Newfie

I think you have mistakenly attributed spamandham's quote to me ChuckE99. Still, to play the god's advocate, had Jesus actually existed, and had he the following that tradition asserts prior to his death, then if he had been lucky enough as you say to have also been entombed, then we can hardly blame the folks living at the time for thinking he was special, can we? He would certainly have been unique amongst all the others who were nailed to a cross.

Newfie

Wasn't that common practice? And besides, I thought I saw the Romans do the same thing to Jesus in The Passion, and we all know that movie was completely, historically accurate, right?

spamandham

Fantastic. So what? How does that contradict the point that proper burial following crucifixion is supported by archeology? Is anyone here arguing that the passion story is based on actual historical events? If so, I must have missed it.

I agree the story makes little sense from many angles, however, the idea that proper burial couldn't follow crucifixion - isn't one of them.

There's a penchant for making up any old crap desired in regards to 'explaining' the crucifixion. The more wild-eyed the speculation, the more attention it gets. The idea that the gospel story (passion included) is highly legendary at best if not the work of abject myth making, just isn't very exciting.

Maybe there's a historical core to it, maybe there isn't, but I doubt will ever figure that out by over analyzing texts that would be labeled 'fiction' if they were written in modern times.

spamandham

How do you conclude that proper burial was uncommon, based on a single artifact of a crucified man with a bent nail through his leg and the crucifixion artifact still attached?

How many such bodies would you expect to find if proper burial for the crucified was common? How many crucified bodies have we found that weren't properly buried? What is the textual evidence that this was a highly unusual practice?

Regardless of the fact that the passion story is grossly implausible and appears to be constructed from OT passages, we have both textual and archaeological evidence to support the notion of proper burial following crucifixion.

What do you, or anyone else, have to support the idea that this was a rare event?

Amaleq13

IIRC, it was thought to be bent because it hit a knot in the wood.

Pyrrho

You asked what difference it made when it all occurred. I answered the question. Have you forgotten your own posts and questions?



It does not. That was not an issue I was discussing. I simply was replying to your question about why it would matter when things happened. Please reread your own posts and look again at exactly what it was to which I was responding.




We certainly have a good deal of agreement on that point. If you look at the very first paragraph of my very first post in this thread, you will see a hint about that.

jab

From a narrative analysis, that one accords a piece of fiction, this is easy to explain: The Romans were into real politic. A dangerous mass cult was beginning to form around Jesus, that disturbed the local authorities more than it did the Roman governor. They wanted him executed and the cult would be nipped in the bud. displaying the body for a long time, on a hill, could provide a focal point for gatherings and demonstrations, and a consolidation of a cult, which had been reduced by teh trauma of the actual state violence to a nub of visible mourners. Neither the Roman governer nor the local jewish authorities would want to encourage irregular mass gatehrings at the site of public executions. Neither would want a visibile martyr. It would make more sense to hide the body quickly away in a graveyard, and post a couple of guards to keep cultish grave-openers or worshipers away.

Apostate1970

There is another counterargument too. And that's that the earliet Christians actually didn't think that a physical resurrection had happened and that this was something that only became doctrine decades later. So Jewish or Roman authorities were simply never presented with a need to show a body.

And to answer your question about why they wouldn't have been interested enough to produce a body to nip things in the bud: you can consider a number of questions.

Firstly, what would authorities do today if they had sentenced to death the criminal leader of a cult and then the cult went around weeks after the execution saying that their leader had risen from the dead? Would they bother to do anything at all? Of course they would probably round up more members on various charges but would they bother to dig up the dead bodies as proof that they were dead? Of course not. Because everyone knows that the cult members are just a bunch of nutjobs unresponsive to evidence and whose claims would resume as soon as the bodies were reburied (even if they could have been identified, which they can't). Authorities might have a very great level of interest in the cult, but that doesn't mean that they'd dig up bodies to produce even more proof which can't be had because of decay and that isn't needed anyway since there was a public execution. Today they'd use DNA confirmation perhaps, but would the cult accept that? No, of course not. "It's all a conspiracy and only we are speaking the truth!" is what you'd get from them.

Secondly, what makes you think that just because they killed one person that Roman authorities had a very great interest in this cult? Virtually no historical evidence is left of it outside of that produced by the cult itself, so that is evidence that they really weren't of great consequence at the time. There's no need to respond to the demands of inconsequential persons.

spamandham

No, I haven't forgotten. I may be dense, but I'm not nearly that dense.

Here's the history:

- someone claimed that burial following crucifixion was implausible
- I refuted that singular point, and nothing else
- several people, youself included, started discussing other implausibilities in the passion in direct response to my point
- to which I asked, what does any of that have to do with the point about crucifixion

...and so here we are.

aa5874

You have not really refuted anything, you do know not how or under what circumstances a bone with a nail and a piece of wood ended up at a gravesite.

It is extremely critical that you establish that this body was buried immediately after death or that it was customary for people to be allowed to bury the crucified as soon as they were believed to have died. You have not established that.

The Jesus crucifixion story appears to be unusual in that Pilate, based on the NT (gMark), had to confirm that Jesus was dead before he could release his body.

If this is the case, this would mean depending on the number of people crucified, and the length of time each took to die, Pilate may have to be up all night so that he could be sure only dead bodies were released for burial.