Jesus’ Bones
Posted this a month ago but it’s disappeared - in all likelihood due to my incompetence! There’s a new link at the bottom.
It’s weeks till Easter and the press are already running a ‘we’ve found Jesus’ bones’ story.
Today’s Daily Telegraph asks the question, ‘Did this casket contain Christ’s bones?’ See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/27/wchrist27.xml. The film director James Cameron, of Titanic fame, claims to have located the burial casket of Jesus Christ. And would you believe it, he’s only gone and made a documentary about it!
So, did this casket contain Christ’s bones? No, of course it didn’t. Read the gospel accounts. It’s not rocket science. All four of them state that Christ rose from the dead. He still has his bones. He needs them.
Christ rose from the dead. All the reliable historical evidence points to that conclusion. James Cameron might not agree with it but he’s got to get over it. But at least the opponents of Christianity have correctly realised one thing. Christianity stands and falls on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Without a resurrected, reigning Lord Christianity is a ‘ball of fluff’ and as my American colleague brilliantly says, ‘we’re all going to hell in a hand basket’.
If we’re prepared to open our minds and consider the evidence there is however a credible case for the Christian conclusion. We know two things for certain.
We know that Jesus died on the cross
Jesus hung there for three hours having endured unspeakable torture from his captors [Matthew 27:27-54]. The Roman soldiers thought it unnecessary to break his legs and hasten death by asphyxiation because in their opinion they were certain he’d already passed away [John 19:31-37]. The flow of separated blood and water from the spear wound in his side recorded in John’s gospel medically confirms this. Pilate only handed over his body to Joseph of Arimathea for burial once he’d received word from the centurion that he was dead [Mark 15:42-47]. Jesus was definitely dead.
We know that Jesus was seen alive
Over the space of 40 days Jesus appeared to over 500 different people on several different occasions. In the gospel accounts we read that Jesus appeared
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to Mary Magdalene [Mark 16:9-11, John 20:11-18]
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to the other women at the tomb [Matthew 28:1-10, Mark 16:1-8, Luke 24:1-12, John 20:1-9]
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to Cleopas and another disciple on the road to Emmaus [Luke 24:13-32]
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to Peter in Jerusalem [Luke 24:34]
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to eleven disciples on the mountain in Galilee [Matthew 28:16-20, Mark 16:15-18]
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to the ten apostles when Thomas was absent [Mark 16:14, Luke 24:36-43, John 20:19-25]
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then a week later to the same crowd when Thomas was there [John 20:26-31]
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to seven apostles at the Sea of Tiberias [John 21:1-23]
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and then on the Mount of Olives prior to his ascension [Luke 24:44-49]
If we were to call each one of the witnesses to a court of law to be cross examined for just 15 minutes each and you went round the clock without a break it would take from breakfast on Monday until supper on Friday to hear them all. And their testimony could be reduced to one simple truth, ‘I saw a man who had died raised back to life again’.
These two facts are indisputable. The question is what happened in between?
Three common explanations are given
1. The first suggestion is that Jesus’ body was revived
The theory goes that Jesus didn’t actually die, he just appeared to. What is alleged to have happened is that Jesus fell unconscious, was placed in the tomb and after several hours he was revived by the cool air of the tomb arose and departed. There are several problems with this
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there was no way Jesus was still alive after the beating, crucifixion and flesh wound he suffered
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there was no way the Roman soldiers failed to kill their victims, they were professional killers
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there was no way Jesus could have woken up, unravelled the grave clothes, heaved the tombstone open, slipped past the guard and presented himself to the disciples in a fit state to convince them that he’d been raised from the dead
It’s nonsense to believe that Jesus’ body was revived.
2. The second suggestion is that Jesus’ body was removed
The theory goes that Jesus died but once he’d been put in the tomb his body was secretly stolen. There are three different groups who might have taken it.
The body could have been stolen by grave robbers
But it’s unlikely that they would have got passed the Roman guard. But even if they had it doesn’t make any sense because they left the only things of value, the grave clothes. On top of that you couldn’t sell a corpse in First Century Israel for love nor money. God’s Old Testament law required anyone who’d touched a dead body to live in a tent outside the city for a week until they were considered ritually clean again. There just wasn’t a market for it.
The body could have been stolen by the Authorities
But there’s no obvious motive for either the Roman or the Jewish leaders to do so. In fact they colluded and placed a guard on the tomb to prevent people from doing so. But even if we were to suppose that they did, as soon as the apostles started to declare that Jesus had been raised from the dead they could have fabricated a reason for doing so and owned up to removing his body. Christianity grew at an alarming rate and right at the heart of its popularity was the teaching about the resurrection. If the authorities had the body they could have discredited it straight away and stopped the spread as they wanted to do.
The body could have been stolen by the disciples
This explanation is actually the oldest of the lot and is found in Matthew’s gospel [Matthew 27:62-66]. The Jewish leaders, in response to the news that the tomb was empty, bribed the Roman soldiers to say that the disciples had come under cover of darkness and stolen the body. But it just doesn’t add up as an explanation. They simply wouldn’t have done it. Three days after his death they were cowering behind locked doors in Jerusalem in fear of the Jews. But something happened to convince them Jesus was alive again because 49 days later they stood up in Jerusalem city centre and preached sermons all about Jesus coming back from the dead. To say the disciples stole the body doesn’t take account of the extraordinary transformation in the apostles. It doesn’t take account for the fact that these men were prepared to die as martyrs for saying that Jesus rose from the dead. People don’t put up with torture and execution for something that they know to be untrue. No one willingly dies for a lie. They were convinced he was alive again.
It’s nonsense to believe that Jesus’ body was stolen.
3. The third suggestion is that Jesus’ body was resurrected
Only this explanation makes sense of the death of Jesus, the empty tomb and his subsequent appearances. Jesus Christ who was once dead came back to life and his dead corpse was reanimated. There is no other explanation. But so what?
What difference does it make that this man came back to life? There are four breathtaking implications
1. Jesus was who he said he was. He claimed to be God in human flesh and that as God he would die and then rise again. That’s an outrageous claim. If any of our friends claimed it we’d think they’d lost the plot. Unless, of course, they pulled it off. Jesus claimed it. His friends must have thought he was nuts. But he did it. He was telling the truth. This man is God and we mustn’t dismiss him.
2. Jesus demonstrates that there is life beyond the grave. He came back from the dead to show us that we will exist in some form after we’ve died. Death is not the end and we mustn’t just live for this world.
3. Jesus claimed that he would deal with the death sentence that hangs over each one of us. God has imposed this on us because of our rejection of him. But He’s provided an alternative method of paying. Jesus said he would pay it instead. When Jesus was executed that sentence was paid in full. There was nothing left to pay. Therefore death could no longer hold him in its debt. Death had to give up its hold on him. So he came through death to life. He paid the debt and we mustn’t try and pay our debt to God in any other way.
4. Jesus foreshadowed the future for all that entrust their lives to him. Just as he was raised to life in a new kind of existence so those of us who follow him will be given the same new life to kit us out to exist forever in eternity. We mustn’t think that there’s any other form of eternal existence that’s worth thinking about.
The evidence leaves us with one option, as unexpected as it seems Jesus Christ rose from the dead. And that has massive implications for our lives here and now and our existence beyond the grave.
Further information can be gleaned from http://www.carm.org/evidence/Jesus_tomb.htm and http://your.sydneyanglicans.net/indepth/articles/ten_reasons_jesus_tomb_is_fake/
Signing this makes sense