Post death visit to the tomb.

I don’t claim to be any sort of philosopher or theologian but I do enjoy reading about it and love to question it.     I have had times of crisis in my faith and during these times I seek out others who have had these questions and see what they have come up with.   IN 1998 during some struggles I noticed a new book that came out called “The Case For Christ” written by Lee Strobel.     I read the back of the book and within an hour was at home soaking it up.     Lee was a journalist whose wife found Jesus and set out on a quest to disprove the Bible.    On this quest he wrote a list of issues he had with the Bible and sought out leaders in the Christian world to interview.    By then end of the first book he became a Christian.    This book and ”I don’t have enough faith to be a Atheist” by David Limbaugh both enlightened me on the following subject.   If you question anything in the Bible take a look at these two books.    They both take objective two sided looks at the subject.

The first Witnesses at the Tomb

In any great fiction novel or fairy tale the author will try to be as believable possible or we all lose interest.   They make their characters believable, they try to use language of the era and try to fit their story into a segment of time.   The writers of the bible did not seem to get the memo.    The Bible states that Mary and Mary Magdalene were the first people to see the empty tomb.    In America with our very politically correct perspectives this is a great story and most never have second thought about it.     This book was written 1980 (or so) years ago and what was considered dependable witnesses has changed quite considerably.    In 0-30A.D. women where not allowed to be legal witnesses…to make my point I will insert some rabbinical sayings in first-century Palestine.    “Let the Laws be burned rather then delivered to women” and “Blessed are those who children are male, but woe to him whose children are female”  (Case for Faith pg 217).   In addition, Mary Magdalene had been a prostitute and in Luke 8:2 Luke admits she had been demon possessed.    Not really a very creative way to convince people in that day and age of Jesus’s Resurrection.    If you are going to make people in 30 A.D. believe a hoax you don’t start your Resurrection story off with these two characters, but they did.     They based our entire faith on the witnesses nobody would have believed in 30 A.D.     I don’t about you but I am guessing they never went to any church building conferences.  :)   I think this shows us quite clearly that the writers of this book were giving us the story straight up without any deviations.    I am sure they where not putting it in there thinking, “Man, sometime in the next 2000 years some people will finally let women have equal standing and when that happens our mega churches will explode….”  I would say they wrote it and took scorn for it.    This leads me into my next reason…..   Coming later.  Scorn and the fate of the disciples.

I have asked people about their objections to the Bible and on several occassions they say (it’s a sexist book for old white men).      Pretty funny to come back with the above point and the fact that the book was written by Jews and ultimately helped to elevate the status of women.