So, was Jesus Resurrected?

[six7s]

History.. Archeology, Sociology. Psychology, etc, etc?

So you count a few minor hits and overlook a shedload of major misses? Good luck with that

Why do you regard it this way as one book?

Ermmm.... I dismiss the bible as one book in this instance in response to you asking "Why distrust the Bible more than any other source?", remember?

I think you have a serious problem here.

My whirled keeps spinning... but thanks for the concern

The narratives we are examining, or a few of us are, are from widely divergent authors, theologies, and dates, and seeing them as "The Bible" occludes that central fact.

And seeing them as anything other than quaint fiction is apologetic bollocks

Stop trying to read the events through the canon of a later compilation - try to see each source as a historical documents standing quite independent of the faith tradition, or you will never get anywhere in making a historical assessment

Why do you afford woo so much slack?

Would you be so lenient if we were evaluating the merits of a chemistry textbook? Or a map?

Think of Harry Prices' The Most HAunted House in England. You can't make an assesmsent of what may or may not have happened at Borley on teh strength of Harry's book as a whole - you have to look at each of the individual narratives and witness statements it contains independently of Price's later interpretative gloss?
cj x

Never mind the quality, feel the width, huh? I ain't buying your yarn

 

[Akhenaten]

So this is where you all went. How sneaky. I'll read the thread and join in soon.

Thanks cj

 

[Darat]

Thats exactly what I'm saying. Yes it is speculation, but clearly the narratives have a root in something, and it's informed speculation. Why distrust the Bible more than any other source? I think looking at the sources is the way to go, but I have spent my day at BBC Birmingham and then running errands for friends so I'm too tired to add much tonight.

OK, let's have another example which might clarify. King Arthur. Whether there was a "Historical Arthur" or not, he clearly bore little resemblance to the Arthur of Mallory and Chretien de Troyes. Yet something happened: at some point the Arthur of romance developed, and given we have earlier references to an Arthur in some Welsh tales and in I believe, and i am half asleep Gildas (actually no I mean Nennius - Gildas never mentions Arthur I think?) we might think there was some historical dude, and some historical events. So was Arthur at the Battle of Mount Badon? Where was Mons Badonicus? Did it ever exist? Even if Nennius made it up (and Gildas does also mention the battle I think), that matters not - because Nennius' creation of the British king is in itself a historical event.

Does that help at all? This is exactly the kind of approach I am suggesting here. I am surprised people are not interested in it as a historical issue at least?

cj x

Or a much simpler explanation and one that we know does explain many, many similar tales: people make stuff up.

We can even go further with what we know about the fictions that people create: sometimes fictions are taken for truths and people promulgate them for various reasons and later on it can be very hard to trace back to the original fiction.

ETA: And we can go further still, we know that people often attach fictions to truths (and vice-a-versa) to make their fiction more convincing, for example historical novels that will use actual events and people and also cult leaders. (See Bare Faced Messiah for examples of how Hubbard, Scientology's founder, used this to try and add a patina of verisimilitude to the baloney he was trying to get people to swallow)

 

[Lothian]

Yes, absolutely. I concur with Ramsay. And I am not interested in discussing the faith claim, as I think my OP makes clear. My perspective is those secondary historical aspects, where we can apply known methodologies and tools to bring light to bear. That may well inform the faith thing I guess, but this is not a faith thread. It's about the Historical Jesus issues.

cj x

..but when it comes to the resurrection there is no historical evidence other than the various tales in the bible. I don't consider the bible to be reliable, so I think I might just watch from now on rather than distracting you.

 

[HansMustermann]

Sorry missed your edit, and replied to earlier version - but to reply to this: I suspect we may have quite a lot of extra-biblical material to bring to bear on the issue. We know a lot about Roman law and administration, we know about the political backgrounds of the era, we have plenty of information from archeology and medicine on crucifixion, and we can look at if the accounts tally with Jewish burial traditions. But the obvious place to start must be with the biblical accounts: inconsistent, written to further theological agendas. but still accounts which provide us with a basis for a narrative. And I agree, not 50:50, if you mean a supernatural resurrection. The Christian claim is this is a unique event in history - the odds must be trillions to one against a person coming back from the dead, at least. In my experience it does not happen. But the supernatural claims are NOT what I want to look at, but rather the naturalistic hypotheses that underdetermine that claim.

cj x

Ah, the "there is no smoke without a fire" kind of argument.

You probably do realize that by the same token you could speculate about the truth value of:

- all the fantastic monsters in Beowulf. Hey, the story must have been based on something

- the sighting of Odin at the battle of Lena by some thousands of soldiers, plus by the smith who shod his 8-legged horse the previous night. And by "sighting", I mean he personally led the charge of the outnumbered Swedish cavalry to victory. I mean, come on, they must base that on something

- Danae getting pregnant from a golden shower by Zeus himself

- the Minotaur

- the hare-brained conspiracies in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion must be based on something, right?

- the gods Ea and Shamash cracking a hole in the Netherworld to bring Enkidu back from the land of the dead, in one version of Gilgamesh. I mean, how cool is that? Not even just resurrecting a dead body, but opening up the underworld to bring someone back from there. Must have been based on something, right?

- the two genocidal rampages of Hathor in the mortal realm. They wouldn't just make up an invulnerable goddess on a rampage that left the country in ruins and coloured the Nile red with blood, right? Must be based on something, right?

- all the dragons and scorpion people and whatnot that Tiamat birthed. They wouldn't make up something like that, would they?

- Actaeon being turned into a stag by Artemis, and subsequently killed by his own hunting dogs. Or for that matter Callisto being turned into a bear. They must have based the story of someone turned into a beast on something they saw, right?

Etc, etc, etc. One could write a whole tome just enumerating such myths, without going into the whole story of each.

Or we _could_ accept that people _do_ make incredible stuff up, especially when they're selling you dogma.

Just look at all the glowing reviews and made up gameplay greatness that fanboys write on Amazon, for games they hadn't played and aren't out yet. But they just have to proselytise for their idols. And for example Paul seems to have had exactly such a fanboy personality, so...

And finally, I'm not giving the Bible any less credibility by default than all the above mentioned myths and legends. I'm giving it exactly as much credibility.

 

[amb]

Has this man ever existed at all? Outside of the gospels the evidence is very scant.
Then you have to consider that never in the history of this planet has a true miracle ever happened or is likely to, even if civilization lasts for millions of years. The laws of physics cannot ever be broken.
Thirdly, had this man been resurrected, every historian of that time would have written about it. The ones who wrote about it decades later were writing hearsay. Even without the benefit of modern communications, such an event would have swept the Roman world. We would have libraries full of the account, hundreds of independent sources.
All we have in reality is a very dubious account in a one book written by superstitious people who lived in the first century, the N/T.

 

[cj.23]

Has this man ever existed at all? Outside of the gospels the evidence is very scant.

Not really scant - embarrassingly rich in comparison to other comparable 1st century Judean figures. This tells us that he very quickly became the centre of a major cult, and was therefore deemed of interest, as so many references survive - not a single contemporary one, but that is perfectly normal for the period.

Then you have to consider that never in the history of this planet has a true miracle ever happened or is likely to, even if civilization lasts for millions of years. The laws of physics cannot ever be broken.

How do you know these two claims to be true? Because no one i know in the philosophy of science would believe either could ever be verified? I can see why you might believe them to be true, but they can not be demonstrated - they are a priori beliefs. This is where my scepticism immediately starts alarm bells ringing. I don't think we can know either of these facts to be true. In my OP I cited David Hume, but here have a look -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume#Induction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction

It's why in the opening post I was so careful to note this problem - we can not actually just dismiss a supernatural event on these grounds. We are prone to because the scientific method presupposes as an axiom methodological naturalism, so we take it as being somehow "true". It is not necessarily so however - it is merely a tool for conducting legitimate science. We often confuse our methodological assumption ("nothing supernatural happens, natural laws always apply" with a truth claim about the nature of ultimate reality.) This distinction is one I think sceptics would do well to understand - science predicates certain things, such as a lack of supernatural events, because otherwise one can not do science. ("Yes, last week, the apple fell because of Newtonian gravity and normal physics; but today it was invisible goblins did it") Those who have adopted materialism as a belief system and abandoned zeteticism and agnosticism often get outraged when I say it, but we ar just confusing the map and the territory here. It may well be (and common sense seems to suggest) that these things are true, and goblins did not do it. But we can't know that. So a sceptical position, as exemplified by David Hume, admits the epistemological limitations - we can't know. Incidentally, Hume gives us teh basis for "extraordinary claims" and "correlation not necessarily equal causation" in the same essay, still worth reading - http://18th.eserver.org/hume-enquiry.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodological_naturalism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalized_epistemology
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism/

Thirdly, had this man been resurrected, every historian of that time would have written about it. The ones who wrote about it decades later were writing hearsay. Even without the benefit of modern communications, such an event would have swept the Roman world. We would have libraries full of the account, hundreds of independent sources.

No, we wouldn't. Look up say Theudas, John of Gamala, The Egyptian etc, etc. Messianic claimants who actually did some damage, and really upset Rome, and caused major civic disturbance. What sources do we have for them? How contemporary? Or say Boudicca/Boadiciea? These were people who made a major pragmatic political and economic impact upon Rome. When are the sources? How many survive? The historiographical issues concerning 1st century texts are nothing like those for say Medieval Europe or the Modern Era.Contemporary attestation is extremely rare for the vast majority of historical figures.

And even in the modern era paranormal claims are barely regarded; try to find attestations in print or on the web for the purported miracles of cult leaders, or supernatural claims. How many historians mention the alleged Miracle of Fatima? I'm guessing very, very few? Zeitoun? Medugorje? How much can you find in mainstream sources like the news media or history books on the levitations of Daniel Dunglas Hume? Or the purported physical mediumship of the circle at Scole, Norfolk in the 1990's?

On the JREF you will find detailed discussion I'm sure of all of the above. Maybe you can find something about the gentleman borne to heaven by doves, or the Angels of Mons. But in a period when religious and miraculous claims were probably far more common and culturally entrenched, I doubt any self respecting author gave this "pernicious superstition" much notice?

So try to look for dates and reference to Honi the Circle Drawer. To understand these things, you always need before claiming paucity of evidence to check exactly what the standards are for the period in question. I fully understand your scepticism, but you need some kind of benchmark?

Here are the classic examples of sources for the most famous 1st century figures, from me on an earlier thread --

Julius Caesar
autobiographical - two sources - De Bello Gallico; De Bello Civili
Cicero's speeches - including at least three on the subject of Caesar - contemporary
Plutarch - written in 75CE, so +129 years
Suetonius - The Twelve Caesars, written in 121CE, so +165 years
Appian, Roman History - written in 165CE so +205 years
Cassius Dio, writing in 229CE, so +273 years

There are probably MANY more, but these are the standard biographical sources. Any classicist help me out here? The difference with Julius Caesar is of course we also have huge amounts of archaeological evidence, coins, busts, inscriptions. The guy was Emperor. However take a look at the dates of those sources! I would imagine as I say many others do exist, but references rather than biographical.


Augustus Caesar (Octavian)
autobiographical - Res Gestae Divi Augusti
letter form Augustus - Epistula ad Gaium filium
Nicholas of Damascus - Life of Augustus c.14AD, the year of Augustus Death -contemporary
Virgil - contemporary poet, Augustus outlives him. He dies at Brindisium about 15 BCE as I recall -contemporary
Tacitus Annals, which begins with death of Augustus, written in 117, so +161 years
Suetonius - The Twelve Caesars, written in 121CE, so +165 years
Appian, Roman History - written in 165CE so +205 years
Cassius Dio, writing in 229CE, so +273 years

All we have in reality is a very dubious account in a one book written by superstitious people who lived in the first century, the N/T.

And the 1st century Church Fathers, and then the following texts
http://jerome23.wordpress.com/2009/...ed-the-historical-sources-for-jesus-part-one/

and more I have not covered yet... (from my blog)

It's good to be cautious. But again, I fear you read the Bible as a single book, through the eyes of the Christian faith community - an odd approach for a non-Christian, and one that even I as a Christian put aside when trying to do historical work. Try regarding it as a historian,, as a collection of disparate texts, different sources, that were collected together later...

Hope these vague thoughts help, and sorry for the rushed reply - working at moment...

cj x

 

[cj.23]

..but when it comes to the resurrection there is no historical evidence other than the various tales in the bible. I don't consider the bible to be reliable, so I think I might just watch from now on rather than distracting you.

Lothian, see my previous post, but there is also other kinds of evidence available? Archaeological evidence, legal evidence, medical evidence, to give just three. And surely sociology and psychology tell us a gret deal about how people react in exactly these kinds of failed cult scenarios, where messianic expectations are dashed? So even with limited historical sources (but please not "The Bible" - the sources were indpendent till long after they were written after all, as i keep pointing out?), it is entirely possible to logically attempt to undertand something of what went on back then??? You seewhere i am coming from here?

cj x

 

[cj.23]

Or a much simpler explanation and one that we know does explain many, many similar tales: people make stuff up.

We can even go further with what we know about the fictions that people create: sometimes fictions are taken for truths and people promulgate them for various reasons and later on it can be very hard to trace back to the original fiction.

ETA: And we can go further still, we know that people often attach fictions to truths (and vice-a-versa) to make their fiction more convincing, for example historical novels that will use actual events and people and also cult leaders. (See Bare Faced Messiah for examples of how Hubbard, Scientology's founder, used this to try and add a patina of verisimilitude to the baloney he was trying to get people to swallow)

Yes absolutely. Fictions draws upon real life places etc, as you say. Yet even if something is a fiction, we can still benefit by examining the way in which the story arose for insights in to the historical cultural framework and situation which produced it. JAne Austen's novels tell us a great deal more about early 19th century values and society than archeology can - but it is an idealised depiction of Miss Austen's won mythology. Ditto say the novels of Horation Alger, Sapper, Shakespeare, etc, etc.

The real question I have to ask though: why do you asume the narratives in the bible are fiction? On what grounds do you make this value judgement? Once I understand that I think we can maybe make some headway...

cj x

 

[cj.23]

So you count a few minor hits and overlook a shedload of major misses? Good luck with that

You completely misunderstand. I am not saying we should use the disciplines of medicine, history, archeology, law, and our understanding of the first century Roman, Hellenist and Judean words to somehow "prove the Bible". I have seen that attempted, and it is often embarrassing. I'm saying that we shoudl examine the narratives critically in the context of the insights of those disciplines - and see if understanding the cultural context in which the purported events happened actually helps us to understand what really happened. I don't plan to read reports on 6th century site digs like say Cadbury Castle to try and prove the historical Arthur - (though others have) - I would instead say that any putative reconstruction of the historical Arthur must take in to account the findings of other disciplines. (See my response to Lothian: this is beginning to feel like hard going, and i'm pretty sure I'm being pretty clear?)

Ermmm.... I dismiss the bible as one book in this instance in response to you asking "Why distrust the Bible more than any other source?", remember?

OK, given the Bible clearly consists of vastly different texts b y different authors, at different times, why do you place a single value on the whole work? Why do you regard it through the eyes of Christianity, as a single work, rather than as a historian, as a set of different narratives? This is what genuinely puzzles me...

And seeing them as anything other than quaint fiction is apologetic bollocks

So the bible is fiction because the bible is fiction? Fascinating! And anyone who says the Bible might contain elements of non-fiction and suggest actually addressing the texts using normal historical and academic methodologies is engaging in apologetic bollocks? Wow, you might be in line for some kind of super-fundie prize, perhaps the Jerry Falwell Prize for Raffia Work? Where did you develop such incisive critical thinking? Jokes aside, you sense my frustration? You have to tell me why the bible is fiction, and why even if it was ALL fiction we could not learn anything about why the people who believed in to did so, and why the authors constructed the text, for me to really get your objection here.

Why do you afford woo so much slack?

Because if we don't examining "woo" we never know if it really is without merit. Alfred Wegener was derided - but right. I'm a sceptic by inclination - I often brutally tear in to any and all assumptions i see, and examine them critically. Hence I interview ghost witnesses, listen to people who tell me they have seen fairies, and talk to "Ufo abductees", and argue with eminent authorities in a number of fields trying to get them to check their methodological assumptions, to see where truth lies. I save my real passionate questioning for the few areas where i Actually have some degree of real knowledge though - like say mental health therapies efficacy.

Would you be so lenient if we were evaluating the merits of a chemistry textbook? Or a map?

Yes. I'm a fan of Carl Sagan. Some of what he wrote is now known to be false - some was when he wrote it. I simply accept he made mistakes, and that we take the errors in context...

Never mind the quality, feel the width, huh? I ain't buying your yarn

What have I Actually asked you to buy though? Find some quotes to show where I have tried to impose a particular answer to the question at hand? HAve I actually asked you to accept a single Christian faith claim as true anywhere in this thread?

cj x

 

[I Ratant]

Peter: Andrew: James: John: Philip: Bartholomew: Matthew: Thomas: James(The Just/Less) : Thaddeus: Simon: Judas Iscariot: Matthias

Why 12?

1. Perhaps beer was sold in 12 packs back then as well.
2. The convention of eating doughnuts when breaking one's fast (holey food) *groan*

OK, I'll stop.

DR

.
The problem of the 12 hot dogs and 8 buns wasn't solved for centuries!

 

[I Ratant]

I thought a serpent swallowed the flower and he didn't manage immortality in the end?

.
He was down there for three days... ring a bell?
That 12th tablet has many of the sources of the myths that are the structure of the Jewish and Christian religions.
As said above, "people make things up".
Just listen to any televangelist.
Over time, the true believers can warp anything into their philosophies.

 

[cj.23]

.
The problem of the 12 hot dogs and 8 buns wasn't solved for centuries!

Maybe the baguette was Napoleon's attempt to decimalise the problem away! So if loaves and fishes had been not available, only hot dogs and buns, it would have been the feeding of the 5,016? (requiring 418 packets of hot dogs and 627 packets of buns?) Um... I am supposed to be working! Still if I ever do a large scale Erisian MAss (hail Eris!) this might come in handy

cj x

 

[Soapy Sam]

This will always be a circular argument.
If we assume divinity, all logical argument is off as not only do we not know how far logical argument applies, it's possible such an entity can actually change the nature of logic at will.

So we can't rationally discuss it.

All we can say is that if he was human and he was nailed to a cross by a bunch of Romans, his chances of survival were not good. He almost certainly died. And Occam's razor suggests he stayed that way.

On the face of it, the whole idea seems deeply silly.

 

[cj.23]

.
He was down there for three days... ring a bell?
That 12th tablet has many of the sources of the myths that are the structure of the Jewish and Christian religions.
As said above, "people make things up".
Just listen to any televangelist.
Over time, the true believers can warp anything into their philosophies.

The XIIth tablet is the late one isn't it, the Enkidu in the Underworld material which does not derive from the Atrahasis Epic? I think the earliest copy we have is circa 625 BCE? Not read it in years, but I have ti on my shelves, I'll go have a look. Cheers for the tip off.

cj x

 

[cj.23]

This will always be a circular argument.
If we assume divinity, all logical argument is off as not only do we not know how far logical argument applies, it's possible such an entity can actually change the nature of logic at will.

So we can't rationally discuss it.

All we can say is that if he was human and he was nailed to a cross by a bunch of Romans, his chances of survival were not good. He almost certainly died. And Occam's razor suggests he stayed that way.

On the face of it, the whole idea seems deeply silly.

Yep, but we can hope to look at naturalistic explanations for the story, in the light of what is known about the history, culture and archeology of the region - as you just have here in the bolded bit. We can ask questions like "would the Roman authorities release the body?" "Did Crucifixion victims invariably die?" "Do the trial accounts make any sense?" "Does what si claimed of the burial customs make sense in terms of 1st century Judean tombs?" In short, if the story was fictional or true, does it actually reflect local customs. After all, at least one of the gospels was written by someone whose knowledge of the local geography was about as good as mine of Middle Earth - I know where Gondor is! - or perhaps more accurately, mine of Edinburgh - if i tried to give directions you might soon work out I was not local. So by checking these known facts we can at least establish if it was a developing fiction, or if some actual accounts and claims underlay it - but as i keep saying,NEVER if it actually was a "supernatural" event.

cj x

 

[cj.23]

Ah, the "there is no smoke without a fire" kind of argument.

No. That implies that a supernatural claim must be legitimate in some sense because people make it. People lie all the time. I am looking at the content fo the narratives, not their ultimate validity. Sure i'm interested in explanatory frameworks - but I don't think we ned necessarily invoke any supernatural forces at all to improve our understanding of what may have happened.

You probably do realize that by the same token you could speculate about the truth value of:

- all the fantastic monsters in Beowulf. Hey, the story must have been based on something

- the sighting of Odin at the battle of Lena by some thousands of soldiers, plus by the smith who shod his 8-legged horse the previous night. And by "sighting", I mean he personally led the charge of the outnumbered Swedish cavalry to victory. I mean, come on, they must base that on something

- Danae getting pregnant from a golden shower by Zeus himself

- the Minotaur

- the hare-brained conspiracies in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion must be based on something, right?

- the gods Ea and Shamash cracking a hole in the Netherworld to bring Enkidu back from the land of the dead, in one version of Gilgamesh. I mean, how cool is that? Not even just resurrecting a dead body, but opening up the underworld to bring someone back from there. Must have been based on something, right?

- the two genocidal rampages of Hathor in the mortal realm. They wouldn't just make up an invulnerable goddess on a rampage that left the country in ruins and coloured the Nile red with blood, right? Must be based on something, right?

- all the dragons and scorpion people and whatnot that Tiamat birthed. They wouldn't make up something like that, would they?

- Actaeon being turned into a stag by Artemis, and subsequently killed by his own hunting dogs. Or for that matter Callisto being turned into a bear. They must have based the story of someone turned into a beast on something they saw, right?

Etc, etc, etc. One could write a whole tome just enumerating such myths, without going into the whole story of each.

Yes. And all of those are worthy of examination. Compare the sighting of Odin at the battle of Lena by some thousands of soldiers, with the Angels of Mons stories. You are already getting somewhere: the miraculous on the battlefield has a huge history. Apply sociology, psychology, history, archeology. (Why did the miracle occur - were there technological reasons, or tactical ones? Why did the victors ascribe their victory to supernatural force instead? Does post-combat fatigue lead to similar experiences? Exhaustion? Look for commonalities. Here is an account I collected on a recent piece of research -

" When I was doing basic training in (I'll remove this), during the summer of
1989, I had an intensely vivid hallucination. It was on the second
day of a field training exercise. After a vigorous day of training
exercises in heat that peaked at 39 °C and then spending the evening
and most of night digging a trench in rocky soil, I was standing in
said trench for a mock battle. It was late morning and the
temperature was up into the 30's again. I'd been awake at this point for over 30 hours.

I saw two soldiers in the brush about three metres away. They were
wearing British combat uniforms. I could see them clearly enough to
make out their ranks, a private and a sergeant, and I could read the
names off the fronts of their uniforms - Adams and Pearson
respectively.

We were trained not to shoot at a target without visual confirmation
from someone else. I asked my buddy in the trench if he saw them,
which he didn't. I could see then so clearly, though, I thought he
was the one who was suffering from sleep deprivation and called over my
sergeant. When he couldn't see them either I was upset, because I
could see them so clearly. I went so far as to insubordinately call
the sergeant "f**king blind" and continued to insist that these
people were there.

After about maybe five minutes of trying to convince my sergeant and
the private in the trench with me that Pvt. Adams and Sgt. Pearson
were right the, crouching in the bush in front of us, they were gone.
I didn't see them "leave" or vanish. I just looked away and when I
looked back they were gone.

--
No need to keep this anonymous; I'm fond of telling this story ;-)

SO I see this as a valuable and useful research approach? Does this show you a little more what I am up to?

Just look at all the glowing reviews and made up gameplay greatness that fanboys write on Amazon, for games they hadn't played and aren't out yet. But they just have to proselytise for their idols. And for example Paul seems to have had exactly such a fanboy personality, so...

And finally, I'm not giving the Bible any less credibility by default than all the above mentioned myths and legends. I'm giving it exactly as much credibility.

But the irony is that here with the Amazon/Paul-as fanboy analogy you have done precisely the kind of thing I want to in the thread - it's a valuable insight, and a useful new perspective on how to look at Paul. And yes, I immediately understand where you are coming from, and it makes sense.

Whichis precisely why I think this thread could be very valuable, if people just went for it and explained what they felt were genuine critiques like this.

Whynot expand on the idea? I think there is an element of truth in that - Paul was arguably the ultimate fan boy.

cj x

 

[cj.23]

I had better go do some work. Hopefully I have clarified a few issues - and Brainache raised some good points I'll try and address later if I can resist the pub. Thanks to everyone who has joined in so far, and I'll also post another account later for us to look at.

cj x

 

[HansMustermann]

Well, if you leave someone up there long enough, they'll eventually die of _something_. Worst case scenario, of dehydration.

Paradoxically, the actually problem is that crucifixion seems to have taken an awfully long time to get someone reliably dead. Most of what it did was to keep them in excruciating pain, rather than kill. Hence the Romans had a standard coup de grace to deliver when they couldn't leave someone up there any more, or just had enough of standing guard at the crosses. They never took someone down alive, unless explicitly ordered to do so.

In effect, that's what makes the chances of survival extremely slim. It's not a couple of hours on the cross on a friday that would kill you, it was the soldiers that would kill you before they took you down.

Duly noted, though, the Bible does make the claim that the standard coup de grace was not applied to Jesus, and he got poked with a spear instead. A trained Roman soldier would know how to make that fatal too, though, if he wanted to.

There is a slim chance that the Romans somehow wanted to take the guy down alive, although there still was a good chance he'd die of infection or be crippled for life.

 

[gambling_cruiser]

snip

The real question I have to ask though: why do you asume the narratives in the bible are fiction? On what grounds do you make this value judgement? Once I understand that I think we can maybe make some headway...

cj x

Because none of the authors was an eyewitness of the events?