Just wanted to note that Islam is way ahead of the OP on this. The Qur’an says in verse 4:157, “They did not slay him, neither crucified him, only a likeness of that was shown to them.” The verse reiterates: “And they slew him not of a certainty” (i.e. they definitely did not kill him, with emphasis on the certainty of his not being killed).
As to how it would appear to people that Jesus had been crucified when he really hadn’t, the Qur’an doesn’t specify. Here, “crucified” is understood to mean “death by crucifixion” in the same way that “electrocution” means “death by electricity.” IOW, he could have been nailed up on the cross and taken down alive, and later resuscitated, is one possibility. I honestly don’t know how to explain this part. We just don’t know enough definite historical facts about these alleged events.
Some Muslims in Kashmir developed an apocryphal notion that after all those events in Palestine with the Romans and the Sanhedrin etc. were over and done with, Jesus went to India to retire. The tour guides will show you his alleged tomb in Srinagar, Kashmir, if you visit there. This is, needless to say, not widely accepted in the Muslim world outside of Kashmir. The same verse in the Qur’an says that God raised up Jesus to be with Him.
It wasn’t taking the bodies down that was the problem, it was the manner of burial. Pilate could have allowed Jewish authorities to take the bodies and give them a criminal’s burial. He could not have allowed an honorable burial. Kirby thinks that a criminal’s burial, either by the Romans or the Jewish authorities is plausible but that an honorable burial in a tomb is not. In either of the first two scenarios the whereabouts of Jesus’ burial would have been unknown to Jesus’ followers (who had scattered and probably fled back to Galilee after the Passover). This is why Crossan makes the claim that “those who knew” where Jesus was buried did not care, and that “those who cared did not know.”
Kirby’s thesis further posits that the first visionary experiences came in Galilee, possibly years after the crucifixion and that the empty tomb is a much later Markan creation.
They are also ALL the same person, and none of Him have ever died. All I can say is, “LORD have mercy on His soul.” He’s been a very bad little boy, and he needs a spanking!
I think that this whole Jesus episode goes to show: If you’re going to crucify someone, also set them on fire. In addition to it looking pretty, you don’t have a bunch of historians and psuedo-historians arguing about it 1,975 years later.
Besides, having one’s Savior handed to one in a bucket has to be a psychological kick in the crotch.
Well, if I wasn’t going to hell before, I’m on my way now.
Well now, it seems that my OP must have anticipated that the concise, deductive reasoning Of Diogenes the Cynic would rise to more succinctly convey the subtle connotations implicit in my construct of the hypothesis, a reasoning that I apparently assumed, erroneously, would be shared by the whole of the Teeming Masses. To the extent that I may have over-estimated anyone’s analytical faculties (or under-estimated their sensibilities), I do apologize.
Let me hasten to add that I consider myself to be a Christian in the sense that I DO believe there was a charismatic and influential entity some 2000 years ago who has come to be known as (the) Christ. What I DON’T believe, however, is that the Bible presents a true, accurate, consistent, believable and scientifically defensible record of that entity’s life and times, or of the origin of the Universe, Earth, and Man for that matter. Someone please correct me (as I’m sure you will) if I am mistakenly recalling that a careful analysis of scripture posits that the Universe (or at least the Earth) is/are some 40,000 years old. Now, if you believe that, your view of the Deity would likely include the necessity of (the Deity) having created all those dinosaurs just a mere second ago (in cosmic time), then skewing the laws of nature and scientific analysis to cause their fossils to appear, in modern times, to be millions of years old. There are those who will argue that indeed, an omniscient Deity WOULD have just such a power. But, would not the Deity have done just the opposite, i.e., caused the fossil record and all the other scientific evidence of the antiquity of the Universe to appear such that Creation had occurred (only) 40,000 years ago (or whatever the number is)? And what of those pesky stars that dare present themselves as four to five billion years old?? The Deity must be having one colossal Chuckle having perpetuated this clever Hoax on we mere mortals. Please.
As far as *the link * goes, the OP’s first mention of Ockham’s Razor was clearly hyperlinked, as is the Dopers’ custom to offer explanation for terms that might not be universally known. Having once presented that, it is unlikely that I would have made the same reference a second time. If anyone was truly offended by the subject matter there, I again apologize. I suppose that my attempt to draw a parallel between what is almost certainly a hoax and what is impossible to conclude is a non-hoax failed miserably. Perhaps Diogenes the Cynic could have more precisely presented the intended irony. Oh,and if the gist of the link HAS been discussed (and debunked) here, a link to THAT discussion would have been useful.
Thank you.
It looks to me like you set up a premise, purporting to believe it, and then hoped everyone would tear it apart. Then when people disagreed with your premise, you could come back and say, “I never believed it, I was playing devil’s advocate to show how silly it all is.” What a waste of time. And then insult anyone’s intelligence who took your post at face value, but thinly veil the insult with an apology.
Please what? I’m not sure who your long diatribe was aimed at, though you did quote me in the beginning of your response. Are you assuming I hold the views you are mocking? While I did provide links to research performed by someone who obviously is a believer, I did so, because I felt his reasearch regarding crucifixion was valid and on topic. Though I did not claim to hold the same beliefs, I can recognize his research and say it seemed some good evidence to demonstrate that a victim of crucifixion would most likely die.
I wish like hell I could remember where I read this, but another possible explanation for the “blood and water” is that the soldier (accidentally or not) performed a pneumothorax with his spear, draining one of Jesus’s lungs, relieving some of the pressure that was asphyxiating him.
A healthy young man could last up to three days on the cross, according to some sources, so I find it unlikely that Jesus died after just a few hours.
While I have no real reason for taking seriously the claim that Jesus went to India, on the other hand the idea is not all that implausible. The Roman Empire in those days was trading with India (either by ship from Egypt through the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea to Kerala, where many Roman coins have been found, or else via a branch off the Silk Road through Persia and Afghanistan). There had been contacts between India and the Mediterranean world since the time of Alexander the Great.
There were some wise men of Jesus’s era who were interested in traveling to India to access the fabled wisdom of the East. The 2nd-century A.D. Egyptian philosopher Plotinus joined the army because he wanted to go to India (and apparently thought joining the army would make travel affordable, since he wasn’t rich; he only got as far east as Babylon, though). Apollonius of Tyana was a 1st-century Greek philosopher who did go to India.
The 19 unaccounted-for years of Jesus’s life between his child prodigy performance in the Temple and his baptism in the River Jordan are a natural tempation for fringe believers to speculate on what exactly he did in all that time. His supposed travel to India is a perennially popular speculation.
So work with me, here: If Jesus really had been to India and studied the disciplines of yoga, he could have mastered mind-over-body control, slowing his breathing and heartbeat enough to simulate death. (Swami Rama actually did demonstrate these techniques while being measured with scientific instruments at the Menninger Clinic in 1966.) And then revive himself not much the worse for wear.
The theory does make sense in a bizarre sort of way, although of course there’s nothing to back it up, only speculation. Nothing but some alleged ancient manuscripts found in Kashmir, but I’m quite skeptical of the authenticity of their claims, as I remain very doubtful of the purported “Tomb of Jesus” in Srinagar, Kashmir. The story rests on the idea that he went to Kashmir to hang out with the Jews there. Excuse me? What Jews? OK, Jews in Iran? of course. The Book of Esther is well known. Jews in Afghanistan? Yes, they were an extension of the ancient Persian Jewish communities and remained there until the late 20th century. But Jews further east? in northern India? Uh-uh, I don’t think so. The only Jews of India were the Cochin Jews in Kerala, who sailed there on the trade winds. But Kerala is clear over at the opposite end of India from Kashmir, and the two places had nothing to do with each other.
I wouldn’t have a problem with this except that Jesus didn’t just keel over one day. He suffered from tremedous blood loss, probably had his legs broken to cause suffocation, and had a spear inserted into his side.
Slow your heartbeat and breathing all you like, you’re going to be dead once you endure that kind of abuse. Even if you do survive, you aren’t going to live long sealed in a tomb(or as some people have suggested…burned in a lime pit) with broken legs, bleeding from some really big wounds and with a big hole in your side.
The water is a Johannine symbol. Throughout John’s gospel, his megalomaniacal Jesus takes pains to emphasize again and again that he is a “font of living water” and the like. Lo! He does indeed spring forth living water!
Jesus could have been on there for days. Mark’s hourly breakdown is Markan symbolism–3rd, 6th and 9th hours–3 times, all divisible by three, evidencing a distinctly Jewish use of threes to emphasize things. Brilliant use of symbolism, that should put Mark alongside Shakespeare and Dante as the greatest writers of all time, but it’s not an historical account of anything.
Mark made the Passion up. He seems to be aware that Jesus died on a Roman cross, when Pilate was praefect and Caiaphas high priest, that Simon of Cyrene helped him with the cross, that the charge was “The King of the Jews,” and that Jesus died, but his followers didn’t. Other than that, the only source Mark used was Jewish scripture and his own imagination.
HPL, you can take every word in the Bible as literal historical truth, if you like. The way I see it, we don’t really have any historically reliable account (it’s doubtful the Gospels are every primary sources). So all bets are off and we’re free to speculate and weave our own nonfactual versions, for what it’s worth. That and $1.83 will buy you a Starbucks grande.
The Gospels aren’t firsthand sources, but they are the closest thing we have. And out of everything in them, Jesus being killed on the Cross would seem to be one of the least debatable elements.
HPL, after I posted last night I realized the mistake I had made in thinking you were following the Bible as literal fact. You said that Jesus’s legs were broken in contradiction to the Bible. So you and I are both making up stuff on our own, sorry for mistaking you for a literalist. We’re each picking and choosing which parts we want to accept. It’s just as the Qur’an says about Jesus: “Those who are at variance concerning him surely are in doubt regarding him; they have no knowledge of him, except the following of surmise.”
Also, I meant to type “it’s doubtful the Gospels are even primary sources.”
Ok. My analytical faculties are limited. I can only answer to simple questions. When I’m asked about Jesus being still alive or not after crucifixion, my limited intellect makes me tend to discuss this issue. It didn’t occur to me me that the question actually included the likehood of Jesus being actually ressurected, the way corpses are rotting in a coffin, biblical litteralism, whether or not there are hoax sites out there and which are those, and dinosaurs.
So, for simple-minded people like me, could you tell us what this thread is about exactly?
If possible by clearly delimiting the perimeter of the question rather than by posting links to a hoak site about rotting corpses expecting that it will be an obvious hint that your “Was Jesus in a comatose state after crucifixion?” actually meant “Is the fossile record reliable?”
