In terms of application of the rules, he certainly wasn’t – as I read it that was one of his major points of contention with the Pharisees.
Actually it is militant atheists who read the Bible most literally without looking at the historical context and reading it as if they had Asperger’s.
Heee! Yeah, you may be right. I did take it all literally as a kid and that is what eventually caused me to disregard it altogether.
Excellent question. Many clues to Jesus after the crucifixion is right in the Bible. In earlier days, people were satisfied with simple TV shows like “I Love Lucy”. Today, one must be more attentive and analytic to follow shows like “Breaking Bad” or “CSI”, so apply that approach to the Bible.
They routinely broke the legs before taking people down from the cross, which implies they had a problem with the executed walking away. They didn’t for Jesus, with one guard saying “don’t bother, this one’s already dead”. Perhaps the wailing women elicited pity, or he thought the sword wound was fatal. I doubt Jesus would have stayed conscious so long on the cross had he suffered internal bleeding from that wound. Anyway, the guards weren’t competent to certify death. Some have wondered why common criminals were being crucified along with Jesus since that show was usually reserved for political dissidents, such as the Spartacus slave uprising.
Forget the illustrations of a 6 ft diameter stone. They dug small cavities in the limestone, so the stone would have been maybe 3 ft diameter. You find similar burials anywhere there are limestone cliffs (ex. Torajah in Indonesia). The tomb guards were scared away by “ghosts”, which wasn’t hard in those days. The 4 gospels differ on facts, but there was one or more villagers beside or inside the tomb when others came, who said “he rose and walked away”.
People later saw Jesus around the town. At one point Thomas doubted, and Jesus had him feel the nail holes in his hands to verify that he was alive and human. Brazilians and Filipinos like to prove that one can be nailed to a cross and the holes later heal. In some cases, the disciples didn’t immediately recognize Jesus. That confirms that he looked like the other Semitic people in that area, making the European paintings of a white Jesus fanciful. I expect someone in the Bible would otherwise have referred to him as “the white guy with blue eyes”. With limited travel and much cousin-marrying, probably everyone looked similar. Much later, Jesus was seen on a hill above former disciples fishing in a boat. He famously told them to “cast your net on the other side” and they pulled in much fish. One can see a school of fish better when looking down from a hill, but could have been a miracle. That was the last anyone mentions seeing Jesus.
Recent discoveries in Palestine could be the tomb of Jesus and family. Time will tell. He may have lived a normal life afterwards and decided that his preaching wasn’t appreciated enough to risk more punishment. Why Jesus? Many other preachers were tortured or murdered throughout history. Paul (the Roman citizen) was the one who spread Christianity thru the Roman Empire. He truly believed that Jesus rose from the dead to Heaven, and he died for his preaching. The Empire later expropriated Christianity for its own means.
I think it is encouraging that most religious books were not strongly edited to show their heroes in better light. The story of Buddha relates him sneaking milk from some maidens, while telling his followers to fast. They left him when they found out. The Book of Mormon has many stories that might have been polished more. Indeed, that church recently made available many early documents that could be embarrassing. Only the crazies pick and choose their stories. Crazier Christians like to focus on the Old Testament and Revelations (rantings of a mad geezer?).
What one must claim to be “a Christian” varies widely. I grew up in Southern Baptist territory where most claimed only they were Christians (I was an evil Presbyterian). The most enlightened would say that anyone who strives to follow the teachings of Jesus is a Christian. Those teachings are independent of whether there ever was a historic man named Jesus. Some speculate that John The Baptist (Jesus mentor) was spreading the ideas of Buddhism to formerly nomadic people, a philosophy that is a better fit to domestic villages. Personally, I define Christianity as following the New Testament (less Revelations). The Old Testament is a totally different philosophy (no “turn the other cheek” there), more suited to the Bedouin tribesmen who wrote it. I think anyone who uses the word “believe” is an idiot. I don’t even know what that word means.
I haven’t the time or the patience to pull all of the latest post in this more-than-three-days-dead thread to pieces, but this:
No, they routinely kept people up there for as long as it took for them to be good and dead, and then some, and the reason generally given for breaking the prisoners’ legs on this occasion was to hasten their deaths. AIUI you can take some of your weight on your legs while being crucified to take the strain off your breathing muscles; long term it comes to the same thing, but you can’t do it at all if your legs have been broken for you.
The reason for wanting them dead in a hurry on this occasion was that there was a religious holiday coming up, and the Jewish powers that be wanted the execution over and the bodies removed by sundown.
Even so, I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if there were some botched crucifixions now and then. Given the slow, painful and gradual nature of dying in this way, it doesn’t seem unlikely that someone might appear dead before they were actually dead. Take them down too soon, and well…
“You’re not dead before you’re dead for three days and dead” may not be a bad rule of thumb for this sort of thing.
If you get plucked down before you even look properly dead, then crucifixion is certainly survivable. There is a mention in [URL=“http://www.ccel.org/j/josephus/works/autobiog.htm”]Josephus of someone walking away from a crucifixion (and no, it’s the not the guy you may be thinking of):
[QUOTE=Josephus]
I saw many captives crucified, and remembered three of them as my former acquaintance. I was very sorry at this in my mind, and went with tears in my eyes to Titus, and told him of them; so he immediately commanded them to be taken down, and to have the greatest care taken of them, in order to their recovery; yet two of them died under the physician’s hands, while the third recovered.
[/QUOTE]
(Not saying that anything like this was going on with Jesus. In his case, “it was a miracle” or “someone made it up” both still seem like more satisfying explanations.)
I identify as Christian but don’t take the resurrection literally. It’s certainly a minority view, but not that uncommon. I realize that it disqualifies me in the eyes of many, but I believe what I believe.
I added to the last post I found about the resurrection, which seems sensible. Trolls love complaining “old post”, but many here don’t restrict thought to instant tweets.
Good point that “breaking the legs” was requested to hasten things, since the Sabbath approached. It does read more like a special effort to hasten death, though could have been a routine part of the show they wanted moved along. Someone could research other historical sources. It is only mentioned in the John version, along with piercing Jesus’ side. Indeed, the whole crucifixion scene varies greatly between the 4 gospels, one involving an earthquake. BTW, I was wrong to state that Jesus was poked initially, it was only when removing him from the cross. I should have paid more attention in Sunday School. There is a beautiful song about his “pierced side” (thank John for that). The main issue is whether Jesus was dead when he was entombed. Earlier in the Bible, Jesus knew that Lazarus was alive in his tomb. A miracle, or did he hear something? I expect that many people went to a too-early grave, especially with the mandate to bury before the sun set. I envision a few medieval funerals where there was some noise from the coffin, but everyone pretended not the hear anything as they shoveled on the soil. No sense risking evil spirits.
In similar vein, the Xmas story w/ 3 wise men is only in Luke, with the others starting off with teenage Jesus. One might surmise that such elaborations were added later, since the other gospels would otherwise have mentioned them. One thing with scrolls is that you can’t just lose the first pages. One would envision others pointing out Jesus as “the kid born under the holy star” and wonder where he hid the gold if the Xmas story was factual.
But, no reason to let that dampen Xmas. As I stated, I think one can be a Christian without even knowing that Jesus actually lived. If it gives comfort, you can say “I believe”, but that seems to mean that you claim you know something that you don’t actually know.
I’ve never taken “I believe” to be an overreaching claim. It’s sufficiently personal and subjective that it should, in my opinion, generally be taken at face value. “I believe” is much softer than “I know.”
People who say they believe in nearly any given theological or spiritual tenet are able to co-exist with each other, even those who hold diametrically opposite beliefs.
It’s those who say, “I know” who are problematic, as to hold a contradictory belief is, in essence, to say to them, “No, you don’t.”
I have a pen-pal who is studying for the ministry. I’m always happy to exchange, “Well, I believe X” letters with her. But I feel a bit imposed upon when she says, “I know X.” It puts me at a disadvantage, as, in my beliefs, she doesn’t “know” any such thing. It’s a dialogue killer. But “I believe” is a dialogue enabler.
(Or…so I believe!)
Actually, the wise men are in Matthew, which doesn’t explicitly state that there were three of them. Luke has a different Christmas story, with shepherds. And an incident in Luke is the only depiction of a teenage Jesus in any of the four gospels.
You’re a bit green here to common on what “many” people do, aren’t you? Trolls may well love complaining “old post”, but the converse claim would be illogical, of course; one may prefer letting sleeping zombies lie without being a troll. Perhaps you should check my (short-ish, but hey) posting history if you think I’m in the habit of trolling.
Or, you know, reached down a Bible or used Google, as long as you were deciding to set the record straight on other people’s ignorance from a couple of years ago.
You can disprove any miracle claim from the Bible by starting off from the standpoint “Miracles can’t happen. Therefore, any other explanation, however ill-supported, is clearly preferable,” but you’re not quite adhering to the path of wisdom if you’re in the habit of beginning an argument by begging the question.
Shush! Don’t muddy the waters with inconvenient facts.
Some apparently feel threatened here, thus the nit-picking. Thanks for fleshing out the details. It does need more editing and I don’t have time to pick thru every Bible verse.
My main claim is that if people today analyze the Jesus story in the Bible (un-biased by personal religion) as if a “Breaking Bad” plot, most would surmise that Jesus did not die from the cruxifiction. He was seen walking about the area later (since they didn’t break his legs), and met with his disciples. They did feel his body and witness the wounds. He appeared like a regular human, if you discount the “he walked thru walls” statements from some witnesses. If your “beliefs” lead you to other explanations, that is fine. I have gotten the plot line wrong in shows many times, and certainly juries often convict innocent people and free guilty ones. We have long had only the Bible as a historical source. It is amazing that historical relics have turned up almost 2000 years later, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and tombs that may be related to the story. To me, those findings are the true miracles.
Nah, it’s just that this is the Dope. We don’t need any nefarious motives to pick your nits.
(After all, “Cite?” is our motto. Didn’t you get the T-shirt when you signed up? Just pop down to supplies, and they’ll fix you up with one.)
The simple way to get around this is to just bring the facts straight away. Otherwise you’ll be all out of nits by the time you get to the argument.
Excellent complaint. I should have done much more researching. wikipedia has excellent articles on Jesus infancy. Matthew does discuss it, but his version would give a much different Xmas story, unless you are into minimalist theater, and care to suffer thru Herod’s infanticide scene. Luke’s is the more elaborate version most cherish.
I will leave with one more point in the Resurrection story that struck me years ago when reading up for a Sunday School lesson for teenagers (smart ones, I didn’t mention it). Luke 24:35-48, has Jesus show up while his disciples are eating and asks (today’s language), “got anything to eat?”, then eats fish voraciously. This has been much discussed since a spirit presumably would not need food. A learned Father answers here: Did Jesus really eat after the Resurrection? | The New Theological Movement , basically saying that he went thru the act of eating, but the food vanished in his organs without being digested. Imagine the scatalogical implications were that not true.
Everything in the Bible has been analyzed in excruciating detail, with perhaps a thesis written about every verse. An unbelievable (pun intended) number of human-hours, mostly funded by the public. If you are Jewish or can pass, you can live a nice life in Israel by simply claiming, “I’m studying the Torah”. Many taxpayers there question the return on that investment. BTW, I am not anti-preacher and have 2 ministers in my close family. They do very good work, most of it in counseling and ministering to those in suffering.
I was raised Methodist in south Georgia.
No one then (“then” being the middle 1960s) in the Methodost church believed the Bible was literally true but everyone at least gave lip service to the resurrection. There were many alternative descriptions of things like the creation of the universe considered appropriate for Methodists (“the universe is about fifteen billion years old… life dates back to the Precambrian era… early mammals arose after the Mesozoic and our species evolved from the primate branch…”) whereas there were NO alternative descriptions being floated around as Methodist-appropriate for the resurrection ("… so the followers thought so much of what he had taught that they felt that what Jesus actually was outlived his mortal life and was still alive", or whatever).
It did seem like people were awkward and almost apologetic about it, especially when speaking to use (“us” being children) as if they would really rather change the subject to how good it is to do good works in the community.
The hegemony of the Born-agains and the fundamentalist Biblical literalism associated with them, that came a bit later. They were around in the '60s but had not as of yet impacted mainstream Protestant denominations like Methodism in a big way.