OK, Jesus’s death and resurrection are the central feature of Christianity. But what's the . . .
But it matters what really happened.
If your premise, at the outset, is that it doesn't matter what really happened, and all beliefs about miracles or "resurrection" etc. are equally nonsense, regardless of the evidence, then questions like the following are the result:
. . . But what’s the big deal? There are at least four other resurrections in the Bible and none of them are worshipped as gods.
The main reason those are not a "big deal" is that 3 of them probably did not really happen, and the 4th (Lazarus) was raised by Jesus, and so it's not Lazarus who is worshipped as a god but rather the one who raised him.
Elijah raised a young boy in 1 Kings, and he . . .
If you read the account carefully, it never really says the boy died, but only that he stopped breathing. And at that point Elijah performs the ritual to revive him. "Resurrection" properly has to mean that the one resurrected did really die, rather than just faint and possibly stop breathing momentarily. There are many documented cases of this. In some cases of this the revived one does require someone to do something or they expire, but in other cases they revive on their own without anyone doing something. But anyway, this story and the next 2 Elisha "resurrection" stories probably did not really happen.
. . . and he himself doesn’t die, but rides away on a chariot of fire.
But this probably did not really happen. The Elijah-Elisha stories are all from one source only, and this is dated 200-300 years later than the miracle events allegedly happened. For a miracle claim to be credible, the reported event and the written account reporting it need to be some time close to each other, like less than 100 years apart. Certainly 200+ years is too far removed from the event for us to give credibility to the account written so long after and likely a product of story-telling and mythologizing over that long time lapse.
Elisha then raises a son of the woman of Shunem in Kings 2, and again . . .
If we set aside the problem of the much later date of the written account, and if we assume that the earlier Elijah story is true -- perhaps he revived the boy who had fainted -- this later Elisha story can easily be recognized as a copycat story, derived from the earlier Elijah story, as the ritual performed by the prophet is identically the same in both. The extreme resemblance of the 2 stories cannot be attributed to coincidence. So even if there's some truth to the earlier Elijah story, this later story is obviously just a reproduction of the earlier one, and some details are changed -- the child really does die in the later Elisha story -- to add more impact.
So for both of these stories, there's no reason to believe, no evidence, that a dead person was brought back to life.
. . . and again after he dies, a dead man is thrown into his tomb and is resurrected when his body just touches Elisha’s bones. The last is also in 2 Kings.
Along with the problem of the much-too-late dating of the source, this incident has the added problem that there are no witnesses to it mentioned in the account.
In fact, if we take the stories at face value, there are virtually no witnesses to any of these miracle resurrection stories. Only the prophet and the mother of the child, in the first two, and no witnesses at all in the third, other than the dead man in that tomb, and when he comes to life, how does he know what happened? Obviously that dead man could easily have been a live man added to the pile by someone who thought he was dead, and he simply woke up when something struck him.
So even if we give some credibility to this one account, written 200-300 years later, there's no reason or evidence in any of it to conclude that any dead person came back to life.
But with all that, let us suppose that perhaps this or some other case of "resurrection" might have happened, whether or not they are recorded in some written accounts. That such a thing may have happened does not in any way undermine the truth of what happened in 30 AD, for which we have real evidence, which is 5 sources, or written accounts of the time, saying that Jesus was killed, witnessed by many onlookers, that he was buried, witnessed by some of the same onlookers, that his burial place was later found empty and that he was seen alive physically by many witnesses, and these saw him together in large numbers, not only 1 or 2 who could have been hallucinating, and not by someone who had never seen him before but by people who knew him from earlier and could recognize him.
So a major difference between the Jesus resurrection and earlier possible cases of someone being revived is that in the latter cases we have no serious evidence telling us of the event such as we have for the Jesus resurrection of about 30 AD. It makes a difference whether the reported event(s) really happened, and the evidence, or written accounts reporting it, are our only guide to what really did and did not happen. Just as with all other historical events we know about.
The fourth is Lazarus which we . . .
And the "big deal" here is the power of Jesus to bring a dead person back to life, and obviously not anything about worshipping Lazarus as a god.
. . . which we have already had another discussion on the oddity of Jesus’s weeping over it when he knew he was going to raise him back up.
Even if we assume the author used the Lazarus incident to make a dramatic point, and even that he added the element of emotion or sentiment, it does not undermine the credibility of the basic event reported, of a dead person being raised back to life. It is very normal for an author to take a real event for his subject matter and provide a dramatic presentation of it for us. Whether the detail that "Jesus wept" really, as a matter of fact, is obviously not what's important.
So what then is the big deal of Jesus’s resurrection.
It's a big deal if it really happened. To say it doesn't matter is just another way of saying it did not really happen and is only another fiction like some others. But it's not like others, because in this case we have real evidence that it really did happen. But also, if "resurrection" has happened at other times or places, in one way or another, that too might be a "big deal" because it means that death does not have to be the end, but that life might resume after death. The Jesus case is our clearest indication, or evidence, for this possibility -- added to the evidence he provided in the many healing miracle acts, for which also we have serious evidence, unlike other ancient miracle legends for which there is no serious evidence, i.e., written accounts of the time reporting what happened.
I once saw a billboard in Alabama claiming the resurrection split time I half. I think the morons thought AD meant after death. BC means before crucifixion. Hmmm.
But why didn’t any of these other resurrections split time I half? What’s so special about Jesus?
The much greater evidence is what's special. Or rather, the serious evidence, lacking in all other cases. Including the lack of ambiguity -- witnesses who saw him killed, saw him buried, saw him alive later. We do not have other accounts of such "resurrection" events in all the ancient literature.
And yet, interestingly, many crusader-debunkers make up stories to claim there were other "resurrections" among the pagan gods and heroes, when there are no such cases. They can't ever produce any written accounts from the time which report any such cases of a person dying and coming back to life. It's obvious that the case of Jesus is "special" -- what is perplexing is the obsession of so many debunker-dogmatists to deny this, going to extremes and pretending that the Jesus case is just one more example of a "resurrection" or "miracle" legend alongside dozens of other similar legends.
If they were honest, and choose to not believe, they would just say we don't know, and we can't explain why it is that in this one case only there is an abundance of evidence, more than enough for normal historical events, while there is no evidence for any other miracle legends. They would try to come up with theories why there is so much evidence in this one case only.
Seems to me that riding away in a Chariot of fire is far cooler, too.
Not if it didn't really happen. (Although even if it did happen, a chariot on fire might explode or meet some other unpleasant outcome, which is not cool.)
No, what's cool is the actual truth of what happened, or if something unusual really did happen. That requires looking at the evidence. Which we do have in this one case but which is always lacking in other ancient miracle "legends" or beliefs or traditions.
