EggplantTrent

Is it an established fact that the historical Jesus was crucified? And if so, what happened to his body. Someone is telling me that the fact that no one has found the historical Jesus' body is highly indicative that Jesus was ressurected.

His argument doesn't sit well with me, but I can't think of any way to refute it, because I don't know enough about the subject. Can anyone help me?

EggplantTrent

Vorkosigan

Caesar must have been resurrected. Nobody found his body either. Ditto for Socrates, Plato....in fact, nearly everyone must have been physically resurrected.

Toto

Actually, it is not an established fact that there was a historical Jesus, or that he was crucified. It's only a theory, without a lot of evidence in support of it.

John Crossan thinks that Jesus was crucified, and like other crucifixion victims, his body was dumped into a shallow grave and eaten by dogs.

The idea that someone put him in a new tomb, rolled a rock up against it and posted guards in front of it, and the body was missing three days later, is a story that was invented for theological or other purposes at a later time, when no one was around to say it didn't happen that way.

EggplantTrent

Was it common practice for romans to inter crucified people into tombs?

EggplantTrent

MortalWombat

I lost my keys once and never found them again. They must have been resurrected too. Maybe I should start a new religion: Keysiantiy. Then I can all go around and baptise people in the name of the Keychain, the Key, and the Deadbolt Lock.

Mageth

Was it common practice for romans to inter crucified people into tombs?

Not to my knowledge. The Romans often left the crucified bodies hanging to rot as a public statement/warning, IIRC, or perhaps tossed them on the local garbage dump as someone else described.

In any event, seeing as Jesus was a Jew, if he was interred, it would have been the Jews, not the Romans, that did it.

Radcliffe Emerson

One of the things actually taught at some seminars now, is the Romans left crucified bodies on the wood until they were completely rotted away, then threw the bodies to dogs to be eaten.
They certainly would not have cared less about letting Jews take a body down because of any religious belief. The Romans would not have allowed the body to be touched by anyone, until they were ready to throw it to the dogs.

The crucificion stories appear decades after Paul made up the first stories about Jesus, they were added to the myth as the years went by.

MortalWombat

Robert Price, in his essay Christ a Fiction, and also in his book "Deconstructing Jesus," compares many of the details of the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection of Jesus to the plots of many popular novels from the 1st century era:

Asha'man

There is also a theory that Jesus may have been stoned to death and the corpse hung on a tree, according to Jewish law.

This is the story presented by several pieces of Jewish writings, including the Talmud and the Toldoth Jesu.

Since it was a corpse that was hung from the tree, you don't have to explaine why Jesus died so suddenly, since crucifixion usually was a multi-day death. Jewish law also required that be body be removed and buried before sundown, rather than be left to rot on the cross as was the Roman custom.

I think the story was altered early in it's life. Note, however, that I'm talking about the life of the story, not an actual Jesus.

SLD

OK two points:

1. Was there someone named Jesus who was crucified? Undoubtedly. Since about 9% of the Israelites of that time period shared the name Jesus, and several thousand Israelites were crucified during the time period that Jesus was supposedly crucified, then it stands to reason that approximately 9% of those thousands were named Jesus. So there are probably several hundred crucified Jesus's whose body we cannot account for.

2. Do we have a grave for Jesus? Yes, in fact we have three ossuaries that were found in a family plot (not sure exactly where in Israel), and they contain the bones of a Joseph, Mary and their son Jesus. IIRC, the ossuaries are dated for around the first half of the first century. Of course, we cannot conclude that this ossuary contains the bones of the Jesus, because we can't even conclude that the Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels is an historical figure or an amalgam of many figures of that time period or is a complete fabrication. But don't tell me we don't have a dead body for Jesus - we do!!!

SLD