How did the myth of Jesus' resurrection originate?

[Aractus]

I'm very disappointed, and have no more time for you.

Look, there's no love lost. You've ignored the meat of my argument - yet again - although i did do my best to address yours. You ignored everything I said about Mary's age, and you also ignored everything to do with Isaiah 7:14, you didn't even try to explain to me why I should disregard a well-regarded Hebrew dictionary.

[rightcoaster]

... I don't think it diminishes my original hypothesis: temporary entombment to get past Yom Tov and Shabbat, then disentombment ASAP and interment. ...

I am agnostic on the subject of whether Jesus' body was placed in a rock cut tomb. ... However, to me the story of Joseph of Arimethea providing his own tomb has the air of a made-up story, and even more so the posting of a Roman guard at the tomb.
...

One alternative to the tomb story is that the Romans simply left the body up as they did with most crucifixion victims, and then buried it in the earth, in which case the tomb story was later worked up to support the resurrection claim.

I think your take on the ex-post evolution of the did-steal/did-not-steal is pretty good -- make it into a Houdini-escape situation, seal and guard and all.

The problem with leaving the corpse on the cross as food for scavengers is that this would have made it quite impossible for Jews, with the horror over the explicit curse associated with such a fate, to have remained followers, and for any new Jewish followers to have been recruited. I can't imagine that the corpse could have been thus left, Dom Crossan's view notwithstanding, and that the NT cover story could have been fabricated so quickly, completely, and effectively that the horrible truth would have been utterly suppressed. That implies a collective lie, a conspiracy of lies among the immediate followers, which is impossible to credit.

That's why I favor the notion that the Jewish authorities did ask for and were able to get the corpse for a proper, curse-free Jewish burial (the hurried temporary entombment a necessary pre-Shabbat expedient) ; and that therefore the crime for which Jesus was executed was not sedition or treason, in which cases the corpse would have been left up as part of the example-setting for which crucifixion was employed. This conclusion follows from the rest of my "passion" scenario, which is that the crimes were 100% the property crimes and batteries against the moneychangers/birdsellers and the gross insult to the Temple cultic practice. But that's another thread ....

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I'm very disappointed, and have no more time for you.

Look, there's no love lost. You've ignored the meat of my argument - yet again - although i did do my best to address yours. You ignored everything I said about Mary's age, and you also ignored everything to do with Isaiah 7:14, you didn't even try to explain to me why I should disregard a well-regarded Hebrew dictionary.

I conceded that Mary must have been between 13-19, but 13-19 or 13-99, does not matter: nobody knew the state of her hymen, and if she was a betulah at 19 she was an unmitigated beast. But that is irrelevant, anyway.

As for Is 7, it is you who have failed to read and understand that the entire story makes utterly zero sense if the almah is not already pregnant. Isaiah is speaking to Ahaz, and he is predicting imminent doom. The imminence is utterly lost on Ahaz if the dolly is a virgin, merely of marriageable age. That is, the story is impossibly vague, stupid, not worth recording at all, if she is just a girl standing around. She must be already visibly pregnant for that story to make sense. However, once written five hundred years previously, it makes for a great source for text-mining, and that is how the gospel-author used it, as part of his larger fiction.

[Minimalist]

Min, help him out a bit more. AR tends to be quite obtuse.

Yeah but he is also easily confused by TMI. The only gap in the record is 4-1 BC and the fact that no coins have been found attributable to other governors suggests that Varus' governorship was simply extended as he was in the process of suppressing the revolts which broke out in 4 on Herod's death. The Romans did not generally replace successful commanders in the middle of a war and Augustus, as emperor, could do whatever the fuck he wanted whenever the fuck he wanted to do it.

It's good to be the king.

[rightcoaster]

I'm very disappointed, and have no more time for you.

you also ignored everything to do with Isaiah 7:14, you didn't even try to explain to me why I should disregard a well-regarded Hebrew dictionary.

None of this is on the thread topic.

The "well-regarded Hebrew Dictionary" does show both "young woman" and "virgin" for "almah". You prefer the KJV, which like you chooses to completely ignore the context in support of a theological position and against reason. There are other English-language versions than KJV --virgins in advanced pregnancy, and all:

New Revised Std Ver:
Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.

Lexham English Bible:
Look! the virgin is with child and she is about to give birth to a son, and she shall call his name ‘God with us.’

New English Translation
Look, this young woman is about to conceive and will give birth to a son. You, young woman, will name him Immanuel.

[Minimalist]

Guys, it doesn't matter what the word means. Isaiah 7 is about "god" assuring king Ahaz of Judah that the joint siege by Israel and Aram-Damascus would fail in the 8th century BC.

It has fuckall to do with any fucking jesus.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+7

12 But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt Jehovah.

13 And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David: Is it a small thing for you to weary men, that ye will weary my God also?

14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

15 Butter and honey shall he eat, when he knoweth to refuse the evil, and choose the good.

16 For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land whose two kings thou abhorrest shall be forsaken.

17 Jehovah will bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy father's house, days that have not come, from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah-even the king of Assyria.

[KichigaiNeko]

I am to understand that the "resurrection myth" has been stolen from the pagan belief of the turn of the year (aka Solstice) the "Virgin" refers to the constellation Virgo and the "star in the east" refers to the very visible rise of Venus at that particular time of winter in the Northern Hemisphere.

[Minimalist]

The dying/resurrected god is a common motif in ancient mediterranean religions. It was necessary to account for the onset of winter and the rebirth that comes with spring and some priest...eager to protect his livelihood...(as always) invented a story which spread in one variant or another to neighboring cultures.

"Jesus" is merely the last bit of chrome on that bumper.

[rightcoaster]

The dying/resurrected god is a common motif in ancient mediterranean religions. It was necessary to account for the onset of winter and the rebirth that comes with spring and some priest...eager to protect his livelihood...(as always) invented a story which spread in one variant or another to neighboring cultures.

The Jesus resurrection myth was different, Min. No solstice here, but a Spring festival; and no gods involved. Since the earliest followers were Jews the problem for them was that the body of the dead human being Jesus was gone from the tomb. I assumed as "facts" only that Jesus was executed, put in a tomb, and the tomb was empty on Sunday AM when his followers came looking for him. I provided a plausible explanation of those "facts" that fit with Jewish law and Roman practice, and that required no miracle, no "resurrection".

At that time Jesus was not "divine", that came later. He was still just a man, but perhaps considered as Moshiakh by his followers, which is OK under Judaism. Moshiakh has to be a person, and the most recent of which I am aware was Rabbi Schneerson of the Lubavitcher Khassidim, who died maybe twenty years ago. There have been many Jewish "Messiahs": Bar Kokhba in about 135CE, Shabtai Zvi in the 17th C as I recall, to name a couple other pretenders. It is not against Jewish law to consider a man to be the long-awaited Messiah. The proof is another matter, of course.

So, as a man and the putative Messiah there was nothing inconsistent with Judaism about Jesus for his followers. There were even other resurrections of dead persons in Judaism -- I think to Elisha is attributed one.

The problem for Judaism is the apotheosis (I think that is the right word) -- the making of Jesus into a divine being. That's impossible in Judaism: trinitarian excuses notwithstanding it goes against the unity of God.

So, unless you have more to offer, you are not correct on this one.

[Minimalist]

At that time Jesus was not "divine", that came later.

That's not the story as "they" tell it. Granted the whole brew had to ferment for a couple of centuries but the winners were the ones who claimed both fully human and fully divine.....absurd and contradictory though that may be.

Glad you mentioned Schneerson, though. I was in Brooklyn the day he died and I said to my colleague (Jewish) "maybe we should duck out of this meeting and head home in case he comes back?"

He laughed.

Again, the concept of a dying/resurrected god was commonplace in the region. Of course there were differences in all the stories but it would not have been considered something revolutionary.

[Aractus]

You prefer the KJV, which like you chooses to completely ignore the context in support of a theological position and against reason.

Um, no I don't. Stop telling me what I think. I prefer the MT over the LXX - obviously, and the KJV was translated at a time when both the LXX and the Vulgate were higher regarded than they are now. While the KJV translators did indeed translate from the original languages, they were also told to use the other sources including the Vulgate, LXX and other early protestant translations (Geneva, Tyndale, etc).