Jesus-didn't-die-on-the-cross-theory

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
Hamilton admits it himself, the story is of an eye witness account, the cultural details,
etc etc, the only trouble he has is that he has closed his mind to the idea that there
could have been supernatural intervention, on what basis? But if it raised a smile, its
enough for me at present 🙂

“...the only trouble he has is that he has closed his mind to the idea that there
could have been supernatural intervention, on what basis? ...”

on the bases of there being no evidence for anything supernatural.

There is also no evidence that there is a tooth fairy -hence I don't think the tooth fairy intervention for exactly the same reason.

Assuming supernatural intervention for something, especially when we can clearly imagine a plausible explanation that assumes nothing supernatural, is always a stupid assumption.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
the hypothesis is that Christ survived, the elaborate stories are those which Hamilton
and Agers seek to proffer.

Well, I think if the hypothetical situation is confirmed, the need to concoct a sufficiently elaborate story becomes more important. Until then it is a sort of "what if" scenario.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
well if it made you smile i am glad, but i do think its both illogical (how can that which is
supernatural be subject to rationality) and unreasonable to limit your search of truth to
unintelligent agencies and thus concoct a whole series of hypothetical events in an
attempt to rationalise a supernatural event.

“...(how can that which is supernatural be subject to rationality) ...”

exactly! So how can you rationally know when or where something is supernatural? Or that that there is a supernatural? Any argument that you give for the supernatural must be irrational and nonsense. And yet you basically say we are wrong for rejecting the belief that there is something supernatural.

“...in an attempt to rationalise a supernatural event. ...”

No, to attempt to explain an event that, like all events, is non-supernatural.
And there is nothing “concocted” about it but rather it is based on the evidence.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
that Christ survived after having been publicly executed by the Romans, stabbed in the
side with a spear and flogged prior to his execution. If that is not magic then what is it?

Reminder of what I pointed out:


“....http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=250535&highlight=jimmmy+Kirby

“...
….Although with modern medicine it has become considerably less frequent, medical literature/history is repleat with instances where persons have been delcared dead, only to revive in the morgue (best-case scenario) or their coffin (bummer). ….
…. “

-so should we conclude that when somebody is assumed dead and then he appears alive that:

1, magic is involved

or

2, he wasn't dead when he was assumed dead

?

obviously I go for 2, for 1, is just stupid.
How about you? Would you assume that magic involved or that he simply was not dead? if you say 1, then that is why I assume 1, with Jesus; -no magic required.

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
I used to think the part about the resurrection of Jesus was probably simply made up as opposed to some people actually believing they witnessed it but then I saw what I believed to be a non-biased (I mean not biased towards religion) documentary (sorry, can't remember which one) with historical analysts that explained several reasons why that part, neuver. ...”

-I think that is similar enough to my basic theory.

Any opinions?

Yep, good thinking here:

Jesus was not really dead when the Romans took him off the cross. Despite them having the experience of murdering thousands of people for basically "looking at me in a funny way", the Romans screwed this politically sensitive one up publicly - big time!

Or, perhaps he was actually someone else when risen,after all the Bible says he looked different...yes that's a good idea - I'll need attention so I'll impersonate the most visible public figure of execution, and pretend to be them 3 days after the event, hoping the local earthquake is keeping the Roman murdering bastids occupied.

Let's stick to "he didn't exist".

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
the hypothesis is that Christ survived, the elaborate stories are those which Hamilton
and Agers seek to proffer.

"He didn't really die" seems pretty simple to me. Not that simple means true. I'm just saying, the followers had a plan and it worked, and Jesus was seen by people who knew how to keep a secret. Then Jesus made a safe exit, then, some years later, they could tell people he'd survived, and it got written up as a miracle complete with examples of Jesus doing more of them, even rising bodily to Heaven as some wrote. This protected everybody involved, even the Roman soldiers who should have made sure Jesus was dead but got paid off not to.

I'm not supporting this idea, I'm just saying it's a SIMPLE story. One paragraph.

Originally posted by JS357
"He didn't really die" seems pretty simple to me. Not that simple means true. I'm just saying, the followers had a plan and it worked, and Jesus was seen by people who knew how to keep a secret. Then Jesus made a safe exit, then, some years later, they could tell people he'd survived, and it got written up as a miracle complete with examples of Jesus doing mor ...[text shortened]... to.

I'm not supporting this idea, I'm just saying it's a SIMPLE story. One paragraph.

Edit:


"He didn't really die" seems pretty simple to me. Not that simple means true. I'm just saying, the followers had a plan and it worked, and Jesus was seen by people who knew how to keep a secret. Then Jesus made a safe exit. Then, some years later, they could tell people he'd died and been resurrected, and it got written up as a miracle complete with examples of Jesus doing more of them, even rising bodily to Heaven, as some wrote. This protected everybody involved, even the Roman soldiers who should have made sure Jesus was dead but got paid off not to.

I'm not supporting this idea, I'm just saying it's a SIMPLE story. One paragraph.

I'm sure that the OP is going to come under a lot of fire from many of the fundies that usually frequent these boards, but it makes me smile that they genuinely think they have the foundation to attack the plausibility of Andrew's alternative. Indeed, what they believe themselves is so outrageous that even if we went to extremes, and posited a chain of billion to one coincidences all conspiring together such that the event happened in some *other* non-supernatural way, this would still be immeasurably more plausible than the magic Jesus 'theory'. *

What has so far been offered is of course nowhere close to being that extreme though.




---------------------------------------------
* Before you all unleash the hounds, note that I didn't quite go so far as saying magic or the supernatural is impossible (despite my own personal conviction on this matter).

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
I used to think the part about the resurrection of Jesus was probably simply made up as opposed to some people actually believing they witnessed it but then I saw what I believed to be a non-biased (I mean not biased towards religion) documentary (sorry, can't remember which one) with historical analysts that explained several reasons why that part, ...[text shortened]... neuver. ...”

-I think that is similar enough to my basic theory.

Any opinions?

There were some doctors here in the USA that considered the historical
information presented by the Holy Bible concerning the physical death of
Jesus the Christ. After considering all the torture Jesus is reported to
have received from the Roman soldiers and the fact that water poured
out with the blood when the Roman soldier stuck Jesus with a spear, the
doctors presented a representation of how the spear must have went
through Jesus. The following was what they concluded:

From the article "on the Physical Death of Jesus Christ" in the Journal
of the American Medical Society, March 21, 1986, page 1463.

"Clearly, the weight of historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus
was dead before the wound to his side was inflicted and supports the
traditional view that the spear, thurst between his right ribs, probably
perforated not only the right lung but also the pericardium and heart and
thereby ensured his death. Accordingly, interpretations based on the
assumption that Jesus did not die on the cross appear to be at odds with
modern medical knowledge."

Since you don't live in the USA if there is anyway you could look up this
article or not. But I thought you might be interested in what medical
science has to say about it.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
you pansy atheists are the worst, you will make up anything to escape having to give
credence to the idea that there may have been divine intervention. Your stance is both
unreasonable and illogical, not to mention prejudicial.

Why did the disciples cover him with healing herbs like Aloe, which is mentioned in the bible? It seems to me if he was dead they would embalm him instead. That is an inconsistency you have to live with.

Here is my take on it: He was crucified, but some of the disciples paid the soldiers to cut him down after only a few hours rather than the 24 hours most people are held up there.

Then they swathed him in healing herbs and he came back from a coma in three days. He then made a magical re-appearance and and did his speech thing and then went up the silk road, where there were founded a lot of churches and monasteries made very close to the time of Jesus. There is a grave in Pakistan with the half moon images cut into the feet of a carving on the grave, in Kashmir, but the present wartime and for the last 40 or more years, archeologists have not been able to exhume the grave. There probably wouldn't be anything left in the grave if it is 2000 years old because it is in an extreme damp environment.

All this was in a book called 'Jesus Lived in India'.

If you aren't blinded by your faith and look at it more logically, it makes a whole lot of sense. He didn't ascend to heaven, he had to boogie out of Jerusalem because of the Roman soldiers, if they had found him alive, they would have for sure crucified him and maybe beheaded him also or maybe put in one of those body fry boxes they were so fond of.

Originally posted by RJHinds
There were some doctors here in the USA that considered the historical
information presented by the Holy Bible concerning the physical death of
Jesus the Christ. After considering all the torture Jesus is reported to
have received from the Roman soldiers and the fact that water poured
out with the blood when the Roman soldier stuck Jesus with a spear, t ...[text shortened]... r not. But I thought you might be interested in what medical
science has to say about it.

Some people don't cite their sources. I wonder why?

Consider the source:

http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/255/11/1455.short

Source: "From the Departments of Pathology (Dr Edwards) and Medical Graphics (Mr Hosmer), Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn; and the Homestead United Methodist Church, Rochester, Minn, and the West Bethel United Methodist Church, Bethel, Minn (Pastor Gabel). "

What are two churches adding, other than faith going in?

Here is a followup letter: http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/255/20/2758.short

"To the Editor.— As an archaeologist and a historian of biblical times, we must warn your readers that the purported historical and archaeological "facts" presented in the recent JAMA article, "On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ,"1 are in sharp variance with the consensus among academic scholars of the New Testament and Jewish and Roman legal and political procedures in New Testament times, as we shall shortly detail. These errors on the part of the article's writers are not merely accidental oversights. The repeated claims to historical accuracy barely disguise theological, we dare say fundamentalist, biases of serious and unfortunate consequence. Curiously, not only are historians and archaeologists not represented among the "interdisciplinary" writers, but the standard scholarly historical treatments of the trial and execution of Jesus are absent from the references.

"To begin with an obvious example of such pseudoscholarship, it may well be, as the authors affirm,..."

For either article entire, you need to subscribe.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Why did the disciples cover him with healing herbs like Aloe, which is mentioned in the bible? It seems to me if he was dead they would embalm him instead. That is an inconsistency you have to live with.

Here is my take on it: He was crucified, but some of the disciples paid the soldiers to cut him down after only a few hours rather than the 24 hours mos ...[text shortened]... d maybe beheaded him also or maybe put in one of those body fry boxes they were so fond of.

Well these doctors were convinced by the evidence that Jesus was even
dead before he was speared. The fact that both blood and water poured
was proof to them that the spearing was not necessary and that he was
already dead before the spearing. So I do not believe the aloe has the
power to bring someone back from the dead and the doctors did not
mention this possiblity.

There is also a book that says Jesus came to America.

Originally posted by JS357
Some people don't cite their sources. I wonder why?

Consider the source:

http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/255/11/1455.short

Source: "From the Departments of Pathology (Dr Edwards) and Medical Graphics (Mr Hosmer), Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn; and the Homestead United Methodist Church, Rochester, Minn, and the West Bethel United Methodist Church, Bet ...[text shortened]... be, as the authors affirm,..."

For either article entire, you need to subscribe.

The authors of that letter, Amnon Ben-Tor and Steven D. Fraade
are associated with Yale University and apparently have prejudice
of their own and neither one is a medical doctor.

Originally posted by JS357
Some people don't cite their sources. I wonder why?

Consider the source:

http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/255/11/1455.short

Source: "From the Departments of Pathology (Dr Edwards) and Medical Graphics (Mr Hosmer), Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn; and the Homestead United Methodist Church, Rochester, Minn, and the West Bethel United Methodist Church, Bet ...[text shortened]... be, as the authors affirm,..."

For either article entire, you need to subscribe.

You also asked about why the two churches were involved. Why wouldn't
they be consulted to make sure no information was missed in determining
how Jesus died. After all it was reported in the Holy Bible.

I cited the normal source that is usually done. I gave the name of the
article and the magazine, the date and the page.