it wasn't like a large percentage of people were involved.
Plus finding a body, with a desert as a back yard seems like a futile use of personnel.
"It's the system, Lara. People will be different after the Revolution."
Actually, contemporary accounts tell us that the Romans bribed the guards to say that Jesus' disciples stole the body, and that the Jewish people believed that "to this day." There was concern about another man claiming to be the Messiah. The Romans were worried about uprisings; there had already been several.
shareGiven the sheer volume of messianic claims at the time (see: Louis Farrakhan, the various imams, etc. of our current age for a point of reference), it's unlikely that this case was given any more credence than any of the others. The "this one was special!" narrative is emotional pornography for those who adhere to, support and benefit from allegiance with this particular fantasy.
Plus there's no accounting for the BILLIONS of revisions to the various texts on Jesua, nor how the current King James bible was cobbled together from thousands of conflicting and disparate sources in the 17th century.
That's really interesting, could you name three or four the conflicting sources that were "cobbled" into the King James Bible?
shareThat's really interesting, could you name three or four the conflicting sources that were "cobbled" into the King James Bible?
contemporary accounts tell us that the Romans bribed the guards to say that Jesus' disciples stole the body
There aren't any. In fact Jesus is never mentioned in any Roman record from the actual time of the events. That is more than unusual in a society that documented everything.
I will say that the premise of this movie is intriguing. Kind of like telling a story from the enemy's side. The execution of the premise however as I understand it turns the movie into a blind affirmation of faith for the already converted in the second half.
There are many. Josephus mentions Jesus in passing twice, Suetonius makes mention of "Chrestus riots" among Jews in Rome shortly thereafter and of how Emperor Nero "devised new tortures for those notorious criminals known as the Christians." Tacitus mentions, in recounting Nero's attempt to shift the blame for Rome's burning onto the Christians, that Christians were these followers of a certain guy named Jesus who'd been crucified under Pontius Pilate in Judea (and proof of what an open sewer for all the world's refuse the city of Rome had become). More than a few atheists who went looking for honest archaeological and historical disproof of the New Testament's accounts ended up coming back Christians on account of records and evidence like this.
shareJosephus mentions Jesus in passing twice,
The following is probably legitimate: "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James" in fact it is probably the reason Josephus writing survive-Jewish scholars had little use for him.
However, the next mention is probably what we call a 'Christian forgery':
"About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared." Written by some well meaning monk during the era when the Church controlled most of the books and learning in Europe.
So AngryNegroMan and RorschachKovacs the truth probably lies somewhere in between.
"It's the system, Lara. People will be different after the Revolution."
Kevin,
I believe some scholars believe some of the words in the second passage are genuine. Up to the point where it says "he was the Christ." And maybe the part at the end starting with "and the tribe of Christians ..." could be genuine, too.
"If indeed one ought to call him a man" at the beginning is also questionable, I think.
"The tribe of Christians" doesn't seem like something a monk would call Christians.
The whole idea that Josephus would really have called Jesus the Christ seems highly unlikely given that such a belief did not affect his overall view of religion.
I believe Josephus says less about Jesus than he does about John the Baptist. Jesus' prominence may not have come till later. Some scholars (e.g., Raymond Brown) believe there are clues in the Gospel of John that some people at the time considered John the Messiah.
"Extremism in the pursuit of moderation is no vice."
Contemporary to the event in question? Can you provide sources for this?
In addition, although there were laws and penalties at the time against grave robbing, after the events of the Resurrection there was a sudden increase in enforcement and the penalties for this crime. Clearly something about this case concerned the Romans.
shareafter the events of the Resurrection there was a sudden increase in enforcement and the penalties for this crime
Sources, please. I don't think that the NT mentions this new, beefed-up enforcement policy.
Also, in some circles, it was thought that John the Baptist had been raised from the dead, but the NT does not mention any beefed-up enforcement policy based on the belief in the Baptist's resurrection.
I'm afraid I can't give sources. I just recall this tidbit from an article that was giving extra-biblical proof (or at least evidence) that the crucifixion did in fact occur. It wouldn't have been mentioned in the Bible because it's not important to the story of the Resurrection.
Also, in some circles, it was thought that John the Baptist had been raised from the dead, but the NT does not mention any beefed-up enforcement policy based on the belief in the Baptist's resurrection.
No, the NT wouldn't. John's resurrection would not have posed an existential threat to Rome: John merely proclaimed repentance and baptism. John was executed in secret, so it would have been no problem to hide his body, or for someone to claim that John had not been executed but escaped, i.e., a false resurrection.
Jesus, on the other hand, was very public from His arrival in Jerusalem to the time of His arrest to the time of His death, including being pierced. Most importantly, John never claimed to be the Messiah or that he would rise from the dead after 3 days, and in fact only claimed to be the herald of the Messiah. Jesus never claimed to be the Messiah; He simply fulfilled all the prophecies about the Messiah and did not forbid people from saying it who wanted to proclaim it. Since the Messiah was to be the King of Israel, anyone getting people to believe they had been raised from the dead would have been a threat to Rome.
(If He HAD stated that He was the Messiah, the Sanhedrin would have been perfectly justified and in fact required to execute Him. Such a claim was the ultimate blasphemy. The Messiah was to be confirmed by signs and wonders and His knowledge of the Law. It's what made His debates and discussions with the Levites and priests in the Temple, especially in the week leading up to the crucifixion, so important. It also made the question of the Chief Priest -- Are you the Messiah? -- illegal)
John's resurrection would not have posed an existential threat to Rome
If it occurred, it would have posed a real threat to Herod, who was the object of John's vituperation. Which is why Herod executed the wilderness prophet. Had the Baptist actually "risen" (other than in Herod's paranoid mind), Herod might have to contend with John's followers who would have elevated John to messianic, if not superhuman, status, i.e., a revolt might ensue, and this would bring on Roman attention.
[Jesus] simply fulfilled all the prophecies about the Messiah
Sorry, but he didn't: he did not free Judea from pagan rule, he did not live the prophesied long, victorious life - instead, he got himself killed by "unclean" Gentiles. The earliest Christians knew Jesus was not the Messiah while on earth - and therefore not the Messiah. They predicted that he would become the Messiah when he returned to earth to fulfill all the prophecies that he did not fulfill in his public ministry. For them, Jesus was not the Messiah of prophecy. He was, rather, a kind of Messiah-Designate who would function as the Messiah only at time's end. Jesus' only self-identification with the prophesied Messiah occurs in Luke 4:21, where Jesus defines his ministry as carrying out Isaiah's description.
If He HAD stated that He was the Messiah, the Sanhedrin would have been perfectly justified and in fact required to execute Him. Such a claim was the ultimate blasphemy.
There was nothing blasphemous in claiming to be the Messiah. Any Jew could - and many Jews did - proclaim himself Messiah. The Messiah was not perceived as God or as God the Son. He was to simply be a man on whom God would send his Spirit and who would explicate Torah in the most successful, meaningful manner possible. Jesus got in trouble when he seemed to identify himself with the heavenly Son of Man - a pre-existent figure, not God, but still divine, the functional equivalent of Israel's Great Angel, Yahoel. In so doing, Jesus was promoting a heretical "Two Powers in Heaven" doctrine. He was not claiming to be God/YHVH/the Father-Creator, but he was claiming to be a pre-existent being, or to be personally identified with that being. No mere man could make such a claim without committing blasphemy, and that's where the priest's cloak-tearing display came from - not that Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, but because he claimed to be a heavenly entity, a "Power" - as he tells the priest, "You will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with Power".
The Messiah was to be confirmed by signs and wonders
First, Jesus' exorcisms and healings were no more Messianic than those of most other healers of the times (except by Isaiah's narrow definition that Jesus modestly adopted). Judaism emphasized that signs and wonders mean nothing apart from a genuine prophecy or Messiahship. After all, frauds, magicians and Baal-worshipers could perform wonders, but falsely. It turned out that the wonders Jesus performed were simply not Messianic - he made the lame walk, the blind see, set "prisoners" free... but he not only left alone the pagan oppressors, he was executed by them - and this at the end of a young life cut short - completely contradictory to the long-lived Messiah of Jewish prophecy.
Jim Carroll,
I have to agree with Bastasch that your historical arguments don't hold up well. Let me say this, which may not please either of you. I believe in the resurrection of Jesus, but I don't think it's a "historical" event. By that, I don't mean that if you could be teleported back to 33 AD and happened to be by Jesus' tomb that Sunday morning, you would not have seen the stone move and Jesus leave. I believe you would have. But history cannot establish such a thing. As Charles S. Peirce said, history, like the sciences, can only establish things within the normal course of nature. In other words, it can only study things that "tend to happen." It cannot establish a particular event, whether miraculous or not.
Now, this might seem like an odd thing to say. Am I saying that history can't establish that Napoleon lived? No. We can establish that because it is within the normal course of nature. If Napoleon had not lived, it would be hard to explain a lot of things, such as monuments and histories devoted to him. It's possible someone could determine that he never lived, but it would be very, very strange. You would have to argue that there was some sort of conspiracy that thousands, maybe millions of people agreed to push to make us believe this fictitious person lived. In fact, I have read a statement by someone (he's literally a "flat earther") that all history before about 200 years ago is fictitious. The world has only existed for about 200 years, but there are evil "powers that be" that have fooled us into believing in earlier events. Obviously the man is mentally ill while quite intelligent. His statements are quite "lucid" in a way.
In contrast, the resurrection of Christ was a "private experience." It was something that a certain number of individuals had. You cannot make an argument for it in the normal historical sense, because to successfully do that, you have to show, I think, that there is no "natural" explanation for what the early Church did. Now, I personally think Jesus' resurrection is the best explanation for why the church continued and grew after the disciples fled at his arrest. But I cannot, as near as I can see, say that there COULDN'T be a natural explanation for that. I don't know, maybe I'm just not smart enough to know one.
Does that make sense?
"Extremism in the pursuit of moderation is no vice."
Assigning one or two guards to investigate out of the thousands stationed in Judea at the time is not a big deal, and probable considering the instability of the region at the time.
Judea was always on the verge of a riot. The Romans would go on to destroy Jerusalem and wipe out most of the Jews in AD 70, because they were sick to death of constant uprisings and people rallying behind different "messiahs." Pilate had already been in trouble with Emperor Tiberius prior to Christ's death for his overt brutality in dealing with riots (in one, he had soldiers enter the crowd concealed under cloaks and give the rioters the beating of their lives), and had been warned to have no further violent uprisings or riots in Judea unless he wanted to return to Rome to account for himself.*
So yes, that he would assign a few men to find the body is within the realm of possibility.
* Pilate was called back to Rome a few years later because his soldiers slaughtered about a thousand Samaritans going on a holy pilgrimage up a nearby mountain, following one of their "messiahs." He was quickly replaced by the Syrian Governor and sent back to face charges before Tiberius -- who died before he arrived in Rome. There are no further records of Pilate after that time.
Josephus is an interesting read, if you're ever inclined to wade through secular Jewish history.
it wasn't like a large percentage of people were involved.
Plus finding a body, with a desert as a back yard seems like a futile use of personnel.
Did the Romans actually go to that trouble? Probably not. But it works for the movie. Most movies require some suspension of disbelief for the premise to actually work, and I think all movies have some things in them that are unrealistic. I thought they pulled it off pretty well, with Pilate constantly fretting about the Jews revolting. It at least comes across as plausible in the context of the story.
shareThis "manhunt for Jesus, Dead or Alive" is the film's central plot driver and its central conceit.
The NT has no record of any such thing happening. According to one account, the apostles returned to Galilee after the crucifixion, taking up again their former occupations. Then Jesus appeared to them at the lakeside and on a mountaintop. The other account says nothing about Galilee, but has all the Resurrection appearances taking place in Jerusalem and environs. But in neither account is it claimed that the disciples/the Twelve/Mary Magdalene were hunted as anti-Roman rebels. On the contrary, the Galilean story implies that they were waiting for the risen Jesus to appear, for "he had gone ahead of them" to Galilee, as the tomb-messenger told the women. They were not harrassed by Romans during this Galilean period. Nor does the Jerusalem tradition mention any Roman harrassment: quite the opposite, the NT depicts the disciples almost from the very first as proclaiming the Good News, right under the very noses of the powers that had killed their leader. They preached publicly, in homes, in the Temple precincts, completely unmolested by Pilate or any other Roman representative. And in the forty days preceding Pentecost, when the risen Jesus was said to have still been on earth, nothing is said - contradicting what the movie depicts - about the Twelve being hounded by Roman soldiers and hiding out in the desert.
Plainly, "the Romans" were satisfied that Jesus had been killed via crucifixion. And they couldn't have cared less about the wild claims that some disciples were making about having witnessed an exalted, glorified, apparitional Jesus. Rome didn't fear ghosts, holy or unholy. They knew that once the physical Jesus had died, he stayed dead.
And as a post-script:
It should also be acknowledged that Jesus' religious or spiritual message - and that of his first Jewish disciples - would not have offended Romans (except the educated ones). A belief in an ascended non-political Messiah who would only exercise his power when the world ended was not a threat to Roman hegemony. In fact, the Roman armies relatively quickly adopted Jesus as their savior, right along with the very popular savior Mithras. The two were seen as compatible.
Some scholars have made a big deal out of the first Christians' claim that "Jesus is Lord" was being perceived as a threat by Rome. The idea here being that if Jesus is your Lord, then Caesar cannot be. But historically, this never happened, it never worked out that way. Christians never got in trouble with Rome as long as they kept the law and paid their taxes. The only problem arose when they refused to burn incense sacrificially to the Emperor and his tutelary spirit or "Genius". But their refusal didn't issue from their acknowledgement of Jesus as Lord; rather it came from the parent Judaism's claim that one can legitimately sacrifice only to the "one true" God, who they identified with YHVH.
It was alright with Rome that Jews refused to worship the Emperor's Genius. Rome permitted the Jews not to sacrifice to the Emperor, but an arrangement was made for the Jews to perform a token prayer in the Temple for the Emperor's well-being, and of course, the Jews paid their Roman taxes.
But although the Christians claimed Judaism as their parent religion, they had no nation or unifying (Jewish-Hebrew) ethnicity - and no Temple, and therefore no special sacrifice-exemption, which is why Rome demanded the imperial sacrifice from them. It was, ironically, the Christians' "Jewish" monotheism that prevented them from performing the Roman sacrifice. The "Lord" to whom they were being loyal was not Jesus the Messiah, but YHVH, the "one, true" God. And the idolatry (sacrifices) they eschewed was idolatry against the God of Israel, not His messianic agent Jesus, who was not (yet) regarded as ontologically "God" by the Christians.
bastasch,
A lot of your comments are quite lucid and convincing. But I see a bit of a contradiction. You say that the disciples were not "hunted as anti-Roman rebels," but you also admit they went to Galilee. At least the males did. Are you skeptical of the whole story that Peter denied Jesus after his arrest? Why would the early church make up such a thing about its revered leader? Doesn't that suggest fear of the Romans? You seem to be attempting to argue that there were no historical factors that entered into the development of the story of Jesus. The disciples were completely free to imagine their savior.
I made another response to you and another person, I think on the previous page.
"Extremism in the pursuit of moderation is no vice."
tgemberl,
Thanks for the kind words.
:)
I see a bit of a contradiction. You say that the disciples were not "hunted as anti-Roman rebels," but you also admit they went to Galilee.
Yes, I think they probably went to Galilee, but the NT makes no statement that this was because of Roman persecution. If there was any persecution at all, it would have been from the Jewish sources - "the priests and the scribes" - that handed Jesus over to Pilate in the first place. But I don't think there was actual persecution of the disciples in Jerusalem, because "the Jews" and Pilate only arrested and executed Jesus. Had they viewed the disciples as dangerous rebels, they would have rounded them up in Gethsemane along with Jesus and "tacked them up", along with him, on Golgotha. But that didn't happen.
The texts say they went back to Galilee because of a message from the risen Jesus, or an angel, that Jesus had gone ahead of them to Galilee, where they would meet him. And in one sense, the Galilean return was only natural - they were not native Judeans, and they had only come to Jerusalem because Jesus had attempted a very late, very short mission in the capital. When Jesus was removed, naturally they would have gone home and resumed their former professions. Which is what the texts say, with no mention of them being tracked, chased, or spied on by either Roman or Jewish authority.
Peter denied Jesus after his arrest? Why would the early church make up such a thing about its revered leader? Doesn't that suggest fear of the Romans?
It suggests fear of the Temple police, who, an hour or so before, had marched into Gethsemane and arrested Jesus, wherein Peter's response was to cut off the ear of the High Priest's servant - surely a sign of what the real conflict was about. The real quarrel was not with Rome, but with the priesthood, against which Jesus had performed a prophetic demonstration in the Temple precincts, driving out the sacrificial animals - thus sealing his rejection of the corrupt priesthood, and sealing his fate, as Mark 11:15-18 so clearly states. It was an inter-synagogue issue, and only peripherally a Roman issue (because Rome depended on a thriving Temple trade, which Jesus disrupted and repudiated).
You seem to be attempting to argue that there were no historical factors that entered into the development of the story of Jesus.
Quite the opposite. I'm no Mythicist a la Richard Carrier, Robert M. Price, etc. What I'm doing in this post is trying to identify the actual, plausible historical circumstances - and they derive mostly from a Jewish conflict over the priesthood, sacrifice, and Temple procedure - not over "the oppressive presence of imperial Rome".
Every film and miniseries that I've seen portrays the Romans as being moderately concerned that they didn't want to create a martyr, and the Sanhedrin was particularly sensitive on the subject, and pushed the Romans to conduct the crucifixion.
I don't recall reading in the Bible anything about a search for the body of Jesus, but that's not to say there wasn't concern. If the public made an inquiry, then the Tribune's deception of using another man's body would have been a good ploy. But the story line beyond that was interesting never the less.
Yes, the story line did keep my interest, even though I was unimpressed by its particular presentation of the "risen glorified Christ".
Agreed that in most cases Rome would not want to create a martyr, but they seem to have realized that Jesus' followers were not political rebels, which presumably is why none of them were arrested - only Jesus. So Rome (Pilate) was probably considering that the crucifixion of their leader would scare his disciples sufficiently that they would scatter - which according to the "Galiliean" Resurrection tradition, they did, taking up their former fishing profession on Lake Tiberias when the risen Jesus, at length, appeared to them.
So it would have been a type of martyrdom that did not encourage a revolt-rebellion response, or even a grief-circle of disillusioned disciples who would create a "cult of the dead leader" in Jerusalem. And in fact they didn't - the disciples seemed to have set up their own "messianic" synagogue in Jerusalem under the very noses of the Jewish elite and Roman governor that had so recently executed their Master. But the cult they began was not about missing and mourning a murdered Master, but about an exalted and risen Son of God - which was not per se offensive either to Jewish orthodoxy or Roman governance. The Acts of the Apostles testifies to occasional persecution by the priestly party, but none by the Roman authority.