Jon Topping

Bart Ehrman ripped into me, telling me I'm not doing good history, all because I critiqued his argument against the empty tomb and Joseph of Arimathea. Ehrman is demanding evidence, however, I already gave the evidence in the full video (which he didn't watch). Ultimately, Ehrman is ignoring the historical evidence, so that he can justify his skepticism about the empty tomb.

Which Early Church theologians held to annihilationist eschatology? What did they say about the mortality or immortality of the soul, and how did it affect their view of hell? Here we’ll look at Athanasius, Justin Martyr, Theophilus, Tatian, Irenaeus, Ignatius, and Augustine.

Because Joseph of Arimathea was a member of the council of the Sanhedrin, he ends up strengthening the historical reliability of different aspects of the story of the burial of Jesus Christ. However, scholars like Bart Ehrman try to downplay his importance, even to the point of denying the story altogether. But this type of skepticism doesn’t match with what we know about history.

Skeptics will argue that, if crucifixion victims weren’t buried, then Jesus probably wasn’t either. We’ll look at the historical sources showing the fate of crucifixion victims, the sorts of exceptions that were made, and whether Roman and Jewish history lines up with how the Gospels describe what happened to Jesus’ body after He was killed.

We take a look at a couple of the most popular Jesus Mythicists; Richard Carrier, and Robert Price.