



John,
The problem here is that you have taken one peice of my response, without
bothering to connect it with the other parts.  I have repeatedly noted that
one needs to take the problematic historcity of acts and then examine the
work of John Dominic Crossan and Burton Mack.  Once you have taken the time
to examine recent developments in biblical scholarship, I think you will 
grasp more clearly what I am saying.




Certainly this is an issue as I think the situation in Waco shows most 
clearly.  If all that is required is that people are willing to die for a
belief for it to be true, then surely David Koresh is the son of God.  No,
the spurrious arguement that the resurrection had to be true for people to be
willing to die must be put to rest.  The other problem is that it is so 
monologocentric.  Even if the resurrection was a big deal (which it doesn't
seem to have been for either Q, Thomas, or even John to a certain degree)
there are a lot of other things which the Early Christians could have been
doing together that would have been worth dying for.  It is my belief that
even the idea of a mixed race community, which brought down regional/national
boundaries in the name of koinonia could have been enough for people to be
willing to die.  Radical communties do that (e.g. Jonestown, Waco, Warsaw, etc)
But my original point was that roman persecution (which is the only persecution
we have documented proof of) was not about whether a carpenter came back from
the dead.  Such a claim was not unique nor particularly abhorent to the roman
or greek mind.  My point is that avoidance of military and civic duty (i.e.
emperor worship) would have been much more problematic -- which has nothing
to do with the resurrection at all.  When nero used christians as human 
torches to light up his dinner party it wasn't because the believe in a 
risen savior, it was because they were supposedly involved in incest and
cannablism.  The argument that christians were martyred for the resurrection
just cannot stand up to critical examination.