I would like to offer one more possibility, the one I think is most likely what happened.
Now you’re getting it. But I disagree about the clinically insane part. After the cross, he was just plain dead.
This is the Lord, liar or lunatic meme, which only works for those brought up in a way where calling Jesus anything but divine is an awful offense to society.
If you did not grow up Christian, this has no power at all.
Just to pop in with a side detail that always jumps out at me: as presented in the text, Joseph doesn’t exactly react with wholehearted enthusiasm when he hears from Mary; but then he changes his mind, after an angel appears to him…
…which, so far, sounds a lot like the liar/lord/lunatic set-up: either that story is false, or Joseph really did meet some kind of supernatural entity; or maybe the guy was just plain crazy. But if the story is true and he wasn’t crazy, then that leaves the possibility that he in fact got met an angelic messenger…
…in a dream. That’s how the passage wraps up, that an angel visited Joseph (which at first sounds like a Very Big Deal) in a dream (which isn’t a Very Big Deal); and that Joseph reacted as if this was a Very Big Deal; and this is presented as if we’re meant to gasp and respond, “oh, yes, of course, that’s a Very Big Deal.”
Which means, I guess, that folks back then honestly believed meeting an angel in a dream was a Very Big Deal; again, it’s not, but people who weren’t liars or lunatics seem to have jaw-droppingly flubbed that ‘lordliness’ call anyway.
If Divine - he could not die - not even for a moment.
You cannot simultaneously be dead and not dead - you cannot be dead and resurrect ‘yourself’.
What you keep doing is called ‘special pleading’ - it is not reasonable, it is not logical - it is, by definition, irrational.
You’re welcome to your belief(s) - but do not dare to pass them off as reasonable or rational.
But he already knew he would be resurected - he didn’t give up his life, as he got it right back.
If I take a three-day jaunt to Albuquerque, do you think it proper that I tell people I live there? Unless you can come up with a verse that says basically “I give up my ability to ever take human form again”, then he gave up nothing.
I agree with you. I just think that if Christians say they believe original sin and that it is okay to punish people for something they didn’t do they should be okay being punished for real crimes of their ancestors. If it is good enough for God surly it should be okay for them. Don’t see the hypocrites lining up at the jails.
Actually, I saw Chicago on Broadway today and Joseph reminds me of Amos. 
The problem is that it feels obvious to you that what kind of food you eat is unimportant while what kind of sex you have is important. However, there’s no objective reason why you should feel this way. Food is important (you know the sentence “you’re what you eat”) and there’s no particular reason outside a specific cultural (and religious) background why dietetary rules should be deemed of little importance while sexual purity should be deemed of tremendous importance. There’s no objective reason why having sex deemed impure should be a serious issue while having food deemed impure wouldn’t be.
You’re in fact conditioned by your cultural background into thinking that one is much more important than the other and expresses it as if it was self-evident when it’s not. Had you been brought up in a different culture, you’d equally feel that of course dietary rules are extremely important, who can’t see that what you eat matters a lot? And on top of it, you deity(ies) of choice would have clearly stated that it seriously mattered to him, in case it wouldn’t be self-evident enough.
It doesn’t seem you realize that your feelings about what is an important rule and what isn’t is rooted into your cultural background and belief system. Could you try to forget for a moment about this cultural and religious background that led you to feel it’s self-evident, and give a clearly objective reason why a god should obviously care about whether or not you had sex with another man, but obviously shouldn’t care about whether or not you had lobster?
That’s making several assumptions :
-That the story about the resurrection was already told very early (as opposed to be made up a couple decades or more later)
-That the Jews/Romans deemed it important enough to be worth disproving (and at the cost of unearthing a dead body which would probably have been seen by both as sacrilegous).
-That they didn’t, in fact, disprove it. It’s not like we have (or should expect to have for such a remote time and place) much information about what the Romans and Jews thought and did about Jesus and the nascent cult about him. Plenty of people even nowadays keep believing things that have been clearly disproven. There’s no reason why fervent believers of the time would have been any different from fervent believers now (“This rotting body they showed? Of course, it wasn’t Jesus! That was just some other guy’s body! They’re lying to you to suppress the truth!”).
You’re probably overestimating the importance of “first days Christianism” when you assume that it would have seriously bothered the authorities at the time, and probably overestimating the likelihood that any trace would remain if anything had been said or done about it. Even for people and events of obviously major significance for the whole empire, we have very few sources and evidences from this time, so for an obscure preacher in a remote province, just forget about it.
And the members of Heaven’s Gate commited mass suicide because they were convinced that they would be brought away by Jesus piloting a spaceship. People have been willing to die for a number of beliefs that you would deem false. That the apostoles did the same doesn’t prove the veracity of their claims (assuming, of course, that the stories about their deaths are true to begin with).
The problem is that you cannot even assume that there was any missing body to begin with. Trying to find naturalistic explanations for an event when we don’t even know if it happened and how it happened is pointless.
Also, one quick Biblical point regarding that story where the body of Jesus is taken from the tomb: that comes up in the text itself, doesn’t it? It gets mentioned and addressed and ends with a little note that the saying is commonly reported among the Jews unto this day, and then the narrative picks back up.
And that story, according to the Bible, is that, what, the guards get asked to spread a tale about how the body was taken away by the disciples? And the guards, as far as I can tell, accept a bribe to do this? And the tale, unless I’m missing something, is still commonly reported when the Book of Matthew is being written?
So, first: taking this seriously means starting with the premise that the guards in question will totally accept bribes to lie about whether disciples of Jesus took the guy’s body? Because, if so, then how awkward is that conversation?
“I wonder if the disciples of Jesus took the guy’s body by bribing the guards?”
“No WAY, man! Not THOSE guards, man! Not the BRIBABLE guards!”
“Wow, you seem sure about this. Do you know their names?”
“I do not; all I know about them is: THEY TOOK BRIBES!”
“To lie about whether the disciples took the body?”
“Yes, that’s the part I of course grant is true.”
(And, second: if they took the bribe and spread the tale, such that it’s commonly reported decades later, then who spilled the beans about the bribe?)
Very true. And a large number of those who died for their beliefs in the past 1800 years were aided in dying by Christians.
Sure, plenty of people have died for their beliefs throughout history across all different religions. Whether their beliefs were right or wrong, they believed them to be right.
But how many people have died for a belief that they knew to be false? That’s the argument I was making regarding the Apostles.
Please list for me how you think each of the Apostles died.
Argument from personal certainty
Perhaps they thought he was the Messiah and King of Israel and a resurrection had nothing to do with it. Being resurrected was not really on the Messiah to-do list.
ETA: Not to mention that thinking a belief is true doesn’t make it true. As has been so amply demonstrated. Joseph Smith died for his beliefs, after all, and so did all those Mormons who died on the trek to SLC.
Before I go to the trouble of looking up the traditional accounts, may I ask why?
Sure, that’s possible. Except that they all preached about the resurrection as though it were fact…
This is obvious. Why say it?
Well, I looked up John the Apostle on wikipedia, and it said that “Church Fathers identify him as John the Evangelist, John of Patmos, John the Elder and the Beloved Disciple, and testify that he outlived the remaining apostles and that he was the only one to die of natural causes.” So if that’s true, then there’s one who maybe wouldn’t have had the problem you mention; and if it’s false, then I’d sure like to hear your insight on the matter.
And with that as a running start, I’d like to hear what you think of the others. Like, if one of them was just out preaching the word and some guy ran up and stabbed him, that’s not really the same as getting arrested and put on trial by the authorities, y’know? So since it’s your point, I kind of figured I’d ask you to, uh, make it.
They may have preached about the resurrection as if it were a fact…but it would better if they could have agreed what the facts were in the first place.
Although Christian tradition holds that all but John died as martyrs, the only death(not counting the two wildly different accounts of the death of Judas) that is recorded in the New Testament is that of James, son of Zebedee.