andrewcriddle

According to the Gospel accounts Jesus was flogged shortly before his crucifixion. This would have reduced his life expectancy.

(If you take the Simon of Cyrene episode as history then it probably implies that Jesus was physically in a seriously weakened condition before he got to Golgotha.)

Andrew Criddle

spin

Starting to get a tad disgruntled...
You mean with only a short number of hours between them.

What goal posts? What reliability?

I'm at a loss to explain why you cited any of these. They only show a conflict between seemers and realers from the latter's perspective. Your back to back stuff doesn't get a look in.

I got that the first time. My comment was that I can speculate just as meaningfully. (Note irony here.)

And this reaction from Pilate is narrative indication that the death is to be perceived as real.

What's going on?

stephan huller

spin,

Clearly (a) the citations are meant to point to an interpretation of a text (b) this tradition thought that Jesus appeared human but was not human so Pilate would have presumably believed that Jesus was an ordinary man but was nevertheless surprised that Jesus couldn't take the punishment an ordinary man could take (i.e. lasting longer than a few hours). It's like you size up a woman at a bar and she turns out to be different than you expect or this restaurant near my house:



The 'pizza' part of the sign is difficult to read high up on a sign so I thought I could get souvlaki and was disappointed.

stephan huller

This would not cause an able bodied man to expire so quickly on the Cross. Celsus's Jew makes the same point. Perhaps this is why Pilate is so surprised (Mark 15:44) by the news. I would at least like people to admit it is the strongest argument for a supernatural Jesus.

stephan huller

I am going to cite the whole section so people who aren't as familiar with this material can see there is nothing here:

Six hours? Really? This isn't meant to raise eyes?

stephan huller

I forgot to mention that the 'third hour' is certainly a mistake. Origen for instance calculates it to have been a three hour death - from the sixth to the ninth hour (Commentary on Matthew 5. 140) miraculum, quoniam post tres horas receptus est. Here is the whole passage:

"Since those crucified persons who are not stabbed, suffer greater torment, and survive in great pain, sometimes the whole of the following night, and even the whole of the next day ; and since Jesus was not stabbed, and his enemies hoped that by his hanging long upon the cross he would suffer the greater torment, he prayed to the Father and was heard, and as soon as he had called was taken to the Father ; or else, as one who had the power of laying down his life, he laid it down when he chose. This prodigy astonished the centurion, who said — ' Truly this man was a son of God.' — For it was a miracle that he who would otherwise perhaps have survived two days on the cross, according to the custom of those who are crucified but not stabbed, should have been taken up after three hours, so that his death seems to have happened by the favour of God, and rather through the merit of his own prayer than through the violence of the cross."

Clivedurdle

Including which bits of Apocrypha?

And has anyone argued that part of the editing process was to bring out time and mathematical elements? Or is this later kabbalistic thinking because of the Hebrew use of letters and numbers?

The references in the gospels to alcohol might be worth another look as well...

Clivedurdle

Two more geometric/mathematical references - the cross - and casting lots.

Clivedurdle

If we look seriously at what we have with these documents, it might lead to some interesting conclusions.

From at the latest in the 300's the entire weight and experience of the Roman Empire was involved in the production and editing of these documents, there have been arguments that this involvement is from around the time of the crossing of the Rubicon.

We are looking at an Empire that has the huge experience of the Egyptian ways of thinking, oriental cults and very early alchemy, a continual feeding of ideas from Persia and China, the wealth of the Library of Alexandria, the technology of the Ankylethera Mechanism, and Archimedes having cracked calculus.

A story of god becoming man and ushering in a new heaven and earth fits exactly the time and place. As Deepak Chopra talks of quantum this and that, gospels that do similar are predictable!

Sheshbazzar

Two decades plus ago, I spent months making a very detailed chart with individual boxes accounting for every single hour for the first fifteen weeks of that year. With each identifiable Gospel event carefully placed in its only possible location, likewise I did the same for each of the 'Old Testament' verses that had established the pattern for these things. (Passover, Pentecost etc.)
I at that time attended a congregation that was diligent about observing The annual Sabbaths of YHWH. And with this hands on personal participation in the yearly reenactments, with careful attention to the time and timing, The exercise proved to be very educational and rewarding.
I spent more than a decade and thousands of hours working with it, eventually leading to a good grasp of how the ancient Hebrew system of linear measures worked, and upon what invariable and unchanging principals they were based.

Of course as these things tend to go, what I found out proved to be against everyones religious beliefs, cultural norms and existing paradigms.
I was 'looking around a corner' that no one on the 'inside of the box' could ever see.
So all I can do is to know of my own long labors, sleepless nights, countless hundreds of thousands of calculations, and my own integrity in the matter. Witness to its existence through my remaining years, and patiently wait for others to finally come to some measure of knowledge and appreciation.

From time to time I do still make attempts to lead other honest and truth seeking individuals to investigate these things. Thirty years and more now have passed, that I have known what I know, but have never heard from anyone that had walked in that path.
Perhaps men will understand in a hundred years, ..or maybe it will take another thousand -I do not know, but I do know that it has been worth my effort, No man in their ignorance will ever deprive me.