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Kirata -> RE: Happy Zombie Jesus Day (4/4/2010 1:45:58 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: sappatoti
No one knows, with any scientific proof, what the cause of death was.
Well if we're going to open that can of worms, no one even knows if he was really dead in the first place, or only rendered unconscious by the putative "vinegar" he was given.
John 19:39 And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight.
Myrrh and aloe have known medicinal properties, and that's a helluva lot more than a burial requires.
We're told that Joseph of Arimathea begged the body from Pilate because he didn't want anyone else getting their hands on it. And that being granted, it is said that Christ was wound in linen with the herbs, and lain inside the tomb -- without, apparently, being placed in one of the burial niches in the walls, because the women who discovered that the stone had been rolled away were invited to look in upon the place where he was lain and see for themselves that he was gone.
The gospels appeared after the epistles of Paul, and appear to have been influenced by them. As Thomas Jefferson puts it, "In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills."
In particular, the notion of sacrificial atonement is a very peculiar one for a religion based on the words of Christ to adopt, given that he explicitly teaches that as you forgive others, so also your Father will forgive you, and states flatly in Matthew, twice no less, "I will have mercy and not sacrifice."
In fact, Jefferson was moved to observe that, "Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him [Jesus] by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being."
Now to say all this may seem at odds with the spirit of Easter. But I hope it will at least raise the level of the discussion if there's going to be one, instead of people just capitalizing on the holiday as an opportunity to poke a stick in the eye of their fellowman.
K.
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