Doctor X

Except that no one had the ability to code him back then.

I am afraid such speculations really do not add much other than the fun as in, "what if Patton had faced Hannibal?"

A nuclear medicine scan will give results within about fifteen minutes that match the gold-standard formal cerebral angiography, establish the no-flow state and brain death, without wasting time with a EEG.

FYI.

--J.D.

Amos

So how would you codify the ego of man?

Conchobar
"And if Jesus had not died he would have been become the final imposter and this would be many times worse than the first" (paraphrased from Matthew 27:64 ). This means two things: That Jesus was an imposter and his death annihilated the imposter he was. Had he not died he would have become a born again imposter who failed to rise up again and we all know how bad they are.

Koyaanisqatsi

As has been demonstrated on these very boards, that's not a problem; that's par for the course of existence.

Many hundreds of millions of people believe that a fairy-god-king like being created the universe. That's a tremendous amount of "incompetence or even stupidity."

But they supposedly did. Let's not forget the alleged piercing of his side to make sure he was dead in their eyes.

But that doesn't mean that Jesus could not have still survived or that Roman soldiers were well versed in the subtleties of comas.

Chances are exceedingly good that many hundreds if not thousands of crucifixion victims had simply slipped into comas. The difference is that most of them were then tossed into mass graves and burried or left on the cross to rot.

Had Jesus slipped into a coma and then been pierced with a lance to see if he were dead (an extremely imprecise method, I should hasten to add) and there was a wealthy Jew nearby who had no doubt bribed everyone involved in order to take his body down, there is no question that being retrieved and properly bandaged (i.e., wrapped for burrial in linen that would not necessarily prohibit oxygen intake) could result in recovery from that coma a day or two days later. It's certainly not medically inconceivable and, as such, is a more reasonable explanation than the reanimation of lifeless flesh, yes?

That presumes they (a) thought there was a deception and (b) cared to. If the "Jews" (always generalized, for some unfathomable reason) had somehow bribed Pilate to crucify Jesus because he was messing with their action, the minute he was actually beaten and spiked to a cross would have been the end of it as far as they were concerned (so long as the normal regiment of soldiers were in place to guard against retrieval). Once you're spiked to a cross and there are guards standing by to prevent any family or friends from prematurely retrieving you, you are considered dead.

The Roman soldiers even betray as much when they allegedly pierced his side to make sure he hadn't just slipped into a coma (a term we understand far better than they did). He looked dead so they made sure (as no doubt they had dealt with other victims who also appeared dead, but were not). That the coma or the piercing failed to ultimately kill Jesus can then be attributed (medically) to him being removed prematurely from the cross (most victims hung on the cross until their bones literally fell off, if collegiate memory serves).

The difference here is that Jesus was supposedly removed from the cross prematurely (i.e., long before most victims were ever removed from their crosses). Thus the medically relevant notion that he had simply slipped into a coma and survived the piercing because he was removed in time (and bandaged and annointed with medicinal oils and herbs, no less, immediatlely) long before most victims are removed.

There's a significant difference between those who knowingly perpetuate a fraud (i.e., cult leaders) and those who follow a fraud (i.e., cult members).

Except for the fact that this little tidbit of the myth wasn't in the first telling of this story (Mark). Mark ends with the Mary's finding an open tomb containing a "young man" who simply told them to go back to the city where they will find Jesus "risen."

You have to deconstruct the chronology of the myth to find any possible nuggets of truth.

Accordingly, Mark merely tells the story of a man who was crucified and on the same day, he was removed from the cross, wrapped and annointed and then placed in a tomb. Well, actually, Mark oddly ommits the annointing part of the traditional Jewish burial ritual, but then I deal with that later.

Suffice it to say that had Joseph performed the Jewish burial ritual properly, it would have meant washing the wounds, applying oils and herbs (which have been proved to have medicinal qualities in other threads here) and then wrapping (i.e., bandaging) the body from head to toe in linen burial shrouds.

At what point the tomb was opened, we don't know. All we know from Mark is that the Marys came up to the tomb two days later and found it already open and a "young man" sitting there in cult robes telling them (superstitious, uneducated mourners, no less) that a "miracle" had occurred and that Jesus will be found among them down in the city.

End of story.

Any intelligent, non-biased analysis of that story would lead one to at least conclude that Jesus had recovered from his wounds (due to his early retrieval from the cross) and had been taken out of the tomb to further recover, whereupon days later he then appeared back on the scene.

The later applications of mythology are therefore perfectly explicable, since tales of "bodily" and/or "spiritual" resurrection were applied decades (if not centuries) after any alleged facts. Hell, a "spiritual" resurrection could have been immediately applied, since to all superstitious, uneducated people having no knowledge of coma would have misinterpreted his survival from the cross as something mystical anyway, even if it had been told to them factually.

There's a strange phenomenon that happens with anyone written of in the bible by name. They are all thought to be the most highly skeptical, critical thinkers of their day. That is obviously a result of cult aggrandizement.

If you went to a third world country and nailed somebody to a cross after beating them close to death and that person then slipped into a coma from blood loss that you nonetheless declared as "he is dead," and then removed him from the cross after only a few hours of blood loss and bandaged and treated his wounds and then he survived and reappeared in his village, the whole village would think (especially if there were no one there to contradict) that the person had cheated death and/or had been resurrected.

What else could they (in their ignorance of such things) conclude?

"Endured?" By all accounts, they were no more harrowing than, "Are you guilty?" "No." "I agree. You're a free man."

Painful, sure, but not life threatening (right leonarde ?).

Painful and life-threatening, but not necessarily unbearable depending upon the health and strength of the individual.

One would think a "god" would be extremely healthy and remarkably strong, but why quibble?

Definitely life-threatening and painful, but possibly surivable if one is only on that cross for a matter of hours and not the typical days or weeks.

Not, in itself, definitive, depending upon where the spear hit, but certainly life-threatening (and painful).

Most damming, to be sure, unless the loss of blood merely resulted in a coma that simulated death and the body were retrieved prematurely (i.e., before all of the blood had been lost).



He didn't have three days without medical attention at all. He was removed from the cross after about six hours (if memory serves), and then, if Jewish burrial ritual were followed, washed (i.e., wounds cleaned), annointed with oils and herbs (the equivalent of applying medicinal healants) and then wrapped in linen burrial shrouds (the equivalent of bandaging the cleaned and medicinally treated wounds).

Even if they wrapped his head with the linen, that wouldn't preclude him, necessarily, from breathing, however shallow. It wouldn't help him breath, of course, but it would not necessarily suffocate him.

It could very well have been that he was in a coma (and nobody knew it), prepared for burrial in the traditional way (which meant the application of medicinally active oils and herbs and bandaged tightly, so that his wounds could coagulate effectively) and hours or the next day or the next recovered from his coma enough to be taken from the tomb (a cave with a rock in front of it, placed there by humans and therefore just as easily removed by the same humans).

Here, read the first account (emphasis mine):

No mention of the annointing of oils as the normal ritual of Jewish burial, but then, that's more likely because Mark clearly was not Jewish, as evidence in Mark 16, which I get to in a minute. Anyway...

See what I mean? No Jew would desecrate a grave, unwrap a dead body and then annoint it with oil. Unless, I suppose, they just didn't know that Joseph had already done this as part of the ritual, but, I digress...

Even without the traditional annointing of medicinal oils and herbs, the bandaging (aka, the linen strips and shrouds) would have helped to stop the bleeding just as such bandaging does today.

When that stone had been rolled away is not clear.

Well, no discrediting of Jesus having been in a coma here. "He is risen!" does not necessarily translate into "he resurrected from the dead." It just means he isn't dead.

That is the end of Mark (according to the majority of theologists and biblical scholars, anyway).

Now, even if this were a literal account, the "just as he told you" part is still not evidence of any more of a miracle than he survived being crucified as he predicted he would. That's an easy prediction to make when faced with death. Death row inmates have claimed that they will come back and revenge their deaths as well as many millions of "normal" people on their deathbeds have claimed that they will find a way to "send a message" or "return."

The "fact" that Jesus didn't actually die and survived his ordeal doesn't then ipso facto mean that his positive claim was therefore demonstrated to be legitimately prescient. It just means (at best) he made an arrogant boast that just happened to come true.

But take particular note of the fact that nothing Mark describes is in any way inconsistent (and, indeed, far more consistent) with the possibility that Jesus was simply "out cold" and appeared to most to be dead and then survived his ordeal. The very fact that the tomb was found to be open and a "young man" (not an "angel" as Matthew apologizes) is sitting there to tell the ignorant, superstitious women to go spread rumors that in turn would bolster the notion that Jesus "cheated" death can easily be understood to be the genesis of the later mythological aggrandizements of a "bodily resurrection."

As you can see from the above, there was no such armed guard, according to the first one to write the story.

Assuming he was on his own; an erroneous conclusion to draw from Mark's account that shows the tomb was already open (for an unknown period) and a "young man" was sitting there (evidence that others had already gone to the tomb and found the miraculously alive--because he was never actually dead--Jesus).

Which, even if he were in a coma and nobody knew it, would appear to be the case to him and everyone else involved. People these days that are pronounced dead and then revive say the same thing, after all.

Imagine what such an event (recovering against all of those odds) would have meant to both the person who survived and the people who already considered him to be "divine" or, at least, "of god."

If I had been beaten and whipped by the Romans, nailed to a cross to die a miserable death, slipped into a coma due to blood loss and then woke up a day or two days or three days later in a cave somewhere, I would certainly think that I had cheated death and the grave, particularly if I lived back then and had deluded myself so much prior to my crucifixion into thinking that I was "the" son of an all powerful deity.

That doesn't, however, mean that I actually were "the" son of an all powerful deity. It would just mean, at best, that I got incredibly lucky (and had rich friends who could actually bribe someone of Pilate's stature to get my body down before death overcame me).

Again, all perfectly, medically valid possibilities that do not require any kind of "divine intervention," even if I (and my friends and disciples) believed that divine intervention was the cause.

Where is he described as the "Prince of Life" and even if he were thus described, that, again, does not discount the far more medically plausible explanation I have here provided.

It doesn't necessarily affirm it, either, but then, that's not the issue, now is it?

He wouldn't have needed to live out his life in obscurity. The myth was created and taught to people who would have no possible way (or motivation) for investigating its veracity. Even if someone had taken it upon themselves to try to physically debunk the myth by seeking out such a person, how would they have proceeded? No one who heard the gospels as written were alive during Jesus' alleged lifetime. Mark was supposed to have been written around 80 C.E., but that is not a known quality, merely an educated guess, so even if there were a follower of the cult of Jesus who had heard the passion narrative as described by Mark, what would he have done? Traveled all the way to Jerusalem and knocked on Rabbis' doors to find out if any of them knew where an eighty year old Rabbi who survived crucifixion lived?

Let's say they did just that and they found Jesus to be alive and well and a wrinkled old man. Their investigation could have easily been destroyed (if it had been written down at all) over the centuries by those intent on maintaining the myth.

Just look how hard it is to kill conspiracy theories and the idea that our Government faked the moon landing. And that's in this day and age, when travelling to a neighboring province takes hours instead of days or weeks and looking up a person's address is a matter of typing their name in a global database.

If you're going to deconstruct things the way you attempted, then you're going to have to go all the way and really deconstruct them in order to see what is or is not plausible. That includes placing yourself in that time period and brainwashing yourself accordingly to be a (literally) pig-assed ignorant, probably nomadic member of a religious cult.

Think of the area we're talking about, too. An area that generates today suicide bombers, entirely on the strength of their cult indoctrination.\



It's not like there were a whole bunch of Carl Sagan's around, infiltrating religious cults in order to investigate whether or not their claims of resurrected gods from forty or so years ago had any truth to them.

If I told you today that I and five hundred other witnesses saw a dead man rise from the grave just ten years ago in, say, Montana and I even told you the names of those witnesses (something not provided by Paul), would you travel to Montana and interview those people?

And if so, where would you report the fraud? To whom would you report it? Would you follow me around to every single meeting I had with my cult members and stand outside to present your evidence? And would I allow you to do that?

This is assuming, of course, that you are not a member of my cult. Imagine if you were a "true believer." Would you then doubt my words and investigate for yourself whether or not what I told you was true or not?

If yes, then I submit you should do the exact same thing with christianity , but don't be surprised when no one takes your arguments (or evidence) seriously. We aren't.

There is nothing ridiculous (unfortunately) about a revered individual recovering from a coma and then having that event erroneously proclaimed a miracle of god by cult leaders who then instruct their followers to believe such a thing or face eternal damnation.

It is happening (again, unfortunately) right this very second.

Actually, strike that. It is entirely ridiculous that such a thing happens all the time, but then, humans, by and large and judging from recorded history, are nothing if not ridiculous.

What's absurd is to believe that clinically dead men can rise from their graves after three days of being clinically dead in those graves and don't end up having the mental capacity of a plank of cedar as their quadriplegic, immoble bodies drool endlessly in a cup.

seebs

No, what's absurd is judging something claimed explicitly as a "miracle" by whether or not it would be possible under normal physical law. The entire point of a miracle is that it *isn't* what we would normally expect to happen.

There are arguments to be made, but this isn't one of them.

Koyaanisqatsi

And the whole point of investigating such a claim is to provide natural alternatives that would more plausibly explain them. It's called "debunking" by some; rational deconstruction by others.

Thankfully, that isn't for you to decide .

conkermaniac

Isn't it even easier to accept that the crucifixion and the resurrection is all myth, fabricated by the authors of the gospels? I see no reason to suppose that he had fallen into a coma when the tale (including perhaps the crucifixion as well) was a lie in the first place. As one member pointed out, these kinds of things are happening all the time in religious cults these days...

Secular Pinoy

The resurrection narrative is very likely a myth, but I'm not sure about the status of the crucufixion. It's probable that it may have happened, but I won't be betting good money on it, not until I get to read about it more.

Biff the unclean

No, what's absurd is judging something claimed explicitly as a "miracle" by whether or not it would be possible under normal physical law. The entire point of a miracle is that it *isn't* what we would normally expect to happen.

The entire point of a miracle is that it is impossible. The very laws of nature must be suspended for a miracle to happen.
Suspended by magic.
We are right not to normally expect them to happen because they cannot. When they appear to be happening they are a trick. Either someone is tricking us or we are tricking ourselves as there is no magic outside of fiction.

The so-called resurrection is obviously the story of someone who wasn't dead to begin with. We Irish have the custom of holding a wake for our dead where the body is watched for three days to make sure it is really dead. Mistakes were rare but happened often enough for the custom to take hold.
Even in the Gospels the "women" were on their way to check Jesus body in the Jewish version of the same custom when they found the empty tomb. It must have been a shock, but somewhat expected as it was the very thing that they were checking for.

My question is why only half a crucifixion? Crucifixion not only condemned you to death it condemned you after death. There was no decent burial, holiday or no holiday. You stayed there until you rotted with the buzzards picking at your bones. Your ghost walked the earth, damned never to rest. Your corpse was a grizzly signpost of what would happen to anyone else who broke the Roman law. Why go to the expense of a crucifixion if you weren't making an example of the malefactor?

Koyaanisqatsi

As I'm sure you're aware, many myths are based upon some form of "true" event. All I was trying to demonstrate was what would have been a plausible, natural explanation, had such a crucifixion and the details provided actually occured in the manner described, thereby providing the genesis for the mythological elements applied to it.

There are many possible (plausible) explanations for what could have happened that have nothing to do with mysticism or the supernatural, yet still follow (more or less) the "plot" points, if you will, in Mark. A local radical Rabbi was tried and crucified by the Romans for seditionist acts against Rome (the historical use for crucifixion, beside murder), possibly because Pilate was bribed to do so by the Sanhedrin (accounting for the anti-Jewish elders sentiment). A high placed/rich member of that Rabbi's cult pays off Pilate (though, more likely a lower ranking guard) to let him take the body down, thinking he is already dead.

By retrieving him after only a few hours on the cross, then washing the wounds and applying medicinal oils and herbs before wrapping the body in the traditional manner for burrial, you have a perfectly plausible explanation for how Jesus' body could have been unwittingly treated so that his wounds didn't kill him. Placed in a tomb (and not burried in the earth), wounds cleaned and bandaged with medicinal oils and herbs aiding in coagulation and healing and a day or two in a coma while the body heals itself, and voila, a perfectly medically plausible explanation for what might have actually happened.

And, again, such an event would also certainly feed an already mystically deluded ego into thinking that they had actually cheated death; that they had been "resurrected," when in fact, it was nothing more than being incredibly lucky. Thus the mythology of resurrection begins and words to that effect are retroactively placed into the character "Jesus" when later cult members tell the story.

Just think what would happen if someone like Pat Robertson went through something similar and lived. He would not just immediately preach that god had saved him, he would probably believe with a far more fervent zeal than he no doubt already has, that he was chosen by god for special treatment and preach accordingly. Put him in the first century and he probably would believe he was actually the Messiah (if he doesn't already ).

See what I mean by the chronology of an actual, natural event then getting turned into a mythology years later? Perhaps Jesus even based his cult dogma on life after death as has been ascribed to him by his later followers, but more likely this notion grew in response to the "miracle" of him not dying that everyone (including himself), due to their ignorance of all things medical, mistook for divine intervention? The Wisdom Sayings of the early Jesus cult do not give us too much information on whether or not his cult beliefs were centered around life after death or not, but, regardless, when it's all boiled down to myth vs. possible, plausible occurrence, at best we have a story about someone who was thought to be dead but wasn't, who then either mistook what happened as ego aggrandizement and went around claiming he had been risen from the dead or his followers created that stuff, which.

Again, the point being, that even taking the passion narrative at face value, one still is not left with any kind of supernatural, divine event.

Which means, of course, that a believer is choosing to disregard plausible explanation in favor of cult inculcation. No big surprise, of course, but the difference is that not even the story itself can be pointed to for any kind of evidentiary support, which raises the more important question, why even tell the story at all?

Setting aside the glaring and multiple mistakes made in regard to Roman jurisprudence and procedure, the details of the alleged crucifixion and "resurrection" provide no evidence of the supernatural, even when taken at face value in Mark, so there can be only one of two reasons it was ever written down (and modified, twice, later):

1. An honest mistake based on the coma/resuscitation possibility that even resulted in Jesus thinking he really did "cheat" death and was therefore "touched" by god (i.e., self-delusional response to a "near" death experience), thereby offering a possible, plausible explanation for the zeal of early christian cult belief.
2. Complete fabrication.

If the latter (and I don't by any means rule it out), then millions of people have been duped for centuries and really are just idiots.

If the former, then millions of people have simply misunderstood what probably happened (if at all). The whole cult grew entirely out of a medically plausible misunderstanding, due to the simple ignorance of all of the people involved at the time of the event (and subsequent re-telling of the event).

Perhaps it's my own needs that lead me to hope this is the explanation, since the alternative is just too depressing to even contemplate and, further, perhaps (just perhaps), if this explanation were more closely examined and more widely disseminated, more cult fence sitters will awaken from their own "comas" and realize how their myths were formed without assigning any undue blame, thereby sidestepping the biggest stumbling block of deprogramming, cognitive dissonance; in this case, the adherence to a belief regardless of its baselessness, because one can't deal with the fact that one's family and loved ones all believe. How can my parents force such obvious lies on me if it isn't true? How could millions of people believe if it wasn't true? Why would people face death to defend this belief if it wasn't true? These are all fallacies we've heard countless times around here and go directly to the problems inherent with cognitive dissonance. Well, here's a possible, plausible explanation for the whole damn thing, without the need to assign any blame.

The original cult members mistook a natural healing process for a supernatural sign from a god and honestly preached this, based upon a simple misunderstanding due to their primitive, medical (or, more precisely, non-medical) training and/or analysis. The honesty behind their prosylitizing is therefore understandable, however incorrectly arrived at.

This is a big deal to cult members; the honesty of their church elders, the honesty of the apostles, the honesty of their parents, etc., etc. By screaming "it was all a fraud," one is directly triggering cognitive dissonance, because that means that everyone the cult member knows is an idiot, too stupid to recognize fraud, thus the argument becomes one of emotional defensiveness (i.e., cognitive dissonance). By saying it was all a fraud, you're saying that they and everyone they love and respect are fools.

Gee, I wonder why that doesn't work (and I know, I've said as much in earlier days)?

If, however, it was an honest mistake, but a mistake nonetheless, then cognitive dissonance does not enter into the picture and no one shuts down further discussion because they think they are being personally attacked; i.e., being called a fool, but in particular, their cult icons are not demonized, just understandably mistaken due to knowledge of complex medical matters they obvious would not have had in that time period.

Honesty is generative and extremely powerful; fraud is deceptive and extremely powerful as well. The difference is, if one learns that something they honestly believe in was itself honestly believed in, just incorrect due to a simple explanation and that explanation makes perfect sense and accounts for how the originators were led to their honest mistaken conclusion, chances are much better, IMO, that they will eventually discard such beliefs. If, however, they are facing the idea that they were deliberately lied to throughout the centuries, well, up go the defense mechanisms and the critical thinking gets shut off.

In other, much shorter words, it's all perfectly understandable without anyone having to call anybody an idiot or fool.

Maybe, just maybe, through this more plausible explanation, the cult will die form the inside, instead from us trying to assail it from the outside. We all know how effective that is.

Sigh...

I won't hold my breath, however. It's certainly not the first time it was presented, though I've never seen it so deconstructed, if I do say so myself.

Hugo Holbling

In fact, the ontological status of natural laws is open to much controversy; van Fraassen does not believe in them at all and has offered some very convincing reasons. In such circumstances it is not far short of meaningless to insist that a miracle is impossible, particularly given seebs' probabilistic context.