when their testimony was used. But maybe the gospellers accepted the women and the apostles did not.

It is suggested that the resurrection showed Jesus in a spiritual body and not in a merely resuscitated corpse (page 344, The Truth of Christianity) and that was too unique and original an idea to have been invented. That ridiculous argument overlooks the fact that the whole point of inventing is to think of something original. 

The story about the supernatural spiritual body of Jesus might have been necessary in case the physical body would turn up. That way they could still say he rose from the dead if the body was found. The rationale was that resurrection does not mean turning the whole corpse back into a living person. People would wonder why they couldn’t find Jesus if he was alive. The "explanation" of the apostles could have been that he could vanish like a ghost and was not subject any more to physical laws. Perhaps the idea of resurrection causing a transformation into a magical being was thought to give the old doctrine a more attractive slant. A body with magical powers and that is like a ghost would be more fun than a resuscitated one. Furthermore, this idea of the resurrection is only in Paul and is not in the Gospels or Acts and in 1 Corinthians 15 Paul stated that those who thought a rotted body could not be put together were wrong for the body was only the seed of the new one so he may have invented the spiritual body resurrection theory as a short-cut to closing up those who voiced such objections. It is suggested that they would not have invented stories about Jesus being of a different appearance for that makes the story sillier and is hardly an indication of its probability but one of improbability. Perhaps they thought Jesus would have had to change his looks if he appeared in case his enemies would recognise him.

It is suggested that when Matthew 28 says some doubted when they saw Jesus it must be history. When Jesus tells them to preach his entire gospel the doubt would seem to be fleeting but Jesus would ask doubters to preach his word for faith can be an endless struggle with doubt. This could have been made up to make it seem that the resurrection was very convincing to sceptics, to make it sound more impressive.

The change in the disciples that led to them losing their fears and courageously going out to preach the gospel proves nothing for they had been in danger with Jesus all the time for years. The alleged change never took place until after the ascension. Never was there anything written to indicate that it was cowardice that held them back until then. We are told that they were in real concrete danger and could not preach. Perhaps, the disciples had to make sure the body of Jesus was past the possibility of identification before they could lie in public.

And there is no evidence that any of them suffered just for Jesus or died for him. Lots of lying prophets have a bad time but it is the people they have following them that give them the strength to go through it. They do not suffer for the truth. If an apostle was killed by the Jews it could have been because he was accused of blasphemy. He died because he was caught and there was no escape and apologising wouldn’t help. Nothing in this makes a real martyr.

Apologists surmise that if the resurrection was lies then why did nobody say they saw Jesus rising from the tomb? Since the original doctrine was that the physical body needed to provide a seed for the new body nobody needed to see the body coming back to life but only to see Jesus after the resurrection. They thought that it did not matter when they saw the risen Jesus and many thought the same not realising that seeing the body rise would be best if that was the kind of resurrection that they believed in.

You can be sure that if a story gets out about a dead man being alive and nobody is saying they saw him rise somebody soon will lie and say they witnessed it. Big stories bring along big liars.

Christians will say that if there is no evidence the witnesses were telling the truth there is no evidence that they were lying either so there is no problem. But when somebody makes an unbelievable claim you do need evidence that they are telling the truth and if they could be lying you have to believe that they are lying otherwise we would believe anything and should believe anything. The failure of the gospels to refute the lying theory proves that they are not the word of God.

This is the evidence for the lying.

The women believed before they saw Jesus (Matthew 28). They lied to themselves for they hadn’t enough evidence.

The two men going to Emmaus who claimed that Jesus had walked with them after his resurrection said that there were lots of scriptures that stated that the Messiah would suffer and then be glorified. This is not true and the predictions are blatantly ambiguous. No wonder these men were disbelieved by those who knew them and the Old Testament well (Mark 16:13). Moreover, when these men saw Jesus they did not know him and they thought he was a stranger and they told him he must be the only one in Jerusalem who did not know what happened in the last few days. They said then about Jesus being crucified and that in the two days since the death the women had gone to the tomb and seen visions of angels saying Jesus had risen and they found the body gone and that some of their friends went to the tomb and saw nothing of Jesus. Then the disguised Jesus called them fools for not believing the women – a verse that is ignored by those who wish to say that since women were not regarded as reliable that the resurrection must be true when they were declared to be the first witnesses. He complained then that the two men were slow to believe the message of prophets. Jesus is plainly saying you should believe in tall stories. He is also saying that weak testimony is enough. He is also saying that the prophets are fulfilled because the women say Jesus rose and that the prophets are the evidence for believing the women. This is all sheer conjuring trickery with facts. Logic says the prophets should be as clear as day before being interpreted that way and the women alone were not enough to believe in such a serious claim. Why should we believe the Emmaus stranger was Jesus? He sounds like a joker! It is like the hundreds of sane people who claim to have seen Elvis since his death. The Christians maintain that Luke was telling the truth, which is arrogance for at most he would have THOUGHT he was telling the truth. Maybe he was but maybe unfavourable facts were dropped out of the story he got. And besides, the witnesses would have been named for Luke could be taking his information from one witness for all we know and the Bible forbids that so that shows how deep his faith in the Old Testament that he made his Jesus praise so much really was. The same goes for the faith of the rest of the New Testament writers. To trust anybody’s perception about Jesus is not to trust Jesus. The Gnostics emphasised this truth and underlined the importance of direct mystical experience and the early Church hated them for that for it was a threat to the authority over minds and hearts that they had deceptively usurped.

But the apostles said Jesus appeared telling them that Moses and the Psalms were about him (Luke 24:44). The apostles evidently wanted people to believe that but they knew the Bible well enough to be aware that none of that could be honestly proved. They either lied about Jesus or they knew he lied.

Thomas did not believe in the apostles’ visions. He told them that unless he would see and touch the Lord himself he would not believe. He may have been accusing them of lying. He may have been accusing them of hallucinating. He may have thought that they were tricked by a Jesus lookalike. These are the only options. The gospeller evidently made the story up because had it been true and known he would have realised the need to rule out the idea that Thomas was accusing the apostles of lying or being gullible which is just as bad as lying for that is closing your mind in order to believe whatever turns you on. Thomas lived with these men and he knew their ways. Thomas believed that he was the only honest one among them. Since Thomas vanished off the scene at this time the apostles could easily have lied saying he did see Jesus even if he denied it.

The doubting Thomas story forever silences the Christian lie that when God won’t do a miracle for a sceptic it is because he does not wish to force belief on the sceptic. When we don’t see Jesus then Jesus did not rise.

Peter was proven to have lied to people around the time of Jesus' arrest and trial. He was hardly reliable as a rock or witness to the resurrection of Jesus.  Peter says that a text from the Old Testament spoke of the resurrection. He lied for it could be referring to being saved from the dying process.

The book of Acts speaks of Paul seeing Jesus as if risen from the dead.  Luke took the main points of the story of Heliodorus to make up this story of Paul being struck down from a horse by a vision and falling and having to convert and recover after. See 2 Maccabees 3.

Paul himself reported a converting vision of Christ when he was going to persecute the Church. It can be doubted for he said we never completely avoid sinning and still said we can do good works! He claimed that his vision was the beginning and the divine authorisation of his gospel. Men who report lying visions are probably lying in saying they had the visions.

Acts 17:22-31 says Paul said that you can be an educated pagan and innocent before God of having wrong ideas about the divine. Romans 1 is clear that nobody has an excuse at all for not knowing God for he makes his reality plain to them. The following from Acts 17 is even more telling as a fabrication put into Paul's mouth, “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent."  This waters down the severe Bible directives from God against idol worship or even worshipping the real God inappropriately.

Jesus was surrounded by liars and that was what he had carrying his word about.  Perhaps it was the gospellers who were doing the lying. If the people they wrote about were liars then it could easily have been the gospellers who were the liars. Acts 4 tells us that the Jews enforced silence on Peter and John for their part in the cure of a cripple in Jesus’ name because this bore witness to the resurrection of Jesus. I cannot believe that the Jews delayed action until a healing took place. Acts even says that Jews let the apostles preach the resurrection at the trial and let everybody see the healed man! If they and the apostles were scheming to promote Jesus and fake persecution then the Jews would have stolen the body and they were all liars. The Bible says the Jews hassled the apostles Peter and John because of the cure of a cripple that they said they could not deny. Of course, they could deny it. They were not forced to admit a natural explanation. Also, why didn’t they react that way over the resurrection which was a worse miracle and more potent in the matter of getting converts in their point of view. Acts is saying the resurrection did not happen as the gospels state. The entire nation was accused of the death of Jesus (Acts 3) which is ridiculous for the Jewish leaders allegedly attempted to keep their plans for Jesus low-key for they feared his supporters among their flock.

The gospels show that Jesus promised to save the world by making God overthrow the kingdoms of the world and establish his own. Instead of this happening he was nailed to a cross. It may have been that the apostles continued to regard him as a prophet and that this overthrow would happen with the result that when he died they took it for granted without seeing anything strange that he rose again so that he could fulfil his prophecy later on.  The resurrection may have been posited as a reinterpretation of Jesus and the apostles lied about the visions of Jesus and did not see themselves as bad for doing this for Jesus had risen though nobody could prove it. It is like how the Moonies believe in the resurrection of one of Moon’s sons and just take Moon’s word for it.

The resurrection is a legend that we cannot take seriously for it was started by liars.

Trent Horn in Counterfeit Christs says that the Messiah was to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem but Jesus did not which makes some think he was not the Messiah.  Horn in distorted thinking says that Jesus himself became the temple when he rose from the dead and can be described as being the house of prayer for all people that has been prophesied.  Verses he uses are Hebrews 10:10 and Isaiah 56:7.  Jesus in John 2 advocated that interpretation. 

Christian scholars believe that if there is evidence that the witnesses of a miracle could be lying then the miracle should not be believed in. They deny that the resurrection of Jesus is in that category. But it is.