Skepticism is a Virtue

In discussing the bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, we must be held to something far beyond normal historical standards of proof. We are attempting to prove a supernatural event, quite an extraordinary claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. The proof in this instance is far from extraordinary. Therefore, what you characterize as a stubborn cynicism of these events, is really only a very healthy skepticism, skepticism that is becoming ever more a virtue in a world filled with alien abduction stories, immensely popular psychic paranormalists, and all too many would-be messiahs and dangerous apocalypticists. Many people dismiss the events portrayed in the New Testament, not because they are biased and cynical, but because they are skeptics, and the proof is just not there.

Basically, the proof for the events in question of Jesus life lies solely on the accounts of the New Testament gospels. There are no independent contemporary accounts, either by Jews or Romans. Jesus, himself, left us no writings. What we are left with are the New Testament gospels. The word gospel, itself, means "“good news."? Bringing into question the impartiality of these stories, since they were meant to engender faith. They were penned in Greek, anonymously by people who probably never knew Jesus. Since, Jesus' primary followers were poor, probably illiterate peasants who spoke Aramaic. They were written down from oral traditions that had been passed down for at least 35 years or so after the death of Jesus. These are hardly reliable sources. They may be enough to convey accurately the general sense of Jesus' message, but they can hardly be trusted to concretely prove his divinity.

With this characterization of the New Testament gospels in mind, I would like to address each one of your points Specifically:

The Empty Tomb

The first gospel recorded from oral traditions was probably the gospel of Mark. Originally, the story of the resurrection was conspicuously absent from this gospel. It was added later. This fact is agreed upon by almost every serious New Testament scholar. It is a convention in historical analysis to put more trust in the accuracy of more earlier sources €for obvious reasons. It is quite likely that the entire resurrection story was merely an addition by later Christians attempting to steer the theology in their preferred path.

Addressing the empty tomb directly, the gospels are fraught with a number of contradictioning descriptions about who visited the tomb, whether or not the stone was moved when they got there, the setting of the announcement of the resurrection, and the commands given to those at the tomb. If the gospels can't even agree on key facts surrounding these events, how well can we trust the gospels that these events actually happened?

Taking all this into account, your reasoning about what Christian, Jew or Roman thought about the tomb is based on false assumptions. Since this entire story probably evolved years after Jesus' death, it seems quite presumptuous to say what the Romans or Jewish aristocracy could have done. You're probably right though, if the Romans could look into the future 300 years or so, and could see what future Christians would claim happened historically, they probably would have behaved as you claimed. However, since they had no reason to believe the historical facts surrounding their crucifixion of Jesus would be in question in the future, there is no reason to believe they would take any further steps outside of executing a man they saw as a rabble-rouser.

They Died for Their Beliefs

Seeing as there were at least half-a-dozen Messiahs in Judea in the first century CE who had followers who died for their beliefs, it seems odd and unfair to hold the beliefs of followers of any one specific messiah in such irreproachable regard. Those surrounding the founding of any very-involved belief system will have extreme amounts of cognitive dissonance when it comes to looking at any facts which might contradict their strongly-held beliefs, especially when they have shared these beliefs with others, and much of their image is entangled with these beliefs. We don't know whether or not the contemporary followers of Jesus, the people who knew him, died under pain of torture for their beliefs, we do know about later Christians. Paul is a great example.

Your passage in 2 Corinthians is an account written by Paul, someone who never knew Jesus, nor was around Judea during Jesus' ministry. How could Paul possibly know whether or not what he preached was a lie or not?

Again, there really isn't anything here that would come close to establishing the divinity of Jesus Christ. We are still far from that extraordinary level of proof we require.

The Conversion of Skeptics, The Conversion of Jews & Baptism and Communion

In this case (as in others), I think you present an illusion of certainty about facts we can't possibly know for certain. Namely, how do you know 10,000 Jews joined the Christian movement? How do you know apostles who personally knew and lived with Jesus were persecuted as Paul claimed to be? How can you be so sure of the validity of Paul's conversion story? How do you know early Christians took part in Baptism and Communion? How does someone being converted from one religion to another prove its validity? If I was a Christian and then became a Muslim a generation after Mohammad's death, would Christianity be disproved?

Also, it is unclear as to how severe the sociological and theological consequences would be that you purport would face the Jews who believed in Jesus and passed on the stories of his life. From the point of view of the formation of the New Testament I described to you, it seems very likely that those who passed on these stories about Jesus could continue being Jewish in every conceivable way. Christianity itself was far more diverse before Constantine than it is now. Assuming that all of these Jews believed in Jesus the same way you believe in Jesus, namely that he was god seems presumptuous from a more historical point of view. The Jews who lived with Jesus probably spread his stories beyond Judea, where they evolved in all kinds of unpredictable ways. Many Christian churches eventually cut all ties with Judaism and even created anti-Semitic doctrines. This seems a peculiar fact in a belief structure you paint as being so homogenous.

The Swift Rise and Spread of Christianity Throughout the Roman Empire

Before the conversion of Constantine, Christianity grew at about the same rate as Mormonism has over the last 150 years. For this issue, specifically, looking at Mormonism puts the growth of Christianity into perspective. Historically speaking--probably due to better-record keeping and more falsifiable claims (i.e. Native Americans being Jewish)--Mormonism has very little to stand on. However, looking at their growth alone, you might wonder how so many people could have overlooked so much. There are dozens of reasons, and it is far more complicated than our intuition, something you want us to rely on when looking at the growth of Christianity.

The truth is, aside from perhaps two emperors over a 300 year period, Christianity faced very little in way of systematic Roman persecution. Also, most of the Christian churches grew outside of the realm of Jewish aristocratic influences. It seems valid to compare Martin Luther King Jr.'s "“I Have a Dream"? speech, perhaps to the sermon on the mount. However, the sermon on the mount is not at issue here. The resurrection story and claims of Jesus' divinity are. If these events never happened, then there is no chance for Christians to mischaracterize them. You can't mischaracterize something that never happened. If the resurrection story, as I suggest, was made up out of whole cloth, then finding people who didn't-not see Jesus resurrected is a non-sensical issue. Just like you can't find anyone who spent every hour of every day with Joseph Smith who can prove he never talked to Jesus and God.

A Reliable Record

Your argument here centers on the straw man of showing how widely and accurately copied the texts in the New Testament are. No one is debating this fact. Scholars debate whether or not we can trust the original writings contained in the New Testament themselves, not the copying process afterwards. As I stated earlier, these original writings were penned by people who probably never knew Jesus, who received these stories from much more-volatile and evolving oral traditions.

Your statements about Josephus, and earlier Roman historians merely support the idea that Christians did in-fact exist in the first and second centuries, again, something that is not being debated.

Whether or not early Christians were surrounded by bitter enemies is still very much in question. Though you continue in this presupposition with very little evidence. The persecution of such a devoted evangelist like Paul can be agreed upon. But whether or not followers of Christ--who did not go out of their way to convert others--were allowed to practice their faith in peace is unclear.

The Verdict

As you claim that there are no alternate theories which succeed in explaining all of the evidence you presented. I would like to present one now, which I think is very historically based, and a much more likely explanation of all of the facts we know, and continue to learn about.

Basically, this is what I believe about Jesus and why:

First, we have to throw out the assumption that Jesus was a revolutionary teacher who sought to change the face of Judaism in his lifetime. It makes so much more sense, historically speaking, to paint Jesus as a very Jewish preacher, who taught very Jewish things, exclusively to Jews in Judea. More than that, he was an apocalypticist preacher, an idea very common in first century Judaism. His message was one that offended specifically the Jewish Aristocracy, and was seen by the Roman governor Pilate as an unnecessary nuisance. Jesus was executed by the Romans to keep the peace during the Jewish Passover. His teachings garnered him a respectable following who spread stories of him after his death. These stories evolved over time and were used to start a new religion about Jesus, instead of one based on Jesus' teachings.

Jesus lived in a very literate time in world history. There were literally dozens of historical writings we have that were penned contemporary to Jesus, yet Jesus is mentioned in none of them. This leads me to believe that Jesus' effect on his world was much more minor than his effect on our world. To me, this rules out thinking of Jesus as a revolutionary teacher. Otherwise his teachings and life would have created more conflict in his lifetime, and hence more contemporary knowledge of his existence. His teachings and an understanding of Jewish theology of the time paint a much different picture.

Jesus spoke continually of a world ruled by evil, soon to be overthrown by god and ruled by a Messiah. Several times while teaching to large crowds he makes it known that this event will take place within their lifetime. Many people reading the New Testament may notice that the ethics of Jesus seem not to be entirely sustainable. Specifically, many of his ethics make so much more sense from the point of view of a man who thinks the world as it currently exists is about to be turned upside down. The rich would become poor and the poor rich, and all kinds of injustices would be turned around. Jesus was not unique in his apocalypticism. Studying the Dead Sea Scrolls, some first century Jewish writings, we see that these apocalyptic ideas were quite popular, especially in the repressed peasant classes.

Jesus in no way meant to replace the Jewish law with his own brand of ethics. In fact, his oft-quoted reduction of the ten commandments into two laws are in-fact merely Old Testament ideas expressed in Deuteronomy 6 and Leviticus 19. He may have drawn a sharp distinction between himself and the legalistic Pharisees, however, the Pharisees were just a sub-set of Judaism, and Jesus' disagreement with this group in no way precluded what he was teaching from remaining well within the bounds of the Jewish Religion. Jesus did not, himself, form a new Religion. The Christianity of Paul would be about Jesus and not about Jesus teachings. This was the religion which was irreconcilable with Judaism, but again, this was not what Jesus taught to his followers.

Jesus' apocalypticism also explains quite well why he was executed. Jesus taught that the rich would become poor and the poor rich. This was a direct threat to the Jewish Aristocracy, made up mostly of Sadducees. Pilate, the Roman Governor of Judea, had nothing to lose by executing anyone who might disturb the peace of the gathering in Jerusalem at Passover. There is nothing too enigmatic here. The execution of Jesus seems to follow pretty transparently from just these two facts. John the Baptist, another Jewish Apocalypticist was executed for very similar reasons.

After Jesus was executed, there is no reason to believe that all of his followers would disperse and forget about him if he did not rise from the dead and return to them. Many of these people had probably invested much of their lives in Jesus' teachings being true. These people would carry on his story and his legend as long as they still could. There are hundreds of historical examples where people behave similarly when their leader falls ahead of them. You only have to look so far as John the Baptist to find a very similar example. His followers spread his message after John the Baptist was executed. The behavior of Jesus' followers after his death was nothing unique or special. It seems to me, that if it weren't for the missionary work of Paul, and later the conversion of Constantine, Christianity would probably just be another footnote in the history of ancient Judea.

Conclusion

I have presented a version of history, I think, that not only fits the discernable facts more believably, but also fits more evenly into our knowledge of world history as a whole. The idea that the paltry amount of proof Christians have for Jesus' divinity is enough to set this one event apart from every other event in world history, as the only supernatural interference of god, is not an idea a person with any amount of healthy skepticism and faculties of rational reasoning can take seriously. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. All Christians have is propaganda written decades after the events. The price we pay for accepting Christianity by such a lowered standard of proof is one that is far too great.