re: #196 steve_davis

Jesus was decidedly dead on the cross. He was scourged with a barbed whip, which would flat-out kill most people at that stage. He had a centurion pierce him with a spear, out of mercy, so that he would die more quickly. Dozens of people witnessed his return after his burial. Either they were all mad members of a cult, or Christ was something well beyond a carnival barker running Oz from behind a curtain.

Two out of the four Apostolic Gospels considered definitive today (after fifteen hundred years of rewrites, editing and outright fabrication) don’t mention the Passion at all. The first written-down description of what supposedly happened at Calvary ca. 33AD was about two hundred years after the event, created by cultists from stories and verbal histories passed down from cultist to cultist, embellished and altered generation after generation for their own purposes.

I’d go with the “mad cultist” option myself.