>>18553688
>most are still alive
>some have died
This tells us pretty much nothing. Does Paul know all of the 500 or most of them? Does he know many people who were there, or just one? The thing is: We do not know. Paul might have only heard this tale from one person, who's since passed away. Maybe he's talking about people he hasn't met but heard were there, and whom he's heard have since died. He might even be talking rhetorically about the fact that due to the natural passing of time some have died. 500 might have just been an embellished number to show that it was a "rather big group" of people.
Moreover, how did these 500 even see Jesus? How did they know it was Jesus? Did they form a line to shake hands with him ("Hi, how are you, name's Jesus H. Christ")? Was he talking on a hill to a large group of people? Did they perceive him manifesting in a preacher? Did they see an environmental sign (like Fatima) they perceived as Jesus? Were some of the apostles there? We don't even know when it supposedly happened, since it may have even happened after his conversion.
And to top things off, how are Corinthians supposed to even verify it? By making a risky trip to Palestine just to talk with people who were, of whom we have no identities. Paul's letter gives us no clues or notes about who they should talk to and where. We don't even know if these people were scattered across different places by now and had got together for a religious festival. This text is also not supposed to convert new people, it's meant to act as reassurance for those who already believe. Corinthians did not need to make this trip to believe it happened, and they had no incentive to.
Just like nowadays we hear multiple group eyewitness testimony of miraculous events, yet few of us actually believe in them. However, Paul's testimony is flimsier evidence of a miracle than even Fatima or Zeitoun - and there are millions of miracle-believing Christian who do not see those as real miracles either.

>>18553688
The OP raises fair points about Paul's claim, but the skeptical response has problems the OP does not address.
Paul wrote 1 Corinthians around 55 AD, roughly 25 years after the Resurrection. He says he "delivered" this tradition to the Corinthians, meaning he received it earlier and passed it on. The Greek word for "delivered" (paradidomi) is technical language for transmitting received tradition. Paul is not claiming he originated this. He is passing on what he received, likely from Peter and the other apostles during his visit to Jerusalem (Galatians 1:18-19), which occurred around 37 AD, within a decade of the events.
>most are still alive
This is the strongest part of the claim. Paul is not saying "trust me." He is saying "go ask them." He names Peter, the Twelve, James, and then 500 others, many still living. If this were fabricated, it would be an invitation to expose the fraud. You do not tell people to verify a claim with living witnesses if the witnesses do not exist or will contradict you.
>Paul does not give any names or places
He does name Peter, James, and the Twelve. The 500 are unnamed because the point is that there were too many to name. The early church knew who they were. Clement of Rome (c. 96 AD) and Ignatius (c. 107 AD) both reference the post-Resurrection appearances as established tradition within the churches.
The deeper question: why would the early church invent a mass appearance to 500 people? Individual visions could be dismissed as hallucination. A group appearance to 500 is either true or a deliberate fabrication. If fabricated, it would have been exposed within the lifetime of the witnesses. Instead, the churches grew by appealing to this very evidence. No counter-testimony survives from any ancient source. Not from Jewish critics, not from Roman authorities, not from pagan polemicists. The earliest objection (Matthew 28:13, the disciples stole the body) presupposes the empty tomb, not a denial of appearances.

>>18553688
People cannot come back from the dead.

>>18553719
To get to the point, if Paul actually wanted people to have this verified, he could have guided the readers to visit certain persons. Maybe a preacher or an apostle who was there. But he gives no names or churches, where they might be. Are people looking for evidence supposed to scour the entire Palestine or Mediterranean to find them? It's pretty clear that the Corinthians don't know who they are, because Paul has to clarify how some have already died. In other words, it's an argumentative method meant to instill a sense of proof.
My conclusion: Paul believed that a large group of people witnessed Jesus. However, he probably didn't meet many of these people, and by the sounds of it, he didn't need to verify the claim. He already had a personal vision, and every claim, be it from a single person or for a large group, he accepts it as a fact. His attitude is already pretty clear in the fact he gives no names or directions to the Corinthians either. He didn't need much to be convinced, and more than likely they won't either.

So to answer your question: No, Paul didn't invite people to go seek the people out, and the people reading the claim didn't need to verify it. The 500 is more than likely an embellishment commonly used in ancient writing, not a matter of fact. He uses the "call to verification" as a rhetorical device here. Even one person's eyewitness account, especially if it was Peter, James or John, would've been enough to convince Paul, and Paul's words already were convincing to the Corinthians.

>>18553757
How can you know? The books literally said he came back.

>>18553736
>Paul is not claiming he originated this. He is passing on what he received.
Which makes it second-hand at best, and it does not, in fact, even make the argument any stronger. If anything, it makes it weaker.
>This is the strongest part of the claim. Paul is not saying "trust me." He is saying "go ask them." He names Peter, the Twelve, James, and then 500 others, many still living. If this were fabricated, it would be an invitation to expose the fraud. You do not tell people to verify a claim with living witnesses if the witnesses do not exist or will contradict you.
Except it's not. He does not name a single person, who was there. He doesn't mention "James, whom you know, was among them". He just mentions that the people apparently were still alive while some were dead. He's not making this letter to a general audience to argue from miracles, he's writing to the believers, who already believe. Non-Christians wouldn't have read his letter. Who would even be making the verification if it's true and how? We don't know if the apostles were even there, and were later told through a second-hand account. It's not like today, where you can easily find eyewitnesses and contact them by phone, or travel to where they are. Traveling to find people related to this specific case would have been costly and risky to your average person. Ancient fact checkers didn't travel around the Roman Empire just to verify a story they heard, nor did they have much need to. They could easily believe in visions and group appearances being real without agreeing about who the Christians saw, because divine visions were not seen with such critical eye as these days. Pagans and Jews also believed in such events. There's no need for anyone to even prove the visions wrong.

>>18553688
Someone told me all stories about jesus are unreliable as none of them were documented by first hand witnesses, written during his lifetime.

Is this true?

>>18553840
You make fair points but they cut both ways. If Paul is writing to believers who already accept the resurrection, why does he bother listing witnesses at all? He does it because the resurrection is not a metaphor or a vision. It is a historical claim, and he is grounding it in testimony. He does not say "Jesus appeared in a spiritual sense." He says "He appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve, then to more than five hundred." That is a chronological list of events, not a theological meditation.
>He does not name a single person who was there
He names Cephas, James, and the Twelve in the same passage. These are not anonymous figures. Peter and James led the Jerusalem church. Paul himself met them within a few years of his conversion (Galatians 1:18-19). The 500 are unnamed because the point is scale.
>You don't need to prove the visions wrong
This is the real issue. You are assuming these were "visions" comparable to pagan divine appearances. Paul does not use the word "vision" (horama) here. He uses the word "appeared" (ophthe), the same word used for Christ's appearance to Paul on the Damascus road. Paul's own encounter was not a dream or a subjective experience. It was blinding, physical, and left him permanently changed. He uses the same verb for the 500.
The early church distinguished sharply between visions and resurrection appearances. The martyrs did not die for a vision. They died because they claimed to have eaten with a man they watched die three days earlier (John 21). You can deceive people with a vision. You cannot deceive 500 people who saw and heard the same thing at once. Either it happened or it was fabricated, and fabrication would have been exposed within the lifetime of the named witnesses.
The argument is not airtight. No historical argument is. But the alternative is harder to believe than the claim itself: the early church invented a falsifiable claim with named living witnesses, and nobody exposed it.

>>18553688
It’s written in the gospels, so no, not but Paul.
If you don’t believe on Him who sent Jesus Christ to us, you are already in the condemnation.

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.”
John 5:24 (KJV)

He’s the king of the world. Even Jews. It was God who sent God’s Son back to us. Jesus Christ the Lord and Savior.

It is more blessed to believe than to incessantly question God’s truth He gave to us.

There is balance to questioning scary faith. To a child they can see plainly that they are accepting from their Heavenly Father the truth of His Word. Accepting God’s instruction. Only a fool says “no, I am God, and I am going to question God on this.”

Did Jesus even die on the cross? Hoe can we even believe the narrative is what actually happened? That part could be made up too.

>>18553688
>Did Jesus appear to 500 people? Did this event actually happen?
No

>>18553963
Why would they make it up?

>>18553971
>Why would one guy who wasn't there make shit up when in our current world someone just haallucinates some event that never happened on a daily basis

>>18553688
When you understand this world is not reality, you understand that the eternal life that God gave you did not disappeared.

This world is illusory.

>>18554003
They all maintained their witness to these events under penalty of death and martyrdom. Not a single one recanted on what they saw.

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>>18553971
>Why would they make it up?
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.

>>18554151
If you're gonna die without hope anyway, knowing it's all made up, might as well give some hope to those who come after.

>>18553953
>He names Cephas, James, and the Twelve in the same passage. These are not anonymous figures. Peter and James led the Jerusalem church. Paul himself met them within a few years of his conversion (Galatians 1:18-19). The 500 are unnamed because the point is scale.
NTA but he does not claim that Jesus appeared before Cephas, the twelve, and the 500 all at the same time. The 500 was apparently an event, but he doesn't claim Cephas or the Twelve were there. Like Paul mentions himself in the passage, and obviously isn't claiming he was there.
>This is the real issue. You are assuming these were "visions" comparable to pagan divine appearances. Paul does not use the word "vision" (horama) here. He uses the word "appeared" (ophthe), the same word used for Christ's appearance to Paul on the Damascus road. Paul's own encounter was not a dream or a subjective experience. It was blinding, physical, and left him permanently changed. He uses the same verb for the 500.
Is the point that Jesus did not appear as a physical, resurrected being in front of some of his followers? If it was just the same sort of vision that Paul had this means less than nothing. And if you believe Paul's experience was so profound, and the type of experience these 500 people had, then you would expect at least one of them to have written something down or had their name recorded as having experienced this, but they didn't. The only evidence of this happening at all is Paul telling us about it, and he heard it second hand.
I believe Paul was told there was an event in which Jesus appeared before 500 people, I don't think he made that up, but there are countless explanations as to why he was told that beyond him being outright lied to(although that is also a possibility)

>>18554151
>They all maintained their witness to these events under penalty of death and martyrdom
The stories of martyrdom aren't real.

>>18554151
Many groups have died for things that they genuinely believed to be true like that one cult called Heaven’s Gate, ISIS suicide bombers, Japanese kamikaze pilots, etc. Apologists often counter by saying that unlike these aforementioned groups, the apostles were eyewitnesses and therefore “definitively knew if it was true or not.” But this ignores psychological factors like group hallucinations, cognitive dissonance, or grief visions which can lead individuals to genuinely believe they saw someone who has died. And yes it is possible that multiple people can experience the same hallucinations since the gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ resurrection all contradict each other, implying that their individual hallucinations differed from each other.

Also historical records for their deaths are quite scarce and most accounts of the apostles’ deaths come from later church tradition or apocryphal texts all written centuries later. The only deaths are attested are that of Peter and Paul (via Clemont of Rome), the others lack reliable documentation.

Even if some apostles were executed, it may not have been because they were given an ultimatum to recant or die.

- They might have been executed as perceived political agitators or for specific crimes like “disturbing the peace” where recanting their belief in the resurrection wouldn't have saved them.
- In many ancient persecutions, simply being a member of a suspect movement was the crime. A late recantation might not have prevented execution.
- Psychologically, individuals who have invested their lives and reputations into a movement may choose to die rather than face the humiliation of admitting they were wrong or a fraud. This is called a sunk cost fallacy.

But there’s another possibility as well. Perhaps they did recant their faiths and this got completely scrubbed from the historical record…

>>18553971
>Why would they make it up?
because stupid people will think it strengthens the story?

>>18554428
dude, that is completely irrelevant AI slop. the story is that these people did not just believe but knew from firsthand experience unlike Heaven's Gate, and that makes all such comparisons moot. the correct answer is that the story is obviously made up, like me claiming that I flew from one balcony to another and 500 people saw it, go find them and ask them if you do not believe.

>>18553688
Name these 500 witnesses.

>>18554151
Indeed. This is why Communism is true because why else would so many people go to their deaths for it?

>...ΩΦΘΗEΠIΠΕΝΤΗΚΟΣΤOΣAΔΕΛΦΟΙΣ...
>"he appeared on Pentecost to the brethren"
>(like Acts 2, when there were 120 brethren)
>*small copying mistake, smudge, or damage to the manuscript resulting in gibberish*
>*attempted reconstruction by the next scribe*
>...ΩΦΘΗEΠAΝΩΠΕΝΤΑΚΟΣIΟΙΣAΔΕΛΦΟΙΣ...
>"he appeared to more than five hundred brethren"
Still my favorite theory