If I believed that everone's immortal soul would be cast into an eternal lake of fire if I did not submit myself to a brutal crucification, I would do it. Sure I would not be happy in those circumstances, but hey, I would know that I would be back in three days and then on to heaven. Where is the sacrifice here? Am I taking crazy pills? I think that most normal people would make the decision to be crucified if they believed the stakes were THAT high. Now if Jesus would have submitted Himself to be cast into a lake of fire for all eternity to save all of mankind from the same fate, I would be impressed. Would YOU allow yourself to be crucified to save mankind under the conditions that Jesus supposedly did? Or would you simply crucify your belief system to save your own mind?
Seeing as how humans have no "souls" why should I do something as stupid as crusifying myself if I know that it really wouldn't help anyone and it would kill me. No thank you.
Show me who has enough faith to endure even "just" three days of death? The problem for most people isn't the dying itself, as you said, some would die for someone else if necessary. The irony is that Jesus opened the way for everybody to die with the same knowledge He had. But how many people will accept the conditions He accepted? Remember, it wasn't faith that He would be "back in three days", it was faith in God. That made the suffering incidental, not the other way around.
In conclusion, we now have empirical evidence of a crucifixion. Death on a cross could be prolonged or swift. The crucifixion of Josephus' acquaintance who survived should not be projected to the crucifixion of Jesus. The major extrabiblical paradigm for crucifixion is no longer Josephus; it is the archaeological data summarized above. The crucifixion of Jesus, who did not possess a gladiator's physique and stamina, did not commence but culminated when he was nailed to the cross. After the brutal, all night scourging by Roman soldiers, who would have relished an opportunity to vent their hatred of the Jews and disgust for Palestinian life, Jesus was practically dead. ... It is not a confession of faith to affirm that Jesus died on Golgotha that Friday afternoon; it is a probability obtained by the highest canons of scientific historical research.- An archeological note on the crucifixion
Jenyar, Not quite. He knew he was very different – regular people don’t have the ability to perform miracles or raise people from the dead. Didn’t he also tell his disciples before his trial that “I’ll be back”? And wasn’t his resurrection prophesied? And how can any regular person live a perfect life with all the emotional stress we have to withstand. Now had Jesus had a wife, a divorce, and several screaming kids then perhaps we could consider him ‘normal’, but a celibate religious geek with super powers is hardly normal. So given all these abilities and special knowledge he sacrificed himself knowing precisely what was going to happen – no faith in anything was needed. Given a guarantee that one will live for eternity after a brief period of suffering is simply a matter of minimal courage. The crucifixion, if it ever occurred, can only be viewed as a meaningless farce. Kat
Jenyar, Nice article - hooray - looks like crucifixions actually occurred - but then that has never been in doubt. But showing that Jesus actually existed and that he was crucified remains unproven and with no reliable evidence. For interest - I've seen other artciles that show that a cross wasn't used but a T since that was easier to construct and gave no resting place for the head. Kat
Faith is knowing precisely what would happen. Sure, Jesus knew He was different - but in the same way I know I'm different: that I'm able to have that kind of faith. I also have to point out that some of your assumptions aren't completely accurate: Now, let's set that in some context that will make sense out of it, because in that sense, at least for most people in the first century and throughout the ancient period, and in fact throughout most of the Middle Ages, miracles really do happen. Magical powers were real. But this is not to say that they were unintelligible or irrational. There was an explanation, an understanding of the order of the world that allowed for the miraculous to happen. - Magic, miracles and the gospelThere were many such "irregular" people, and Jesus was no more irregular than most of them... compared to his contemporary, John the Baptist, Jesus was a very ordinary guy. He wasn't ascetic, he didn't have a particularly theological education, and he didn't perform any great deeds. Jesus had his own cross to bear, as have each of us. His emotional burdens were just as heavy as about any of us can bear. Couple that with the knowledge that you will be delivered into the hands of the two most powerful factions in existence, as a criminal, and it was pretty harsh. But Jesus followed that path willingly. As I said before, the only reason He had to presume that He would be resurrected was His faith that God would see justice done, and he was the means of it - He could not resurrect himself, as a human being, and neither can we. Whatever we lack in faith or perfection, Jesus supplied. That is why our only certainty lies with Him. But His father has become our Father, and his faith, our faith. That's why I said it's no different.
No, the point is that all the evidence we have points to the historical viability of Jesus' life and death, along with enough peculiarities that makes it an individual (rather than generic, or invented) crucifixion. Read the article.
Jenyar, The article indicates that crucifixions were not rare - this doesn't point to Jesus especially or that a crucifixion would be a remarkable event. What is does is set a typical and believable scenario on which the numerous mythmakers of those times can add a fictional godmanhero and have the locals believe it as real. The myth is then verbally passed down over time with the inevitable exageration and embelishments that comes with mythhmaking where facts are absent. Kat
Jenyar, No. Faith does not entail knowledge otherwise it would not be called faith. Faith means believing what will happen without knowledge – usually an emotional and irrational guess. And Jesus is alleged to have performed miracles – by that standard he would be far from ordinary and not like you at all, and he must have known he had godly powers, otherwise, what - the miracles he alledgedly performed were pure accidents? You simply cannot compare him to ordinary men and that takes away a major part of your argument and alleged meaning for the crucifixion. Kat
It's not like Jesus had much choice about it. All this justification came afterwards, as Christianity evolved to fill a peculiar niche in the human psyche. And it all amounted to nothing since it did not save people, they still have to save themselves. It is an extension of the blood cults of the Jews, which came out of earlier pagan fertility rituals (not that there's anything wrong with that). You can still see it today in the concept of martyrdom. "He knew he was very different – regular people don’t have the ability to perform miracles or raise people from the dead." No, he was no different. This is not to denegrate Jesus, but rather to uplift our low concept of humanity. We are just like him, we are also the boss' son. We are only fallen if we think so, if we lack faith in the way things are. Modern doctors raise people from what would have been, in Jesus' time, certain death- every day. We can obliterate all life on the planet, and certainly Jesus never claimed to be able to do such a thing. The meaning of the cruxifiction was Jesus' attitude of surrendering to the flow of events. Death is not something to be feared, let god do what she will, who are we to control everything?
In its original sense sacrifice meant "to make sacred". The crucifixion can be interpteted in terms of God becoming the world so that the world, in the end, can become God again.
