spamandham

As the result of 2000 years worth of relentless propaganda, you have to forget everything you think you know about Jesus to ever hope to understand early Christianity.

Based on noting who all the Jesuses are in Josephus, I've concluded Jesus was a name reserved almost exclusively for high priests - which is consistent with some aspects of the Gospels; Jesus was called 'rabbi', he taught in the temple, he taught with authority, etc.

spamandham

Why is that important? The point is that we have irrefutable evidence that at least 1 crucified individual received a proper burial, and so the idea that Jesus might have received a proper burial is not implausible. ...which is the only point I was making.

Whether that happened in 3 days, or 7 days, or a month later, or a year later, is irrelevant.

Pyrrho

When a body is removed is extremely important. It was simply not normal to remove a body right after putting it on display. Normally, it would be there until it was really and truly dead. You see, crucification does not result in a quick death, but tends to take a long time. If bodies would be removed right away, they would end up with a lot of people who would turn out not to have been dead yet, which would make it unreliable as a form of execution (though still very nasty as a punishment). Remember, this was at a time before modern medicine, so occasionally someone would be thought to be dead when they were not dead yet. So when a body is removed is extremely important.

Given that the Romans had a good deal of experience with crucifixions, and given their tendency to keep the bodies on display for long enough, why would they make an exception to the rule in Jesus' case? You see, the story does not make sense from many different angles.

In fact, this aspect of the story has led some to believe that Jesus was not dead yet, and his empty tomb is explained by him running away to avoid the Romans having a second attempt at killing him. After all, if the story has any truth to it at all, he was a condemned man, and if they caught him again, they surely would have gotten it right the second time. The thing is, though, these people are believing too much of the propaganda in the Bible, as really the Romans would probably have gotten it right the first time, and not allowed the body to be removed so quickly.

Newfie

aa5874 is correct! Ssomething is still very off with the account of Jesus' crucifixion.

So, in one instance the nail was still attached to a portion of that individual's cross, and remains were found in an ossuary. Jesus was nailed to his cross, but no mention is ever made of his body being cut from it. No, that would have ruined the symbolic value of the cross. In fact, he is only mentioned in Acts as having the holes of where the nails went.

He wasn't cut from his cross, died relatively quickly compared to most cross victims (and he would have probably been in quite good shape physically compared to the average modern man his age), and was not held on display until his body was mutilated. It seems awfully convenient that most of the standard practices of Roman crucifixion that would have ruined Jesus' body were omitted and he ended up with a lovely corpse to visit people with afterwards.

Newfie

I agree. It's interesting that care was taken to post guards outside of the tomb, which seems such a ridiculous waste of manpower where simply leaving Jesus' body on display would have served the same purpose far easier.

The gospel audiences would have been all too familiar with the usual form of crucifixion so it almost seems as if the accounts of Jesus' death had to be detailed in order to establish that he was not just faking death, but was truly dead. Moreover, the gospels seem intent on stressing the intactness of Jesus' body, something that would not have been expected from an ordinary crucifixion. No, Jesus' was never seen as just a routine crucifixion.

Point being, Jesus' being put on the cross could not be denied, but details could be spun in such a way that the stigma of being left naked on display and the rest of the usual practice could be lifted, allowing a reanimated, intact, non-humiliated Jesus to reappear without the accusation that something fishy was afoot.

ChuckE99

The entire Passion is a made up story, so I don't see the point in arguing whether or not the Romans could have produced Jesus' body after the crucifixion. However, if Jesus was a historical person, I tend to agree with JD Crossan's theory (I can't remember which of his books I read it in), that Jesus probably pissed off the Romans (disparaging the temple, possibly) and was arrested, dragged off, and executed (possibly by crucifixion). His followers last view of him would have been when he was arrested and dragged off. They never would have heard from him, or saw him, again. No vigil at the cross. No body. No tomb.

Amaleq13

FYI: The nail was still attached because the end was bent and it could not be easily removed.

Ben C Smith

You mean John, right? John 20.25, to be exact. Refer also to Peter 6.21.

Ben.

ChuckE99

Actually, what it means is that out of the literally thousands of people crucified by the Romans, we have just one surviving artifact. If that one person got a proper burial, 99.9% of the other victims did not. The odds are Jesus did not.

aa5874

For Jesus of the NT, it absolutely matters. In the NT, Jesus claimed he would rise from the dead after three days and three nights.

What if Jesus got a "proper" burial 7 days or a year later?