The Resurrection of Jesus meets the criteria of historicity

I will point out that the reference from the source "Historical Method and the Deeds of Jesus: The Test Case of the Temple Demonstration." should not be taken seriously as accepting the historicity of a document is not the default position. Those who assert the truth of a historical document have a burden of proof that must be met. The same can be said for those who discredit the truth of a historical document. The default position is to suspend judgment. Because of the title of the book and the absurdity of the quote, I have not bothered to check to see if this was a quote mine. I assume that is probably the kind of message the author quoted was trying to get across. Skipping ahead to the quote from David Hackett Fischer, if you read the rest of the quotation it becomes obvious that the context of this quote is very important, and this little instance of quote mining paints a misleading picture about what the original author meant, and it also helps my point about suspending judgment. http://books.google.com... Page 61 and onward. The section is titled “The Fallacy of Misplaced Precision” Also, the quotation from C. Behan McCullagh is a paraphrasing of a method that he lays down, which I feel the need to quote as it makes for a perfect way to rebut my opponent's position. http://en.wikipedia.org... With the whole method laid down, right away if our hypothesis is that “The story of Jesus' resurrection is false” it holds a lot better than “The story of Jesus' resurrection is true”. Without even looking at historical texts we can see how the second hypothesis conflicts with our own knowledge of how the world works. A man coming back to life after being dead for 3 days is something that has never observably happened. People who die do not come back from the dead. This already causes the hypotheses to fail at steps 4 and 6. It is not plausible, and goes against accepted beliefs. At the same time, my opponent believes that his hypotheses can only be explained by something beyond naturalistic means. His argument hinges on the belief in a supernatural being that is not known to exist. Right there, this violates the 5th step in McCullagh's historical methodology. Taking that all into account, it becomes obvious that the position of Jesus' resurrection being false is more probable than it being true. So the hypothesis of the resurrection being true fails at the 3rd step as well. I would say that this previous argument alone places the belief of Jesus' resurrection firmly outside of the realms of historicity and into the realm of faith, however, I will go a step forward and show how the texts that deal with this particular “event” are unreliable. First of all, none of the reports of the resurrection are from first hand sources. The gospels themselves were not written by anyone who had ever known Jesus, let alone saw him resurrected from the dead. This is a fact that scholars actually do agree on. The gospels also do one thing in particular beautifully, and that is contradict each other on the events surrounding the resurrection. According to Matthew 28, an angel descended from heaven and informed the 2 Marys that Jesus was not there. According to Mark 16, the 2 Marys found a man dressed in white who told them that Jesus wasn't there. According to Luke 24, there were TWO men. According to John 20, Mary Magdalene alone went to the tomb, and there was no one there. The gospels all say that Jesus was resurrected, but when it comes to the details, all 4 of them contradict each other. Besides that, there are many other factual errors and contradictions between the gospels that make them less credible sources of information. Outside of the gospels, the only other account of the resurrection that I can recall is one that is allegedly written by Josephus Flavius.. The authenticity of this writing is in great question, for many reasons.. According to Louis Feldman, a Hellenistic scholar who specializes in works of Josephus Flavius, wrote in his book “ Josephus and Modern Scholarship”, that he counted 87 articles published during the period of 1937-1980 that question the authenticity of the Testimonium Flavius either in whole or in part. In addition to that, if you look at the testimony itself... http://www.earlychristianwritings.com... Flavius was a Jew. If he actually made this testimony, he would have been a Christian, something that he was definitely not. It would be absurd to take this as an authentic testimony. At the same time, Flavius certainly never witnessed any type of resurrection. Wrote more, out of room. This documentary on Youtube demonstrates that early Christian fanaticism isn't that special. http://www.youtube.com...