Was Jesus Resurrection an actual event?

WTF!?! The Roman Empire persectued Christians, did u ever think of that?? Not easy to save any documents.

Hi Ahhhhh.....

If you were referring to me, yes I have considered what you said. However, also consider that there were many mystery schools and Christian sub-sects for the time. There may be, still, some writings that we aren't aware of. There are "schools of thought" that say that Mary was much more than she is allowed to be in modern religious thought.

I'm just really curious and not really sure if my surmise is anwywhere close to right.

Actually, more than anything I am amused at the apparent lack of "common sense". People find it difficult to accept unfounded mystical cirucmstance, the miracles and the like, and yet they will substitute that type of belief set, with another that speaks of aliens, science mumbo-jumbo and other substitutions that are as equally unfounded.

Kind of cries out for some logical or rational thought to try and give a reason and method for the original happenings. That's all I'm interested in here.

My salute to Unes for his book too.

OK, you are right in synch or concert with what I'm most interested in - was the male/ patriarchal domination a motive/bias in the reporting of the parts of the NT that purport to be historical?

I think YES!

Doctrine should never shape history retroactively. It does, but it should not be allowed.

My God thinks these kinds of questions are a very good thing - he/she/it doesn't think that truth-seeking is ever a bad thing.

Hi Seekerof,

Originally posted by Seekerof
. . . that the resurrection belief IS the very cornerstone of Christianity/Christendom [the largest religion in the world]. That without such a belief, the very beginnings of Christianity/Christendom would never have started.

I totally agree with you. I do believe Christianity has done great many good things. Probably without the Christianity's morality we would still be living under some brutal powers like the Romans. However Christianity also has given us some scuffling restrictions that have hampered our free thinking. And I do believe that Christianity by insisting to keep those faulty ancient religious myths they are impeding the meanings of our own profound experiences of God. It is so shameful to insist that Evolution does not exist.

Hi dbrandt,

Originally posted by dbrandt
Mary is not the center of Christianity. Mary can't save anyone. Mary shouldn't be the focus of salvation. The apostles knew Jesus, and Him alone, is where our thoughts and trust should go.

Well, obviously it is your choice to practice your faith any way that suits you. That is not what we are talking here. We are analyzing if the Jesus Resurrection was a true event then since Mother Mary's stature in the Christian Church is just below Jesus we expected that Apostles should have revered her. This is a logical statement.

Hi (banned member),

Originally posted by (banned member)
The Roman Empire persecuted Christians, did u ever think of that?? Not easy to save any documents.

But we do have good amount of documents about the early Christianity, I hope you are not claiming that ONLY the documents about Holy Mother Mary were lost.

sigung86, thank you for your encouragement.

May God bless us all,

Am I wrong?
If I'm not mistaken, the Romans, during their administration of Palestine, kept very good records, some of which have been found and studied.
At least this is what I was taught years ago in a comparitive religions course in college. I may have been sleeping at the time.
I thought the story goes that Pilates reports to Rome mentioned the rebel Barabus but there was no mention of a man Jesus.
And isn't the only real secular history of the man Jesus from Josephus, some 100 years after the fact?
Someone please enlighten and correct my deficit of knowledge here.

Originally posted by Unes
Since the Apostles and others did NOT pay any attention to Mother Mary, and there is no documentation about the life and fate of Mother Mary. Even her tomb is obscure. This lack of interest in Mother Mary made me to conclude that Jesus resurrection story must be a fairytale that was invented later on by the Gospel writers. ,

It seems to me that Mary was not recorded as the focus of the apostles and disciples attention because she doesn't save people. They knew this, but as they died off(people who acually saw Jesus) other crept in and manipulated and perverted the Gospel. Christ is the focus of salvation. Jesus rose from the dead that we may also.

Originally posted by Unes
since Mother Mary's stature in the Christian Church is just below Jesus

And we are told of this where?

Originally posted by Unes
I wrote a book that explored the existence of Mighty God. I argued God created this Universe over thirteen billion years ago.

I also argued; if Jesus resurrection was a true story then the HOLINESS of Mother Mary should have become crystal clear to all the apostles; Since the apostles experienced Jesus divinity first hand. And then Jesus was gone to heaven, then Mother Mary, in flesh, was the Holiest person amongst them. Acually after Jesus Mother Mary was the Holiest person that ever lived on this Earth. And all the apostles had full knowledge of this fact. Then it is reasonable to assume that Mother Mary should have become the center of all the attentions for all the apostles and the other followers of Jesus. Then there should have been tons of documents about Holy Mother Mary.

Since the Apostles and others did NOT pay any attention to Mother Mary, and there is no documentation about the life and fate of Mother Mary. Even her tomb is obscure. This lack of interest in Mother Mary made me to conclude that Jesus resurrection story must be a fairytale that was invented later on by the Gospel writers.

I created a web site to introduce my ideas: www.TheTruthShall.com

May God bless us all,

i do not understand how christ's mother mary not being paid atention to has any bearing on wether the resurection took place. why should she have anything to do with events past jesus's birth, other than to be refered to when she was present? the only reason she has anything to do with the story is the mirical of jesus's birth. she was blessed by God to give birth to the jesus and helped to raise him that is it. past that she is no holier than anyone else.

the only one of importance is jesus himself. it was he who was without sin and died as the supream sacrifice. not mary. it was jesus who had a message to deliver unto the people. it was the diciples who were to carry on spreading the word after the resurection and ascention. mary's part was long over by that time, so why should she be venerated after jesus was gone? mary was chosen for one task and that was to be jesus's mother nothing else. she was blessed and honered by the act of giveing birth and careing for this special infant. there is no need however to revere her for more than she did.

Believers have to believe everything that they are told to believe and
without any right to discuss anything about what they are told to believe.
Doubting about anything or everything (as you should do) conc. the New
and Old Testament?Than start reading "The Christ Conspiracy" (Acharrya S)
called ,conc. the Bible:"The greatast STORY ever sold".
And,what a story and course of millions of deaths who refused to believe
that story.
After reading that book,plse come back here with your questions.
Baloria

i wish i could afford a new book. or to be honest even a trip to the library.

Drogo,if you can't afford to buy that book (only$11,15),you should at least
read some excerpts:
www.truthbeknown.com...
Flanders

Since the Apostles and others did NOT pay any attention to Mother Mary, and there is no documentation about the life and fate of Mother Mary. Even her tomb is obscure. This lack of interest in Mother Mary made me to conclude that Jesus resurrection story must be a fairytale that was invented later on by the Gospel writers.

Weren't there 500 witnesses including the gaurds outside of jesus's tomb, the gaurds were later killed after they said they saw jesus's resurrection.

Thats an interesting story, where did you hear it? I've never heard it before and would be interested to hear.

all truly the sons and daughters of God?

Jesus in his teachings tried to tell all this. HE spoke of being the "light". That is the light of the holy spirit that resides in each and every one of us. Many have tried to twist his words for the "betterment" of man and "religion".

The man had so much faith in God as the father that he went to the cross for his beliefs. Perhaps he was one of the fortunate few whose faith was so strong that God allowed him to perform miracles, and be resurrected, and then the trip "up" to heaven.

This "light" is within us all. The ones who are able to "harness" the great power that each and every one of us have that are truly the masters. The first step is recognition of the fact. This "light" or "energy" is what holds this place together. Keeps this illusion going. We are all 70% water, no molecules of anything actually touch. What holds us and everything else together?

Mary was a supposed "virgin" according to the teachings of many. However, did Jesus not have brothers and sisters? It was not till Jesus turned the water into wine that even Mary or the apostles had a clear understanding of what Jesus was about. If this is the case then the "Immaculate conception"?

I've said it once and I'll say it again:

BEWARE OF THE TEACHINGS OF MAN. BEWARE OF THE TEACHINGS OF THE
CHURCH.

Learn to listen and pay attention to God. He speaks to us all the time. However, one must have and truly want to listen before one understands.

"Christianity" as a movement is going haywire. Much hate, prejudice, and judgemental condemnation are being taught by so called "Christians". Exactly what Jesus or any true follower of God do not want.

the first question is really, was the crucifixion an actual event? It has been discussed fairly recently in another thread but, there's a reasonable amount of doubt that this ever happened. Check it out (use the search function)

no crucifixion, no resurrection. I have an easier time believing the theory that he just got the hell out of Dodge City.

Originally posted by madmanacrosswater
all truly the sons and daughters of God?

That is the light of the holy spirit that resides in each and every one of us.

The Holy Sprit does not make His home in a person until that person accepts what Jesus has done for the forgiveness of sins. Our spirit is dead until that happens. Jesus told some people that they were of their father the devil. If Jesus said something like this to someone you need to wake up and find out the truth concerning Him.

Groupies:

Well, I'm BAAAAACK as NEO-AMADEUS.

But back to the topic: Bear in mind that none of the Resurrection Pericopes in the Gospels match each other very closely (the crucifixion narratives by comparison are more allignable with each other).

This fact should be a red flag to anyone who wants to "literalise" the resurrection "event" in some way or another. (You might have to read the Resurrection Pericopes in the gospels over very carefully first and then line them up side by side to get an idea of what I mean when I say they all bear witness to a very "confused tradition").

For example, "Luke" mentions a kind of Phantom-Jesus appearing to 3 persons on the road to Emmaeus "in a different form" and who could later appear behind closed doors at will, yet the same "risen lord" could "eat a honeycomb & fish" in full few of witnesses.

He was "recognised" only when he "broke bread" (suggesting that the writer wanted to convey the idea that he was only "made manifest to the disciples" at some kind of a shared/group meal---and not observable under other conditions)

John's gospel has Miryam of Magdalah not recognising the "risen Iesous" and thinking her (lit." husband" = Greek: "kuriou mou") to be the gardner----and later in the same gospel there is the story of Judas-Thomas putting his fingers into the side wounds---suggesting that the writer of that pericope in the gospel envisaged a more solid body than a phantom who can appear and disappear, but Mark (the earliest written Greek Gospel in the canon of the NT) has no resurrection account at all (in fact it ends in mid sentence with a preposition (!) at 16:8 ephobounto gar : "the women were afraid because...") and the parallel "synoptic" gospels (who use Mark as their primary source) start to diverge in their stories from that point on in the narrative, which can hardly be construed as coincidental.

There is also the issue of Resurrection Appearance Locations: "Luke" places the risen "Jesus appearences" in Jerusalem, whereas "Matthew" places them in the "Galilee" on a mountain-top like a New Moses.

"John's" gospel seems at one point to have translated into Greek an Aramaic phrase ("al Galileah" (I go before them "to the Galilee") as "al Eliah" (I go "to my god").

So we have some very basic root linguistic problems in trying to ascertain the exact meaning of the language being employed in the garbled Greek-gospel "resurrection" narratives.

It is vitally important (for the serious student of these narratives) to recognise the fact that the accounts of the "resurrection" of R. Yehoshua bar Yosef the Galilean ("Jeezuz") in the gospels are not in their original form in Aramaic but in a late first century Koine Greek dialect (some like the author of "Luke" use better Greek than others, e.g. the baby Greek of Mark) and that the original Galilean Aramaic Kerygma (or proclamation of the Gospel message among the first "Nazorean Christians) is essentially lost (with a few exceptions that we can find scattered throughout the New Testsament, such as "Gabbatha" ("exalted place") or "golgoltha"("skull there) or "Abba" ('daddy') or "mara-natha" ("may the Lord come now") etc..

So too is the original meaning of the the Aramaic expression "he was EXALTED on the 3rd day" lost and later translated into Greek as "he was raised" (notice the the Greek passive tense, in other words it never said "he rose" but rather, "he was raised/exalted").

There is a big difference between "he was exalted" (i.e. to the Right hand of Majesty) and "he rose from the dead": the first expression is more of a proclamation of a righteous Martyr (e.g. Daniel chapter 12 where the "righteous shine like the stars of heaven" etc.) rather than a resuscitated corpse, or some kind of transformed "body".

Also "Mark's" gospel (the earliest of the "canonical four") written about AD 70 mentions that the SOMA ("live body") of Iesous ("Jeezuz") came down from the cross, not the PTOMA ("dead corpse") and since it takes usually about 70 hours to kill someone on a gibbet, there is a strong chance that R. Yehoshua survived his ordeal (if in fact he was strung up at all, since there was a Shimeon of Cyrene carrying his gibbet at one point and Roman soldiers in Judaea were extremely venal in the 1st and 2nd centuries and could have switched victims fairly easily).

Also the Greek expressions regarding the "resurrection" use the passive OPTHE ("he was manifested unto x ") rather than "x actually saw him" and there is a curious phrase in "Matthew's" gospel which says "he was manifested unto his disciples in Galilee, but some doubted". (cf: the message of the "angels" : "tell his disciples to go into Galilee and there he will manifest himself to them..." or in the 4th gospel: "Rabbi, when will you manifest yourself to the world"?) etc.

One must also consider the role of MIDRASH in the earliest kerygma of the so-called Resurrection passages of "Jeezuz" in the gospels (where certain specific passages from the Old Testament were patched together to form legendary stories about the teacher to "fill in the details" ("but he did not leave his Nephesh (breathing-soul) in Sheol, neither did he allow his Holy One to see corruption..." or "after two days he will kill us, on the third day he shall raise us up", or "since when has the Righteous (one) ever died?" etc.).

Believers in a "physical" resurrrection often cite the (late?) story of an "Empty Tomb" as proof that "Iesous rose bodilly" (whatever that means). BVut an "empty tomb" does not "prove a resurrection-event": it merely indicates that the body/corpse was not in the place "the women" thought it was supposed to be laid out when they came to the supposed site of the tomb to oil the body a few days later.

Although Paul (Saul of Tarsus) never met "Iesous" in the flesh (only in dreams and visions, like my cook !) he claimed to have had a "manifestation" of the risen "christ" at some point in his career---"at last, he was manifested (OPTHE) unto me..."----but he never speaks of a bodilly resurrection of "Iesous"(when he speaks of the resurrection of the dead, he speaks metaphorically: "it is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body: it is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption..." echoing the language of the Mystery Reglions of Tarsus in Cilicia (e.g. Mithra) where he was born. And Paul equates Christianity with The Mysteries of Christ: "behold, I tell you a Mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be transformed...at the last Trumpet..." i.e. on Judgement Day)

Unfortunately in the "scientific: 21st century, we use language very differently than members of the mystery cults (and 1st century Jewish Messianic Chrsitians who overlaid their speech with heavilly SYMBOLIC Old Testament midrash) did in the 1st century, and these mystery cults (which Christianity was competing with in the Roman Empire) were heavilly overlaid with death-life symbolism and esoteric symbolic language. The language the earliest Christians used for the "resurrection" of their "lord" is also expressed in the same vein: modern readers should be more aware of this fact than most on this thread seem to realise.

Just some thoughts on the top of my head today. I know you all missed me!

Originally posted by Unes
I wrote a book that explored the existence of Mighty God. I argued God created this Universe over thirteen billion years ago.

I also argued; if Jesus resurrection was a true story then the HOLINESS of Mother Mary should have become crystal clear to all the apostles; Since the apostles experienced Jesus divinity first hand. And then Jesus was gone to heaven, then Mother Mary, in flesh, was the Holiest person amongst them. Acually after Jesus Mother Mary was the Holiest person that ever lived on this Earth. And all the apostles had full knowledge of this fact. Then it is reasonable to assume that Mother Mary should have become the center of all the attentions for all the apostles and the other followers of Jesus. Then there should have been tons of documents about Holy Mother Mary.

.....

God said it, I believe it, that settles it. Yes, Christ died and the arose from the grave. If He didn't all is lost and there is no hope.

As far as Mary's "Holiness", Mary was the human mother of Christ, but she was still a human. She is nobody to pray to or hold up as God. In order to do so is in violation of the very first commandment, and as God is a tad on the jealous side, I'd dare not go there!

Christ even made it clear when He was told that his mother and other kin were outside. Remember?

[edit on 11-4-2005 by Thomas Crowne]

Originally posted by drogo
i wish i could afford a new book. or to be honest even a trip to the library.

I'll send you mine. U2U where you'd like it sent and it's yours.

Originally posted by dbrandt

Originally posted by madmanacrosswater
all truly the sons and daughters of God?

That is the light of the holy spirit that resides in each and every one of us.

The Holy Sprit does not make His home in a person until that person accepts what Jesus has done for the forgiveness of sins. Our spirit is dead until that happens. Jesus told some people that they were of their father the devil. If Jesus said something like this to someone you need to wake up and find out the truth concerning Him.

Thank you for your sermon dbrandt. However, I being the same faith as you see and read things differently. One must throw out the teachings of man that has been revised over the last 2,000 years to suit whatever and whoever's needs during the time period.

According to your statement billions on this planet who have never even heard, or will never hear the name Jesus are doomed from the beginning. That is contradictory to the teachings of Jesus himself. Yes, Jesus is the light, however so are you and I. Heresy is it not? Not in the least bit.