aa5874

And, if the fantasies are removed just for this thread, Jesus would have been a dead duck.

He would not have been able to survive in Judaea with the things he was saying about the Jews and calling himself the son of the Blessed.

Jesus, I would think, would have committed suicide, rather than make the Romans crucfy him a second time.

Thomas II

Let's just suppose that Jesus existed and we go by what we read in the gospels...

There is a story of Jesus saving the life of the servant of the centurion, so the centurion owed Jesus a "life" favor,and good roman soldiers were big on honor...strength and honor...

Then there is also Pontius Pilatus' wife, who had a dream, a premonition, so she did not want Jesus dead...She had influence too...

Then there are Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea...
Both are men of means and power. Joseph claims the body of Jesus directly from Pontius Pilatus. He does that with the centurion, who assures Pilatus that "Jesus is dead", so Pilatus says "Take the body", and off they go Joseph, the centurion, Jesus, the women,etc...to the burial site owned by Joseph...

The soldiers outside are there to guard Jesus until he is ready to walk out. Then they go home and NOTHING happens to them...Sleeping during a guard would have meant death...

Jesus' legs are not broken..."Instead" they pierced his side...
Not really instead...Jesus was probably chocking because his lung was filled with fluid...They pierce his lung to save him...
Out comes blood and water...
They drugged him...brought him down from the cross...healed him...and then he went quietly into exile without the apostles...("Where I am going you can not follow...")

That seems more plausible than "He resurrected and then took off flying into the sky..."

:huh:

premjan

He must have been a strong bloke.

Thomas II

Probably in good shape...Could handle 40 days fasting in the desert...Walked a lot all over...even over water...
Probably had low cholesterol...Was hot for Mary Magdalene...
Must have been fit...

Transient

Rubbish.
If you are going to accept the stories of miracles like the ones you mentioned as true then you are saying that the guy was actually able to perform miracles.
Why not go the whole hog and say that there is a god then and then you might as well say that that same god raised him from the dead lol.

You cannot accept half the stories, saying that people owed "Jesus" favors because of miracles and then stop there - it is total garbage.

Conclusion: if the stories are correct then "Jesus" was raised from the dead by the god of creation.

There - now this thread is finished and we can all go back to reality.

Toto

Any naturalistic explanation is more plausible than the claim that a dead man resurrected and flew off (levitated?) into the sky.

But there are scenarios that are much more plausible than your hypothesis - namely that someone made up all or part of the story.

show_no_mercy

What if Mary and/or the disciples ran to the wrong (empty) tomb?

Transient

Yes indeed.
More likely the guy caused too much trouble, was crucified and died.
He was a real nice guy with too much steam and his followers were distraught and fled.
later they kept up his teachings and ways.
Then along comes another character that spiritualizes it and pedlles it to the gentiles.
Then along come others who try to flesh out the stories to make them more exciting.
Who knows, so much guesswork.

aa5874

And what if it was James and John who were dressed up as angels with their face covered, dressed in long white gowns and told the women that Jesus had risen.

That may have scared them off.

And, upon reflection, perhaps the soldiers who were guarding the tomb were paid twice, once by the disciples who pretended to be angels and then later by the high priests or sanhedrin.

Perhaps, instead of witnessing the transfiguration up in the mountain, Peter, James, John and Jesus were planning how to stage a resurrection.

It is noted that Jesus only took James, Peter and John.

Mr 9:2 - Why all that secrecy? It would have been even more wondrous if Jesus transfigured in front of the sanhedrin or his thousands of followers.

Maybe that is where the disciples learnt how to pull off the resurrection trick. But it worked.

This is all speculation based on the assumption that Jesus did die.

spamandham

If we don't assume that, then a trivially simple explanation for all the implausibilities in the Gospel story, is that they simply never happened. Is there some reason we should assume these stories are representative of historical events?

...more plausible than that, is the idea that none of it actually happened, or at least not the way the Gospels record it.