Jesus dying on the cross

Factual Questions
21

Certainly you can accept #'s 1>4 without accepting #5- "Jesus was resurrected on the “3rd day”. Bup- you roll #5 into #4- there is nothing supernatural about the death of Jesus- in fact his survival would be the unusual thing to accept. Given the primitive medical skills available, it is unlikely that Jesus could survive.

I don’t know why it is so hard for some unbeleivers to accept Jesus as an all too human teacher who preached some good thoughts & died. Just because Jesus existed doesn’t mean he was the “Son of God”. These kind of dudes remind me of those radical Fundamentalists who think that if they accept Evolution as a fact, then that disproves God somehow.

I have very little faith, and am a confirmed Skeptic- I even subscribe to CSICOP. But I have no problem accepting Jesus as a man, and a teacher. To think otherwise to is toss Occams Razor out the door, too.

Jesus was a real guy- get over it.

Evolution is a fact- get over it.

22

I had to roll #5 into #4, because Moriah put it up as though that were the thing the OP had a problem with. The OP clearly didn’t have a problem with Jesus dying - he has a problem with the reports in the gospels that he was seen later (albeit contradictory reports).

There is a clear reason the OP has a problem with the resurrection and not with the other Jesus claims Moriah picked out - it’s a violation of biology. That’s qualitatively different than the other items.

23

The OP seems to have a problem with the death of Jesus- which of course would invalidate the Resurrection. But one needs no doubts about the death to question the Resurection.

It still seems to be kid of like one of those silly claims the Creationists come up with- cast some doubt on some small aspect of Paleotology, then the whole “house of cards that is Darwinian Evolution comes down, which proves the existance of God”. Reword that to- “cast some doubts upon the reality of Jesus, then the whole house of cards which is Religion comes tumbling down”. It doesn’t work that way.

24

Well, according to some sources, Jesus had a Roman father.

25

well… technically Jesus was God. You cant kill God. He must have survived even if his body died…

  • You are interrogated all night by the Sanhedrin
    *Made to walk back and forth between King Herod and Pontius Pilate’s residence

  • You get beaten by centurions

  • Get 30 lashes with a phlagellum (with sharp bones on the ends of multiple whips)

  • Made to carry your cross to the outside of Jerusalem

  • Get crucified in front of a multitude

    see if you dont die pretty fast on a cross…

THEN

*You get stabbed in the chest deep enuf so that blood and water pours out
*Taken to a cave nearby and buried with a heavy stone covering the entrance

  • You have mercenary guards standing by the entrance in case you survived all of the above

    You got to be God to get out of all that…

26

Mandrake has been suggested…
http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/146_mandrake.shtml

27

Josephus and Tacitus both say that Jesus was executed. They say nothing about a resurrection. The Bible is not a historical document and is really of no value to a question like this.

28

The accounts of the crucifixion in the gospels are similar to other accounts of Roman crucifixions. If everything happened to Jesus as they said, it would have to be a seriously complicated conspiracy among the disciples and higher-up Roman officials. The idea that the disciples would fake Jesus’ death doesn’t make sense if you consider that the disciples did not understand Jesus’ message of redemption until after his death, until then they thought he was to be their earthly king. Peter went to the point of getting his ear cut off trying to prevent Jesus from being taken into custody. Jesus’ death was seen as a defeat and was something the disciples were trying to avoid.

I understand the suspicion that his body was stolen after his death and accounts of his sightings made up, but I think the fact that he existed and was crucified is pretty supportable. Even if he was drugged and taken down from the cross, we must assume the account of him being speared in the side is false, and that he was able to recover from his other multiple injuries in three days. Remember he would still have been up there for hours, he was not given the sponge until late in the day. Add this to his other injuries and it is unlikely he could have survived even if drugged.

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/2020/2020/010411_jesus.html

Here is an interesting account of Jesus’ last days, including crucifixion rituals, that has been researched by historians.

29

To answer the OP, yes, some people have put forward theories in which Jesus did not die on the cross. The people behind The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail suggest that Jesus survived and even had children. Barbara Thiering has written several books arguing that the Gospels should not be interpreted literally, but as allegorical texts known as ‘peshers’. Google will find you more.

Whether he actually did or not is something we do not know and cannot know. We have no way of determining that particular point.

Try this little thought experiment. Imagine an event which took place within the last 40 or 50 years i.e. in the modern age of mass media, with a large crowd watching from all sides, with a colour film recording everything, with someone else making an audio recording of everything, and in broad daylight with clear visibility. You’d think we could be pretty sure about the details of that event, right? Well, not if it’s the assassination of JFK. Sure, most people either don’t know much about it or figure that it was just LHO on his own, but just look at the endless list of books, videos, magazine articles and, indeed, formal legal cases, that disagree about what hapened. And we can’t definitively prove it one way or the other.

Now contrast this with an event that took place roughly two thousand years ago (i.e. longer than you can even imagine), before any modern media, with no film or video, no audio record, not even someone on hand to make a sketch or painting, in a foreign country most Westerners couldn’t even find on a globe, and of which the first written account was written at least 70-90 years after the alleged event took place (and that’s a conservative estimate). What’s more, that first written account has been re-copied endless times, translated and re-translated and re-interpreted endless times for over 1900 years - sometimes by peope with a vested interest in making it say one thing and not another - before it gets to you, from a language which doesn’t use the same alphabet or grammar as English, and from a time in history when only specialist historians can agree what words meant (is that ‘virgin’ or ‘young woman’ or ‘betrothed young woman’?). You see the problem? The fact is, we don’t know what happened and can’t know. People who claim otherwise are being fanciful in the extreme.

Be clear: faith is not knowledge. If it were, it would be based on facts and evidence. As such, any ‘faith’ has the same truth value as any other. If you want to believe he died on the cross, that’s a perfectly good faith. If you want to believe he didn’t, that’s just as good a faith. If you want to believe he was never crucified at all, that’s just as good too.

I don’t know if Jesus died on a cross. I do know that throughout history lots of people who believe one version of events have seen fit to fight, kill and slaughter people who believe a different version of events, spilling a lot of innocent blood in the process. In other words, if Jesus did die on a cross for any purpose, that purpose is often served least well by those who claim to act in his name. And that is a fact.

30

Very good link, mascaroni. Sounds to me that mandrake could have been the original “date-rape drug”.

[ul]:smiley: [sup]Welcome to the boards![/sup][/ul]

31

ianzin, I understand your point. There are many, many points of the Bible that can be disputed, and many that have to be taken (or not) on faith. But in answering the OP, I do believe there is sufficient historical evidence that shows Jesus was a real person and was crucified. Whether or not anyone believes the Biblical implications of that is up to them.

I agree that many details of the event are questionable in their historical accuracy, like the JFK assasination. However, no matter what anyone believes the circumstances were, we still have the fact that JFK was a real person and was assassinated, and I believe there is also sufficient evidence to prove the same for Jesus. And that, knowing what we do about Roman crucifixions, it is highly unlikely that Jesus somehow survived one.

32

Yep, you believe it, and that’s your choice and the choice of millions. Millions more have either never heard of JC or think the Gospels are wholly unreliable. For more details, I heartily recommend The Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy edited by C. Dennis McKinsey, which I thnk does a pretty god job of showing that the historical support for Jesus is a lot thinner than many believers fondly imagine.

As for the crucifixion, to say it’s unlikely anyone would survive one is to miss the point. We don’t have any way of knowing whether JC was crucified, and even if he was we cannot know how accurate any of the Gospel accounts were. The various ‘conspiracy’ theories about disciples and Joseph of Arimathea managing to take JC’s body before he actually died, and then take him away to be secretly revived, don’t cut much mustard with me, but I must necessarily assign them the same truth value as any other version I’ve heard. There’s no reason to suppose the ‘back from the dead’ version carries any more weight. Likewise, if you believe that JC actually died, and in fact never did appear again, that belief is just as worthy as any other in this thread.

Suppose something happened in 1930 that you knew nothing about. Suppose that now, in the year 2003, the very first written account is produced, with no other suporting facts, evidence or testimony; no documentation; no corroboration. Suppose also that this first ever written account tells of an event or events which fly in the face of reason, evidence and experience, such as a man levitating off the ground in full view of eyewitnesses. How much credence are you going to place in that account? And what does your (God-given?) capacity for thought and reason tell you is more likely - that the laws of physics were suspended for a moment, or that the account is either mistaken or non-literal? I go with reason. It’s not perfect, and neither am I, but then I’ve never felt inspired to kill anyone because their pet version of events 2000 years ago in Judea differ from my own.

33

So we don’t leave out any crackpot theories (although I don’t subscribe to the original one myself) let’s not forget that Judas Iscariot/ Thomas Didymus was Jesus’ twin brother and died on the cross instead of Jesus. Wacky Gnostics.

34

Well, Ianzin, Cecil himself says there is no reason to not accept Jesus as a real historical person. There is documentation, also, accept it or not. FAR more documentation that any of the “conspiracy” theories. More than just about anyone of that period who wasn’t a major political leader.

You know, I beleive that Emperor Augustus lived & died too- but not that he really was a God. Same thing as King Tut.

35

There are a couple of points that, oddly enough, have not been sliced and diced yet; Evidence of death and depth of the spear wound.

In those days, nobody knew about blood circulation, the significance (maybe even the presence) of the heartbeat, or reflexes. We’re not really sure, but the test for life or death may have been holding a polished piece of metal in front of the face to check for fogging. A badly injured person might stop breathing for a short time, and be thought dead. Even these days, people “die on the operating table” and revive. My Aunt Louise did.

From what I’ve read in earlier posts, one account says Jesus was stabbed with a spear in the side and leaked blood and water. It doesn’t take much of a wound to do that. One poster assumed a wound to the pericardium, but that would seem to be a guess. Just a short poke to the abdomen would release blood from the skin and clear fluid from the peritoneum.

Having said all that, I still think it doesn’t affect the meat of Jesus’s philosophical insight and teachings. All of our musings about forensic medicine don’t change any of that.

36

The incident of poking Jesus in the side probably came from a common mythological theme (Prometheus, et.al.) in which the symbology of the liver (right abdomen) is used to portray resurrection (the liver regenerates/is rich in blood/was used as an oracle/etc.).

As far as Jesus on the cross, I’d go with Occam’s Razor as mentioned.
Jesus was a man with appealing ideas. Crucifixion was a spectacle.
Jesus was mythologized using the current spectacles of the time.

37

[ nitpick ] Peter didn’t get his ear cut off he cut the ear off of one of the people in the mob that came to arrest him. [/ nitpick ]

38

Make that "of one of the people who came to arrest Jesus
:smack:

39

A Roman citizen was given 40 lashes less one. A non-Roman got 40. In the Acts of the Apostles it says that St. Paul got the 40 less one. Jesus would, presumably, have gotten the full 40.

As noted above, Jesus is considered to have died relatively quickly on the cross. In his novel King Jesus, Robert Graves suggests that the man who flogged Jesus “did him a favor” by really tearing into him so he would succumb quickly when on the cross rather than have a slow, excruciating death. I have even heard it suggested that this is why Pilate said “ecce homo” (“behold the man”) when he brought Christ out on the balcony; Jesus may have been beaten beyond recognition at that point, and he wanted to assure the crowd that this was the same person as they were expecting.

There are said to be nearly one hundred apocryphal books to the New Testament which were produced in the early centuries of the Christian era. At least one of the apocryphal gospels says that when a person in the crowd soaked a sponge with wine vinegar and placed it on a reed for Christ to drink ( adetail included in Biblical accounts), he was actually slipping him a drug to simulate death. Later, so the story went, when Jesus was taken to the tomb an antidote was given which caused the poison to be vomited up. I believe this was in the Gospel According to Philip, but I was unable to find a citation when I searched the Web just now.

All this means is that the Bible, if it is to be accepted, is to be accepted on faith. The case would be the same without this story.

40

Do you mean this Gospel according to Philip?
I can’t find anything about poisons or antidotes. The only parts I can find that might be relevant are this passage:

which seems to say that Philip believes Jesus’s real mission only began when he rose from the dead, when he “rose up”. It doesn’t appear to be suggesting that Jesus didn’t die.

And this passage:

which also, in context, appears to suggest that he died since he left “that place” (the land of the living).

Actually, that Gospel according to Philip is quite a good read, some nice prose in there:

This appears to be a biblical version of Richard Dawkins’ immortal gene theory.

Hmm… you may be right Philip, but I’ve heard tales about humans and sheep getting closer than they ought….