Jesus is buried in India. There are reports of a mystic from the west that moved to India at the correct time to have been Jesus. There is a shrine in a small village devoted to this man. Fortunately, the Indians simply accepted him as another spiritually advanced individual, and was allowed to continue his teachings.
I have gathered this information from friends that have visited India, and recieved this information first hand from locals, and others who have visited the shrine. Of course, this man’s identity is impossible to prove. But it’s the only direct answer I have seen.
Since I am not a biblical scholar, what does the Bible say specifically happened to Jesus and his body after the resurrection?
dude I’m 20 and was raised Catholic. No doubt i have some religious beliefs. This question was basically one of thousands that I have about my religion.
We can discuss the existence of Jesus, the disposition of his body, and the relevance of his teachings all day, but the one thing that you guys always forget in these discussions is that the underlying principle of religion is faith. All of your requests for cites are basically asking someone to prove their faith and are therefore silly.
Has it been answered then to your satisfaction? If not, why not?
Again, I’ll just say you are overly complicating things. You can’t equate modern science with ancient texts and expect them to correlate. They won’t…and they don’t. The easiest obvious answer is that they were simply written by men, and from the mind of men, who didn’t know anything about how the universe really operates, and so simply incorporated into their texts their own understand and world view (which was primative, to say the least). Even if you believe the whole divine inspiration thing (which I don’t), the tools god used (i.e. the people who actually did the writing) still didn’t have a clue how the universe opperated, and so incorporated their own world view into their writtings. The third possibility, that god dictated the bible, etc, verbatum, means that god him/herself hasn’t got a clue as far as how the universe operates…which would be pretty ironic IMO.
So, instead of a fruitless attempt at making the NT/OT jive with modern science, just read the thing(s) and believe…or don’t. Religion in the end comes down to belief or nonbelief. You can’t KNOW anything. Thats the difference between it and science…you can’t test religion, you can’t study ‘god’, all you an do is look at the WRITINGS of other men from thousands of years ago and speculate…you will never be able to test or experiment or analyze critically the data (since there IS no data), so you have to simply believe.
(BTW, I’m 39, been there, done that, and have the tee shirt :))
Afaik, Airman Doors, the only request for a cite in this thread was about the supposed ‘Roman writings’ about Jesus…and thats a valid request for data, not something to prove ‘faith’…which as you pointed out is impossible. There IS no data, no cite that ‘proves’ religion…its all based on belief and faith.
Since he went up in a blaze of glory, I think you should assume whe was traveling at the speed of light. Thus, he is now 2000 light-years away, possibly passing the star-forming region in Orion…
I remember reading about a small town in Japan which claims that Jesus retired there (rather than being crucified in Judea). There’s even a sign saying, “Home Town of Jesus Christ!” Any Dopers in Japan ever hear of this?
My own opinion is that you might as well ask for the precise location of Prester John’s capital city.
Some versions of Christianity do believe that “Heaven” as in the seat of God and the departed saintly souls, is an actual place within the Universe; others believe it’s part of the Universe but not physical or definable; others, that it’s a completely different State of Being from our physical Universe.
As tom~ mentioned, the orthodox belief about the resurrected Christ is that his human body, was transformed into a “glorified” state that transcends everyday physical limitations. Think of it as that now his physical body moves and acts in multiple dimensions/planes of existence. As to how come he could do that, remember, under the standard Christian belief, we’re talking about one person of the Trinity, i.e. “God”. If you hold the standard Christian belief, this God can do anything, and conservation of matter/energy/angular momentum, the speed limit of light, you name it, it doesn’t apply. God would exist “beyond” such things as time or space themselves, in the sense of before/after, in/out, close/far – which is not the same as “somehow outside” (“outside the universe” or “before the big bang” are meaningless statements). It is a matter of faith, not of factual answers.
That this particular ‘tradition’ can only be documented back to 1899 hardly inspires confidence. If it proves anything, it is how easy it is for invented traditions to become oral ones. Especially if there are tourists to impress.
According to this site, Josephus wrote Antiquities in about 90 AD. The reference to Jesus is in the following passage (the parts in CAPITALS are the bits which are thought to have been added by christians):
That “Roman guy” was Tacitus who lived from 56 - 120 AD and published his Annals in about 115 AD. He says:
Unlike Josephus, Tacitus is (far as I’m aware) pretty reliable. He generally checked his facts and didn’t accept things uncritically. It has been suggested that Tacitus was merely relaying what Christians told him. This is possible but isn’t necessarily the case. He was well thought of in Rome and may well have had access to official Imperial archives on which he based his Annals. Certainly this statement:
sounds, to me, more like a simple statement of the facts as he knew them than him relaying something of uncertain veracity. But YMMV.
Cremation – My understanding is that the prohibition on it was a limited one. Or at least it was declared one in retospect.
At one point the Chuch allegedly said the following:
Hey, look, we didn’t mean to rule out that particular method of handling the corpse problem. It’s just that it was often used by rebels to spit on doctrine in general and the “resurrection of the dead” in particular. It was a way, for many if not all throgh history of contemptuously saying, Hey! Resurrect THIS!
But if people want to use this method for other reasons than that, they can still be Catholics in good standing. After all, some people were reduced to ashes naturally, or died by other means and later their corpses ended up being consumed by fire. Since nothing is too great for the Almighty to handle, everyone will be resurrected, so it doesn’t really matter.
