411314

I've read the argument that the Jewish and Roman authorities would have produced Jesus' body if they could have, which would have disproved Christianity, and I've read some convincing counterarguments, such as in this essay:

• "First, to claim that the enemies of Christianity did not produce Jesus' body, therefore the body was missing (and presumably resurrected), presupposes an interest in Christianity which first-century non-Christians may not have had."
  
• "Second, even if a non-Christian had been motivated to produce the body, it could not have been identified by the time Christians began to publicly proclaim the resurrection. According to Acts 2, Christians did not begin to publicly proclaim the resurrection until seven weeks after Jesus' death. And by that time the body would have been far too decomposed to be identified without modern forensics, as evidenced by John's statement (11:39) that Lazarus had already started to decompose after just four days."
  
  "[I contacted] John Nernoff III, a retired pathologist, and asked him about the decomposition of a body at 65 degrees Fahrenheit. According to Nernoff, a face will become nearly unrecognizable after several days at 65 degrees Fahrenheit."
  
  "Of course, for all we know, the temperature inside Jesus' tomb may have been much colder than 65 degrees Fahrenheit. As Craig points out, "Jerusalem, being 700 meters above sea level, can be quite cool in April."Unfortunately, given the lack of meteorological records from the time, one can only speculate on what the temperature would have been inside Jesus' tomb."
  
  "But even if it were cold inside the tomb, Jesus' corpse still would have been unrecognizable after seven weeks of decomposition. Again, I contacted Nernoff, but this time I asked him to suppose that the average temperature was 45 degrees Fahrenheit. Nernoff stated that even that temperature could not entirely prevent decomposition of the body; molds and some bacteria grow at that temperature."
  
  "Furthermore, additional changes in appearance would be caused by dessication (drying), rigor and its relaxation, and settling of blood in the dependent In private correspondence, Craig stated that Jesus' corpse would have had "identifying marks on it that would make its identity obvious."
  
  "Although Craig did not list the identifying marks, presumably he has in mind the telltale remnants of Jesus' crucifixion: nails (or holes where the nails had been), unbroken legs, etc. I think this argument would be a plausible one if Jesus had not been reburied. However, if the reburial hypothesis is true, none of Jesus' followers would have witnessed the reburial. They would not have known the exact location of Jesus' corpse within the criminals' graveyard."
  
  
• "Third, suppose, for the sake of argument, that the Jews took the resurrection seriously, violated the tomb, removed the body, and paraded the rotting corpse of Jesus "through the streets of the city for all to see." It is doubtful that such disconfirming evidence would have "nipped the Christian heresy in the bud."
  
  "For all we know, the early Christians would have denied that the body was Jesus, or they would have found some way to explain it away, perhaps by modifying their doctrines directly."
  
  "Elsewhere, Craig writes, 'Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence, then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter, not vice versa.'"
  
  "It is unclear why first-century Christians could not have engaged in a similar rationalization had, say, the Jews produced Jesus' corpse."

Most of the arguments sound convincing to me, but does anyone here know if potential converts would have recognized the corpse as Jesus and been discouraged by it?

The counterargument I don't get is the claim that most people weren't interested enough in Christianity to try to disprove it. If that were true, why would they have crucified Jesus or persecuted Christianity? What do you think?

Also, does anyone know if the e-mail address of the article's author is posted somewhere?

thedistillers

If a couple of scientologists start to believe L. Ron Hubbard rose from the dead, I doubt you'll see anyone bothering to produce Hubbard's bones.

Toto

Jeff Lowder is a former officer of the Internet Infidels. You can try to email him through that page.

According to Acts, the disciples waited long enough before they started telling people that Jesus had risen, so that the corpse would not be recognizable.

There are a lot of elements in the Christian narrative that do not make a lot of sense. Among them is the question of why anyone would have cared enough about a wandering Jewish teacher to bother with a trial and execution.

Pyrrho

All of this is assuming that there really was a guy named Jesus who did something that resulted in the relevant books being written. That is something else for you to look into, but I will not go into any details on that idea presently.

Many people were executed in the Roman Empire, and they were not all starting a new religion, so them killing some guy is no proof that it was religiously motivated at all, even assuming that the Romans actually crucified some guy named Jesus. Additionally, in ancient Rome, there was no concept of a separation of church and state, which is a very modern idea. Back then, denying the existence of the gods of the state was often regarded as treason, with a punishment thought to fit that crime. In the case of the Jewish people, the Romans made an exception to that rule, as it was an old and established religion. But as soon as Christianity became known, it was regarded as a new cult, and given the denial of the gods of the state, it was not well liked.

As for parading a body about to disprove Christianity, the only reason to do that would be if one seriously thought that the new cult (even if it existed at that time and was recognized) would grow without doing so. But the simple fact is, new cults often die quickly, and so it is natural to not be overly concerned about such things right away. So it really seems unlikely that anyone would think doing such a thing would matter, even if people would recognize it (which you are right to question). Additionally, there is a natural disincentive to parade dead bodies about on a whim, as there is always the possibility of diseases being spread by doing such things. The Romans had an interest in public health, and so they would not want to do such things lightly.

Ian St. Ian

Are you referring to Acts 2, please?

Toto

Yes, read Acts 2. Would producing a dead and rotting body have made any difference to people who saw tongues of fire and other miracles?

Of course, Acts is not straight history, and this story is undoubtedly faith based fiction. As far as anyone knows, Christianity was so small in the first century that it made no impression on anyone outside of a small group.

RareBird

The whole rose from the dead thing doesn't stand up to any scrutiny whatsoever. First of all, it requires a "flat world" sandwiched between heaven and hell in order to make the ascension into heaven thing possible. Without that fundamental assumption, either the person still has to be alive, has died and stayed dead at another time or drifted up into the air to hang around in the stratosphere out of sight of people to fake that he or she has gone to heaven. The fact tat we live on a round planet that does not sit between some heaven or hell demands that anyone who supposedly rose from the dead either remain alive and thus we can see them now, or die a second time and stay dead where their body decays wherever it is buried. All in all, the truth shows that it's all a fairy tale crock that can't be.

Newfie

One thing about the crucifixion that never made sense to me was why Jesus, amongst the many thousands that the Romans hung from crosses, was allowed to have his body taken down just after death and buried. Wasn't the whole point of crucifixion to keep the body on display, as a warning to future malcontents? Shouldn't his body have rotted on the cross ultimately to be consumed by birds? Wasn't someone who had died on the cross, being mutilated and dishonored by being displayed naked in public, usually denied burial?

spamandham

There is an excavated artifact from Givat Hamivtar, of an ankle bone with a nail through it, attached to a beam. The nail was bent and so could not be removed prior to burial, so they just cut the beam instead. It was found in an ossuary in a family burial chamber. ("Excavating Jesus", 2001 hardback edition, pp. 246-247).

So, the idea that the crucified could still receive proper burial is directly supported not just by textual evidence, but by archaeology as well.

aa5874

But what is really not known is when the body was removed from the cross or buried with the cross.

Was it the same day or 7 days later? When did this crucified person get a "proper" burial?