Quote:
Originally Posted by flamesfever
Textcritic, with regard to how his body was treated after his crucifiction, i.e. "likely tossed into a mass grave...", did you discover anything in your studies that would lead you to believe the Resurrection, or any part thereof, as outlined in the Gospels or Paul.
|
No.
I was once a believer, but the easily most plausible explanation for the rise of Christianity is that Jesus's body was disposed of in a mass grave—as the Romans were want to do, and that one or more of his first followers suffered bereavement fantasies that they interpreted as an actual resurrection event. The idea of bodily resurrection in the Last Days was one that was common among Jewish apocalypticists since at least the second century BCE, if not earlier.
Paul quite obviously considered Jesus's resurrection as a fulfilment of this fairly widely held expectation. Of course, for him and the first Christians this was also proof that the Last Days were immanent. They quite clearly believed that they were living at the end of the age, but these ideas have been greatly massaged and recasted after centuries of waiting for the Apocalypse.