Jesus lived, but he didn't rise from the dead
 

Just a thought i've had that I wanted to share and get other's opinions on.

When Jesus was crucified, he would have been crucified alongside many other "criminals" etc who were penciled in for the same days punishment, much as in todays society a judge has a schedule in court for hearings and dealing out sentences; also in foreign countries where stonings still occur, there will be more than one stoning in an afternoon, people watch, get involved then move onto the next spectacle.

I was hinking that if Jesus was strung up on a cross, people would have jabbed at him with spears, spat on him, stabbed him, thrown stones etc. and when he no longer longer reacted, perhaps passed out from from the physical pain of his injuries, the onlookers and perpertrators would have got bored and moved onto the next crucifixion.

Then, during the night, as he was hung out to die, his supporters, or maybe just Mary Magdelene, came along, let him down, put him in a cloth and bandages to help heal the wounds and contain the bleeding, carried him to the infamous cave and he recovered.

Of course, if this was the case, he would have had to go into hiding to avoid future punishment, much the same as a criminal would today if he had escaped say from a prison.

And of course, no matter how well disguised (or not) you were, there would be sightings of the guy. However, in those days, the sightings would have spread like chinese whispers as opposed to a more modern way of putting out a note in a police computer system.

Does this sound derogatory (if so, my apologies) or does this raise an interesting thought?

It's a valid idea, problem is, Jesus is a matter of faith. Tomorrow one could come with hard, rock solid evidence that what you're saying is true, and people would still believe that he resurrected.

Paul, this makes perfect sense to me.

I've never believed in the Divinity of Jesus, but I do believe that he existed. There is a reasonably satisfactory ( for me ) historical evidence that a man named Jesus was born and worked, but they all fall short of divinity.

Considering the number of illusions that could be pulled against an uneducated and pre-medieval society, I have no doubt that such a trick could've occurred.

Personally I believe that the "spearing" of Jesus (as well as the number of guards around his tomb) were added to Biblical texts (or stories that lead to it) in order to make the "death" of Jesus move convincing. I'm believe that he was not fatally wounded, and that his "resurrection" was simply a recovery from non-lethal wounds.

I'm positive that a skilled illusionist/magician of today could create a convincing "death" and resurrection. Given their lack of knowledge and technology, it would be even easier to fool the unsuspecting crowd of Jesus' time.

It's further 'proven' in my mind by the number of "miracles" that Jesus performed, such as water into wine. A simple slight-of-hand or substitution illusion would cause this effect very well, and would only help to add Divinity in the minds of his supporters.

The odds of someone surviving crucifixion long enough to pull this off....pretty slim. ;)

That said, the earliest gospel - Mark - didn't originally even include anything about Jesus rising from the dead. Personally (and I know the massive majority of Christians would disagree with me on this), I don't think whether or not Jesus rose from the dead is really all that important when it comes to the religion.

I don't think Jesus (or his followers) were magicians...just cool people who impacted those around them so as to cause those people to write fantastic stories about their encounters which metaphorically capture their experiences.

Hercules may have lived. He may have wrestled a loin, and may have been a hero. He probably wasn't the son of Zeus. Legend has a way of making heros divine in nature instead of focusing on their messages and philosophies.

IMHO, who gives a crap if Jesus was a part of something supernatural? It's just a distraction from a brilliant philosopher. I'd be pissed is people started insisting that Gandhi was a deity or Martin Luther King Jr. was an angel. The message is what's important, not the nature of the source of the message.

Just whose loin does one have to wrestle to become a hero?

Would he be a hero if he wrestled Alyson Hannigan's loin?

If Jesus lived, he died. Whenever...
He wasn't declared a god 'til quite a lot later for chrissake.

Your new avatar scares me.

You can be pretty sure that if JC was crucified, he died. Period. Any resurrection is a metaphor or the result of too much want, too much sun and too long without a proper meal on the part of those who saw/spoke with the guy. I bet he lived, and was a Charismatic (other notable charismatics were Alexander the Great, Ghengis Khan, Joan of Arc and Napoleon) who was also a polymath with a heart - combine that with a committment to belief and following one's thoughts to their logical conclusion, and the man (JC) who decided that we could speak directly to God without needing the intercession of a priest class would stick to his guns and feel he had to communicate this important new idea even when the entrenched powers decided he was a dangerous revolutionary and needed to be destroyed.
The term excruciating, meaning the ultimate in horrible pain, comes from Ex Crusis, or from the cross, because that particular punishment was the absolute worst one the Romans (a nasty, and rather advanced and educated group of people) could come up with. Anyone on the cross was a goner. Roman guards were punished by death if a condemned prisoner escaped/went missing. The guards would have been damned sure to keep that pesky JC guy under close watch until he was dead, dead, dead.
So I repeat - any sighting of JC post-crucifixion was a result of exposure, hunger and desperate desire on the part of whoever claimed to see him. Don't discount the possibility of a "Big Lie" on the part of such claimnants either. These folks had an agenda and a power structure they were challenging and a fear of rather nasty death - they would use whatever weapons came to hand in their fight.
With all due respect to whoever feels it ought to be due, of course.

as a Jew I believe he existed, I believe he was crucified and I believe he was a Jew. Thats all for me.

And lo! We failed to survive our perversion.

It's a fucked-up epitaph, ain't it?

This idea has been floating around in my head for a while. What if it wasn't Jesus that was crucified? It was known that a great teacher was "in town", but in a time where there was no photographs - just word of mouth - how many would really know who Jesus was by just looking at him? When the authorities moved in on Jesus to arrest him, it took Judas to point Jesus out and identify him with a kiss.
Now comes the "what if".
Jesus was crucified and died on the cross. But the only people who knew what Jesus looked like would have been those closest to him. If Mel was right in his movie, the Romans would have kicked the shit out of Jesus before he was strung up. Witness to the crucification would have seen a broken man up on that cross identified as the "King of the Jews". Who would have been in a position to say otherwise? Here's my "what if".
What if Judas was not a traitor? What if one of the followers sacrificed himself so that Jesus could live? There was a sacrificial lamb; one that paid for our sins. What if the sin he died for was the protection of the identity of Jesus? And the sightings made after the crucification was that of Jesus himself? He would have had to leave the middle east for fear of continued persecution from the Romans - hence the Assention stories. As for rising from the dead... the body would have been removed and hidden so that rivals could not have desecrated it.
For the rest the story, what a powerful political statement it would have made if someone could have thwarted the will of mighty Rome and cheated death? The Jews were being ground to the ground. Revolution was in the air. What better way to instill a fighting spirit in the masses than to dispel the fear of death?

Just my two cents worth - probably gonna burn in hell for this!

I'm going to go with the fact that once on the cross, he was done for. However, I know several people who have seen Jesus. It was simply a matter of a few hallucinagens, and some deep thought. Mind that hallucinagens were used by many primitive cultures to commune with the dead. All it takes a is a goal, and a cactus.

Wait wait wait... So you believe you could recover from being crucified? Oh, how I would love to see THAT!

John Holmes

Come on, like said before, it's really a question of faith.
IF you believe in God, or whatever power, or supernatural something, you accept, that "he" or "it" is way over our capabilities and perception.

So, if Jesus Christ was son of God, as many people believe, it would be no problem for God to make his son resurrect. Right?

There won't be any proof for things happened 2000 years ago; and if there would be something anyway, the influence of the church would probably not change the minds of the majority of people.

But anyways, if everything was so clear and obvious, there were no religions.
The idea is to believe. So it doesn't really matter if Jesus resurrected or not. The message is to love eachother, forgive, help people etc.
And everyone can do that, with our without believing in any of the Gods.

Personally I believe Jesus did not die on the cross. There are many references to his life, after he was supposedly crucified, in other religious works. It all makes a good story though. A story that has been told, and told again....not to mention interpreted again and again...what you read in todays bible is mans interpretation of past story telling.