Why can't Christians Verify Exactly Where Jesus Was Buried?

[Aractus]

I don't think there was.  "Performed healings" you say..what does that entail, lol?

It entails exactly what it sounds like. I'm not sure why you'd argue against it, there have been hundreds of religious people throughout the years documented to have performed healings - heck they still do it today in some parts of the world. I have heard first-hand accounts from people that have witnessed faith healings. Of course their belief in quackery is perhaps not very helpful there, but its their belief nonetheless, and at least doesn't involve the hunting of critically endangered species for use in "traditional medicines".

Both from the pen of an author.......just as a -wild ass- guess.....?  I know, a radical proposition.

Right, so you have no explanation. If there was no Jesus then it's an example of irreducible complexity - that is that either the Epistle of James came first and the Sermon on the Mount (as well as the Sermon on the Plain) were based on it, or the gospel of Matthew came first and the epistle of James was based on a specific section within it, rather than on the broader teachings delivered by Jesus throughout. Neither of those explanations matches the evidence - the evidence clearly shows that James was based on the teachings delivered by Jesus and not the gospel of Matthew, and that Matthew was also based on the teachings delivered by Jesus and not on James. In other words, it's a very clear example of where Jesus has given a sermon (a series of teachings) and it has been used in two completely separate writings unaware of each other's existence.

To argue otherwise is nonsensical. Let's say we accept that James was written well before Matthew - that means that Matthew somehow took teachings that were spread across a letter and distilled them into a coherent sermon delivered by Jesus - that's illogical as much as anything else. For one thing, if that was the case, where did the rest of Jesus's teachings in Matthew come from (that aren't found in Mark)? Because James is very specific and narrow in his use of a small amount of the teaching of Jesus - just as if that writer had listen to that sermon - and perhaps other sermons from Jesus - and then decided which were the important bits he wanted to continue preaching to the followers of Jesus after his death.

Let's say we ignore scholarship that tells us that James is written before any of the gospels, and instead postulate that it's written after Matthew. If that were the case then why does James use such a specific section of the gospel of Matthew, instead of Matthew's broader themes? So it's highly unlikely (for further reasons I've not discussed FYI) that the sermon on the Mount is an invention of Matthew, or that the similar Sermon on the Plain is an invention of Luke, or that the teachings from the Sermon on the Mount are the invention of James. Therefore if they didn't come up with it, and the three of them all used the teachings found within the Sermons on the Mount/Plain, then it must be that the teachings pre-existed. And that means someone else came up with it - and wouldn't you know it that person was Jesus of Nazareth.

I think there probably was a historical person the book of Mark is loosely derived from, but I think the story of Joseph of Arimathea was invented out of whole cloth just to give Jesus a tomb to rise from. Ordinarily, the Romans would throw criminals condemned to crucifixion into a mass grave. There's no reason to believe that they would make an exception for Jesus, and the only purpose giving him a tomb serves is dramatic. It makes for an intriguing climax to a story, which is what the gospels were--religious propaganda used to proselytize by telling a good yarn.

Not true at all, you've pulled that "fact" out of your ass. Jehohanan's remains were found in a Jewish ossuary sealed in a Jewish tomb, he was crucified by the Romans in the first century, just like Jesus he was first laid on a shroud to be later placed in an ossuary, he was significantly younger than Jesus, and a crucifixion nail along with traces of wood from the cross or tree he was nailed to was still embedded in his heel bone:



And here is his ossuary:



If Jehohanan could have been laid to rest in a family tomb, then so could Jesus. Joseph of Arimathea's tomb is largely irrelevant, because it's a small tomb about the size of a small fireplace that is designed to be use intermittently and not as a final resting place (it's a bit like what a morgue is today, where the body is placed in a shroud and later transferred to an ossuary). Yes it's true that this takes much longer than just a couple of days for the flesh to decompose from the bones to placed in the ossuary, but as I've pointed out if the family has their own tomb somewhere else then the shroud is placed in there until it is ready to be transferred to an ossuary. Therefore it is quite logical to think the family would want to move the body to their tomb as quickly as possible anyway, even if they had the use of Joseph of Arimathea's private tomb for as long as they wanted (just as you don't want to leave your relatives today in the mortuary for longer than is needed).

Even if the Bible has that detail of Joseph of Arimathea's tomb wrong it doesn't change the fact the family would have taken possession of the body at some point and laid it to rest either in a tomb or a grave, and probably in Nazareth (or some place else we don't know about) and not Jerusalem. There is no evidence whatsoever that the Romans would have taken the body and burned it or put it in a mass grave.