Did Jesus Die On The Cross

[Minimalist]

A BBC documentary on the question. We all know how xtians love to trot out the "all reputable scholars agree" canard but this documentary includes such notable scholars as Pagels and Crossan and they seem to think it is a load of shit.

Goes off the rails a bit at the end with the "buddhist jesus in Kashmir" horseshit but until then quite interesting if only for the nuance that these scholars have when discussing what morons like drippy and G-C think is so widely held.

[Natachan]

IIRC the closest real life model of Jesus sold out to avoid crucifixion. I'll have to look and see if I can find the story.

[vorlon13]

As a career move, the whole cross bit immortalized Christ.

Died on the cross ??


Hardly

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Well, if Jesus had been crucified, he certainly would have died on the cross - that was, after all, the whole point. But before we get to that point, we'd need to verify the rest of the Passion narrative as historical fact.

And that, kids, ain't happening.

Boru

[Natachan]

Well, if Jesus had been crucified, he certainly would have died on the cross - that was, after all, the whole point

Meh, not so much. The purpose of crucifixion was public humiliation. A proper Roman man was supposed to be in control, especially of his own body. Crucifixion removes that control over your body and bodily function. It was an extreme form of humiliation.

The death of the victim is secondary, and less important. There are accounts, though few, of people surviving crucifixion.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Well, if Jesus had been crucified, he certainly would have died on the cross - that was, after all, the whole point

Meh, not so much. The purpose of crucifixion was public humiliation. A proper Roman man was supposed to be in control, especially of his own body. Crucifixion removes that control over your body and bodily function. It was an extreme form of humiliation.

The death of the victim is secondary, and less important. There are accounts, though few, of people surviving crucifixion.

Picky, picky, picky.

Boru

[Diablo]

His followers probably bribed the guards to pretend that he was dead and take him down. They patched him up and a few days later he was OK to walk around. The wounds didn't heal though....

[Minimalist]

Well, if Jesus had been crucified, he certainly would have died on the cross - that was, after all, the whole point

Actually, they go into that very point because it could take days for someone to die on the cross but jesus (wimpy fuck that he was) only lasted a couple of hours. Josephus records that he saw three friends being crucified and went to Titus to have them released. His wish was granted and he records that one of the 3 survived.

[Anomalocaris]

The Romans had quite a long time and many recorded instances of motivation to offhandedly crucify Jews. So there must have been lots of crucified Jews. The name Jesus, or Joshua, and Joseph, were pretty common. So it seems entirely probably that the Romans crucified a quite few Jesus Ben Josephs.

So it seems very difficult to me at this remove to ascertain whether there had been a specific Jesus Ben Joseph at the origin of the Jesus cult, and whether if such a Jesus existed, he was one of those Jesus Ben Joseph's the Romans undoubtedly had nailed up to leave to die.

Keep in mind while it is perhaps possible to debunk some particular favored scenarios of how a specific Jesus may have become the origin of the Jesus cult, the vagaries of human self deception, wish thinking and outright lying makes possible an virtually infinite number of ways to make a particular Jesus ben Joseph become the the grain around which the myth coalesced. It would seem quite improbable to debunk them all. One would have to debunk almost all of them to say there never was any particular Jesus at the origin of the myth. So I see no real reason why it is particularly improbable that there should have been a single real person who became the grain around which the Jesus myth arose. No one seem to doubt there was a singular, particular Mohammed.

So I think while it is fairly safe, based on contemporary understanding of the operation of reality and of human psychology, to say there actually was never a Jesus son of god, but it seem impossible for now to argue convincingly based on more than vaguest inferences from dodgy circumstantial evidence either way about whether there ever had been a specific Jesus Ben Joseph who had a more than trivial connection with the beginning of the Jesus cult, and how he met his end.

[Minimalist]

No one seem to doubt there was a singular, particular Mohammed.

Read Robert Spencer's "Did Mohammed Exist?"