Seeker2000

There has always been a lot of talk about the resurrection. Well, I think it is imaginable that the apostels did believe Jesus was risen although that might never have happend. After such an event as the crucification they could very well had some kind of visions, I think there's even a psychological explanation for people that are severely mourning (but I'm no expert on that topic). In addition to this there have been a lot of people with visions from all over the world. If not visions, they might have had dreams at least.

Also, the understanding that Jesus must have risen from the dead could have come from their understanding of the scripture. After all they believed him to be the prophecied messiah and there is also some kind of Jewish Wisdom literature that seems to have inspired Paul. The Jewish people also believed in the resurrection of the dead at the end of times, so it could have been interpreted that the end was near and the resurrection of Jesus was one of the first signs. At least during the first decades of Christianity there existed some belief that the end was coming (which didn't happen, so the beliefs changed, but that's not important for this topic).

So there are explanations about how Christianity might have originated (of course it could also have happened some other way), but what I'm wondering is why the people back then, at least the apostels, didn't take a look at Jesus' tomb to see if he was still there? Even if they were sure about the resurrection and felt no need to check it, shouldn't someone back then have noticed at some point of time that his body was still in the tomb?

Well, maybe one should first consider where and how Jesus was buried anyway. I once read that crucified people usually didn't receive a normal burial, as part of their humiliation. So maybe the Romans just put him in a mass grave or something like that. But I'm no historical expert. A conflicting issue would be that I also once read that Josephus mentioned that after crucifications the families sometimes took the dead bodies from the crosses and arranged a traditional burial. But still, if that happened sometimes it doesn't mean that it happend with Jesus. And I don't take the stories of the Gospels into account during these considerations since they were written at least ~40 years after the events and could have easily been fabricated by the author(s) or simply be some kind of legends that had formed.

If Jesus was normally buried, what kind of tomb could it have been? Maybe it wasn't common to take a look inside the tomb and that could be an explanation then. Or some of the apostels did that, but had come to the belief of a resurrection before and for some reason the dead body didn't change that.

What do you think about this? Assuming that Jesus was indeed crucified, what do you think how he was buried, what happend to his body and why didn't that interfere with the belief in a resurrection?

Chris Weimer

Well, they did think that he was supposed to come back from the dead.